Does Aerith Make a Stealth Cameo in Final Fantasy V?
First off, I fully realize that Aerith debuted in Final Fantasy VII and retroactive cameos aren’t especially a thing, but this was nonetheless how I chose to title a post about something I discovered working on the previous one: There is a generic enemy in Final Fantasy V that sure looks a lot like Aerith, about five years before she had any business showing up in a video game.
Meet the Lemure, an enemy appearing in the Phoenix Tower are of FFV.
Top: original sprite. Bottom: sprite from the 2013 iOS remaster.
She’s got Aerith’s signature curtain bangs. She’s wearing a similarly pink dress. She has an association with flowers just like Aerith does. And it’s a bit easier to see in the sprite done for the 2013 iOS remake, but she’s even wearing a ribbon in her hair. It’s not Aerith, technically, but it looks enough like her that Bartz, Lenna and company get a chance to kill her years before Sephiroth got around to doing that. For comparison’s sake, here’s Aerith, even though I doubt anyone reading this site wouldn’t know what Midgar’s most famous flower merchant looks like.
I was genuinely surprised that this retroactive cameo hadn’t come to my attention beforehand, but there’s a simple explanation for why it exists. This enemy character was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, who was one of the people responsible for the look of the game’s monsters. He’d later go on to design Setzer and Shadow in Final Fantasy VI and then all of the playable characters in Final Fantasy VII. Clearly, he was batting around the idea of a young woman with parted bangs and a flower association for years and only realized it fully and famously in Aerith. It’s less foreshadowing than it is a glimpse at a beta version of a concept finalized later.
The localized name for this monster should sound familiar to Sailor Moon fans, as it’s very close to the term used for the monster of the week in the Dead Moon Circus arc. In ancient Rome, the lemures were angry spirits of people who were not properly buried, and curiously the term is plural only. A backformation singular, lemure, exists in English and actually names a decidedly less beautiful monster in D&D. Given the previous post, I’d guess that’s how the term arrived in the FFV localization, though it could also be Sailor Moon’s fault, for all I know.
The original (and famously shoddy) PlayStation localization called this creature Disabler, probably in reference to its various status ailment attacks, but the Japanese name is a lot more mysterious. It’s チャムキュビア, which you could transliterate as something like… Chamcubia or Chamukyubia? Neither means a whole lot to me on its own, but the Final Fantasy Wiki has a theory that’s it’s a combination of the katakana rendering of the word charm (チャーム or chāmu) plus a katakana rendering of the word cute (キュート or kyūto) plus a permutation of the feminine name Silvia (シルビア or Shirubia). That might seem like a longshot, but there’s at least a potential link with the name of its palette swap — localized as Vilia but originally named the similarly confounding シルビューヌ or Shirubyūnu. There’s a chance that the first two syllables in the Japanese name are the same rendering of Silvia that you get at the end of the other character’s name. And in case you’re wondering, that particular name would be appropriate for these flower-themed enemies because it literally means “inhabiting the woods,” from the latin silva, meaning “wood” or “forest.”
It’s possible to steal the Ribbon item from the Lemure. This is notably because the Aerith’s hair ribbon is iconic, of course, but also because these items fill an unusual role in the Final Fantasy games in that they’re oddly powerful in a way their name and appearance would not suggest. Starting with Final Fantasy III, wearing the ribbon protects a character from most if not all status ailments. In the first Final Fantasy, however, it offers protection against elemental damage and most instant death attacks. In most later names, the Ribbon looks more or less like an ordinary hair ornament, but the way they’re depicted in the first three titles gives some idea as to why they might be endowed with mystical properties.
Left: Official art for the ribbon item from FFII. Right: Official art from FFIII.
They’re less like a hair tie and more like a stole, the scarf-like vestments that you’d see a priest drape over his robe, and complete with cross embellishments, no less. I have no idea why they’re merely called Ribbon in Japanese, however — or at least リボン (Ribon) — because I’m not aware of any connection with the word ribbon and this type of specialty garment. I wonder if later Final Fantasy games just depicted the item as a more generic bow because the religious significance was forgotten or if it was a conscious purging of religious iconography like I discussed in the Ghouls ’n Ghosts post.
Regardless of the reasons for this change, ribbons occupy a special place in the Final Fantasy series, and I suppose the fact that Aerith wore one should have signaled that she was destined for something mystical and powerful. In fact, in that way, the ribbon makes for a good symbol for Aerith herself: innately feminine and possessing mystical powers.