Yuffie Kisaragi

"Cunning and sly, she may look like a common thief, but Yuffie is a very skilled and powerful ninja..."

- Description

Yuffie Kisaragi is an optional playable character in Final Fantasy VII. She is a Ninja and a Thief, wielding a large shuriken.

Yuffie is a Materia hunter encountered in various forests on the Planet. As a rebellious and cocky tomboy, she desires to restore her homeland Wutai to the glorious nation it was before being conquered by the Shinra Electric Power Company. Despite her obnoxious personality, Yuffie is friendly, helpful, optimistic and willingly helps the party in their battles.

Yuffie is one of two optional characters along with Vincent Valentine. As such, she has almost no impact on the game's main storyline, but there are some changes made to various scenes if she is recruited. She can join after being discovered in various forests after the events at the Mythril Mine, encountered as the Mystery Ninja. She wields shurikens in battle for ranged attacks, and her Limits usually involve her hitting multiple enemies at once.

Appearance
Yuffie is the youngest member of the party and is usually depicted as the shortest. She has short black hair that is sometimes depicted as brown. Her hair is a bit longer in Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, where it reaches down to her shoulders. Yuffie's eyes are dark brown in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, and her Play Arts figures, and purple in her main concept images. Her weapon of choice is the large 4-Point Shuriken.

In Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie wears a white headband with a green, sleeveless turtleneck jumper that bares her stomach and a pair of tan shorts with no belt and an unbuttoned/unzipped fly. Over her left arm she wears a protective gauntlet that originates from a single pauldron over her shoulder, presumably meant to also act as a shield. The gauntlet is held in place via a strap tied across her chest and around her back. Ninja-mail mesh covers part of her right arm and left leg, and an additional piece of armor covers the rest of the thigh. She wears a smaller wrist-covering gauntlet on her right arm, orange fingerless gloves, and orange sneakers with white leg warmers.

In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, two years later, Yuffie wears a black tank-top with a white Hawaiian flowered design underneath a sleeveless dark-gray vest. Both stop just below the rib-cage, revealing her midriff. Her shorts, while still khaki, now fold back (showing the interior fabric to be black) over a dark-gray belted hip-pack that rests across her right hip. Yuffie's green forehead protector is replaced by a black long headband with white stripes on the rims. A white wristband on her right arm and a black cloth that starts from below her elbow and partially covers her left hand replace the gauntlets, while khaki-colored, laced knee-high sneaker boots with black socks that have two white stripes at the top, replace the sneakers and legwarmers.

The animators for the film have noted that Tetsuya Nomura wanted Yuffie to have a "cute" face, and her facial animations were constantly redone. Her Wutai heritage gave them an opportunity to use Japanese clothing styles not present in the other characters' appearances.

In Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, one year after Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Yuffie wears her long, black and white headband seen in most of her outfits. Her attire includes a blue and black strapless top that reveals the midriff, with shoulder straps and a black and yellow belt looped from underneath her shirt and over her shoulder that hikes the shirt further up her stomach. She wears orange denim short-shorts with a yellow belt tied together with a cord, and a yellow pouch closed with string crossed over to create a loop that attaches to two buttons, as well as a dark grey (although appearing white in game-play) wristband on her left arm, and a dark blue fingerless glove with off-white adjustable string that covers her entire right forearm. Braced black and blue-grey boots with a yellow band across the foot of the boot and white thigh-high socks complete her ensemble.

In Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, a 9-year-old Yuffie wears a green and yellow vest/hoodie underneath a white singlet and white shorts.

In Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII- she wears a green sleeveless hoodie, revealing her midriff with a yellow button-up vest over the top. Her orange shorts are buttoned and tied with a green rope. The shorts also have external pockets that extend beyond the pant legs. She wears white wristbands.

Throughout all of her outfits she wears a white headband, sometimes wearing a second, black band tied over the white one. In Final Fantasy VII she has a pair of kunai knives tied to the ends of the headband to hang down her back.

Personality
Yuffie has a cocky, proud, brash personality, and she can be aggressive. Yuffie is a tomboy and acts unashamedly towards her goals. She bestows honorific titles on herself, such as "Great Ninja Yuffie", "The Single White Rose of Wutai" and states everyone is "Dyin' to talk to a babe like [her]". Despite being the daughter of Wutai's leader, Godo Kisaragi, Yuffie has little tolerance for tradition and is rebellious to Wutai's old-fashioned ways, which lead to her clashing with her father.

