Starbound: Cloud and Tifa’s Love, Individuation, and Soul Recognition in Final Fantasy VII
by Somebody’s Nightmare (nitezintodreamz)
When most people think of Cloud and Tifa and their journey throughout FFVII, a common set of images comes to mind: starry night skies, water towers reaching into the heavens, ethereal green whisps of Lifestream particles. Their iconography has a celestial, eternal quality about it, a permanence that aligns with the very notion of the promise that binds them and is the catalyst of their tale. And it bears a striking resemblance to the legendary folklore that appears every summer in Japan – interestingly enough, on the seventh day of the seventh month – the Tanabata legend, a story of two lovers separated by the Milky Way and permitted to reunite only once a year when the stars align. This legend is more than a simple tale of star-crossed lovers and tragic romance, though. It’s a mythologized commentary on how true, enduring love survives distance and absence, even across the cosmos, making longing and separation a true test of its endurance and reunion.
Reunion, you say? A word that echoes so resolutely through the Final Fantasy VII mythos that it is often the first word that fans think of, between the yellow reunion flowers that symbolize many of the game’s relationships and the ominous reunion of Jenova’s cells at the Northern Crater, the looming tipping point of the game’s external conflict. For a game that internalizes the idea of reunion in so many facets of its storytelling, it should be no wonder that Tanabata imagery permeates the game’s most crucial bond.
Cloud and Tifa’s story, as it has evolved over three decades of storytelling, sits at the nexus of Final Fantasy VII’s core plot threads, both internal and external. Their story, not unlike that of the Tanabata legends Orhime and Hikoboshi, is one of constant separation and reunion, and the evolution of their love grows alongside these ebbs and flows. I’ve recognized this pattern within their story for a long time, but as the lore of Final Fantasy VII continues to expand with entries like the FFVII Remake Trilogy, Traces of Two Pasts, and most recently, Dear Destiny, a hidden intentionality about the deeper, structural nature of their bond has surfaced in a way I couldn’t help but explore more thoroughly.
When considering the deeply spiritual and psychological nature of FFVII as a JRPG and a Final Fantasy entry – a worldbuild where the planet’s spiritual core of the Lifestream serves as the bedrock of both the internal and external conflicts of the games’s narrative – it becomes increasingly apparent that Cloud and Tifa’s bond functions as far more than a simple friends to lovers romance tale that helps facilitate aspects of the game’s plot and in particular, the protagonist’s personal journey. Even the most charitable and in-depth analysis often fails to recognize what I believe are implications of a bond that is perhaps as ancient as the Lifestream itself.
Considering the evolution of Compilation entries and the scenario writer’s inspirations of real-life philosophies in crafting FFVII and its mysteries, I’ve fallen under the increasing suspicion that Cloud and Tifa’s relationship – in the tradition of Tanabata and the theme of reunion – is one of a bond that persists across insurmountable distances, lifetimes, and the boundaries of conscious memory or thought. Whether we choose to call this phenomenon soulmates, twin flames, red thread of fate, the anima’s call across the collective unconscious, karmic recognition, or some blend of all of it, the experience feels the same. This sort of reading lends itself to the idea that Cloud and Tifa’s story is less about two people falling in love and more about two souls finding their way back to each other, where they belong, over and over again.
To each other’s Promised Land, you might even say.
Scenario writer Kazushige Nojima explicitly cites Yogācāra and Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious as foundational to Final Fantasy VII’s worldview and the mysteries that lead to the end of the story. My goal in this essay is to explore Cloud and Tifa as “soulmates”, not only in the romantic sense, but in a psychological and spiritual sense that can be understood through the application of Jungian psychology, Yogācāra Buddhism, and common soulmate mythology, grounding it in the structural metaphysics of the game’s in-universe mechanism of the Lifestream.
I must first disclaim that I am no expert on any of these topics, nor do I claim that my interpretation is somehow representative of the developers’ intentions or a factual application of these philosophies to the fictional layers of this particular video game. I am simply applying my own research as a layman and fan in an attempt to reconcile what I have experienced in the game and Compilation materials with possible theoretical and philosophical frameworks that support my interpretations.
To make this piece as organized and digestible as possible, I’ve broken my analysis down into the following structure:
- Jungian Psychology, Love, and Individuation
- Soulmates across Cultures and the Nature of Reunion and Karmic Recognition
- Jungian Soulmatism & Karmic Reunion
- The Lifestream as the Collective Unconscious
- Cloud’s Identity Conflict and the Personal Unconscious
- Understanding the Unique Nature and Evolution of Cloud and Tifa’s Bond
- The Lifestream Scene: Love as Individuation, Reunion, and Healing
- Beyond the Reunion: Unconditional Love that Endures
- Starbound: Stars That Remember, Souls That Reunite
Let’s mosey.
