August 20, 2024 • 21 mins
Final Fantasy's Yuna was a fan favorite character who confronted her beliefs and broke a cycle of destruction of violence. We talk about her journey and why it resonated with so many.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
When ever told you a production of iHeartRadio? And we
are back with another Birthday edition Fictional Feminists around the World. Oh,
(00:25):
I'd put feminists in there. Fictional women around the world.
I guess that's up for a debate. And this one
I mentioned recently in the episode we did on Aris,
and I said I was really excited to talk about her.
So here we are. We're doing Yuna from the video
games Final Fantasy ten and Final Fantasy ten two, and
she is a favorite of my Final Fantasy ten is
(00:48):
one of my favorite games. I loved her so much.
I did an art project on her in high school. Famously,
the lowest grade I ever got was in art. Famously,
to me, I'm so mad about it. Okay, but the
art piece was good. And I have so many stories
(01:08):
about playing these games. I'm not someone who normally grinds,
as they call it, like you play a lot so
you get to the top level or whatever. I did
in this game. And one time it was Christmas Eve,
I remember, and I was trying to get this like
ultimate weapon and the odds of it were really really low.
(01:31):
It was a random thing and you had to be
a certain level. And I got and I kid you not.
The power went out too and I lost Oh my
progress did I was like I was in shock. I
think it was as like depressive state day. Did you
(01:51):
just sit there and stare and like toll a pause.
I did all of the things that you know won't work,
but you're so pair to your like blowing all the
dance because if that will do anything, You're getting the
memory card and like what if I could unplug it?
We plug? I remember it so and I never did
(02:12):
it again. I was like, well, I'm not gonna that's
that's it. I'm never gonna get that weapon. And then
my little brother got it easily and I was burned again.
The music also very good. I have the soundcheck and
I love it, and she has Yuna has an intro scene,
(02:33):
a CGI scene, and it is one of the at
that time, it was one of the most beautiful cutscenes
I had seen, and it was it's still is very,
very beautiful. It's like a sun setting and she's walking
on water and she does this dance where she's sending
off the souls and the souls are sort of like
white plasma things. Pearl pearl colored. I guess there's a shimmer.
(02:57):
It was so pretty, the music was great. So I
remember that very very well. Clearly. I think I would
in college randomly just show people that scene and they'd
be like, who are you congratination? Like what? Okay? So
all that to say, I have fond memories of that
(03:18):
game and this character. I will talk about the second
one too, though. So as described in previous Final Fantasy
episodes that I've done, this is a series of video
games that generally fall under the fantasy genre, but they
do a bunch of other things, like sci fi. They
are not necessarily connected. In fact, I believe Final Fantasy
(03:38):
ten and then ten two is the first direct sequel
in the series. And as I said, they are difficult
to explain these games. This one is a doozy even
saying that, but we're we are going to talk about
the second one, which is also a doozy, but in
a different way. All right, So Fantasy ten starts with
(04:02):
you playing a dude named Titus, and also this sport
that you've never seen before called blitzball, and there's a
heavy metal song playing. It's relatants and his whole world
seemingly gets sucked up by this huge floating creature. It
almost looks like a messed up whale in the sky.
(04:22):
He wakes up in a new place and he eventually
meets Yuna, who is a high semminer for the world
of Spira. Essentially, this means that she can call gods
to fight by her side, but there's clearly something more
going on with her that she's not saying. She is
on a mission to summon the final aon to battle Sin,
(04:43):
which is the creature that attacked Titus's world. It is
a pilgrimage mini seminars undertake to basically put Sin in
hibernation for a while, but then he wakes up in
cycle happens again. Titus agrees to travel with her and
a group of others on her journey, which I can
not stress enough. It is clear is a really really
important journey. You just don't know why. Una is a
(05:08):
playable character and is the daughter of Summonerbraska and an
unnamed all Bed woman. The all bed are sort of
seen as lower class people with technology. The technology seen
is kind of strange in this world. It's sort of like,
what are you doing there? She has a heterochromia like
(05:30):
our past super producer Andrew. So she's got two different
colored eyes and it is supposed to represent her heritage.
