Last Order -Final Fantasy VII-

Last Order -Final Fantasy VII- is an Original Video Animation based on events that occurred in Final Fantasy VII. The movie was released in Japan with Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

The 25 minute anime is about two events that happen in Final Fantasy VII: a flashback that takes place 5 years before the game begins, revolving around Zack Fair, Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart and Sephiroth at Nibelheim, and another flashback, which involves Zack and Cloud on the run from the Shinra Electric Power Company. The anime cuts back and forth between these two events, with the Turk commander Tseng reminiscing on the Nibelheim Incident. Last Order also forms the basis of the PSP game Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- and serves as a tie-in with the mobile phone game Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, as several of the game's playable Turk characters appear as minor characters.

Although the anime was originally only released in Japan, it was released in the collector's edition of Advent Children in North America and Europe. This Limited Edition Collector's Set was released on February 6, 2007.

Creation
The anime was made over a period of roughly six months, from Tetsuya Nomura's approaching Studio MadHouse to create the short to its completion. Nomura worked heavily with Studio MadHouse during this period making sure what they were making fit with the ideas he was trying to portray, and several scenes underwent numerous revisions, changing both major and minuscule points to meet with Nomura's approval.

Plot
The anime opens up with the unresponsive Cloud being carried by Zack on his back in a forest. The two are being pursued by men in grunt uniforms, but they manage to escape and jump off a cliff.

Meanwhile in the Shinra Headquarters Tseng is talking on a cellphone how the military has made contact with the "target" and the Turks will be sent to where it was encountered. 72 hours ago the Turks received a mission to capture "samples" on run from a Shinra facility, two adult males, one formerly a SOLDIER First Class.

Once the scene fades out Nibelheim is shown in flames with Sephiroth killing a villager. Sephiroth walks away from the town and Tifa searches around Nibelheim for her father and sees Zangan helping an injured civilian. Zangan tells her Sephiroth is the one who set the town aflame and that her father is at the Mako Reactor on Mt. Nibel with him, and despite Zangan's warnings, Tifa runs off.

Zack, still carrying Cloud, is surrounded with troops. As they ready their guns, Zack places Cloud on the ground and begins to fight them, but as more troops arrive, Zack runs off, leaving Cloud behind.

Zack along with a troop arrives at the burning Nibelheim and meets Zangan, who tells Sephiroth has gone to Mt. Nibel with Tifa. Zack tells the troop to help Zangan and that he will help Tifa.

Zack is shown again, running down a street. Two troops on bikes stop him and suddenly a helicopter arrives, containing two Turks--Rude and Elena's older sister. Rude asks via his headset if they're supposed to kill or capture Zack. Tseng in his office tells them to try their best to catch him alive. The female Turk tells Zack to surrender, and that if he does, they can promise his personal safety. The two troops on the bikes decide to take him, readying their guns, and Zack declares "what he wants is freedom," and runs at the two troops.

Tifa runs towards the Mako Reactor. She sees her father lying on the ground with a bloodied sword beside him. She runs to him, and he tells her to run. He dies, and Tifa cries over his body, then grabs the sword and says she hates SOLDIER, Shinra and the Mako Reactors. Sephiroth enters the Mako Reactor and stops at a door that leads to the deepest chamber and says, "Mother. I've come for you." Tifa, holding the sword, runs toward Sephiroth, yelling how he dared to kill her father and everyone in the village. Sephiroth quickly turns around, grabs the sword, and knocks her down the stairs. Tifa reminisces about a promise that when she's in trouble, Cloud will come and save her.

Cloud is lying motionless on the ground with Zack's sword in front of him. Two troops try to lift the sword from the ground but are unable to. Zack arrives on a bike he stole and saves Cloud from the troops. Zack and Cloud are then shown on a bike, with Rude and Gun in a helicopter above them, following. Zack speeds off into a narrow road, and Gun reports they've lost them and Rude says they're heading off to Midgar. Tseng in his office says Midgar has to be cordoned off.

Back at the reactor, Zack wakes up Tifa. Tifa says she hates Shinra, SOLDIER and him. Zack walks up the stairs to the door Sephiroth went through and smashes it open with his sword. Zack sees Sephiroth in front of the metallic sculpture of Jenova saying they should take back The Planet together and go to the Promised Land. Zack yells at Sephiroth, asking him why he killed the villagers and hurt Tifa. Sephiroth laughs and tells Jenova "those people are here again." Sephiroth says that with Jenova's superior powers and knowledge, she should have become ruler of the Planet and rips off the metal cover to reveal Jenova inside a large glass container. Zack places his sword beside Sephiroth's neck and Sephiroth laughs and calls him a traitor, grabs his sword and the two fight.