Jungian Psychology, Love, and Individuation
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, did not write about love and romance in ways that we typically understand or view it, especially when applying the same sorts of lenses that are applied to most works of fiction featuring romance. His work considered the machinations of the psyche (the totality of the conscious and unconscious mind), with his primary theory revolving around the process he called individuation. This process, which all humans must undergo as part of personal growth and psychological wholeness, requires integrating the unconscious, particularly the shadow (the repressed or unacknowledged aspects of the self) and the anima or animus (the contrasexual archetype within the psyche). This reconciliation is a process that allows us to achieve true actualization by confronting and accepting all parts of ourselves, including those that we repress and those that we project on others, understood by Jung to be of the opposite sex.
Sound familiar yet?
Interestingly enough, while Jung did not specify romance as a particular archetype of its own, he did make clear that love is a powerful and transformative force for individuation. Love – true, transformative, enduring love – is not a simple matter of emotional attachment, but rather a catalytic force that pushes us towards self-awareness, spiritual growth, and embracing the totality of ourselves (and the other person). Love, therefore, becomes a psychological event that demands courage, trust, and surrender. It involves sacrifice and pain, confronting and accepting imperfections and flaws, and integrating deeply buried inner qualities, all of which lead to profound personal evolution for both parties involved.
Applying this understanding to a romantic relationship leads us to draw the conclusion that love in this context has the power to both expose what is unresolved in the ego while helping to stabilize it through transformation. A love that is powerful and real enough to stand up under such a microscope creates a mirroring between us and our beloved: not showing us who we are, but who we might become if we are brave enough to face the truth of our shadow selves, leading to our own personal individuation.
Jung’s understanding of such a powerful kind of love between two people is important to contextualize before we even broach the concept of soulmates or spiritual/fantasical partnerships. The Jungian lens emphasizes that these connections involve intense recognition, comfort, and frequently, a mirroring of one’s subconscious, unhealed wounds. These relationships crack people open because they expose these shadow elements: wounds, defenses, unfinished development, and hidden secrets. As such, pain in such context isn’t a sign of wrongness, but a sign of growth and that the bond is achieving its intended purpose.
In Jung’s view, a true bond of love is not a frivolous, temporary undertaking. It is one that is so committed it requires not only accepting another person, but being present in helping them accept themselves.
As we will see later, that becomes the very definition of soulbonding in many mythologies.
Yet beyond that, Jung also believed in something even more profound to the idea of soul-bonds: the possibility of recognition across time. He spoke of the collective unconscious as a reservoir not just of human archetypes, but of connections that persist beyond individual lifetimes. When two people meet and feel an inexplicable sense of familiarity of having known each other before, Jung would suggest that the recognition might be real. Not necessarily in the literal sense of reincarnation, but in the sense that certain archetypal patterns or configurations of psychic energy can recur across generations or lifetimes, creating bonds that feel ancient even when they begin in the present.
This brings us to Cloud and Tifa and applying a Jungian understanding to their bond. It goes without saying that Cloud is undergoing a psychospiritual identity crisis, complicated by mako poisoning and Jenova cells. But beyond the fantastical elements introduced by the experimentation that Cloud falls victim to following the Nibelheim Incident, the core of his crisis is Jungian in nature. His SOLDIER persona is the mask he wears to avoid his shadow: his shame, his fear of inadequacy, his terror of being unworthy of love.
So how does this position Tifa in the Jungian reading? Tifa isn’t simply the girl Cloud loves. She’s the one who holds the key to his psyche, the one whose presence pulls at the seams of his constructed identity because she knows the boy beneath the persona. She can be read, in Jungian terms, as both anima and anchor: the inner figure of desire and the external reality that will not let him disappear into fantasy.
Cloud and Tifa’s reunions, both at the train station in Sector Seven as well as their “true reunion” in the Lifestream, feel like what Jung described as soul recognition: the psyche calling out across distance, across trauma, across the dissolution of self, and finding its way back to the one person who can make wholeness possible. In fact, we might argue that this recognition predates their current reality as Cloud and Tifa as we know them. More on that later.
So now that we understand the Jungian perspective, how does this translate into soulmatism?
Soulmates across Cultures and the Nature of Reunion and Karmic Recognition
The notion of soulmates is a recurring motif across both Western and Eastern mythologies, philosophies, and cultures with remarkable consistency, even if ideas and applications differ within contexts.
In many Western traditions, soul-bonds are often described as an alchemic coniunctio, a term Jung himself used to describe psychic unions within relationships, which, as described above, he found to be demanding and transformative experiences. In Plato’s Symposium, lovers were mythologized as two halves of a severed, four-legged whole, forever seeing reunion. Even in Kabbalistic mysticism, which is widely believed and theorized to be an influence on the development of FFVII, soulmates are understood as two halves of a single soul separated at creation and destined to reunite through tikkun, the process of spiritual repair, making love and reunion essential to both personal wholeness and cosmic restoration.
It goes without saying that many mystical and theological traditions across Western cultures profligate varying degrees of “souls”, human spirits or consciousness seeking and recognizing another across lifetimes. Soulmates, twinflames, and kindred spirits are all widely understood mythologies that have permeated modern understanding of long-held and intellectualized ideals.
