Just like in Venice and Montreal, Square Enix used the third International CG Film Festival in Tokyo to promote its CG movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Producer Shinji Hashimoto, co-director Takeshi Nozue, character supervisor Miyamoto and sequence supervisor Jinchi Morizumi were attending the event in Roppongi to explain the key aspects of the movie: Action sequences, which would have been difficult to realize in a live-action film, dramatic elements and a focus not one the content of single pictures but on the entire video content. One of the key issues was to re-create the world of Final Fantasy without damaging it, while transferring it to another way of presentation. The development team also was very careful not to damage Final Fantasy VII's original images in the process. Transforming the game's super-deformed characters into their more realistic alter egos as seen in Advent Children hence proved to be a major challenge. In the early stages of the development process, a model of a child, woman and a man were created as a first step. Once the developers felt confident in these first models, the other characters were all derived from these three original models, allowing for a fast realization of the entire project. In his closing comments, producer Shinji Hashimoto explained that manga, anime and games are not limited to certain countries, but that they would be meaningless if they were not interesting. Therefore, he wanted to pay his respects to the people who created the original Final Fantasy VII eight years ago.

While no specific release date for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was given, director Nozue mentioned the project was currently 60% complete. Officially, the movie is still listed for a release in Japan sometime this year.

• SB Games