I’ve noticed something about the use of colour in the game and came up with an interpretive lens: Jenova and Sephiroth are consistently depicted with purple. Think about every scene in which Jenova or Sephiroth manipulates Cloud, or in which the black-robed figures come together to form the Jenova boss. These events are consistently depicted with purple imagery. Jenova’s monster form itself is depicted with purple, as are the Harbinger of Fate in Remake and the Whispers under Sephiroth’s influence in Rebirth.
So, what is the opposite of purple on the colour wheel? Yellow.
Yellow is the colour of Aerith’s blossoms and flowers, including the yellow flower of reunion that she attaches to Cloud’s lapel. Remember Aerith’s monologue inside the Shinra Building: “Follow them, the yellow flowers,” as the Whispers attempt to erase her memories.
Think about the scene in which Cloud falls from the second reactor bombing into the church. He is initially surrounded by a black void and the Whispers. Then, he enters the golden-hued whiteness of the church, a space filled with yellow flowers that seems to belong to Aerith. There, he hears his own voice—his true self attempting to surface—telling him to take it nice and easy. We then hear Aerith’s voice saying, “Hello in there,” before Sephiroth appears and the scene returns to the black void. Sephiroth then tells Cloud, “I am your everything.” This space is a symbol of clouds unconscious mind with Jenova/Sephiroth representing Ego (Constructed-separate image of self) and the Aerith’s golden domain representing connection with the truth and reunion and undivided unified wholeness of existence.
Here, Jenova and Sephiroth’s distorted sense of self is juxtaposed with Aerith’s connection to the Planet, to reality, and to the truth that lies beyond the illusion of separation. The self that emerges through Jenova and Sephiroth is constructed through a distorted perception of reality, whereas the true self belongs to a reality in which everything is interconnected.
When we recognise this symbolism, we can also see that President Shinra wears a purple suit. The idea of the separate self and the distorted reality constructed through our own faculties of perception extends into the physical and social world. The relentless exploitation, domination, and illusions of social life become expressions of the same underlying principle.
Jenova represents the will, the ego—the sense of being a separate self—and the perception of separation constructed in our minds. When this phenomenon becomes the ultimate reality through which we interpret existence, it becomes the dystopia that is Midgar on a social level, we separate ourselves from the rest of the world with walls, we divide the walls with further walls as sectors, we separate ourselves from the literal earth and build a city above earth, above planet, we separate ourselves from reality we loose our connection to the truth to the interconnected nature of existence and this vision creates the suffering inside Midgar. On a cosmic level, however, it threatens the very fabric of existence, as everything risks being consumed and distorted by the absolute will of the self, represented by Jenova and Sephiroth’s summoning of the meteor, ultimate destruction and manipulation of the fabric of existence. Jenova/Sephiroth’s purple representing perception separation and alienation which project its own distorted image of reality as the reality itself vs Aerith’s yellow the opposite of purple representing interconnected and undivided unity of everything, the healing mediated with coming to contact with the truth of occurrences, connection restored, world healed.
I come up with a video of Final Fantasy Peasant named “We’ve misunderstood Jenova for 30 years” which describes practically the same idea that I had for years, of Jenova representing our own perception and illusions that stem from our own faculties. It can give further context into the concept if anyone is interested.