Yuffie is clever and cunning, but despite this, she is not averse to heroics and is a reliable ally and caring friend.

Yuffie is the subject of two running jokes in the series. One is her motion sickness, as she gets ill whenever on a moving vehicle, be it an airship or a boat. The other is her obsession with Materia. In Final Fantasy VII, she claims she wants Materia because Shinra banned it in Wutai and she wants to use it to restore Wutai's glory. However, her obsession is intact in her appearances before and after the game, having found various other reasons to hunt the magical baubles.

Early life
Yuffie was born at an unspecified time, but seems to be somewhere around the beginning of the Wutai War. Her mother is never mentioned but according to the "Creation Materials" section in the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega guide, her mother was named Kasumi and died from an illness when Yuffie was young. As a child, Yuffie watched Wutai turn into a tourist resort and grew up on stories on how the area used to be a place of honorable mystique before Shinra's arrival.

Meeting Zack and the Turks
"For the glory of Wutai!"

- Yuffie in Crisis Core

In Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, a 9-year-old Yuffie first appears when Zack invades Fort Tamblin, proclaiming herself as "Wutai's Greatest Warrior". Zack plays along with her antics and she runs off. After losing the war to Shinra, Yuffie's father and the leader of Wutai, Godo Kisaragi, turns their hometown into a tourist attraction. This does not suit Yuffie, who thinks about restoring Wutai to its former glory. At some time after the war, Godo is given a list of SOLDIER email addresses and locations of rare treasure by an unidentified blond man (speculated to be Lazard Deusericus or Rufus Shinra in the Crisis Core Complete Guide), but Godo does nothing with the information.

Yuffie steals the information from her father and sends Zack emails about rare treasure, intending to ambush him at the end of each mission and either steal from him, or seize the treasure for herself. She fails on both counts when Zack either does not fall for her ruses, or the treasure she finds is not up to her standards. As Yuffie continues to taunt Zack through emails the locations she leads him to become more dangerous, Yuffie getting her information from an anti-Shinra group based in Wutai. On the final mission, Yuffie steals Zack's Bahamut Fury Materia and escapes. She mails it back to him a few days later, not understanding how to use it.

During Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, Yuffie encounters the player Turks in Wutai, where AVALANCHE has set up a stronghold in the pagoda. Pursued by AVALANCHE, she is saved by the player Turk and starts scheming to steal their Materia moments after learning what Materia even is.

Yuffie follows the player Turk into the AVALANCHE base and steals the bomb detonators planted in the pagoda, and the player Turk must chase her and get them back. Yuffie accidentally presses the detonator switch, and she and the Turk must cooperate to escape. Once they rendezvous with Tseng, Yuffie realizes the player Turk is with Shinra and flees.

Joining Cloud and Meteorfall
The party runs into a Mystery Ninja in a forest who attacks them but is soundly defeated. After demanding a second round and having been turned down, Yuffie joins Cloud's party with the idea the others are intimidated by her might despite her loss.

In Junon Yuffie forges a bond with Red XIII after Cloud is unanimously voted to infiltrate the Upper Junon. On the Shinra Cargo Ship, Yuffie disguises herself as a crew member, but suffers from seasickness, and says she does not want to be part of the investigation on Sephiroth's appearance on the ship. In Costa del Sol, Yuffie works part-time at the Materia shop for the day, only to steal the shop's Materia overnight.

Later, when Barret is talking about the fate of his hometown, Corel, which was burned down by Shinra, the party is unanimously sympathetic toward him if Yuffie is not present. If she has been recruited by this time, she will not hesitate to voice her lack of sympathy for Barret, citing he should never have trusted Shinra.

Yuffie has a chance of being Cloud's date in Gold Saucer when the party goes there to retrieve the Keystone. If Yuffie is Cloud's date the two will take part in a play and go sightseeing on the gondola, where Yuffie will kiss Cloud and then get angry at his unresponsiveness.

After Tifa and Barret have been imprisoned in Junon and Sapphire Weapon attacks the city causing enough commotion for the two to escape, Yuffie disguises herself as a news reporter and assists Cait Sith and Barret in their escape.