Her father went on the summoning Journey to defeat Sin
when she was a child with two people named Jactin
Oron and you recognize Oron from that heavy metal scene
I was talking about, yes, and their names will be
(05:53):
important later. And he left her at the summoning temple
until he came back. So they embark on this journey
and through it, Titus and Una grow closer. Yuna is
(06:15):
definitely the healer of the group, but she's also the
only one who could summon. She is kind and compassionate,
a believer, self sacrificing, determined, loyal, putting the needs of
others before herself. She hides her sadness and like the
weight of what she's doing behind a happy facade. Titus
(06:36):
and her become romantically involved. There's a whole kissing seed
in the water in the ice, and he starts pushing
back against her her beliefs, some of the things she believes,
and through this Una does start to question some stuff.
Una is kidnapped by a rival blitz ball team, which
(06:57):
is basically like Quidditch put underwater. She escapes and then
the stadium is attacked by the new master of Yevin,
Seymour Yes, who summons an aon called named Anima, and
Yevin is sort of the belief system that Una follows.
The party gets away and Una records final farewells to
(07:19):
her loved ones or on that Later they are attacked
once again by Sin, and Seymour pops up. Yuna is
kidnapped again, but it turns out it was by her
all bed cousin Riku, and then Riku joins the party
and goes on this journey with you. Seymour proposes to
Una through various coercions, she agrees to marry him. Basically,
(07:44):
she wants to get him to turn himself in for
all the evil he's done. She's kidnapped again, oh to
be married to Seymour and then and then Riku reveals
to Titus that the final summoning to keep away Sin
kills or just puts him into hibernation, but the summoner
summoned him, meaning that Yuna will die at the end
(08:06):
of this journey. Yeah, Titus and the party, they try
to crash you in his wedding, but she is forced
to go through the ceremony. When Seymour threatens to kill
her friend, she jumps off the temple, but summons an
aon in mid air and is caught. The party is
put on trial for treason. Yuna escapes with a few
others and wins in an aon battle A summon all right,
(08:30):
so faith shaken, Una goes on to be alone, but
Titus finds her and apologizes for being so enthusiastic to
beat the final summon when he didn't know what it
would mean. He didn't know she would die. She says
he makes her happy, and he attempts to convince her
to stay with him and give up the pilgrimage. She
turns him down, feeling a sense of duty too strongly.
(08:52):
They kiss and Titus promises he will stay by her
side no matter what. More drama. It turns out Sin
is ject who is one of her father's past guardians
on the last Pilgrimage and also Titus's dad. Titus is
(09:12):
actually a dream like literally, he is a dream of
the faith to preserve the memory of a world destroyed.
Titus accidentally learns Yuna is in love with him. It
turns out UNA's father chose Jeck to become Sin injected. Yes,
Titus's dad who he's been looking for this whole time.
(09:35):
Una refuses to sacrifice any of her friends, knowing they'll
eventually become the new Sin, and breaks the cycle, declaring
that the final summoning is a false tradition and rejecting
the teachings of Yevin. Then the only way to truly
defeat Sin is to defeat the progenitor of the faith
of Yevin and the faith that protects the dream of Xanerkin,
(09:58):
the dream Titus is from. They defeat Sin, slash jacked,
and you Yevin, who is the progenitor? Ending the cycle
of violence? But oh no, this means that the dreamers
wake up and Titus disappears. Oh no, as he's hugging Yuna,
he fades away. Later, she is seen whistling for him
(10:19):
because he taught her how to whistle, and he always
he said, I will always come if I hear you whistle,
And he does not come. She says that people and
dreams lost should never be forgotten in a public address.