As they're fighting, Zack says he trusted Sephiroth and that he's no longer the Sephiroth he once knew. Sephiroth says he is the chosen ruler of the Planet and that he will take back the Planet from humans and return it to the Cetra. Sephiroth defeats Zack and throws him out of Jenova's chamber, then walks up to the glass container and places his hands against it, telling Jenova everything is all right now. The camera shows the glass breaking and a sword shoved through him. The attacker removes his sword and Sephiroth falls to the floor. The unknown man says Tifa's name and runs to her removing his helmet, the camera showing the troop is Cloud. Tifa wakes up and is amazed Cloud is there, having kept his promise. Sephiroth breaks Jenova's container and cuts off her head, taking it with him as he walks out. Zack encourages Cloud to finish him off. Cloud runs at him and Sephiroth stabs Cloud through the stomach and throws him back into Jenova's chamber. Sephiroth walks up to him, saying, "Do you think a mere human could defeat me?" and stabs Cloud lifting him up over a ledge. Cloud grabs his sword, pulls himself back onto the platform, and swings the sword, throwing Sephiroth aside. Sephiroth can't believe what is happening, then sees Cloud's glowing eyes and laughs. He tells Jenova to come with him to the Promised Land and jumps off the platform to the bottom of the reactor, disappearing. Cloud, still with Sephiroth's sword in him, passes out. The scene changes to a Turk dialing on her cellphone outside Jenova's chamber. Zangan, along with Tifa on his back, is shown looking at Mt. Nibel. He says to himself he hopes Cloud and Zack survive.

The reactor is filled with Turks and scientists, with Zack and Cloud on stretchers. As Zack is being carried out of the reactor, Professor Hojo says he is to be taken to Shinra Mansion basement. Tseng approaches Hojo who asks how the village is being handled. Tseng replies they've already started working on it, but questions if they "really have to do all that", but Hojo only tells him to hurry and finish it up. Hojo sees Cloud carried out and approaches him. Hojo finds Cloud interesting and wants to use him as a new sample for his experiments.

Zack has abandoned the bike after running out of gas and has hitchhiked a truck leaving for Midgar. Tseng walks toward eight Turks beside a helicopter and a Turk says, "We helped them five years ago, and now we are chasing them?" Tseng and the Turks board the helicopter.

Zack and Cloud are in the back of a yellow truck driving in a wasteland outside Midgar. Cloud is still unresponsive, but Zack promises Cloud he won't leave him because they are friends, and that once they get to Midgar, they can become jack-of-all-trades, doing dangerous missions as they are the best-paying jobs. A sniping scope locks onto Cloud, and a person says they will be within firing range soon. Another person says to go for it. The first person says the Turks said to wait until after they arrive, but the second person says they're not going to give the Turks credit and not to worry and just shoot. The camera then shows the Turks' helicopter above the wasteland, with Tseng and Elena's sister piloting.

Zack looks above the truck and asks the driver why they aren't in Midgar yet, but suddenly blinks and dashes to Cloud and the screen goes black. Zack is heard telling Cloud to run, and a gunshot is heard.

Discrepancies with the game
Because Final Fantasy VII was produced several years prior to the release of Last Order, the interpretations of events sometimes differ between the game and the OVA. Further discrepancies are made in Crisis Core. The contradictions are as follows:


 * In Crisis Core, Zack changes his hairstyle after Angeal's death. This hairstyle is the one he is shown to have in the flashbacks in Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children, yet, in Last Order (and Before Crisis) his hair has retained its original appearance. This contradicts the rest of the Compilation, as Zack changed his hairstyle before the Nibelheim incident occurred.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa's father is found already dead inside the Mako Reactor. In Last Order, he is found dying outside the reactor. Crisis Core does not include this event.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, when Sephiroth injures Tifa, Zack just checks on her. In Last Order, they have a short conversation before Zack enters the chamber. This conversation also occurs in Crisis Core.


 * In Last Order, Cloud and Sephiroth have a dialogue during their confrontation that was not present in the game. The same is true in Crisis Core.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, when Cloud charges Sephiroth with Zack's Buster Sword, Sephiroth turns in time to be stabbed in his stomach. In Last Order, Sephiroth is unaware of Cloud's presence in Jenova's chamber until after he is stabbed through his lower back. He is once again stabbed through the back in Crisis Core.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is stabbed by Sephiroth's Masamune once. In Last Order, he is stabbed with the sword twice. Cloud is only stabbed once in Crisis Core.


