With news that Final Fantasy VII is finally being ported to the PSP, I’ve been walking around with a goofy smile on my face. I love FFVII and I think I did just about every stupid thing a fan could think of for the franchise. And just because I am bored and feeling slightly masochistic, let’s list down the five most ridiculous things I did for my fandom.

FFVII Ultimania: Potion Limited

On the tenth anniversary of the franchise, Square Enix re-released the FFVII guidebook Ultimania; the special edition version came with a 1:1 scale replica of the Shinra-brand Potion (Heals HP 100 :D).

The contents of the bottle of potion is actually drinkable; it is an especially formulated ginseng energy drink Square Enix developed with Suntory. I asked a friend in Japan to purchase one and ship it to me just because I wanted to taste it. I never got around to opening the bottle and taking a sip because — well, I’d have wasted USD 120 if I did OTL

FFVII Doujinshi

FFVII fujoshi number in the thousands, and even after twelve years since the game’s release doujinshi are still being drawn, published, and sold at COMIKET and other outlets. Final Fantasy VII was one of the first fandoms that I collected BL from, and I now have an embarrassing number of R18 doujinshi on the subject.

As of last count, I have close to forty individual works, and some of them are by established BL manga-ka like Sakurai ShuShuShu, Fujiwara Beni, and others It’s so good to be a girl!

FFVII Crisis Core: Limited

When the PSP first came out, I wasn’t one of the people who lined up for hours just for a crack at one. I even bought an NDSLite before I considered purchasing a PSP, because all of the games I wanted to play were on the Nintendo. And then SQUEENIX had to go out and announce that they were releasing a numbered LE PSP 2000 bundle for Crisis Core, so of course I ended up wanting one

Getting my hands on one was effed up in so many ways. Not only was it a Japan-only release, pre-orders were already sold-out in the domestic market before anyone in the English-speaking world had even heard of it. I had to go through a bidding service to get one, and it ended up costing almost twice as much as a regular PSP bundle T^T

Still — it was a steal, as the set now fetches up to USD 600 on EBAY. Ah fanboys~

FFVII Advent Children: Advent Pieces

When Advent Children was announced years ago, I somehow got into my head that I wanted a DVD of the movie, and promptly took my search online. That’s when I stumbled across the Limited Edition Boxed Set: Advent Pieces, and my poor fangirl heart was broken when I found out that it had sold out in Japan upon release.

It’s lovely to have friends you can rely on, and I managed to get one shipped in, but not without a lot of heartache at the customs office. Let’s just say that in between the shipping charges, the insurance, and the taxes, I had to pay an extra USD 200 on top of the box’s retail price. Ouch >:O

Square Enix Showcase Museum

And at the very top of The Most Ridiculous Things I Did for FFVII™, was a trip to the Square Enix Showcase Museum in Shinjuku two Christmases ago, to molest uh I mean look at their life-sized statue of Sephiroth. Sephiroth is encased in glass and embedded on the floor of the museum’s mezzanine level, away from the Kids Toys section on the ground floor (where I also purchased a shitload of stuff — woe is me).

When I was there I was just one of two guests, so the salesgirl manning the replica jewelry displays took an interest in me. We got into a conversation (where I surprised her by speaking to her in Japanese) and before I knew it she was leading me to the case and telling me to sit on the floor so she can take a photo. I can tell you personally that it is very very hard not to swoon in fangirl glee being that close to the statue.

I’d have cheerfully risked being kicked out of the country permanently if I could steal Sephiroth and take him home with me.

With the recent release of the BluRay Directors Cut version of Advent Children and the impending port of FFVII to the PSP, more and more fanboys and girls will be crawling out of the woodwork to pledge allegiance to Jenova. Whatever claims they make about being the most hardcore and most updated, sorry but it’ll take a lot more to impress me than a bunch of “trailers” cut and pasted from an AMV that they didn’t even program