Blogpost 3: "Who are they really?"

Good day to you, person who is reading this! You know, I've always wondered if there's any other mythologies or random tidbits that I would find cool in Final Fantasy besides... well, the summons. And since I love FF8, I did some research and found out some pretty cool stuff. It's pretty interesting due to the fact that you never knew stuff like these but you've been thinking about them all the time. Take Shin-Ra from FF7: It actually comes from Egypt which means "Dark God" and is portrayed as a vampire, which makes sense because the Shin-Ra Company is seeking world domination using Mako energy. Cool, right? Too bad I'm not an FF7 person. I'm more centered on FF8 because i don't any other Final Fantasies having gunblades... XIII doesn't count because Lightning is the only one who has a gunblade and gunblades are like a standard military weapon in FF8. So far, this game's been pretty awesome because you can actually control your critical strikes. I'm always wondering if a gunblades in FF8 can actually shoot bullets or maybe the "bullets aren't used to shoot but power up its user's magic instead. I'll never know... or maybe I will. Heck, even gunblades have their own history... according to Joe Juba's article "Final Fantasy's Mythological Roots" Seifer's gunblade, the Hyperion-- is from the Greek mythology who is supposed to be one of the twelve titans who were defeated by Zeus. I'm not gonna be talking about the gunblades for the time being, though. Maybe next time.

The Rhine river

The Loire river, located in France

All right, you probably know that Laguna and Raine are Squall's parents, right? If you didn't, I'm sorry for spoiling you. Laguna is spanish for "lagoon", which is a body of water. And his last name, Loire, is a river in France. Some fans also say that Raine is a mis-translation of  "Rhine" which is a river that acts as a border between Switzerland and Liechtenstein. And if you look around your dictionary, Squall means a storm at sea and it is contrasted by a lagoon (Laguna).
Laguna probably came from the word "Ragnarok" which can be written as 「らぐなろく」and can be pronounced as "la-gu-na-rok" which is a sword used in the FF series (not this one, though) and a spaceship in this game. See? Even their names have their own origins.

"Squall is a cold and taciturn youth"
- Dissidia: Final Fantasy's brief description of Squall
Like I said, it's parallel to the meaning of his name because squalls are sudden gusts of wind that may bring rain or snow or dust. Storms are cold and so is his personality but he started thinking about his life when he met Rinoa, which comes from "Eleanor" meaning "light" in French and she gave light to Squall's life.

After all this research, I've finally realized that there is more to mythology in Final Fantasy than just summons. I highly recommend you try this game out because it was good in its time and you'll understand more what I'm saying. I gotta say, I'm impressed as to Nomura's selection of references with regarding the character names. Gonna put a blog about the weapons next, so stay tuned!