Final Fantasy series' inconsistences with death

I barely have anything to blog about these days. But even if that were the case, there's still some interesting things to think about. Right now, as I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm taking note of just how many characters end up perishing in-game through cutscenes and/or otherwise. There's a lot of them in this game, and it gave me time to reflect on the series and games that had the more notable deaths. Might as well list the one's that are really notable.

II: Josef, Minwu
III: Elia
IV: Tellah, Anna
V: Galuf and the rest of the original heroes
VI: Cid (can be prevented), Gestahl, Leo, Shadow (can be prevented), Cyan's family, Rachel
VII: Aeris, President Shinra
VIII: Vinzer Deling

Those are of course the more memorable ones from the games I'm already familiar with, but there's a whole slew of characters that come near death or perhaps fake their deaths. I'm not familiar with II that much apart from what people have told me, but I know for a fact Desh in III jumps into a tower reactor, only to show up much later on. IV is incredibly blatant with its fake deaths, all of which tend to be sacrifices in some way. Yang jumping into the barrel of a powerful cannon? How could he survive that? Cid is even worse, jumping down a huge chasm with a bomb ready to deploy. And he's the FIRST character you see recovering. Somehow, despite Tellah NOT being able to cure Palom and Porom of petrification much earlier, the village elder of Mysidia could do it. Nothing makes much sense when it comes to these fake deaths.

In V's later stages, Lenna gets sucked into the vortexes during one of Exdeath's main attacks, and is eventually rescued. Although when she's back in the party, she's essentially dead, and her status also shows that when you look at it upon getting her back. But you could just revive her. You couldn't do that with Galuf, mostly due to the circumstances involving his sacrifice. There's also barely any effort to prevent Xeza's death from occurring, or Kelmar's.

Skipping over to VII, as VI had plenty of decent deaths and no real fake-outs apart from the preventable ones. Believe it or not, the two characters I mentioned above are the only two who somehow die, and both by Sephiroth's hands. Sephiroth's Masamune somehow just couldn't kill anything else. Tifa gets slashed completely across the chest in a flashback, and even falls about sixty feet down stairs, but she survives. Tseng gets stabbed in the chest at one dungeon, and is laying on the ground when you meet him there, but he's revealed to have survived despite not appearing later on. Finally, Cloud himself. He also gets pierced in the chest by Sephiroth like Tseng, but also gets lifted up. This somehow doesn't kill him, and Cloud even pulls a reversal and knocks Sephiroth below. And that's just Sephiroth's examples of not killing, there are others in this game. Palmer getting hit by a truck? Well it could be survivable and it is in his case. What about Rufus during the Diamond Weapon attack? Somehow, despite the earth-shattering beam, it's revealed he's okay. This is just not understandable.

VIII had a few of these happen, usually involving moments with Squall and Rinoa (particularly the end of Disc 1 where Squall gets outright skewered with a shard from Edea), it's hard to really follow them. The missile base mission also sees Selphie's group somehow making it out of there, using something...rather special. Laguna in one of his scenes somehow manages to push his injured comrades down a cliff, both survive (although Ward no longer can speak). Vinzer is just the unluckiest guy ever.

So yeah, get your deaths together Final Fantasy. Other JRPG series usually keep characters dead. Usually. Only a few times would they not, but this series is quite notorious for fake deaths. Not saying that death should always happen in these games, that would make things tragic and perhaps make the overall fanbase a little more secluded, but less fake-outs please.