Further Reading

Scene from AC depicting Meteor's descent toward Gaia

The moon over Ajit.

The thick red vertical lines demonstrate where the timezones would be divided, one hour being lost per timezone as one travels east Timezones on Earth fall every at approximately every fifteen degrees longitude, so we applied the same concept for Gaia, making each time zone about 269 km wide. Ergo, the circumference of the planet is 6,456 km--that means the entire planet is not that much bigger than the United States, to give you a sense of orientation. Since the map of landmasses only spans approximately 981 km, most of Gaia is water. The size being as it is, Gaia must be a moon, since no planet can be that size and still be a planet. There are two scenes in Advent Children that indicate Gaia itself has a moon in its sky, however this can easily support the idea that Gaia is one of multiple moons to a larger planet--Spira--and has little bearing on whether or not Gaia itself can be classified as a moon.

The full scale of Gaia's area vs. the known landmasses from the game.

All of Gaia's landmasses would fit in Texas O_o.

As further demonstration of the diminutive stature of Gaia, here is a full-area map of the world (it's mostly ocean, we assume), and an overlay that shows how big all of the known landmasses in Gaia are in comparison to the size of the United States. Please bear in mind that the second map is only for size-comparative purposes and does not show the proper latitude of Gaia's landmasses.

Since the landmasses of Gaia cover such a small percentage of the planet itself, there are only three timezones represented on land. Since Midgar seemed to be the largest and most populated, industrial city in the game, it served to reason that it was thus the most important. To prevent temporal issues that would have arisen from the fact that traveling east causes one to lose daylight, we chose to unite all three timezones under one blanket timezone: Midgar Standard Time--similar to how on Earth we use Greenwich Standard Time to synch up official timepieces. While each timezone does run on its own hourly marker, we chose to show the events of Advent Children as having a timestamp from a consistent source, giving us Midgar Standard Time.

Gravity and Physics of the Native Gaians

Moving along, a significant amount of complaints seem to arise as to the physics--or lack thereof--depicted in Advent Children. I find it a bit unusual that the blatant lack of physics in the original game itself is apparently perfectly excuseable, but a lack of physics in a movie is complete and utter blasphemy. *eyebrow* Whatever. Either way, most of the issues with the physical sciences can be easily rectified with a simple explanation--and no, it's not 'magic'. It is, in fact, significantly more concrete than that. It's gravity. Gaia is an exceedingly small body, ergo the gravity thereupon would be significantly less than that of, say, Earth. This means that objects fall slower, things are lighter, and motion has potential to be much faster.

We are told that over 2000 years ago (the exact year is not specified), the Ancients arrived on Gaia. It is very possible that these so-called Ancients were, in fact, Spirans. Come the time of FFX-2, Machina was no longer outlawed, and technology was once again thriving across Spira. While they had no cars, there were advanced airships and speeders, so it was only a matter of time before the ability to traverse the atmosphere and go into space was available to the Spirans. And when they discovered their tiny moon was atmospherically compatible and had pleasant landmasses amid a vast sea, they decided to expand their civilization. These ancient Spirans settled on the tiny landmasses of Gaia and began their peaceful nomadic life, basically starting over without any fear of Sin and without the haunting, lingering fear that Sin's destruction could follow them to this new place. They lived peacefully with the powerful Lifestream to guide and help them care for their new world.

As time went by, the ancient Spirans began to lose touch with the planet, instead deciding to settle into towns across the continents. A new force of destruction would then suddenly come to disrupt the Spiran's life on Gaia. Jenova's arrival on the tiny moon 2000 years ago sent the civilization into whorling chaos. But we all know how this part of the story goes.

The point is, the residents of present-day Gaia descended from those Ancients. And if those Ancients were originally from Spira, then much of the argument for lack of physics dies right there. Supposing Spira is a full-fledged planet (as opposed to a moon or a dwarf-planet), the gravity on it would be significantly higher than that of Gaia. Therefore, the indigenous creatures of Spira would have evolved to be able to withstand and function in an environment with this amount of gravity--their bone structure would be sturdier than that of a creature who evolved in lowered gravity, and the musculature of the Spirans would be exponentially stronger than someone from a lowered-gravity environment. So when the Spirans arrived on Gaia, they probably had a hard time adjusting right away--think moon-bouncing. But as time passed, they would adapt...like ya do...to be able to walk on Gaia as any native creature would. However, there isn't enough time in two millennia for evolution to take any drastic steps to adjust the skeletal and muscular makeups of these people; meaning that, while they appear to move in normal Earth-style gravity, their bodies are used to a level of gravity that is much greater. So much like martial artists can manipulate their bodies in ways that your average Joe cannot, highly skilled people on Gaia like Cloud and Tifa and Vincent and the Turks all appear to be able to utterly defy physics, because their trained bodies simply allow them to use their muscles and innert bodily strength to overcome an amount of gravity significantly smaller than that which they were designed for. So while they walk as if gravity holds them down like anyone else, the evolutionary process that molded their race to function in high-gravity gives them almost superhuman strength in a low-gravity environment.

Think like how Goku from DBZ trained in space at 100x the gravity of Earth, and then when he got to Earth, he was the friggin' strongest dude EVER.

This would allow for Cloud to carry and swing his enormous sword, for the Remnants to make their bikes literally jump off the surface of the planet, for Reno to climb buildings and do handsprings in midair, and since objects are inherently lighter and fall more slowly in lowered gravity, this even permits Rude to get cracked on the head by a metal billboard and get up dusting off his sleeves. Especially if the sign was made of, say, aluminum.

Turk Stuff

the turks--R&D -> assassins? only when AVALANCHE started becoming hostile.

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