But don’t just bandwagon because “it says so in Japanese” (I don’t think it does, at least). If you know Japanese well enough, play through the game and interpret for yourself! You might agree with OP or you might not. I personally found that the original game gives even fewer hints at which of the two relationships was more *romantic*. Whether the interpretation is correct or not is…up to interpretation! I’m also fluent in Japanese and worked as a translator and I disagree that this is said in a romantic context. That picture is misleading and should be deleted. In context, with nuance, this is still true. My comment about this being wrong was re. Tl dr don’t bandwagon just because somebody says you’re right, learn japanese and interpret it for yourself the picture that says “i want to love you”…that’s…really pushing any interpretation of the phrase, tbh, and i personally think that with context, and with nuance, it’s still wrong :P My original response to this post was re. literally anybody fluent in japanese would have been like “a ha, this exclusively romantic phrase is being used in this context, ergo it is romantic” and that would have been the end of this argument, but like sorry buddy it’s just one of many things that phrase could mean :P Like seriously, if this were canon somebody would have told us millennia ago. it’s all ambiguous in the original, which is pretty in line with japanese culture and probably what the creators intended. you can interpret it that way, and that’s up to you! but my interpretation of the original scene, and all of cloud and aeriths interactions in this game, is that their relationship is meant to be left ambiguous. I’m also fluent in japanese and worked as a translator! which gives me the right to say that japanese is too nuanced for that one phrase to mean “ah yes romance” exclusively. If the phrase had an exclusively romantic context, then clerith would have been confirmed…not 21 years after the game was released :P
Or watch Tim Roger’s video (he’s a professional journalist for ) OR you can watch a JAPANESE man explain how it’s a romantic phrase. Google the phrase and watch how many romance lyrics pop up. I’ve had multiple Japanese fans privately try and teach me this very same romantic nuance of the phrase, and any time I told others about it I got told I was a liar. We’re talking about the nuance that this phrase has in the Japanese culture. Nobody in this entire conversation said jack about the “love” kanji being present or that it LITERALLY said she wants to love Cloud. It literally means “I want to meet you”, but it carries a romantic nuance to it that is the equivalent to saying you want to love someone. It’s not “hella” wrong, you just don’t understand how complex the Japanese language is. There’s nothing really romantic attached to that. “あなたに会いたい” means “I want to meet you.” In the context of this scene, which I’ve played through in Japanese, Aerith is saying she wants to meet the real Cloud. …I normally don’t reblog shit like this but I’m fluent in Japanese and this…this is just flat out wrong.
Go like, subscribe, comment and like all pro clerith comments, guys!! This is amazing for our community and will hopefully put an end to people telling us we’re “delusional.” Tim Roger’s been an open Clerith fan for his whole series, but he has confirmed what so many of us have been saying for literal years about Cloud and Aerith’s date.