A to Z Challenge: The A's of Final Fantasy

Welcome to the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge of 2016!!

This year, I decided to highlight characters from my favorite game franchise, Final Fantasy, so this year, my blog title is tagged with the A-to-Z abbreviation for gaming (GA). I also plan to see what the other gaming bloggers are on about. I can't wait!

So today's letter is A, and at first, I only had one character, and then, I forgot a summon, and then, I remembered someone else, so we have a three for three here.

But ladies first! Here is Final Fantasy's sweetheart: Aeris Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII.

If you follow my normal blog, you've seen me discuss Aeris's heart-wrenching story already. For everyone else, Aeris was the last living Ancient. The majority of her race was killed or mutated into monsters by a shape-shifting alien that scientists mistook to be an Ancient, and they used it to create super humans and by accident, a bunch of monsters. Smart people, right? (More on that thing later in the alphabet.)

We meet Aeris as a flower girl in the slums and fall immediately head over heels for her sweet spirit and can do attitude. She's basically the most powerful character in the game that we never get to really use. She is brutally murdered early on and still manages to save the world in the end with a prayer and a white materia she thought did nothing.

Arcade Sushi ranked Aeris's death as the 3rd most shocking death in video game history in 2013, and indeed it was.

The mysterious Auron is walking around Final Fantasy X with a great big blob of water following him and destroying things as it goes when we first see him, so we don't know what to expect. A guardian from the real world of Spira (this gets explained a couple of times during this challenge), Auron is actually a good guy and brings together our main character Tidus (coming later) with the rest of the cast to save the world.

He is an awesome swordsman, and spoiler alert: HE'S DEAD!! Killed by the evil summoner Yunalesca when he realizes something is amiss (more info on that later), he holds on so he can help bring her and her psycho father Yu Yevon down.

The aeon Anima in FFX is possibly the scariest aeon you can summon in any Final Fantasy game (and this reveal still gives me chills)! You only see the top half until Anima does her (yes, Anima is a woman!) overdrive attack, and then, you see this thing!

AHHHHH!!!!

Speaking of crazy summons, stick around for Bahamut tomorrow! (I promise most of these posts won't be this long!)