Although different in nature and philosophy, the metaphysical understanding of “soul-bonds” can also be found in Eastern philosophies. The Red Thread of Fate, for example, originating in Chinese mythology and deeply embedded in Japanese culture, posits that an invisible red thread connects souls who are destined to reunite. This thread can be stretched or tangled by cosmic circumstances, but it never breaks, persisting against time and distance.
It is the Eastern notion of karmic imprints or recognition, though, embodied within Yogācāra Buddhism, that provides us with a proper scaffold for viewing how soulmatism may work within the world of FFVII. This tradition views consciousness itself as the vehicle that carries karmic imprints (vāsanā), which are traces of past experiences, emotions, and connections stored in the deepest layers of mind, termed the ālaya-vijñāna or “storehouse consciousness.” These imprints don’t require conscious memory, but shape attraction, recognition, and the inexplicable pull toward certain people unconsciously, even when logic cannot explain it. This philosophy is meant to explain why two people might meet and feel an instant, overwhelming sense of familiarity and attraction, as if the soul is recognizing something it has known before, even if the mind has no memory of it.
This is important, especially for FFVII and particularly for Cloud and Tifa’s bond. This familiarity is alluded to in their early childhood, and carries through the patterns of separation and reunion that they experience throughout the story. As stated previously, Nojima-san has referenced both Jung’s collective unconscious and Yogācāra in understanding the mysteries behind FFVII. Interestingly enough, both systems – one Western and one Eastern – allow for an interpretation of soul recognition across time. Both philosophies suggest that reunion isn’t accidental but inevitable, that the soul or karmic imprint will find its way back to what it has always known. Both systems share the belief that spiritual energy can recognize manifestations across time, distance, lifetimes, and boundaries of conscious memory.
Perhaps this is why Cloud and Tifa are so closely bonded even though it is repeatedly reinforced that they didn’t grow up close. Perhaps this is why formative experiences that predate the age of childhood amnesia are so catalytic in their experiences. And perhaps this is why the theme of reunion is so indispensible in understanding their bond and its structural role in Cloud’s journey and the entirety of the FFVII story.
Jungian Soulmatism & Karmic Reunion
Before we dive into how these principles justify Cloud and Tifa as soul-bonded in any philosophical understanding, it’s important to draw a framework that can be effectively applied to the in-game universe of FFVII. This is where I am drawing upon the many philosophies and cultural mythologies described above to create my own theoretical framework for understanding FFVII and Cloud and Tifa’s bond within it.
This framework emphasizes several core principles drawn from Jungian thought and Yogācāra Buddhism, including archetypal and karmic recognition, psychic memory, spiritual continuity, and the inevitability of reunion. It draws upon ideas of Jungian understandings of personal and collective unconsciousness, particularly how love leads to personal transformation and thus individuation. It also considers common soulmate mythologies and lore, which, across traditions, envision destined, often ancient connections involving intense recognition, comfort, and frequently, a mirroring of one’s subconscious and unhealed wounds. I’ve broken down this framework into key distinctions which are applied to FFVII’s worldview and Cloud and Tifa’s relationship arc:
- Recognition preceding understanding. A soul-level bond operates beneath conscious awareness. Throughout the Compilation, it has become increasingly evident that Cloud and Tifa are drawn to one another before and beyond the promise, the mountain incident, or any one singular romantic moment or feeling. Their subsequent reunions throughout the story become less metaphysical but hold the same power, remaining archetypal and karmic rather than deliberate (finding each other at the Sector 7 train station, and the Lifestream scene, namely).
- Love catalyzes individuation. A soulmate relationship does not exist to “complete” the self, but to expose what must be integrated. In Jungian psychology, the beloved often carries projected anima or animus material, which is the idealized, repressed, or shadowed aspects of the psyche. Healthy individuation requires that these projections be gradually withdrawn and integrated. In Cloud and Tifa’s case, their bond consistently surfaces the parts of Cloud he cannot face alone, making their relationship the place where his projections collapse and true individuation becomes possible.
- Soul-level love is both destabilizing and structural. Soul bonds break down defenses because they expose wounds and hidden shame. This means love is not an accessory to the hero’s journey but the structure that makes his transformation possible. Cloud’s movement toward wholeness cannot occur without Tifa, not because she fixes him, but because her soul-level, karmic recognition and love for him make truth, individuation, and reintigration possible through acceptance.
In Yogācāra, karmic imprints persist beyond death, shaping recognition and attraction even when conscious memory is absent. FFVII mirrors this logic through the Lifestream, which functions as a repository of consciousness itself. Memory, emotion, and relational imprint are preserved as souls dissolve into it, and when consciousness re-emerges, those imprints conceivably can guide recognition and return. Within this framework, Cloud and Tifa do not necessarily need explicit past lives together for their bond to be soul-deep. If the Lifestream preserves patterns of connection, then reunion is not a coincidence but an inevitability.
