Yes, Jenova Looks Like Sephiroth’s Mother | FFVII Rebirth

This submission is getting insta-removed on the FFVII subreddit (too many links maybe?) so posted here for my own posterity.

I somehow stumbled onto reddit, and somehow stumbled on an older thread about Jenova having shapeshifted into Lucrecia during the Nibelheim Incident (which is something I’ve also independently thought about before), and a lot of people within were being resistant to that idea. That thread was only a month after Rebirth released so it’s reasonable to assume many were still playing it and hadn’t fully digested its information, but just to reiterate some things based on the most up to date depiction of events.

I’ve considered many options for this lady over the years. It could be a Cetran queen she imitated, or it could be a face she based on the legend of Minerva. There’s also a theory which pops up every now and then about FFX‘s Yunalesca possibly being related to Jenova in some capacity, and while the necessary timeline isn’t possible, I will say that Yunalesca is probably the closest match to Jenova’s face in the updated model from Rebirth.

But the one form which I believe makes the most sense is that of Lucrecia. Many swear that, because Jenova was said to have imitated the Cetra or because Shiva was likely the last force she faced in battle, the appearance we meet her in must be based on one of them, and that it’s impossible for it to have been Lucrecia. But remember that she was in battle. Jenova would not have remained humanoid in that situation. Rebirth shows us through a flashback while Sephiroth is reading the Jenova Project reports that, under current canon, Jenova was not dug up looking like the woman she is when he finds her.

Jenova had approached the Cetra in their own forms to manipulate their society (with the Shadowblood Queen being one particularly noteworthy incarnation), but eventually they clued on to her schemes and waged a vicious war against the alien monster, which possibly culminated in Shiva being summoned to freeze Jenova inside of the northern glaciers. This is described in OG FFVII, referenced in the Shiva summon’s datalog, and displayed to us in Rebirth’s Hall of Murals.

• Ifalna (FFVII): “Yes, but… There is no record of Weapon ever being used. A small number of the surviving Cetra defeated Jenova, and confined it. The Planet produced Weapon… But it was no longer necessary to use it.”
• Shiva loading screen (Remake): “An ice-elemental entity and ruler over the world of ice. It is said that she once saved the planet from certain destruction by staunching a great wound with a glacier.”
• Hall of Murals (Rebirth): “A deceiver that stole the faces of the dead – of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers lost. With their voices did it sow the seeds of discord among our people -among the children of man. For the planet did we lay down our lives in battle, and in death returned to her embrace. Yet our adversary did not. Could not. Thus did it fall into a deep slumber.”

Revenant Mother Alissa from The First SOLDIER Episode 2 is a SOLDIER transformed into a Jenova creature through her spiritual residue now known to inhabit the Masamune. In that form, Jenova’s face is covered at the top again like the Shadowblood Queen. The Revenant Mother and Blighted Spirit are forms associated with a battle fought by Da Chao and the other Cetra of Wutai’s southern Igara region, totally distinct to the main conflict when Jenova invaded the Knowlespole Cetran community. The First SOLDIER didn’t recount Jenova having infiltrated Igara as a humanoid, it only really addresses her appearing in youkai forms, but the consistency in design between the Shadowblood Queen and Revenant Mother may suggest that this was her preferred Cetran form at the time, which is totally unlike how she looks when Sephiroth finds her or how she looked when Shinra excavated her out of the Northern Crater.

Jenova transforms back into a monster to fight her wars against the Cetra – illustrated in both the Lifestream holograms and on the two Minerva-like murals – which is how we see her being dug up in the Nibelheim flashback.

To me the statues in the Corridor of Apocalypse seemed to suggest that Jenova had taken the monster form we most know her in from a devil in some local Cetran folklore. There are robed Cetra, but then also a skull creature with long fangs that looks a lot the face of the usual Jenova monster.

It’s my belief that this folklore theory is supported by the Blighted Spirit, a drastically different Jenova manifestation which appeared in Wutai’s Igara Region during Ever Crisis: The First SOLDIER. The Gi’s monument, which many believe to be Jenova, again looks vastly unlike the others. She’s an alien, right? And alien stories always seem to follow the trends of the society they’re being told in.

You can figure out how her abilities work based on FFVII and Rebirth, but it’s explained more clearly in The Kids Are Alright that Jenova can psychically read people’s minds and hearts to figure out the form that will manipulate them most, whether through love or through fear. For the Cetra community in the ancient Gongaga region she snatched the body of their beloved queen, for the northern Knowlespole Cetra she first appeared as their deceased relatives then revealed herself to be a Lifestream-drinking demon, for the Cetra who inhabited the Asian-themed Igara region hundreds of years later her transformations are more like youkai, for the warrior Gi tribe her likeness resembles a fierce beast and for the current scientific society she’s being forced to wear the face of the most fearsome lifeform of all – Sephiroth.

The form that Sephiroth finds her in at Nibelheim is therefore likely not Minerva, a random Cetra or Shiva. Despite all previous appearances having blue skin & pink eyes, the Rebirth model has grey skin & red eyes so that she doesn’t actually match Gi Nattak either. Rather, the most likely candidate from a narrative, thematic and visual standpoint is her having sensed Sephiroth’s approach and shapeshifted into the form which would affect his mind the most. Jenova peers into people’s hearts and appears in the form which will make them most vulnerable to manipulation. Which for Sephiroth, is Lucrecia. His mother that he’s been missing for decades. It being Lucrecia’s face is made especially apparent with the recent contexts from Ever Crisis which show Jenova’s spirit inhabiting the Masamune to appear as Lucrecia inside of his dreams a whole ten years before the Nibelheim Incident.

In my opinion this is what makes the most sense in Final Fantasy VII, and that pick becomes further solidified the more we learn about Jenova’s shapeshifting history.