Yuffie steals the party's Materia when they enter Wutai, and they must chase her and save her from Don Corneo before she returns them. Yuffie proves herself to her father by beating the bosses of Wutai's Five Story Pagoda, and her father begins to understand the reasoning behind her position.

If Cloud talks to Yuffie right before descending to the Northern Cave for the final showdown against Sephiroth, she will try to make Cloud sign a contract that says when the war against Sephiroth is over, the party's Materia will belong to her. Cloud refuses, saying he gets airsick whenever he reads while flying.

Being an optional character, Yuffie does not appear in the ending FMV. It is later explained that she and Vincent were absent because they went to Midgar to help evacuate the citizens and Shinra personnel before Meteor hit. After placing an injured Rufus Shinra aboard a helicopter, Yuffie warns Vincent to be careful in his search of the Mako Cannon. She later saves him as the building collapses from a lightning strike.

Post crisis
In On the Way to a Smile, following Meteorfall, the group returned to the Forgotten City to pay their respects to Aerith. Following this, the group parted ways, with the majority of the group's destructive Materia being given to Yuffie in name but being kept "for safe custody" by Cloud.

Returning to Wutai with the expectations she would be treated as a hero for saving the world from Sephiroth, Yuffie returned to discover her home town in ruin. Forgetting about fame, Yuffie offered her healing Materia to help those wounded after the Lifestream had passed through Wutai during Meteorfall.

After a while a strange epidemic arose and, believing Yuffie to be the carrier, her father locked her within the family dojo to both quarantine her and protect her from the townsfolk. Freed by Yuri, a childhood friend, the pair left Wutai to investigate the Materia Caves for a Materia that might cure the "Midgar Disease". Calling via cellphone but unable to find an answer on whether one existed from Cloud or Tifa, Yuffie and Yuri explored the caves newly opened when the Lifestream had erupted from the earth.

While finding no Materia within the caves, the pair encountered many monsters. During a battle, a stray fireball released a black liquid from the ground which appeared sentient, and chased Yuffie and Yuri out of the cave, where it infected Yuri with Geostigma. Encountering Nanaki, who was traveling the world, Yuri revealed he had visited Midgar before Yuffie's arrival and that he believed he was the one to infect Wutai with the "Midgar Disease".

Returning to Wutai to discover the township had begun separating those infected from the populace by building a hut at the town's outskirts, Yuffie looked after those quarantined within the hut. Two weeks later, with the number of those infected increasing in spite of the quarantine, it was theorized the disease was not due to infection. Yuri hypothesized only those who had already been sick or injured and were thinking they were "going to die" were infected, admitting that he himself had thought he was going to die when he became infected in the cave. The township was made aware of the black water Yuffie and Yuri had encountered and warned the populace of the possibility of infected water.

One year later, the number of "quarantine" huts had increased to two and the following year Yuffie embarked to investigate the Materia Cave to the north, passing Corel where she ran into Cid and Nanaki while Cid was testing his new oil-fueled airship. After Cid inadvertently left Nanaki and returned to Rocket Town, he and Yuffie continued on to the northern Materia Cave in search of a Materia that might cure Geostigma.

Geostigma crisis
"All right, who's been touching my materia?"

- Yuffie to Tifa in Advent Children

During Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, when Cloud's cellphone is lost in the lake in Forgotten City Yuffie's voice recording plays among others, where she says, "Surprise! It's me, Yuffie", although her voice is difficult to pick out as other pieces of dialogue are being played at the same time. Yuffie mentions the children from Wutai have gone missing, and tells Cloud to call her if he knows why.

Yuffie appears in person along with the other playable characters from Final Fantasy VII during the battle in Edge. She arrives via Cid's airship (still showing signs of motion sickness after parachuting down). She helps the party defeat Bahamut SIN, and brings Cloud's Materia collection from the Midgar ruins aboard the  Shera.

During the bonus feature "Reminiscence of Final Fantasy VII", Yuffie sends a "Closed for Business" sign to Barret through the Strife Delivery Service as a way of getting Cloud to take a day off. She seems to call Vincent Valentine in the time after Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children because Vincent asks Cloud to relay a message to her, claiming she has no right to call his phone.