Who so that's yeah, yep, that's the first one. This
brings us to the second one, which I'm going to
(10:42):
tell you, is a total total turn ah. It was
trying to be cool. You no longer found gold you
quote scored it. The music was very upbeat, and now
they have this this thing the system called dress spheres,
(11:02):
meaning that you'd use a dress sphere to change your
outfit and get new abilities. So you could be like
I want to be a witch. You'd use the witch
dress sphere and you transform into a witch and you
have new abilities. So the second one largely follows Una,
main character. She joins the gold Wings, who are sphere hunters,
with her cousin Riku and Brooding Pain. Her name is
(11:26):
paying No, Okay, yes, yeah. She kind of comes out
of nowhere. It's to tout these spheres down, especially in
UNA's case, spheres of Xanarkin, which is where Titus is from,
and hoping to get any scrap of Titus, and so
these fears can like store memories or kind of like
videos stuff like that. She starts to have dreams of
(11:49):
her and Titus being killed together. She falls into the
far Plane, which is basically where souls go, and meets
a man named hu Yen who looks like Titus. Then
she hears Titus's whistle and it helps her escape the
far plane. Una connects with Lynn, who's sort of a
famous singer slash summoner that cared for shoe Yen, and
(12:12):
Lynn reveals she wants to help Shoot put shoe Yen
to rest, and with UNA's help, both sho Yen and
Lynn fade away. So they're supposed to be like kind
of like in The Mummy too, Samantha, you know the
past lives, Yeah, that are playing out again depending on
what you've done. You can reunite with Titus, though they
later realized that he could disappear at any time. And
I cannot stress enough. There is a concert. There is
(12:35):
a concert that you put on to sing and like
it's a pop it's a pop beat perfectly, and then
I had that song too. After all of this, Una
struggles with guilt about the downfall of Yevin, especially when
she encounters so many people who lived by it and
(12:55):
don't know what to do now and it's gone. This
game is really interesting in a lot of ways. I'm
going to talk about some of them, but one of
them is there's not like a main conflict necessarily, but
you do have the new Yevin Nights and I can't
remember the name of the other, but they're like in
conflict with each other, and you know, in part feels
guilty because of that. It was is so different. I
(13:21):
just is so different than ten. And people were including
me when you played I've Shocked. I was like, what.
One of the reasons why this is is because it
marked a massive corporate shift that some people are still
sore about. But it's also sort of like, well, you
kill God and the last one, so everything didn't just
(13:46):
get better because you did that. Some things got worse.
There are a lot of political factions that have their reasons.
Yuna is not a queen or a leader on any
grand scale, and reuniting with Titus is actually kind of
seen as a bad thing, like she can't let go
of a ghost. This was fascinating. So to get Titus back,
(14:09):
and it's a super shortcut scene, you have to get
one hundred percent completion just to get it. You have
to work really really hard, and it always felt like
the goal that's what she wanted. She was looking for
these fears and this was great when I was reading
about this, because I was like, oh, I didn't pick
up on all this. So here's a quote from PACEDE magazine.
(14:31):
So much of the game is about Youna moving on
and finding a new sense of self outside of her
role as a semminer. That to throw all that away
and the true ending produces a sense of disquiet. To
bring Titus back, you even have to say yes, I
still want this to an NPC explicitly asking you, hey,
isn't this against every lesson you've learned? The return of
(14:53):
Titus that leads to the return of sin to a
world unable to let go, to do nothing but retell
the same stories again and again. The good ending for
Spirrait is for Una to simply walk away from his ghost.
Oh I love it. He gave me a lot to
think about. That game is also really I haven't replayed
(15:25):
it since I played it that first time, And to
be clear, I didn't hate it. It was just such
a It was a departure. It was a departure, and
it did feel like it was trying too hard to
me at the time, like the whole like you scored
this or whatever. But it was also it was unique
in terms of there wasn't like a big bad necessarily.
(15:48):
It was mostly women in your party, you know, the
costuming thing. It does feel kind of sexist in a way.
