Editing Aerith Gainsborough

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|image=[[File:Aerith FFVII artwork.png|200px]]<br>''Final Fantasy VII'' artwork

|games=''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''<br>''[[Compilation of Final Fantasy VII]]''<br>''[[Kingdom Hearts (series)|Kingdom Hearts]]'' series

|dob=February 7

|age=22 (''Final Fantasy VII'')

|gender=Female

|height=5'3"

|weapon=Staff, Rods

|species=Half-[[Cetra]], Half-[[Human]]

|affiliation=[[Cloud Strife]]

|occupation=Flower Merchant

|family=[[Ifalna]] (biological mother)<br>[[Professor Gast]] (biological father)

|englishva=Mandy Moore (''Kingdom Hearts'')<br>Mena Suvari (''Kingdom Hearts II'', ''Advent Children'')<br>Andrea Bowen (''Crisis Core'', ''Dissidia 012'', ''Explorers'', ''Mobius'', ''Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind'')<br>Briana White (''Final Fantasy VII Remake'', ''Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion'')<ref>[https://ign.com/articles/2019/06/11/final-fantasy-vii-remake-breaking-bad-supergirl-stars-in-voice-cast-e3-2019 Final Fantasy VII Remake: Breaking Bad, Supergirl Stars in Voice Cast - E3 2019]. IGN.</ref>

'''Aerith Gainsborough''' is the deuteragonist of ''Final Fantasy VII'' and ''Final Fantasy VII Remake''. Aerith is a 22-year-old woman who joins AVALANCHE. As the story progresses, AVALANCHE pursues the antagonist [[Sephiroth]] (and by proxy, [[Jenova]]); along the way, the player learns that Aerith is a Cetra, or "Ancient", the first ever race to live on the planet. She was designed by [[Tetsuya Nomura]] with influence from Yoshinori Kitase, [[Hironobu Sakaguchi]] and Yoshitaka Amano. Aerith has also appeared in the later-released ''[[Compilation of Final Fantasy VII]]'', and in the [[Kingdom Hearts (series)|''Kingdom Hearts'' series]].

==History==

In ''Final Fantasy VII'', Aerith is first introduced as a flower seller, when she briefly converses with [[Cloud Strife]], a mercenary working for the antigovernmental group AVALANCHE, who are fleeing from the bombing of a [[Mako]] reactor. The two later meet in Aerith's church in the Sector 5 slums, where she is faced with the possibility of capture by the [[Turks]]. Aerith asks Cloud to be her bodyguard for the cost of one date. She is eventually apprehended, but is ultimately rescued by Cloud and his allies. Aerith then joins them in the pursuit of [[Sephiroth]], while also embarking on her own journey of self-discovery.

After a failed attempt to foil Sephiroth's theft of the [[Black Materia]], Aerith ventures alone into the Forgotten City. Cloud and his companions give chase, eventually finding her praying at an altar. As Aerith looks up to smile at Cloud, Sephiroth appears and kills her by impaling her through the torso. This enrages Cloud who vows to kill Sephiroth in vengeance. Cloud carries Aerith's body out into a lake in the Forgotten City, and releases her back to the Planet. Reeve Tuesti, the head of Shinra Urban and Development, brings the news of her death to Elmyra Gainsborough, Aerith's adoptive mother. The party later learns the reason for Aerith being in the Forgotten City; through her White Materia, Aerith was able to summon Holy, the only force capable of repelling the ultimate destructive magic, Meteor, which has been summoned by Sephiroth. Although Aerith successfully cast Holy before her death, it is held back by the power of Sephiroth's will. When Sephiroth is finally defeated and Holy is released, it appears that it is too late to function as effectively as it should, as Meteor has already come too near to the Planet's surface. While Holy clashes with Meteor, attempting to prevent its impact, the gravity of both Meteor and the Planet pulling on Holy in opposite directions weakens it. Aerith is seen praying with both hands interlocked whilst urging the lifestream to ultimately defend the planet. The Planet's [[lifestream]] then flows forth, intervening between Holy and Meteor, and acting as a battering ram while aiding in the destruction of Meteor.

===''Compilation of Final Fantasy VII''===

Aerith's original Japanese name is エアリス Earisu. This was transliterated to "Aeris" in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics, but in later products has been changed to "Aerith". Both transliterations have basis, as the Japanese "su" (ス) is used when transcribing "s" (/s/) and "th" (/θ/) to Japanese. However, official Japanese material uses the spelling "Aerith", and developers have stated that "Aerith" is a near-anagram of "Earth". Prior to the game's release, Western gaming magazines, such as the May 1996 issue of Computer and Video Games, also referred to her as "Aerith".

In early planning stages of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith was to be one of only three protagonists; herself, Cloud and Barret. During a phone call to Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die, and after much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith. Nomura stated in a 2005 Electronic Gaming Monthly interview: "Cloud's the main character, so you can't really kill him. And Barrett...{{sic}} well, that's maybe too obvious." While designing Final Fantasy VII, Nomura was frustrated with the "perennial cliché where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion to express that love." He found this trope appeared in both films and video games from North America and Japan, and asked "Is it right to set such an example to people?" Kitase concluded: "In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."

 

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