Cloud, Sephiroth, and others reimagined as teenagers attending high school in the Japanese city of “Midogaru.”

April is the start of the school year in Japan, with new students taking their first steps on campus under a fluttering shower of cherry blossom petals, and among this year’s incoming class of freshmen are Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockhart.

“Wait a second, aren’t Cloud and Tifa, respectively, the protagonist and absolute best female character from Final Fantasy VII?” you might be saying. If so, yes, you’re correct on both of those points, but they’re also part of what Square Enix is calling Youth Fantasy Evecri Academy VII, which takes the cast of the mega-hit fantasy RPG and drops them into a Japanese high school setting.

In this alternate continuity, Cloud and Tifa are freshman enrolling at Municipal Seventh High School in the town of Midogaru (not to be confused with Midgar, the primary setting of Final Fantasy VII). Midogaru has a bit of a rough underbelly, it seems, with teens testing their fighting prowess against one another in the style of classic battle high school anime/manga series, and Cloud, sulking around with his oversized baseball bat, wants to prove that he’s the strongest fighter around.

Gal pal Tifa is worried about Cloud, though, and has asked for the help of second-year upperclassman Aerith (who’s the leader of a gang) and Zack Fair, tough guy first-class who’s having to repeat his first-year classes, to help keep him from getting into more trouble than he can handle.

Keeping a sternly watchful eye on these kids is their P.E. teacher, Barret Wallace, who’s ready to give anyone who needs one a good smack upside the head with his harisen folded paper fan.

Municipal Seventh isn’t the only high school in Midogaru, though, There’s also the presumably prestigious and well-funded private institution Shinra School of Medicine’s high school program, whose students include a young kendo club member named…

…Sephiroth.

Also attending Shinra Medical High is Angeal Hewley, student class president…

…and tasked with helping the boys grow into fine young men (or whatever role it is that Shinra is plotting for them) are fine arts instructor Glenn Lodbrok…

…political science and economics professor Matt Winsford…

…and physics teacher Lucia Lin.

▼ There’s nothing at all suspicious about the Shinra teachers listing their blood types as “P,” “ I have concluded there is no need to confirm it,” and “A, B, O, any of them are fine,” is there?

In addition to a dedicated website for Youth Fantasy Evecri Academy VII going up, the official Twitter account for mobile game Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis (“Evercri” being a mashup of Ever Crisis) also sent out a tweet saying that “School is now in session.”

This would ordinarily be the part where we say “Buuuuut, the tweet was posted on April 1, so this is clearly an April Fools’ Day joke.” However, with Ever Crisis being a mobile gacha game where drawing new versions of characters in unique outfits is part of the core gameplay loop, and with the character portraits bearing the name of Applibot (Square Enix’s joint developer partner for Ever Crisis), there might indeed end up being some sort of limited-time in-game event with this high school setting, and the Youth Fantasy Evecri Academy VII website does promise that a trailer video of some kind is “coming soon.”

Source: Youth Fantasy Evecri Academy VII official website via Twitter/@FFVII_EC_JP via Hachima Kiko
Images: Youth Fantasy Evecri Academy VII official website
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