But people did love it, like they love that you
could put on all of these costumes. Now, a lot
of them were very very sexy. Of course, of course,
some of them, I'm sure were very problematic because there
(16:11):
were tons of them. There was like a lot of costumes,
so it was just different. But I'm kind of intrigued
looking back at it now that it was it did
feel kind of women Ford, even if I feel like
it was clumsy in a lot of ways it went
about it and maybe sexist in a lot of ways
it went about it. But as I said, I haven't
(16:32):
played it since then, I'm not sure. But this Pace
magazine article was great and they were big fans, So okay, yes,
she Yuna is a fan fave. As I said in
the Erath episode, I believe she's second. She comes out
as like second favorite final Pasty character pretty often. The
creators wanted to create a character that had to challenge
(16:54):
her faith in being raised with this idea of inevitable
death and finding her own way forward. There have been
different characterizations of her. The creators have said since she
was no longer burdened with being a summoner in the
second one, and with the influence of her cousin, her
attitude changed, and there was a lot of backlash to
(17:14):
it and said basically that the costumes were too skimpy.
Why is there singing now? It's fashion and boyfriend based.
And here's a quote from the gamer. When the world
asked Una to be cruel, she refused, and that refusal
turned out to be a step towards a much more
permanent resolution to the me of middle school constantly submerged
(17:36):
in a stream of escalating violence for trade as heroism
of the strong female character, always having to be as
combat proficient as Black Widow. You Know is a unique story.
She wasn't dismissed by the narrative as weak willed or
stupid for trying to be nice, nor did she die
a martyr, even if she'd planned on it. At first.
She was kind and she survived to see that kindness
(17:57):
vindicated at the end of everything she'd suffer to get
to that point. You Know's victory held an important lesson
Kindness is not a weakness. It was kindness that killed
Sen for good. The rejection of her sacrifice just for
sacrifice's sake, you know, was strong without sacrificing her gentleness.
When I finished and really looked at the game, I
recognized that she was strong because she's so kind. She
(18:19):
bore the weight of the sendings and made the decision
to become a summoner because she saw sorrow and wanted
to ease it, even knowing much of that decision was
also rooted in following her father's legacy. The main driving
force behind her decisions was deceptively simple. She just wanted
to help people however she could. And that was honestly incredible.
And when I was doing the research for this, sometimes
(18:43):
I just forget how yeah she did, like she challenged
her faith and she really pushed herself to Those were
tough decisions she was making and tough things she was challenging,
and she was the one that was leading that, and
that was pretty cool. I can see why I loved her. Also,
(19:03):
I have to end with final quote because I loved
it so much. So this has nothing to do with
you to really, but you know, some of these games,
they're Japanese, so the dubs can be a little funny
in how they turn out. Titus has a scene where
(19:25):
he passes out in the snow and they're all climbing
up this big mountain. He just passes out, and this
is where he learns he's a dream, so big news,
and he wakes up and they're all freaking out. He says,
nothing like a good nap, Time to go, and they
just sort of accept it. I love that so much.
(19:50):
Sometimes I just still just randomly remember that nothing like
a good nap. That is Lippi. It's true. I'm asleep
thinking about that. Well, thanks as always for letting me
nerd out in these episodes. This was really fun and
I got I got in touch with a bunch of
(20:10):
friends who I played it with and I was like,
did you hear They're like no, I played that game
forever and I was like, well, it turns out you
shouldn't want to get Titus in the second one. What wuck? Yeah,
So it was really fun. I appreciate it as always.
If you have any thoughts about this listeners, or any
suggestions for future people we should cover, please let us
(20:31):
know our emails Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast
are on Instagram and TikTok. At Stuff I've Never Told You.
We're also on YouTube, we have tea public store, and
we have a book you can get wherever you get
your books. Thanks as always too, our super duce Christina,
our executive producer My and your contruder Joey. Thank you
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
You is production by Heart Radio. For more podcasts or
my heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
(20:53):
Apple podcasts, or where you listen to your favorite shows.