This is what I mean by a Jungian soulmatism and karmic reunion reading of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It applies both Jung’s psychological insight and Yogācāra’s spiritual coherence to the metaphysics of FFVII’s world. Their bond is not sustained by romance alone, but by the internal logic of a universe where consciousness, memory, love, and reunion are inseparable. Thus, this reading becomes ontological rather than merelynarrative or symbolic, grounding their relationship in the very structure of being within FFVII rather than treating it as a matter of plot, preference, or interpretation alone.
As Jung observed, love is the force that burns away the false self so the authentic self can emerge. This is precisely what Cloud and Tifa achieve across the narrative. A mutual, romantic, and transformative love that catalyzes individuation, and a psychospiritual reunion that restores wholeness.
The Lifestream as the Collective Unconscious
This brings us to the game’s metaphysical architecture and its importance in understanding Cloud and Tifa’s bond within the above-described ontological framework of Jungian Soulmatism and Karmic Reunion. Most importantly is our understanding of the Lifestream, the primary psychospiritual mechanism of FFVII’s world that facilitates everything from understanding of the in-game magic systems, world cultures, individual character arcs, and most crucially, the exposition of the internal and external conflicts of the game’s core plotlines.
The Lifestream is most commonly understood as a vast, flowing repository of spirit energy and consciousness itself, full of memory, emotion, knowledge, and identity. When biological beings (human, flora, fauna) die, their spiritual energy returns to the lifestream, causing individual consciousness to dissolve into the collective. Within a Jungian reading, this is where the Lifesream functions as the collective unconscious, carrying the shared psychic, archetypal, and ancestral traces of every soul that has ever existed on Gaia. That’s quite a warehouse of inheritance.
Individual consciousness thus exists in contrast to this collective reality. It is understood by most interpretations of the Compilation that every person has, as Jung would call it, a personal unconsciousness– a private inner world that holds what is deeply buried or repressed in an individual, and what is necessary for the process of individuation. Mako poisoning, therefore, can be understood as what happens when individual unconsciousness fragments and cannot maintain coherence against the overwhelming weight of the collective. This unique intersection, along with the alien influence of Jenova S-cells, can be understood as the malady affecting Cloud.
Rebirth has clarified the manifestations of the Lifestream, somewhat divisively. In my view, however, this is what is apparent:
The Physical Lifestream exists below ground, represented by ethereal green liquid and the rocky landscapes of the planet’s core. This is where Tifa falls in Gongaga, where the WEAPONs and Whispers fight, and where Sephiroth’s true form exists. This also seems to be the place where the Lifestream scene of the original game takes place.
The Metaphysical Lifestream manifests as dreamlike worlds saturated with rainbow imagery, the plane where multiple “worlds” appear in Zack’s story, each marked by different breeds of Stamp. It reads as a representation of the collective Lifestream, where memories, emotions, knowledge, hopes, and desires flow together. These confluences can resemble alternate realities, but function more accurately as the accumulated psychic residue and unfinished business of countless souls. Accessed through dream states or fractured consciousness, this realm represents the vast store of knowledge that can overwhelm and destabilize an unprotected mind. Rebirth also seems to suggest the corruption of this plane, thanks to Sephiroth and Jenova’s presences within the Physical Lifestream.
With respect to Cloud and Tifa, it seems that the Lifestream itself provides the landscape for connections that feel ancient, even when they began in childhood. Their pull toward one another, their mutual recognition, the way Tifa’s voice can reach Cloud even when he’s lost in mako poisoning or manipulated by Jenova, now can be read as expressions of a bond inscribed in the very fabric of the Lifestream, operating at a level deeper than conscious memory. The genesis of this bond still remains a question mark, and it may remain forever so. It still poses the question.
When they finally reunite in the Lifestream when Tifa enters Cloud’s fractured mind and calls him back to himself, we see that it is not simply one person helping to save another, but rather a soul finding its way back to the one person whose presence makes wholeness and individuation possible. Her voice cuts through every layer of trauma, delusion, and Jenova’s manipulation, because the connection exists at a level Sephiroth and his corruption cannot touch.
That is what the villian of the story is working so tirelessly to dismantle.
Cloud’s Identity Conflict and the Personal Unconscious
I’ve said repeatedly that FFVII is often misunderstood as a war to save the planet from corporate greed, megalomaniacs, meteors, and ancient alien evil. And in many ways, it is about those things. But its primary conflict, even when examining the rivalry between Cloud and Sephiroth, is the internal fracture of Cloud’s identity and the journey to reclaim it. Cloud’s identity journey, though shrouded in red herrings and misdirection for the early part of the story, is the story of FFVII.
In a Jungian reading, Cloud’s SOLDIER persona, formed just prior to the start of FFVII upon reuniting with Tifa, is the mask he wears to protect his vulnerable inner self. With the fantasy and narrative conflict elements of FFVII, it’s important to break down exactly how this defense mechanism works and the exact fracture it is hiding.
