Final Fantasy VII Remake: Traces of Two Pasts is divided into three parts: Tifa’s, Aerith’s, and “Picturing the Past”. “Picturing the Past” has been featured before in the World Preview artbook. The translation is not the same before, and judging from the sections I compared, I think the original Japanese text was updated and expanded upon for Traces of Two Pasts. It’s still the same story, and since it centers around new characters, it’s going to be the least interesting part of the novel.
Back to “Traces of Tifa” and “Traces of Aerith”…While obviously the two women keep certain thoughts to themselves, the chapters are presented as recounting their childhood and teen years to party member(s). Bizarrely, Tifa narrates her story sometime after Kalm, maybe even reaching Chocobo Ranch; Aerith’s is when she and the gang are on the ship to Costa del Sol.
So just to be clear, this novel is technically set in the universe of the Remake/Rebirth games, but at specific times that haven’t happened yet. And while the flashbacks in Traces of Two Pasts are set before any timeline shenanigans really happen in Remake, it is unlikely the stuff here is wholly canon to Final Fantasy VII despite some obvious Compilation references.
If that’s confusing, don’t blame me.
In Tifa’s episode, she narrates about her and Cloud’s sleepy and rather old-fashioned hometown. Her closest friends, all boys, head to Midgar for glory, just as Cloud would do, but it’s the latter’s departure weighs on Tifa’s mind the most. Martial arts training helps keep her occupied, but after the tragedy at Nibelheim, Tifa finds herself in the unfamiliar big city of Midgar with huge medical debt.
Aerith’s story features little about her time at Shinra. Instead, she mostly retells of the early days at Elmyra’s. Elmyra married into a rather wealthy — but kind — family, and she deals with the family business, waiting for her husband to return from the front, and, of course, a sudden adopted daughter with secrets of her own. As Aerith grows up, the pressure and guilt of hiding her background and how it’s affected Elmyra sometimes gets to her.
Both women’s backgrounds have been touched on various media, and so readers will be familiar with a good portion of their flashbacks. Traces of Two Pasts, though, is much more detailed, to the point you could say it changes previous canon. Like, Tifa in Nibelheim had a cat named Fluffy, but you could attribute this to simply being an unimportant fact in previous works. But in another example, in the original game, Sephiroth mentions he hired a guide, which turns out to be Tifa. Crisis Core (at least the PSP version) is vague about how Tifa was hired, but in both, Tifa boasts she’s the best guide. Here, although she volunteered, she kind of accidentally gets the job. In fact, all adults 20+ were eventually assigned patrols up the mountain due to increased monster sightings, and Tifa doesn’t defeat her first monster until the Nibelheim Incident, so she hardly seems like a prime choice to be a guide. Even if this history is canon only to the Remake timeline, this means setting aside a lot of details we have taken for granted and trying to adjust, which isn’t easy to do after 20+ years.
Aerith’s is the more disappointing tale, as it essentially boils down to how Aerith’s house is so nice (i.e. why she/Elmyra are rather rich) compared to most slumdwellers. And the answer is basically that Elmyra’s father-in-law kept his construction business below the Plate while others went above, giving him a near-monopoly but still treated his employees and neighbors well. Elmyra keeps taking steps back from the family business for Aerith’s health and safety, especially as factions like Don Corneo’s rise in power. Frustrating as it may be, I can understand why Zack wouldn’t be brought up yet, but her complicated relationship with Tseng, for instance, would be more interesting than Aerith accidentally blurting out an suboptimal fake name.
As a side note: when I first saw the cover, something about it bothered me. The English version made some font and editing changes, so the dust jacket cover doesn’t seem as sharp to me as the (clean) hardback cover and the original Japanese.
Regardless, Final Fantasy VII fans can learn new trivia like Tifa’s teenage job in Nibelheim or how Barret both became a part of Avalanche and this cell’s new leader all in one day or, but in short, this is very similar to previous Nojima Final Fantasy VII novels. He has a habit of bringing in new characters and then somehow creating a “full circle” moment, and Traces of Two Pasts is no different. Still, the novel is well-written, and even when the flashbacks shift, it’s easy to keep up with what was happening then in the ladies’ lives.
Yes, both had rough lives in their own way, but neither tale is full of misery as Tifa experiences first love then massive debt while Aerith balances her newfound freedom with still a sense of being trapped. I may not agree with all the story and/or characterization choices (thought Tifa would spend a little more time thinking about how she hates Shinra) and question why so much of what fans knew or assumed had to be blurred or outright erased. But still, Traces of Two Pasts is time well spent for Final Fantasy VII fans, especially for Tifa and Aerith lovers.
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