Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy III is a Japanese anime cartoon show, aimed mostly at young children and adolescents. It was produced by the Square Soft Studios and broadcast on the Play Station, which was the most watched television station in Japan at its time. After the show got cancelled, American studios discovered a crate containing VHS tapes with all the episodes of the original series, and decided to recreate the entire thing from scratch. Despite their best efforts, they ended up ruining yet another overseas trend.
The original series followed the story of four young ragamuffins who decided to go on many adventures to become fully-grown men/women (this was left to the imagination of the viewer). Oh, and also there was an evil cloud hell-bent on making everyone blind, and the four decided on doing something about it because no other living soul on the planet showed interested. Along the way, they would often be followed by different adults, who held different motives for wanting to accompany them. The show is most renown for going down a dark route shortly after news spread about the show being cancelled, due to the television station being rendered moot by upcoming competition and technology.
Development[edit]
Original[edit]
The original series is now extremely difficult to find because almost all copies were burned, and those that did survive are left floating about in the atmosphere. However, there are some who believe that the inspiration behind the show came from the first two games in the Final Fantasy eternal franchise. There are many things to be considered, however, when attempting to make this assumption:
- Unlike the first two games, this cartoon does not plaster the viewer with text at every given opportunity.
- This show provides the main heroes/heroines to find employment, and also to quit their jobs as they see fit.
- This show allows the heroes/heroines to summon ferocious beasts to do all the hard work for them.
- Also, unlike the first two, where it was socially acceptable for the characters to attack the air they breathe, the show's producers thought that this would be a bad influence on young children, so instead the characters would attack every hostile creature they encounter, only stopping when there is nothing left to attack.
Below is a list of the production team behind the original series
| Title | Name |
|---|---|
| Director | Hero-nobody Sack-of-Gucci |
| Producer | "Massive" Uma Me-a-motto |
| Chief Animator | You-shit-taker Man-oh? |
| Assistant Animators | Herometry Tanker, Kazz Hokey-Cokey, Coach Is-she |
| Editors | No-sir Go-belly, K. Yoshi Yoshi, Cats who shit on Gucci |
| Writer | Ken doll Trader |
| Composer | No-boo Who-ate-my-soup |
Remake[edit]
Although Square-Enix had decided to port all first six Final Fantasy games to the Game Boy Advance in a desperate move to put behind the atrocities they had released for the NES and the mind-numbing translations they've made for the American market, they followed in their time-tried tradition of skipping a title for no likely reason: Final Fantasy III. Square-Enix later apologized for this, explaining that the project briefing for Final Fantasy III had accidentally slipped off the pile and into the trash can, and they had forgotten about it. They decided to redeem themselves by making a port for the Nintendo DS, as Game Boy Advance systems had already been outlawed under the "Get With the Times Act" back then. However, short on funds and time, they outsourced the project to a Taiwanese fake plastic turd factory, and the results reached a new point of mediocrity, where anyone would rather play the original game than the remake.
The process involved a few changes to the premise. Rather than having faceless, genderless children, who the viewers were entitled to call whoever they liked, new distinctive characters would be created. These new characters had parents, and were complete strangers to each other, randomly thrown together when fate pulled their names out of the hat. In an attempt to ensure gender equality, a little girl was thrown into the mix for certain. However, when viewers watched for the first time, there was much confusion as to which character was supposed to be the female. This was quite an issue for the players because knowing which character is female is of utmost importance to appropriately decide which character is to be the White mage. Chicks can only be white mages.
Also, because the American studios hated how the original series's dark and depressing ending, a completely new ending was written, in which everyone lives happily ever after. Despite their best efforts, however, viewers soon discovered the original series and preferred this over the remake.
Below is a list of the production staff behind the remake:
| Title | Name |
|---|---|
| Director | Herometry Tanker |
| Assistant Director | Kazz-yucky More-icky |
| Producers | Herometry Tanker, Tomboy Son |
| Editors | You-itchy You-shit, Shit-soaked Ohio |
| Artists | A-shit Hicky, Shoryuken Alba |
| Assistant Artists | You-shit-taker Man-oh?, Kangaroo Sumo, Jim You-moron |
| Composer | No-boo Who-ate-my-soup |
| Assistant Composers | Cage Calamari, Sue Yoshi Second |
| Writer | As is I-know-shit |
The reason you might recognise some of these names is because the American studios kidnapped some of the original team members and forced them into slave labor, so that they wouldn't be blamed for any negative backlash.