Cloud’s fractured identity is sustained by the interaction of three forces: his ideal self, his true self, and the influence of Jenova. His ideal self is shaped by a childhood desire to be a “cool hero” who could save Tifa, rooted in early experiences of shame, failure, and emotional distance, especially his inability to protect her on the mountain or express his feelings directly. This ideal becomes the motivation behind joining SOLDIER and making the promise that defines his self-concept. When Cloud reunites with Tifa in Midgar, the Jenova cells implanted by Hojo act as the adhesive holding this persona together. Through Jenova’s mimetic abilities, they read Tifa’s memories of Cloud as the boy who made a promise and use them to reinforce his heroic self-image, altering his memories to prop up the illusion and creating an opening for Sephiroth’s manipulation. Beneath this construction, Cloud’s true self supplies the raw material that makes the false persona functional: his genuine introverted and guarded nature, his real memories as an infantryman, his secondhand knowledge from Zack, and the abilities granted through experimentation. Together, these elements allow Cloud to perform the role of SOLDIER convincingly while masking the fracture at his core, the belief that he must be someone else in order to be worthy of love.
What’s important (and terrifying) to remember is that through Jenova cells, Sephiroth has access to everything. He can see into the deepest parts of Cloud’s soul, knowing what he fears and desires most. As a result, he knows that, at the heart of this, Tifa is the emotional center in which Cloud’s entire sense of self is situated. That is why, throughout the game and Rebirth in particular, he is relentless in attacking and severing their bond. Sephiroth knows that if Cloud and Tifa’s bond not only remains intact, but if she helps him regain himself – or achieve individuation – his plans will fail. Tifa’s voice reaching Cloud and calling him back to himself will break Sephiroth’s hold of manipulation, and the rest of the house of cards will collapse.
But why is Tifa the key? Beneath Cloud’s persona is his shadow – everything he cannot face about himself and the repressed feelings that are associated with them. It is his shame at failing to save Tifa on the mountain and his sense of inadequacy amongst the other boys in Nibelheim. It is his fear of his own weakness and ordinariness. It is his inability to express his long-held feelings for Tifa without the armor of “exceptionalism”.
At the core of all of this, buried so deep that Cloud is seemingly not even currently cognizant of it, is his desire to be both seen and chosen by Tifa. Cloti fans have been insistent on this because it is written repeatedly in the canon. Cloud’s decision to join SOLDIER is not driven by admiration of Sephiroth or dreams of military glory. As 2000 Gil to Become a Hero makes devastatingly clear, Cloud’s ambition is to become “a special existence to Tifa.”
The tragedy of Cloud’s psyche predates this. His need to prove himself started well before the promise, before the mountain incident, and before any precipitating event, at least as of this writing. Ultimania quotes, Traces of Two Pasts, and Dear Destiny allude to Cloud withdrawing from Tifa at a very young age not because she rejected him, but because he couldn’t process the feelings he was beginning to have for her, beginning a long pattern of isolating and constructing emotional facades to avoid facing the vulnerability of wanting something he fears he doesn’t deserve.
This brings us to understanding why their bond is so important in the first place.
Understanding the Unique Nature and Evolution of Cloud and Tifa’s Bond
One of the most fascinating aspects of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is how early it begins and how much of it predates conscious and verbal memory. During the childhood amnesia period (roughly the first 3-6 years of life), explicit memories rarely persist into adulthood, but the emotional imprints formed there often do.
As small children, Cloud and Tifa were next-door neighbors who played together so closely that they moved freely between each other’s houses. Most of this is imagined to occur during the childhood amnesia period, before core memories could be stored and solidified retainably beyond unconscious storage and before language would capture the bond. Nonetheless, it is evident from their behavior moving forward that there is a profundity in this early formation of the bond that fortifies its importance. They may not have been able to articulate what they meant to each other at that age or why, but the bond exists nonetheless. Our questions of Jungian soulmatism and karmic reunion can resurface here.
Cloud withdraws around age five or six, and while we don’t have exact answers as to why yet, implications from the canon materials, such as Traces of Two Pasts, Dear Destiny, and a deeper examination of the original game, suggest that it is not because their connection has faded, but because the connection has become too intense to process. Jung would say that our earliest relational experiences dictate how we relate to others, especially those we are drawn to. For Cloud, Tifa was more than just the girl next door that he would play with, but the most significant presence in his life outside of his own mother, a presence that created a similar feeling of safety and home to be in.
This suggests that Cloud’s fixation on Tifa at a young age extends beyond simple adolescent infatuation. In general, Cloud and Tifa’s bond cannot be understood as an ordinary or textbook fictional romance. From the beginning, Cloud’s attachment to Tifa is not driven by conscious desire but by something seemingly embodied. His feelings precede the promise, the mountain incident, and even language itself. Those moments become narrative anchors later, ways for Cloud to explain a pull he never fully understood. In Jungian terms, this suggests a bond rooted deep in the psyche, formed before identity solidifies, and powerful enough to shape how he understands connection, safety, and longing for the rest of his life.