 * In Final Fantasy VII when Sephiroth attempts to leave with Jenova's head, Cloud pursues him onto a catwalk that crosses over the middle of the reactor, a wide shaft leading into the Lifestream below. Here, Sephiroth quickly turns and runs his Masamune through Cloud. After being impaled by Sephiroth and held in the air above the Lifestream, Cloud pulls the blade out of his chest and uses it to fling Sephiroth into the Lifestream. In Last Order, Cloud charges Sephiroth while he stands at the top of the stairs leading to Jenova's chamber, and is impaled a first time. Sephiroth then tosses him into Jenova's chamber and impales him upon his blade a second time, holding Cloud above the shaft that leads to the Lifestream. Cloud grabs Sephiroth's sword and throws him into a wall. Sephiroth then jumps into the Lifestream willingly. What happened in Last Order is also present in Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-. Crisis Core alters the events even further, with Cloud charging Sephiroth on the steps and being knocked into the Jenova chamber. Sephiroth then stabs Cloud and the events proceed as they did in the original game, other than occurring in the Jenova chamber.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, when Zack rushes Sephiroth he is instantly defeated. In Last Order, he fights with Sephiroth for about 48 seconds before being defeated and the battle commences above the shaft. In Crisis Core, the fight is expanded into a two-part boss battle and the battle commences below the shaft.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, when Cloud moves Tifa to safety after defeating Sephiroth, there is no dialogue. In Last Order, after Cloud stabs Sephiroth in front of Jenova and moves Tifa to safety, she regains consciousness and speaks with him. Though this seems like a contradiction, the dialogue in Last Order comes from the true version of Nibelheim incident events revealed during the Cloud's Subconscious sequence, and is further explained as both Cloud and Tifa recovering lost memories in the Lifestream in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania.


 * In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is present during Sephiroth's attack on Nibelheim and is knocked unconscious. He later recovers and rushes to the Mako Reactor after Zack has already gone in. In Last Order, Cloud and Zack discover Nibelheim in flames, and Cloud only goes to the reactor after looking for injured civilians with Zangan. In Crisis Core, Cloud is knocked unconscious just as in the original game.


 * In Last Order, Zangan is shown to be involved with rescuing civilians during the Nibelheim incident as true to Final Fantasy VII's original version of the event. In Crisis Core, however, Zangan is nowhere to be seen.


 * While Final Fantasy VII features the hitchhiking scenario, it jumps ahead to a scene in which Zack is gunned down on a cliff overlooking Midgar by three Shinra soldiers by surprise, one of whom then fires several shots into his body at near point-blank range. In Crisis Core, Zack was still fighting (barely) the three Shinra soldiers (two infantrymen and one captain) when he got gunned down. In Last Order, while riding in the bed of the pickup, Cloud is seen being targeted through the scope of a Shinra soldier's rifle. Zack scrambles to protect Cloud, the screen goes blank, and Zack is heard telling Cloud to run, followed by a gunshot and the closing credits, leading to an incorrect inference that he was killed while taking a bullet for Cloud. In Advent Children Complete, the scene is featured as one of Cloud's flashbacks and extended to clarify the sniper missed his mark and they came under fire, resulting in Zack's final confrontation with a legion of Shinra soldiers as depicted in Crisis Core, which leads to him being killed by the three surviving soldiers, as seen in the original game.


 * In Crisis Core (and presumably in Final Fantasy VII), Cloud is infused with Mako for the first time after the events in the reactor, but its also quite possible before failing to make SOLDIER, he was exposed to Mako, it just didn't take and therefore he was only supposedly cut out to be a standard guard, but in Last Order, Cloud seems infused before Hojo's experiments, and as his eyes glow while fighting Sephiroth, which would back up the latter statement, and might be correct, not one of the many discrepancies. Though this might be a result of the battle occuring within a Reactor.


 * In Last Order, Zack's eyes appear dark purple, a phenomenon which contradicts all the other pieces of the Compilation where he bears the sky-blue eyes SOLDIER were known for; a fact Zack himself also comments on in Crisis Core.


 * In Crisis Core, following his battle with Sephiroth in the Mako Reactor, he is knocked back towards the stairs leading to Jenova. In Last Order, he is knocked back and instead hit a capsule.

Voice actors
Despite the anime's release on the collector's edition of Advent Children in North America and Europe, it was not dubbed. The voices remained Japanese; however, English subtitles could be turned on.

In the Compilation
Though the events as depicted contradict Final Fantasy VII and are again contradicted by Crisis Core, Last Order has still been included as an important part of the Compilation in both the Crisis Core and 10th Anniversary Ultimanias, and several explanations--such as the contradictory events being the reports of the present Turk and Cloud and Tifa not consciously recalling their conversation until Cloud's memories are restored--have been offered to explain the differences in the Last Order telling and the rest of the Compilation.