The Story[edit]
The opening scene of the first episode of the original series shows the four ragamuffins falling into a hole in the ground. They find a giant turle guarding a crystal, so they kill the turtle and steal the crystal. When their hometown finds out, they are forced to get jobs to pay for their crimes, but tells them of more crystals accidentally. The four then set off to find these crystals, passing through a ghost town and stumbling into a cave. They find a scantily-clad princess Jasmine inside, who is looking for Genie. However, Genie has turned evil so they kill him and bring all the ghost people back to life.
They are soon greeted by a crazy old man who gives them his airship. Since children are too young to be able to pilot an airship, it crashes into the mountains, and they are forced to try and tame a ferocious dragon. Instead, they encounter a paranoid amnesiac and manage to escape by foot instead. They travel to a large tower guarded by a crazy cat lady, whom they manage to beat effortlessly, and decide to ditch the amnesiac by pushing him into the furnace before leaving.
Having taken control of a ship this time, they find out where dwarves live and learn they are upset because one of their precious ice dildos has been stolen. When they say this, the thief comes along and steals the other one from in front of them. The four kids chase him into a volcano where one of the other crystals is kept, kill the thief, steals the crystal and returns both ice dildos to the dwarves as they are too young to understand their significance. Then they find a ruined town, where a skeleton wizard has tied everyone to the trees in his forest. The four children manage to kill him and are rewarded with a magic wheel from the town's king.
They take the wheel back to the crazy old man, who magically turns their ship into another airship, and tells them to take better care of it. The four kids then fly the airship off the side of the world...except it turns out it's a floating island and they are actually flying back down to the real world. They find a woman who takes them to another of the crystals. She goes to embrace the four kids but trips and dies instantly.
An evil rich man then grounds the children, forcing them to break into his mansion and steal the key back, however the evil rich man breaks the last crystal. The four kids then fly their airship around until they are shot down by an army from a nearby kingdom. The kids capture the prince, forcing the king to commit a suicide on himself. After the prince becomes the new king, the kids find and break into another mansion, this time owned by an old man with lots of fat, fluffy, winged pigs. He stows away on their airship, and makes them crash into the ocean.
The ship is turned into a submarine by the old man, who then decides to leave and go home. They find an old woman sleeping in one of the underwater caves, and she wakes up and joins them, longing for the thrill of adventure. The five of them hijack yet another airship, but this is too much adventure for the old lady and she decides to break into the old man's mansion instead. The four kids then enter another cave looking for treasure but could only find a tooth. Bored, they try breaking into the mansion again, but are attacked by the old man and woman. They easily kill them.
The four kids them pick up a key the elderly couple dropped after death, and eventually find a tower made of crystal. They see another temple not far off and discover the last crystal inside, which they steal before going into the tower of crystal. After going into the tower and trying to join the dark side, they are forced to look into a mirror for all eternity. The ghost of the elderly couple laugh at them but take pity and find five people to help break the mirror. The slutty princess, the crazy old man, the paranoid amnesiac whom they thought had been killed, the prince who became the king, and a random old man are chosen at random.
Once the four children have been freed, they manage to find a portal that takes them into a different dimension. They are confronted by a strange man, but manage to kill him easily. It is then that the four of them are met by a scary looking naked lady with tentacles coming out of her anus. She is supposed to resemble a cloud that wants to make everyone blind. Because they are four children nonetheless, they are killed when she starts FIRIN' MA LAZOR!!!!
Remake[edit]
(Because the American studios weren't happy with this ending, they wrote a new one, which goes as follows)
Once the evil cloud has shot the four kids down with her LAZOR, four more people pop up out of nowhere, bring them back to life and kill themselves so that they will at least have a fighting chance of winning the fight this time. The four kids then fight the evil cloud and win. Everyone goes home. One of the four kids starts dating the slutty princess, another of the four kids turns butch, while the other two form a bromance.
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