Deepground conflict
"I am the champion of the earth and the sky. I am the conqueror of evil. The single white rose of Wutai... Yuffie Kisaragi!"

- Yuffie in Dirge of Cerberus

In Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, having joined the World Regenesis Organization, Yuffie is in charge of the espionage and intelligence gathering. Yuffie works to fight against Deepground in 2010. She is the one who rescues Vincent from Rosso the Crimson in the Shinra Mansion, where the bloodthirsty Tsviets were about to kill him, and takes him back to the WRO Headquarters.

Onboard the Shera, she suffers from motion sickness, and leads the troops from the airships to the ground for the Battle of Midgar to shut down a generator inside the Shinra Building. Yuffie and Vincent go into Deepground to kill Weiss, but are stopped by Nero, who sucks Yuffie into darkness, kidnapping her and Vincent goes to save her, since Nero's darkness does not affect him. Yuffie and other AVALANCHE members aid Vincent in Omega's destruction and she is seen last in 7th Heaven, asking Tifa if she has heard from Cloud, most likely concerning Vincent's whereabouts.

Gameplay


Yuffie is an optional playable party member who must be recruited. She is first fought as a random encounter in a forest location on the world map. After this, the player must give her all the correct dialogue responses to recruit her. The player must answer, in order:
 * 1) Not interested
 * 2) ……petrified
 * 3) Wait a second!
 * 4) ……That's right
 * 5) ……Let's hurry on.

As a party member, she wields shurikens which are long range, which she uses in Limits which normally damage all enemies. Her stats are below average, though she has the highest Luck stat. Her ultimate weapon, the Conformer, deals more damage based on the level of the enemy, making it the most reliable ultimate weapon.

Yuffie is a date option for Cloud. She is the second most difficult character to date, only ahead of Barret, as her starting hidden date value is 10, compared to Tifa's 30 and Aeris's 50. By visiting Wutai after recruiting Yuffie, an extensive two-part sidequest can be accessed.

Creation and development
Yuffie and Vincent were almost cut from the game due to lack of time, and they became optional characters. The main reason for there being so many cutscenes for Yuffie is because event planner Jun Akiyama, who was in charge of them, had a strong attachment to her. Her appearing in a battle and the scene with her afterwards were his ideas, and as development moved along the scope expanded.

According to the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega, in earlier versions of Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie and Wutai as a whole were very different from the finished product. Yuffie was envisioned as a 25-year-old bounty hunter seeking Cloud and Sephiroth, and she in turn had a bounty on her head. Posters showing her stats would be found around the world, and Yuffie's stats, abilities and level would change when the party acquired her depending on which poster was inspected last. She was also intended to be an ex-SOLDIER.

The Wutai subquest would have involved Shinra placing Wutai goods under high taxes, straining their economy. Yuffie would have stolen the party's money to try and help, but the town would reject the funds. A Shinra spy in Wutai, Sera, would have spread pro-Shinra propaganda, and planned to blow up the "Ten Face Mountain" to level Wutai and build a Mako Reactor in the ruins. Cloud and his allies would have to climb the mountain and stop her. Her mother's name would have been Kasumi Kisaragi and she would have died while Yuffie was still young.

Yuffie's job class was originally listed as "Ninja (Assassin)".

In the Character Files section of the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega Early Material Files, the recruitment info says Yuffie was planned to be available any time after passing Kalm. This may be why Yuffie has a spoken line in the Marshes scene involving a slain Midgar Zolom, which cannot normally be seen in the game.

Voice
Yuffie is voiced by Yumi Kakazu in Japanese.

She is voiced by Christy Carlson Romano in the English versions of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and by Mae Whitman in Kingdom Hearts II and Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-.

Musical themes
Yuffie's theme is "Descendant of Shinobi," which plays during the sequence after the party defeats her in battle and during many other scenes involving her. It is set in G major. This theme appears in a vocal form on the Final Fantasy Song Book "Mahoroba" album. The PlayStation 4 version had a glitch that plays a wrong music track when the player recruits Yuffie that involves entering the one-time World Map fields. Instead of playing her theme, the game plays the last field music the player heard.