You know will f
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
When ever told you a production of iHeartRadio? And we
are back with another Birthday edition Fictional Feminists around the World. Oh,
(00:25):
I'd put feminists in there. Fictional women around the world.
I guess that's up for a debate. And this one
I mentioned recently in the episode we did on Aris,
and I said I was really excited to talk about her.
So here we are. We're doing Yuna from the video
games Final Fantasy ten and Final Fantasy ten two, and
she is a favorite of my Final Fantasy ten is
(00:48):
one of my favorite games. I loved her so much.
I did an art project on her in high school. Famously,
the lowest grade I ever got was in art. Famously,
to me, I'm so mad about it. Okay, but the
art piece was good. And I have so many stories
(01:08):
about playing these games. I'm not someone who normally grinds,
as they call it, like you play a lot so
you get to the top level or whatever. I did
in this game. And one time it was Christmas Eve,
I remember, and I was trying to get this like
ultimate weapon and the odds of it were really really low.
(01:31):
It was a random thing and you had to be
a certain level. And I got and I kid you not.
The power went out too and I lost Oh my
progress did I was like I was in shock. I
think it was as like depressive state day. Did you
(01:51):
just sit there and stare and like toll a pause.
I did all of the things that you know won't work,
but you're so pair to your like blowing all the
dance because if that will do anything, You're getting the
memory card and like what if I could unplug it?
We plug? I remember it so and I never did
(02:12):
it again. I was like, well, I'm not gonna that's
that's it. I'm never gonna get that weapon. And then
my little brother got it easily and I was burned again.
The music also very good. I have the soundcheck and
I love it, and she has Yuna has an intro scene,
(02:33):
a CGI scene, and it is one of the at
that time, it was one of the most beautiful cutscenes
I had seen, and it was it's still is very,
very beautiful. It's like a sun setting and she's walking
on water and she does this dance where she's sending
off the souls and the souls are sort of like
white plasma things. Pearl pearl colored. I guess there's a shimmer.
(02:57):
It was so pretty, the music was great. So I
remember that very very well. Clearly. I think I would
in college randomly just show people that scene and they'd
be like, who are you congratination? Like what? Okay? So
all that to say, I have fond memories of that
(03:18):
game and this character. I will talk about the second
one too, though. So as described in previous Final Fantasy
episodes that I've done, this is a series of video
games that generally fall under the fantasy genre, but they
do a bunch of other things, like sci fi. They
are not necessarily connected. In fact, I believe Final Fantasy
(03:38):
ten and then ten two is the first direct sequel
in the series. And as I said, they are difficult
to explain these games. This one is a doozy even
saying that, but we're we are going to talk about
the second one, which is also a doozy, but in
a different way. All right, So Fantasy ten starts with
(04:02):
you playing a dude named Titus, and also this sport
that you've never seen before called blitzball, and there's a
heavy metal song playing. It's relatants and his whole world
seemingly gets sucked up by this huge floating creature. It
almost looks like a messed up whale in the sky.
(04:22):
He wakes up in a new place and he eventually
meets Yuna, who is a high semminer for the world
of Spira. Essentially, this means that she can call gods
to fight by her side, but there's clearly something more
going on with her that she's not saying. She is
on a mission to summon the final aon to battle Sin,
(04:43):
which is the creature that attacked Titus's world. It is
a pilgrimage mini seminars undertake to basically put Sin in
hibernation for a while, but then he wakes up in
cycle happens again. Titus agrees to travel with her and
a group of others on her journey, which I can
not stress enough. It is clear is a really really
important journey. You just don't know why. Una is a
(05:08):
playable character and is the daughter of Summonerbraska and an
unnamed all Bed woman. The all bed are sort of
seen as lower class people with technology. The technology seen
is kind of strange in this world. It's sort of like,
what are you doing there? She has a heterochromia like
(05:30):
our past super producer Andrew. So she's got two different
colored eyes and it is supposed to represent her heritage.