Tifa becomes central to Cloud’s inner world not because she is idealized or distant, but because she is present at the formation of his relational architecture. She is woven into how he experiences intimacy and desire. The metaphysics of the Lifestream deepen this further. If consciousness, memory, and emotional or karmic imprint are preserved within the Lifestream, then Cloud and Tifa’s bond operates at a level deeper than childhood attachment alone. The game never states this outright, but it consistently makes it plausible. Their survival of the bridge incident, their repeated reunions, and the planet’s recurring symbolism around memory and return, even the involvement of the WEAPONs in Tifa’s gongaga Lifestream event, all suggest a continuity and a connection that is larger than what we can see on the surface.
This bond unfolds through the stages of love often described in Japanese as koi 恋, and ai 愛, and Nojima-san’s careful use of these descriptors allows us to trace these phases with surprising precision. In Traces of Two Pasts and Dear Destiny, Tifa’s feelings during the promise night on the water tower are described as both suki (affection) and koi (the feeling of falling in love). Cloud’s departure and the destruction of Nibelheim fracture that innocence. During the seven years of separation that follow, Dear Destiny shows Tifa’s romantic love for Cloud sharpened by absence, yearning, and unresolved grief. She is not only processing Cloud’s disappearance, but the trauma of losing her home and the person who anchored it. Her love deepens through longing, memory, and hope, sustained by the promise even as certainty fades.
Tifa’s love for Cloud isn’t simple or one-dimensional. In Traces of Two Pasts and Dear Destiny, she reflects on his nature with a clarity that’s almost unsettling. She sees his independence as both strength and isolation, and she admires his discernment even when it manifests as judgment. She recognizes his aloofness not as coldness but as self-protection. She’s touched by his quiet kindness, the gestures others might miss. She knows he cares, even when he hides it behind indifference or apathy. She sees through the persona to the boy underneath. This is what makes Tifa’s love radical: she’s as intrigued by his darkness as she is by his beauty. She doesn’t shy away from the parts of Cloud that are difficult, that are rough, that don’t conform to the archetype of the hero. She’s not looking for him to be perfect. She’s looking at him as he is (flawed, contradictory, struggling) and finding in that struggle something worth loving.
For Tifa, the transition toward ai begins later and under far harsher conditions. Throughout the early part of the game, Tifa is navigating the intense internal conflict of being in love with Cloud, whom she has newly reunited with, while knowing that there is something deeply wrong with him that she struggles to protect and help him through. In Rebirth, particularly through Gongaga and the events that follow, Tifa’s devotion shifts from conflicted longing to committed resolve. By Mideel, as she remains beside Cloud through mako poisoning and total psychological collapse, the boundaries of ai are fully tested. At this stage, her love stands without reciprocity, clarity or any assurance of return. It is selfless, enduring, and chosen, a love that remains when nothing is given back.
This is the kind of love that Jungian psychology describes as essential for individuation, the love that accepts the shadow alongside the light. Tifa’s ability to see and love Cloud’s duality is what makes her essential to his psychological repair in the Lifestream.
What complicates this arc is what Rebirth has revealed about Cloud himself. Through Sephiroth and Jenova’s intrusion into Cloud’s most repressed inner world, we see that within his deepest, most buried self, Cloud’s feelings for Tifa have already crossed into ai. Long before he can consciously articulate it, long before he can live it, his love for her is bound up with devotion, protection, and self-sacrifice.
We can assume, at this stage, that Cloud’s true self already became oriented toward ai at least as early as the water tower vow, but perhaps even earlier than that, prior to the incident on the mountain where he followed her in an attempt to keep her safe. It is this love, buried beneath shame, fear, and fragmentation, that Sephiroth seeks to corrupt and sever, precisely because it is the one bond capable of anchoring Cloud’s identity and pulling him back to himself.
It is within this context that the sexual nature of their relationship should be understood. Their attraction and tension is not simply a sudden spark due to physical appeal alone. It is each body responding to a bond that has already matured into longing and desire. Jung understood libido as psychic energy, a force that animates desire and transformation.
In dozens of scenes, Cloud and Tifa’s attraction functions in exactly this way. Their awareness of one another is immediate and charged, marked by restraint, proximity, and intensity that neither can fully articulate. This is deliberate on behalf of the developers, because their chemistry becomes a living, physical embodiment of what the psyche and the spirit already recognize.
When Tifa finally enters Cloud’s mind in the Lifestream, the reunion is not to be understood as a rescue operation. It is an exercise in trust, recognition, and acceptance. Tifa bears witness to Cloud’s shame, fear, and fragmentation, all while accepting his truths and verifying the reality of his identity. This is only possible because, as described above, Tifa already knows, accepts, and deeply loves the true Cloud, including the unique duality that makes him who he is but that he may be unwilling to accept himself.
