Yeah, the soundtrack really was fantastic. It always is in a Final Fantasy, but VII's in particular takes some of the heavy lifting from the PS1's abundant technical limitations to really make the world come alive. It's been what, 17 years since it came out? I still catch myself humming the Cosmo Canyon music.

VI's ending sequence where everyone is escaping Kefka's Tower while it cycles through their individual themes was a masterstroke.

SPOILERS FOR VII, AND NOT THE SPOILER EVERYONE KNOWS

"I thought he said it was only a name!"

As for Aeris's (never Aerith!) death…I always quite liked the brutal matter-of-factness about it. Yeah, it's out of your control, but that's sort of the point. Death is pretty much sudden and horrible and unfair in real life. Watching Aeris, the main love interest, being suddenly dispatched without even any…

Agreed. VII is a hard one to be objective about because it came out at such a landmark transitional time in the industry. For me personally, and I'm sure for a lot of people, it was not only my first exposure to Final Fantasy, but the first time a videogame truly felt so huge and immersive. Hell, it was probably the…

Even reading that annoyed me.

ReBoot first introduced my child self to the concept of a 'time skip' in a narrative. It blew my goddamn mind.

Both a Mamma Mia reference and a Michael Buble reference in a single comment? On the AV Club? What's happening!?

I want that picture framed on my mantle, so that I can beguile guests with it.

Yes, and it still would have been an improvement if the topic was broached directly before the exact time when the narrative needed it.

Don't get me wrong, they're fine and it's not like I'm going to miss an issue. They're just a bit banal, and the dialogue doesn't flow, and bending isn't depicted in very interesting ways.

And totally with either gender.

Yeah, but he's pissed at her during the second act of the story. Convention demands that the third act will deal with that.

I don't trust the comic enough not to lean on convention and make him a love interest for little ole Bei Fong. Hope I'm proved wrong, of course.

Yeah, can't argue. I just think that maybe writing that part of the timeline is sort of a thankless job anyway. The original series had a band of young heroes ending a 100 year war, Korra is set in the supposed better world that those heroes created. The comics get landed with the fine details; the political and…

Yeah, watching that Book 3 finale of Airbender was a really special thing, wasn't it? I always felt it was let down by a few things that prevent it from being the high-point of both series though.

Estimated dragon speed is not steady ground for criticism.

Yep, I've read them. My love of seeing the continuing stories of the Gaang outweighs my realization that the books themselves aren't very good.

Did anyone else get those tingles watching this episode when you know you're seeing a creative team firing on all cylinders, squeezing the best out of every faucet of their project? This episode was a benchmark of the Avatar universe.