Her father went on the summoning Journey to defeat Sin
when she was a child with two people named Jactin
Oron and you recognize Oron from that heavy metal scene
I was talking about, yes, and their names will be
(05:53):
important later. And he left her at the summoning temple
until he came back. So they embark on this journey
and through it, Titus and Una grow closer. Yuna is
(06:15):
definitely the healer of the group, but she's also the
only one who could summon. She is kind and compassionate,
a believer, self sacrificing, determined, loyal, putting the needs of
others before herself. She hides her sadness and like the
weight of what she's doing behind a happy facade. Titus
(06:36):
and her become romantically involved. There's a whole kissing seed
in the water in the ice, and he starts pushing
back against her her beliefs, some of the things she believes,
and through this Una does start to question some stuff.
Una is kidnapped by a rival blitz ball team, which
(06:57):
is basically like Quidditch put underwater. She escapes and then
the stadium is attacked by the new master of Yevin,
Seymour Yes, who summons an aon called named Anima, and
Yevin is sort of the belief system that Una follows.
The party gets away and Una records final farewells to
(07:19):
her loved ones or on that Later they are attacked
once again by Sin, and Seymour pops up. Yuna is
kidnapped again, but it turns out it was by her
all bed cousin Riku, and then Riku joins the party
and goes on this journey with you. Seymour proposes to
Una through various coercions, she agrees to marry him. Basically,
(07:44):
she wants to get him to turn himself in for
all the evil he's done. She's kidnapped again, oh to
be married to Seymour and then and then Riku reveals
to Titus that the final summoning to keep away Sin
kills or just puts him into hibernation, but the summoner
summoned him, meaning that Yuna will die at the end
(08:06):
of this journey. Yeah, Titus and the party, they try
to crash you in his wedding, but she is forced
to go through the ceremony. When Seymour threatens to kill
her friend, she jumps off the temple, but summons an
aon in mid air and is caught. The party is
put on trial for treason. Yuna escapes with a few
others and wins in an aon battle A summon all right,
(08:30):
so faith shaken, Una goes on to be alone, but
Titus finds her and apologizes for being so enthusiastic to
beat the final summon when he didn't know what it
would mean. He didn't know she would die. She says
he makes her happy, and he attempts to convince her
to stay with him and give up the pilgrimage. She
turns him down, feeling a sense of duty too strongly.
(08:52):
They kiss and Titus promises he will stay by her
side no matter what. More drama. It turns out Sin
is ject who is one of her father's past guardians
on the last Pilgrimage and also Titus's dad. Titus is
(09:12):
actually a dream like literally, he is a dream of
the faith to preserve the memory of a world destroyed.
Titus accidentally learns Yuna is in love with him. It
turns out UNA's father chose Jeck to become Sin injected. Yes,
Titus's dad who he's been looking for this whole time.
(09:35):
Una refuses to sacrifice any of her friends, knowing they'll
eventually become the new Sin, and breaks the cycle, declaring
that the final summoning is a false tradition and rejecting
the teachings of Yevin. Then the only way to truly
defeat Sin is to defeat the progenitor of the faith
of Yevin and the faith that protects the dream of Xanerkin,
(09:58):
the dream Titus is from. They defeat Sin, slash jacked,
and you Yevin, who is the progenitor? Ending the cycle
of violence? But oh no, this means that the dreamers
wake up and Titus disappears. Oh no, as he's hugging Yuna,
he fades away. Later, she is seen whistling for him
(10:19):
because he taught her how to whistle, and he always
he said, I will always come if I hear you whistle,
And he does not come. She says that people and
dreams lost should never be forgotten in a public address.