Cloud, in turn, can recognize and accept that he has always been seen by Tifa, and this validation and mutual understanding – the cure of “love” that Dear Destiny seems to theorize in the case of Conrad and Adelia – is what frees Cloud from the fragmentation and loss of sense of self due to mako poisoning and Jenova’s mental shackles. In Jungian terms, this is individuation achieved through their bond, where the projection collapses and the self reintegrates. In FFVII’s metaphysical reality, it is a karmic reunion. Two souls recognizing one another across rupture and loss of self, and choosing each other again because the bond itself exists at a level even Sephiroth cannot touch.
So how does this happen, especially under our applied Jungian soulmatism and karmic reunion framework?
The Lifestream Scene: Love as Individuation, Reunion, and Healing
The Lifestream scene is the emotional climax of FFVII, blowing up the entire internal conflict and recentering us on what truly matters in this story. It is not the final battle or the fight against Shinra or even the destruction of Meteor, which threatens the very cycle of life itself. It is the moment when the protagonist, Cloud Strife, who is completely broken and not the person we thought he was all this time, is made whole by confronting the truth of who he is and by being seen and loved in that truth by Tifa Lockhart.
This scene has been poorly understood for years. Some of this is due to the low-tech, poorly translated storybook format of the original game. Some of it is due to disjointed storytelling throughout the game or poorly conceptualized ideas that were too big for their time. Some of it is simply due to poor media literacy, intentional or otherwise. But when looking at it from both the lens of the game’s strict, canonical, metaphysical reality, as well as an interpretation of Jungian soulmatism and karmic reunion, it becomes clear that the bond between Cloud and Tifa is the structural beam upon which the entire story sits.
I’ve written about the Lifestream Scene ad nauseum, so I’ll try to keep this concise. This scene is often reduced to Cloud “recovering his memories,” or “revealing the truth”, but that framing misses its deeper function. The purpose of the scene is threefold: to uncover the truth of Nibelheim, to prove Cloud’s continuity of self, and most critically, to rebuild his identity through acceptance. Memory alone cannot accomplish this, as the false SOLDIER persona collapses only when Cloud is forced to confront the emotional core he has spent years avoiding: his shame, his perceived weakness, and his love for Tifa as the original motivator behind everything he did and tried to become.
The Lifestream operates as a shared psychic space, a dissolution of individual boundaries into collective consciousness. Cloud is spiritually collapsed here, but even in his most fragmented state, he protects Tifa, draws her into his mind, and allows her access to the most vulnerable interior space a person possesses: his subconscious. This choice is itself revelatory, as Cloud does not, will not, and arguably can not grant this intimacy to anyone else. The truth of who he is is inseparable from his feelings for Tifa, and the scene makes explicit that he must reveal those feelings for him accept himself at all.
What Tifa witnesses inside Cloud’s psyche is not a heroic ideal but the boy she remembers from Nibelheim, one who is afraid, ashamed, and desperate to be noticed. The pivotal memory is not the Nibelheim Incident alone, but the Mt. Nibel failure that anchored Cloud’s sense of inadequacy and tied his self-worth to Tifa’s approval. His desire to become SOLDIER, the construction of his false identity, and even his dissociation are revealed as attempts to be worthy of her. In Jungian terms, this is shadow confrontation at its rawest. In the original scene, this version of Cloud is literally represented by a darkened or “shadowed” version of himself.
Tifa’s response is not correction or disappointment, but recognition. She remembers him when he cannot, not as an observer but as a participant who has always known the truth. She affirms that the promise mattered not because he succeeded, but because he cared enough to make it. She helps him to reframe his failures as evidence of courage rather than weakness. And in this process, they both uncover the final truth that Cloud was indeed in Nibelheim five years ago and that he did in fact keep his promise to her by protecting her.
Throughout this recognition, Tifa’s acceptance collapses the projection that held the false persona in place. Cloud learns that he never needed to be exceptional to be loved. He just needed to be himself. And Tifa, through enduring and unconditional love, holds space for Cloud to reach this realization.
This is the moment in which love and individuation converge. Cloud achieves psychological wholeness by being fully seen and accepted by the person he loves. And as Ultimanias later affirm, their love is brought into the light here and feelings are earnestly returned. Cloud emerges integrated, no longer divided against himself.
But it is important to note that Tifa is transformed as well. She learns that love is not passive longing, but presence through collapse, uncertainty, and fear. The Lifestream scene is therefore not only Cloud’s reckoning, but hers as well. It is the culmination of both their individual arcs and their shared one, a reunion that could belong to no one else because it is built from the deepest truth of who they are together.
Given all of the new and expanded lore introduced by the Remake Trilogy and its supplemental materials like Traces of Two Pasts and Dear Destiny, we can only anticipate that this soul-level experience of recognition and transformation is going to be magnified tenfold.
