Title: My Fandom Loves Its Ringtones
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Content notes: Spoilers for CC/original game and Advent Children.
Summary: FF7's favorite piece of tech is a common device.

Some amazing machines exist within the Planet of FF7: Cid's airships, the Highwind and later the Shera, Bugenhagen's holographic planetarium, Cloud's insanely customized bike Fenrir; even Shinra's machine, like the Sister Ray cannon and the eight huge reactors surrounding Midgar, are awe-inspiring if ultimately horrific in their use.

But the phone is the pet darling that keeps coming back. In the original game the cell phone was incorporated into both story moments and game mechanics. The PHS was introduced as your tool for swapping party members; any time you chose it in the menu, you'd hear a cheery ring tone before being presented with all of AVALANCHE's members to pick who you wanted fighting alongside Cloud. It came up in story moments such as Reeve communicating via Cait Sith or, if you didn't have Cait Sith in your party at the Temple of Ancients, he'd interrupt a conversation with a call to present his own solution. (That he heard everything Cloud and Aerith had talked about suggests Cait Sith had been tampering with the party's devices somehow, another sneaky aspect to his spying business.) Otherwise, though, phones were low-key and not seen too often in a game that lovingly detailed bathrooms for many residences (I suppose "My Fandom Loves Its Swirlies" could have been an essay itself, but, no), suggesting they weren't too common.

When Final Fantasy VII's Advent Children was in production, however, Square-Enix partnered with Panasonic to advertise one of its cell phone models within the movie. One could guess that the phone was going to be a big deal in the movie--and oh, it was, and has remained since in the compilation. Tifa hears the phone for Cloud's delivery service ringing and sighs, 'he's not here anymore' before picking up; Cloud is shown keeping her voice-mails and others friends' messages on his phone to show that though he's pulled away from them, it's not for lack of caring. The fourth wall gets a sharp rap when, just after Tifa has apparently defeated a strange man, she gets surprised by his cell phone ringing out what any fan would recognize as the victory theme. Young Marlene asks for a cell phone to call home, then regards Vincent with some incredulity that he doesn't have one--and his smooth entrance in a later scene is "where can I buy a phone?" And even the afterlife seemingly has a signal, as the late Aerith leaves a message on Cloud's phone, and in the extended Advent Children Complete calls children on phones to guide them to a sanctuary to be healed in.

It's probably little surprise, then, that the chronologically later Dirge of Cerberus would also feature phones, both showing that Vincent now has one (which he apparently got shortly after Advent Children) and that Cloud is back in touch with his friends, carrying on an actual conversation rather than just listening to the message. But phones also get a prominent place in Crisis Core, the majority of which takes place five years prior to the original game: a very large amount of news and information in the game is passed on to Zack via e-mail on his phone--and yes, they're using e-mail now! Sometimes, in fact, at times that may seem hilariously inappropriate: when a town is on fire, you have a chance of catching a neatly-composed text from one of the residents of the town frantically (but fully typed out!) telling you so, though Zack is right there to see himself. Even if it may sometimes seem to cut into a dramatic moment, at least there's no denying that the Compilation enjoys its cell phones; a couple of its entries are Japanese cell phone games, even, such as Before Crisis and a release of the original game's snowboarding mini-game.