Summary
- Last year, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director seemingly compared Aerith’s relationship with Cloud to “sisterly love”.
- The director has issued a statement saying that it was a misinterpretation and that isn’t what he meant.
- Final Fantasy 7’s creators won’t release any “official statements” on who any of the characters like.
Following a controversial comment about Aerith’s love for Cloud being “sisterly”, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed that the creators won’t make any more official statements about who Cloud likes.
For as long as Final Fantasy 7 has been around, one of the biggest topics of debate has been regarding Cloud’s relationships with Tifa and Aerith, and which of the two is his canonical love interest. As someone who has written about this before, I can tell you with certainty that there are many interpretations and opinions on this subject, making it very controversial no matter what is said.

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Even though I’d argue that Cloud and Tifa are clearly pushed a little more to be canon due to Zack and Aerith’s relationship (putting myself on the firing line there, I know), Remake and Rebirth still leave it up to the player’s imagination a bit. That meant it was quite a storm when the game’s director, Naoki Hamaguchi, commented on Aerith’s relationship with Cloud and compared it to “sisterly love”.
Hamaguchi’s laid-back comment reignited the war between Cloti and Clerith shippers once more, but it seems that the director wants to clarify what he calls a misinterpretation of what he said. As pointed out by aitaikimochi over on Twitter, Automaton recently had the chance to chat with Hamaguchi, who took it upon himself to clarify what he meant.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director started off by saying that creators don’t talk about the romantic relationship of characters unless it’s through the content that they’re making. This essentially means that everything official and canon comes from the source material itself and not from comments made by the people behind it.
The director really hammered his point home by saying that no one on the team will make any “official statements” about who Cloud likes, who Aerith likes, or who anyone else in the party likes. It’ll all be answered by the games, so we’re back to square one when it comes to whether Cloud likes Tifa or Aerith more.
As creators, we will continue to convey through our content. For example, no-one will make any official statements about who Cloud likes, who Aerith likes, and so on. – Naoki Hamaguchi
All of this seems to suggest that the final canonical answer to whether Cloud’s canon love interest is Tifa or Aerith is going to be answered in the third and final part of the remake. I guess we’ll all have to wait until then to stop the arguing, although I sincerely doubt that it’s going to end there.

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