My stomach flips as I check the time – it's close to dinner on Friday, January 31. Final Fantasy 7's 28th anniversary.
The date warrants its own public celebration in Japan. In Manhattan, drunk finance guys stumble on the sidewalk, but they don't have Square Enix on the brain as I do. Neither are they worried about meeting legendary concept artist Yoshitaka Amano tonight. They burp out wet laughs as they trip into another bar, and I'm at least comforted by the fact that, even if I don't meet Amano on this rainy night, I'll at least get to see his art – its dark beauty is everything that draws me to the Final Fantasy series.
I'm trying to talk to Amano ahead of his new exhibition, "Apocalypse," which is showing at a gallery near Chinatown until March 15. Though Amano is an accomplished illustrator, having made art for the ethereal horror novel Vampire Hunter D, and an animator, having designed Mamoru Oshii's cult-classic film Angel's Egg, he's best known for his near-decade at Square Enix.
He stopped being the Final Fantasy series' primary character designer after Final Fantasy 6 released in 1994, but within Square Enix, Amano's gracefully evil style lingers like poison in the system.
When Amano was a character designer at Square Enix, he always drew both princesses and demons with the same flirty confidence. He depicted Maria from Final Fantasy 2 as a pouting, alien supermodel and Final Fantasy 5's Siren boss with the same unimpressed, sleepy glare and luxuriously long limbs
He told me in a 2023 interview that he liked drawing women because “I think, as a male, we know who we are, but women are more mysterious.” He laughed. “It’s really complicated and hard work.”
As a woman who sometimes feels unknowable to myself, I agree. Amano's words hang over me when I see his work online, ink-splotched and untouchable, or witness prickly, painful things in more recent Final Fantasy games. His art undoubtedly led Square Enix to the crystal spires and bloody mouths of the gritty Final Fantasy 16, and it's certainly reflected in the emotionally and celestially heavy Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
This is why I'm looking out my window at the rain and drunk guys wearing soaked college sweatshirts – I feel that, maybe, speaking to Amano again could help me know myself. But then I get an email from the gallery owner. He says we'll meet tomorrow at 5. OK, I guess I can hold off on knowing myself until then.
Tomorrow comes – another icy day, but I take the train to the gallery with two copies of interview questions in my coat pocket. I printed them nervously, thinking it might be easier for Amano and his interpreter to respond if they could read what I want to know: What was the main inspiration behind the monsters in Final Fantasy 2? Do you feel like creating art for Final Fantasy permanently influenced your art style? Is there anything you think people misunderstand about your art?
But, as I'm about to pull open the heavy gallery door, I get a phone call from the owner. He wants to know if I can meet Amano tomorrow. Um, I'm already here, so he tries to coordinate with an interpreter. No luck. I agree to move our interview to tomorrow morning and start exploring Amano's Apocalypse.
Though the exhibit mostly consists of shadowy black-and-white art Amano drew "in one go about 10 years ago," he says in a press release, its centerpiece is a 13-foot tall aluminum painting of his concept art for Final Fantasy 2's monsters. I stand in front of it while other gallery attendees take selfies, having a staring contest with the Black Knight's nightmare horse and the Hecteyes' sloppy pile of yellow eyeballs.
Seeing these creatures like this – nearly lifesize, but frozen like roadkill – is a summation of what pulls me to the Final Fantasy games. It's neither their magical sense of freedom, nor their mythological stories with sometimes divisive endings, but the visuals. Divorced from everything else, the Final Fantasy games' visuals make me feel surrounded by supernatural possibilities. I am a hero, I'm in trouble, but I'm surrounded by beauty, so I'll continue on.
The rest of Apocalypse murmurs with the same ghostly power, soothing me with its sensual fearsomeness. In the press release, Amano says, frighteningly, that "the world is constantly moving, and I feel as if some mysterious disaster is watching us from an unseen place."
Ambulance sirens chase their distant disasters outside as I confront Amano's mysteries – angels of death in Sumi ink, a ripple of demonic muscle I can barely make out, vulnerable women splayed out naked before seven skulls.
"I hope that through these works you can feel the deep love, quiet sadness, and hope," Amano says in the press release. "These works are paintings of salvation."
I leave the gallery, head swimming with fanged bad boys and blooming girls seemingly at peace with the specters of death that stand beside them to suck their blood. I didn't have an illuminating conversation with Amano like I'd hoped, but I feel I've begun to understand a new piece of myself through his work – this is the first time I'd ever seen it in person.
The next morning comes, and the gallery owner suddenly stops responding to my emails trying to reschedule our interview. I'm annoyed, and a little humiliated, but I urge myself to move past it like one of Amano's exposed but empowered girls.
It's hard. I scroll mindlessly through Instagram and see photos from this weekend of Amano, always so stoic and wearing expensive shades of gray. I can't help but wonder if he noticed something off-putting about me in our last interview. Was my makeup weird? Did I smell too much like my vanilla shampoo? Some people might be perturbed by the feeling that they're speaking to a cupcake.
But I do my best to let go of the shame and begin to accept the humble position of being ghosted. Even without Amano, Apocalypse confirmed something to me – pain is not always personal – to me, or Clive, or Cloud. It can be incidental. Welcoming the randomness of what's good, evil, or embarrassing is the best path to otherworldly confidence.
"Are we really heading towards the end?" Amano says in the press release. "No, we are certainly here now. Here in New York."