Who so that's yeah, yep, that's the first one. This
brings us to the second one, which I'm going to
(10:42):
tell you, is a total total turn ah. It was
trying to be cool. You no longer found gold you
quote scored it. The music was very upbeat, and now
they have this this thing the system called dress spheres,
(11:02):
meaning that you'd use a dress sphere to change your
outfit and get new abilities. So you could be like
I want to be a witch. You'd use the witch
dress sphere and you transform into a witch and you
have new abilities. So the second one largely follows Una,
main character. She joins the gold Wings, who are sphere hunters,
with her cousin Riku and Brooding Pain. Her name is
(11:26):
paying No, Okay, yes, yeah. She kind of comes out
of nowhere. It's to tout these spheres down, especially in
UNA's case, spheres of Xanarkin, which is where Titus is from,
and hoping to get any scrap of Titus, and so
these fears can like store memories or kind of like
videos stuff like that. She starts to have dreams of
(11:49):
her and Titus being killed together. She falls into the
far Plane, which is basically where souls go, and meets
a man named hu Yen who looks like Titus. Then
she hears Titus's whistle and it helps her escape the
far plane. Una connects with Lynn, who's sort of a
famous singer slash summoner that cared for shoe Yen, and
(12:12):
Lynn reveals she wants to help Shoot put shoe Yen
to rest, and with UNA's help, both sho Yen and
Lynn fade away. So they're supposed to be like kind
of like in The Mummy too, Samantha, you know the
past lives, Yeah, that are playing out again depending on
what you've done. You can reunite with Titus, though they
later realized that he could disappear at any time. And
I cannot stress enough. There is a concert. There is
(12:35):
a concert that you put on to sing and like
it's a pop it's a pop beat perfectly, and then
I had that song too. After all of this, Una
struggles with guilt about the downfall of Yevin, especially when
she encounters so many people who lived by it and
(12:55):
don't know what to do now and it's gone. This
game is really interesting in a lot of ways. I'm
going to talk about some of them, but one of
them is there's not like a main conflict necessarily, but
you do have the new Yevin Nights and I can't
remember the name of the other, but they're like in
conflict with each other, and you know, in part feels
guilty because of that. It was is so different. I
(13:21):
just is so different than ten. And people were including
me when you played I've Shocked. I was like, what.
One of the reasons why this is is because it
marked a massive corporate shift that some people are still
sore about. But it's also sort of like, well, you
kill God and the last one, so everything didn't just
(13:46):
get better because you did that. Some things got worse.
There are a lot of political factions that have their reasons.
Yuna is not a queen or a leader on any
grand scale, and reuniting with Titus is actually kind of
seen as a bad thing, like she can't let go
of a ghost. This was fascinating. So to get Titus back,
(14:09):
and it's a super shortcut scene, you have to get
one hundred percent completion just to get it. You have
to work really really hard, and it always felt like
the goal that's what she wanted. She was looking for
these fears and this was great when I was reading
about this, because I was like, oh, I didn't pick
up on all this. So here's a quote from PACEDE magazine.
(14:31):
So much of the game is about Youna moving on
and finding a new sense of self outside of her
role as a semminer. That to throw all that away
and the true ending produces a sense of disquiet. To
bring Titus back, you even have to say yes, I
still want this to an NPC explicitly asking you, hey,
isn't this against every lesson you've learned? The return of
(14:53):
Titus that leads to the return of sin to a
world unable to let go, to do nothing but retell
the same stories again and again. The good ending for
Spirrait is for Una to simply walk away from his ghost.
Oh I love it. He gave me a lot to
think about. That game is also really I haven't replayed
(15:25):
it since I played it that first time, And to
be clear, I didn't hate it. It was just such
a It was a departure. It was a departure, and
it did feel like it was trying too hard to
me at the time, like the whole like you scored
this or whatever. But it was also it was unique
in terms of there wasn't like a big bad necessarily.
(15:48):
It was mostly women in your party, you know, the
costuming thing. It does feel kind of sexist in a way.
