Terra Branford


Terra Branford, known as in Japanese media, is a fictional character in the Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games published by Square Enix. Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura designed Terra for the main series installment Final Fantasy VI, where she is one of its protagonists. Terra also appears in the spin-off fighting game series Dissidia Final Fantasy and the rhythm series Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. She has made small appearances in several other games in and outside the Final Fantasy series.
Terra is the daughter of a human and a magical creature known as an "Esper." Mentally enslaved by the evil Gestahlian Empire, they use her magic powers to make war on the Empire's neighbors. Rebels rescue her at the beginning of the game, and she helps their campaign against the Empire.
Initially designed to be a man, developers designed her character to start as a passive person in the first half of the game to show her growth throughout the story. Journalists and fans praised the character for her complexity and unique backstory. She has been on many lists of gamers' favorite Final Fantasy characters and some lists of their favorite video game characters.

Appearances

''Final Fantasy VI''

Terra is the first introduced character, a mentally-enslaved Imperial super-soldier who possesses destructive magic. She is made to participate in an armored assault on the town of Narshe, exterminating most of the town's militia in pursuit of a recently unearthed magical creature which are known as Espers. Upon encountering the creature, her fellow soldiers are killed and her armor destroyed. She wakes up in the home of a man named Arvis, now free of her slave crown and suffering amnesia. Pursued into the depths of Narshe's mines by Imperial forces, the thief Locke and a horde of moogles eventually rescue her. After events in Figaro kingdom and another Imperial invasion on Narshe to claim the Esper, she learns she is the daughter of an Esper father and human mother, explaining her magical abilities. Having been previously brain-washed and extensively trained, Terra realizes she was instrumental in the Empire's conquest of the other city-states on the southern continent. She discovers that her power had caused the deaths of fifty Imperial troops in moments. Terra became a vital part of the revolutionary movement known as the "Returners", whose strategy was to try and ally with the Espers, who live beyond the sealed gate, against the Empire. Terra succeeded in opening the barrier between worlds and unleashed the Espers' upon on the Empire, leaving its capital in ruins.
In the games post-apocalyptic second half, Terra is found no longer wishing to fight. For the orphans of the town of Mobliz, she has become a mother figure. She fails to stop an attack on the town by a legendary demon known as Humbaba, requiring the players' party's intervention to drive it away. Returning to the village later, the player finds her ready to stand up against Humbaba. She joins the player to defeat it and vows to make the world safe for children. At the game's conclusion, Terra expects to fade from existence with the remaining Espers as magic leaves the world. Her father's spirit, however, tells her that she will not die because she is half-human.

Other appearances

Terra is the heroine representing Final Fantasy VI in ', a crossover fighting game featuring different characters from the Final Fantasy series. She returns in ' as a member of the evil Chaos army, and also appears in the next game, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT with an alternate appearance featuring her green hair from Final Fantasy VI. Her character appears in the mobile title Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia.
Terra is a playable character in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Explorers, Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade, and World of Final Fantasy, where she is voiced by Yukari Fukui. She is also one of the randomly purchasable "Premium" characters in and a collectible character in Final Fantasy Record Keeper as well as Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Final Fantasy Tactics S briefly allowed Terra and other Final Fantasy characters to join their parties. Players can outfit their characters in Terras outfit in Gunslinger Stratos 2. Her character was included in the technical demo Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CG Game. Merchandise items featuring the character such as gashapon figurines and full models have been produced.

Development

Developers initially conceived of the character that would become Terra Branford as a half-esper young man in his early 20s. He was to be a partner and rival of the dark, mysterious Locke Cole. The character's design changed over time, however, to that of an eighteen-year-old half-esper female. Character designer Yoshitaka Amano initially created the concept art for Terra. Tetsuya Nomura, one of the game's graphic directors, redesigned her in chibi form for her representation in the game. The main difference between the two was her in-game appearance has green hair as opposed to her original blonde. In a 2006 interview, Amano stated that Terra was his favorite video game character to design. The developers intended for the game to have an ensemble cast with no unique protagonist. For this reason, the second half of the game opens with another character, Celes Chere, instead of Terra, who opened the first. Another reason for this shift is that the team wanted Terra's story arc to progress in a new direction after the first half. The game story made Terra a very passive character in the first half of the game to show her personal growth and strength as the story progressed. At the end of the game, Terra was initially going to die when magic left the world. However, the development team decided that this would be "excessive" as she had finally discovered her humanity and let her live without her magic powers.
Although the character's name is "Tina Branford" in Japanese media, American playtesters "hated the name Tina, almost to a person!", according to the game's translator Ted Woolsey. For this reason, Woolsey renamed the character "Terra" in the North American English version of the game. While acknowledging that some might dislike the name change, he noted that the games he worked on "were meant for a broader audience than the one which buys and plays Japanese imports", and those who know Japanese should play the original versions. In the game Dissidia Final Fantasy, Nomura chose Terra as the representative hero for Final Fantasy VI. He reasoned that without her, there would be no female hero character in the game's roster. Nomura stated that "based on feelings" from Final Fantasy VIs production, he "thought it had to be Terra" as she appeared on the game's cover art and advertisements. Gameplay-wise, Terra is Nomura's favorite character in Dissidia Final Fantasy.

Reception

The character was very well received, especially among the Japanese fans of Final Fantasy. Though she does not form a couple with anyone in Final Fantasy VI, "Terra and Edgar" and "Terra and Locke" were popular fan wishes in polls of Japanese fans. That same year, she was ranked sixth in V Jumps poll for the most popular characters in the Final Fantasy series. A 2013 poll by Square Enix saw that Terra was the sixth most popular Final Fantasy female character in Japan. In an article about Dissidia Final Fantasy, IGN editor Ryan Clements called her one of the most recognizable and well-loved characters to fight against evil alongside other Final Fantasy protagonists.
In 1996, Next Generation chose the scene of Terra learning to love again by taking care of orphaned children as the most memorable moment in the Final Fantasy series, stating "It's safe to say that no other game series has tackled such big issues, or reached such a level of emotional complexity. It truly is beautiful." In 2013, Gus Turner of Complex ranked Terra as the fifth most significant Final Fantasy character of all time, calling her "a benchmark for all female protagonists in the series, made unique by the multi-dimensional aspects of her personality and backstory," and stating "what characters like Yuna and Aeris continued, Terra started." Also in 2013, Michael Rougeau, also of Complex, ranked her as the ninth most celebrated female lead character in video game history, calling her "one of the most compelling and complex heroines in gaming" and declaring her a much better female Final Fantasy protagonist than Final Fantasy XIIIs Lightning. That same year, Tom's Guide’s Marshall Honorof included her among the top ten female protagonists in video game history. Entertainment Weeklys Darren Franich listed her as one of "15 Kick-Ass Women in Videogames", asserting that "Going through a Django-like transformation from brain-washed slave to active hero, she's far more interesting than the simple Madonna-whore dichotomy of Final Fantasy VIIs Aeris and Tifa." The book Japanese Culture Through Videogames addresses Terra as a complex fictional character, comparing her with Metal Gears Solid Snake, Final Fantasy VIIs Cloud Strife and Tekkens Jin Kazama due to her identity issues.