The theme "Stolen Materia" is a variation of Yuffie's character theme set in E minor and is often used in association with her, generally whenever she is behaving in a sneaky or untrustworthy manner. It first plays when the party arrives in the Wutai area, again when they realize that much of their Materia has been stolen, after Yuffie locks two party members in a cage in her house, and once again when she and Godo agree to steal the party's Materia at the top of the pagoda.

Other appearances
Yuffie has appeared in the following games in the Final Fantasy series:
 * Final Fantasy VII G-Bike as a support character.
 * Dissidia Final Fantasy in a cameo.
 * Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia as a playable character.
 * Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call as a playable character.
 * Pictlogica Final Fantasy as a playable character.
 * Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade as summonable Legend.
 * Final Fantasy Artniks as a series of cards.
 * Final Fantasy Record Keeper as a playable character.
 * Final Fantasy Trading Card Game as a series of cards.
 * Triple Triad as a card.

Non-Final Fantasy guest appearances
Yuffie has had key guest appearances in the following non-Final Fantasy games:
 * Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring as a playable character.
 * Kingdom Hearts series as a support character.
 * Itadaki Street series as a playable character.

Etymology
Yuffie is one of the few characters to retain a true Japanese name in the English versions across all Final Fantasy games. The only modification made to Yuffie's full name is that the developers anglicized the name by adding a second F and an E to the spelling of her original Japanese given name Yufi. In French, her name, while pronounced the same way, is written Youffie.

When fought as an opponent Yuffie is known as the Mystery Ninja.

Trivia

 * Yuffie is the only party member to be fought against.
 * Yuffie's dialogue when met as a Mystery Ninja changes if either Tifa or Cid are the party leaders. She calls Tifa "Boobs" and Cid a "Cranky-legged old man".
 * When Cid gains the position of leader, and the party begins their quest for the first two Huge Materia, Yuffie is the only character who does not have extra dialogue each time the player completes a Huge Materia event.
 * Even though Yuffie can only be fought in forests as Mystery Ninja, the scene that takes place immediately after is on a grassy plain with no trees is sight.
 * In a bit of foreshadowing, if Yuffie is in the party after they liberate the Tiny Bronco, she suggests heading to Wutai, for "No reason at all".
 * Yuffie is assumed to have a decent relationship with Red XIII, seeing as how he is the one she went off to talk to when Cloud was picked by default to be the one to use Priscilla's dolphin to get up to Junon. She also appears alongside him in Dissidia Final Fantasy (see below). However, it was revealed she tends to make fun of him to blow off steam.
 * Yuffie seems to have a good relationship with Vincent Valentine, whom she nicknamed Vince (along with Cid Highwind). According to Vincent himself, she likes to call him for no reason. In the ending of Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, she is most worried about Vincent's disappearance out of everyone. This may be a reference to them both being secret characters in Final Fantasy VII.
 * Yuffie seems to look up to and respect Aeris. She never refers to her as any derogatory nicknames like she does to the others, and she never pokes fun at her. When Sephiroth kills Aeris, Yuffie cries and hugs Cloud. In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, everyone in the party except Vincent sports a pink ribbon on their left arm in remembrance of their fallen friend (Vincent wears a ribbon on his right arm, because he has a gauntlet on his left arm). Yuffie is the only one to sport three pink ribbons: one on her upper left arm and another two on her shuriken.
 * Yuffie has had a different outfit in each of her appearances in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and appears to be the only character to have a different outfit in Dirge Of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-.
 * Though her age is given as 16 in the original Final Fantasy VII instruction manual, the website for the PlayStation Network downloadable version of Final Fantasy VII gives her age as 19; her age during the events of Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-.
 * Yuffie is one of the two playable characters in Final Fantasy VII who do not appear in any of the game's FMVs, the other being Vincent Valentine. This is because the two characters are optional characters and may not have been recruited by the player at the time of each FMV, and redoing various FMVs to accommodate their recruitments might have been too costly for Square.
 * Yuffie's Limit Break Bloodfest has the same name as one of Seifer's attacks from Final Fantasy VIII.
 * The Yuffie warping glitch lets the player skip to different points in the game. The glitch only works in the PC versions.
 * Yuffie has a themed parfait at Artnia Cafe. It's flavor is Matcha green tea and is topped with a chocolate shuriken.