But people did love it, like they love that you
could put on all of these costumes. Now, a lot
of them were very very sexy. Of course, of course,
some of them, I'm sure were very problematic because there
(16:11):
were tons of them. There was like a lot of costumes,
so it was just different. But I'm kind of intrigued
looking back at it now that it was it did
feel kind of women Ford, even if I feel like
it was clumsy in a lot of ways it went
about it and maybe sexist in a lot of ways
it went about it. But as I said, I haven't
(16:32):
played it since then, I'm not sure. But this Pace
magazine article was great and they were big fans, So okay, yes,
she Yuna is a fan fave. As I said in
the Erath episode, I believe she's second. She comes out
as like second favorite final Pasty character pretty often. The
creators wanted to create a character that had to challenge
(16:54):
her faith in being raised with this idea of inevitable
death and finding her own way forward. There have been
different characterizations of her. The creators have said since she
was no longer burdened with being a summoner in the
second one, and with the influence of her cousin, her
attitude changed, and there was a lot of backlash to
(17:14):
it and said basically that the costumes were too skimpy.
Why is there singing now? It's fashion and boyfriend based.
And here's a quote from the gamer. When the world
asked Una to be cruel, she refused, and that refusal
turned out to be a step towards a much more
permanent resolution to the me of middle school constantly submerged
(17:36):
in a stream of escalating violence for trade as heroism
of the strong female character, always having to be as
combat proficient as Black Widow. You Know is a unique story.
She wasn't dismissed by the narrative as weak willed or
stupid for trying to be nice, nor did she die
a martyr, even if she'd planned on it. At first.
She was kind and she survived to see that kindness
(17:57):
vindicated at the end of everything she'd suffer to get
to that point. You Know's victory held an important lesson
Kindness is not a weakness. It was kindness that killed
Sen for good. The rejection of her sacrifice just for
sacrifice's sake, you know, was strong without sacrificing her gentleness.
When I finished and really looked at the game, I
recognized that she was strong because she's so kind. She
(18:19):
bore the weight of the sendings and made the decision
to become a summoner because she saw sorrow and wanted
to ease it, even knowing much of that decision was
also rooted in following her father's legacy. The main driving
force behind her decisions was deceptively simple. She just wanted
to help people however she could. And that was honestly incredible.
And when I was doing the research for this, sometimes
(18:43):
I just forget how yeah she did, like she challenged
her faith and she really pushed herself to Those were
tough decisions she was making and tough things she was challenging,
and she was the one that was leading that, and
that was pretty cool. I can see why I loved her. Also,
(19:03):
I have to end with final quote because I loved
it so much. So this has nothing to do with
you to really, but you know, some of these games,
they're Japanese, so the dubs can be a little funny
in how they turn out. Titus has a scene where
(19:25):
he passes out in the snow and they're all climbing
up this big mountain. He just passes out, and this
is where he learns he's a dream, so big news,
and he wakes up and they're all freaking out. He says,
nothing like a good nap, Time to go, and they
just sort of accept it. I love that so much.
(19:50):
Sometimes I just still just randomly remember that nothing like
a good nap. That is Lippi. It's true. I'm asleep
thinking about that. Well, thanks as always for letting me
nerd out in these episodes. This was really fun and
I got I got in touch with a bunch of
(20:10):
friends who I played it with and I was like,
did you hear They're like no, I played that game
forever and I was like, well, it turns out you
shouldn't want to get Titus in the second one. What wuck? Yeah,
So it was really fun. I appreciate it as always.
If you have any thoughts about this listeners, or any
suggestions for future people we should cover, please let us
(20:31):
know our emails Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast
are on Instagram and TikTok. At Stuff I've Never Told You.
We're also on YouTube, we have tea public store, and
we have a book you can get wherever you get
your books. Thanks as always too, our super duce Christina,
our executive producer My and your contruder Joey. Thank you
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
You is production by Heart Radio. For more podcasts or
my heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
(20:53):
Apple podcasts, or where you listen to your favorite shows.
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