Beyond the Reunion: Unconditional Love that Endures
Cloud and Tifa’s story doesn’t end with the Lifestream scene or even with the Highwind scene, where they finally express and consummate their feelings, without words, under the same stars where everything began. Their story continues into the post-game dynamics of entries like On The Way to a Smile and Advent Children, into the ordinary lives of family and domestic partnership that their childhoods, if not interrupted by trauma and apocalyptic catastrophe, once seemed to foreshadow.
Despite the growth and individuation achieved in FFVII, Cloud falters in this post-game arc. The guilt he carries over Aerith and Zack’s deaths, compounded by the terminal illness of geostigma, manifests as withdrawal and self-punishment. He isolates not because his love for Tifa has diminished, but because he believes himself unworthy of the future he has been given with her. Ironically, this is not unlike the same wound revealed in the Lifestream, a belief that love must be earned through suffering. His struggle is not with loving Tifa, but with accepting that he is allowed to be loved and to live despite perceived failings or inadequacies.
Tifa, who has been down this road before and loves Cloud unconditionally, understands this. She does not chase or coerce his return, but instead holds space for it and confronts him in the right moment. By this point, her love has fully matured, is patient, resolute, and grounded in karmic recognition. She knows Cloud’s instinct to run when pain overwhelms him, and she trusts the bond to bring him back. This trust is not naive or foolish. It is born of everything they have already survived together and can endure whatever the cosmos (or the plot) may throw at it. Cloud, through forgiveness and acceptance, comes back to Tifa and the children the life they are building. This reunion is quieter than the one in the Lifestream, but it is no less important.
As we consider Cloud and Tifa’s bond at a spiritual, soul, or karmic level, it is important to end on the note that the Promised Land is often misunderstood as a literal destination or fixed only to certain characters. The FFVII canon ultimately frames it as a place where one belongs and where the heart is at rest. For Cloud, the Promised Land is not found in death or transcendence, but in life.
And it is with Tifa and the family and life he builds with her in the aftermath of the end of the world. That is where Cloud’s Promised Land is, in the world of the living, anchored by love that endures.
Starbound: Stars That Remember, Souls That Reunite
Tanabata is a story about waiting, distance, and having faith that reunion will come, even when the cosmos itself seems to conspire to keep us apart. Despite what many may think, FFVII has always held that ideal within every fiber of its storytelling: that some bonds transcend separation, time, and distance, and that reunion isn’t an accident, but something inevitable, the soul finding its way back to what it has always known.
Cloud and Tifa feel like soulmates not because the game decrees it, but because love is the mechanism through which they reclaim themselves. Their bond is romantic, yes. It’s also sexual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. It’s every register at once, because this kind of storytelling understands that we’re whole beings, and that true, enduring, unconditional love is both timeless and engages the totality of who we are.
Jung called individuation the movement toward wholeness. But he also understood that individuation isn’t a solitary process, that it requires the beloved. The one who can witness us in our chaos and remain steady in our collapse. The one whose presence calls us back to ourselves even when we’re lost. The one soul who will recognize us across lifetimes, across the collective unconscious, across misunderstandings and self-doubt and trauma.
For Cloud, that person is Tifa. And for Tifa, that person is Cloud.
Whether we call it karmic recognition, archetypal projection, or simply love: the truth feels the same. Cloud and Tifa are souls who’ve found each other across every obstacle. And the reunion they achieve (in the Lifestream, in the world of the living, in the quiet slice of shared life) can be understood as the fulfillment of a pattern woven into something larger than themselves.
Cloud and Tifa are not star-crossed lovers. Rather, I would elect to call them starbound. Separated by distance, by trauma, by the abyss of Cloud’s identity crisis, by Sephiroth’s relentless manipulation, they find their way back to one another, not because it’s written by fate or destiny, but because the Lifestream itself seems to hold the memory of what they mean to each other. Because their souls recognize each other across every distance. Because love, in the end, becomes the force that holds the self together when everything else falls apart.
This is the story Final Fantasy VII has been telling all along. And it’s a story worth honoring, not as another fantasy narrative, but as a way for us to remember what is truly important in life. Bonds. Relationships. Recognition. These are the things that make all of the themes of Final Fantasy VII come alive and resonate with us so deeply. They resonate because they touch what so many traditions across so many cultures, have tried to name: the experience of souls recognizing, reuniting, and choosing each other again across the boundaries of time and memory and life and death.
This is how we find out who we truly are. And this, is how we find our way home.
Jung, C. G. (1953–1979). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book (S. Shamdasani, Ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Williams, P. (2009). Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. Routledge.
(For Yogācāra and ālaya-vijñāna)
Lusthaus, D. (2002). Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism. Routledge.
Nojima, K. (2005). Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega. Square Enix.
Nojima, K. (2021). Traces of Two Pasts. Square Enix.
Nojima, K. (2024). Dear Destiny. Square Enix.
Square Enix. (1997). Final Fantasy VII [Video game].
Square Enix. (2020–2024). Final Fantasy VII Remake; Final Fantasy VII Rebirth [Video games].