In the city of Midgar, a young blonde man lives alone after the loss of his mother. He has a small group of friends, including a young lady from the slums and a man with a grudge associated with Shinra. After a run-in with Shinra’s special forces, the Turks, he escapes Midgar and finds his way to the town of Nibelheim, where something very important involving his mother happened. This boy’s name is not Cloud Strife. His name is Evan Townshend.

The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story is an extended universe story for Final Fantasy VII. The author, Kazushige Nojima, was one of the main scenario writers for the original Final Fantasy VII. It’s an interesting piece of VII lore because it’s not a game, it’s not an animation, and it’s not even a manga: it’s a straight-up book. Unlike the other Final Fantasy VII novel, Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile, Cloud and the rest of the party play a very small role. The majority of the story takes place between Meteorfall and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, focusing on the new original character Evan Townshend and his run-ins with the Turks. It’s a neat piece of extra lore that expands the world beyond what the original protagonists could see.

The Kids Are Alright Follows a Brand-New Cast

Shifting Perspectives

Cloud doesn’t appear much in The Kids Are Alright. Neither does Tifa. Barrett’s nowhere to be found. Red XIII gets to help save the female lead, Kyrie, at one point, but that’s it. In other words, The Kids Are Alright takes the “camera” away from Cloud’s party and instead explores what life is like for some normal citizens of Midgar.

Evan Townshend, Kyrie Canaan, and Leslie Kyle are the members of “Mireille’s Investigative Services,” a detective agency for finding missing persons after Meteorfall. Evan’s mother went missing right after Meteorfall, but after a man hires Mireille’s Investigative Services to find his missing son, the search leads them to Nibelheim.

Related

The PS5 Pro, Sony’s Most Expensive Console to Date, is Already Experiencing Issues

Fans were already wary of having to shell out $700 for a PS5 Pro, and now the console is having problems.

Meanwhile, the Turks are investigating the outbreak of the vicious virus known as “Geostigma,” and Evan ends up crossing paths with them. Turns out that Evan’s mom’s disappearance runs even deeper than Evan could have thought. Evan’s a fun narrator, and his lack of combat skills makes him an interesting foil to other viewpoint characters across the Compilation.

The mystery behind Evan’s mother’s disappearance is engaging, and the story does a good job of making the reader understand his ungrateful behavior toward her before she was gone. Flashbacks show that he was a bratty, insecure teenage boy who wasn’t able to understand his mother’s sacrifices without hindsight — something plenty of readers have gone through themselves.

It sets him up as a flawed character with room to grow while also making sure the reader doesn’t outright excuse him for his actions at the beginning. He and Kyrie are also very much not combatants, but that works for the format. Fight scenes can be hard to follow in text, while escape scenes are less hectic and allow for more creativity. That’s not to say the book lacks action, though.

The Kids Are Alright Uses New Characters to Its Advantage…Mostly

Beyond AVALANCHE and Shinra

When The Kids Are Alright was released in Japan back in 2011, the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII had been running for nearly fifteen years. The original game was an icon for Square Enix, but they had to be careful not to run it into the ground — which they’d already been accused of doing after the mixed reception to Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

This makes the original game party’s lack of presence notable; while the Turks play a bigger role than usual, they aren’t even the main characters. The central cast of The Kids Are Alright consists of original characters, and that was a good decision. It fleshes out the world of VII without putting Cloud and company through the wringer yet again — sometimes the iconic heroes just need some rest from all the trauma.

It also helps sell the world of VII as being bigger than it looks — when the main squad are always the ones who solve things in the end, it makes them feel less human and more like forces of nature. Evan and his friends getting their own conflict that they get to resolve on their own makes them more likable — the readers get payoff for rooting for them.

Related

What Final Fantasy VII Fans Need to Know About The First Soldier

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis expands the lore of the series with The First Soldier — here’s what fans need to know about the first two episodes.

It’s not like Advent Children where the rest of the party stands back on purpose while Cloud fights Sephiroth one-on-one — Evan earns his spotlight, even if the action setpieces mostly consist of escaping from danger. Besides Evan, the other new characters aren’t as fleshed out, but that’s mostly a consequence of having a first-person narrator for the majority of the story.

There are perspective shifts to focus on the Turks, but they’re in third person. Kyrie and Leslie both migrated to the games in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, but ironically, Evan is nowhere to be seen. Between Kyrie and Leslie, Leslie got the more flattering game portrayal, being a noble criminal who begrudgingly works under Don Corneo so he can take his revenge on him later.

Kyrie, meanwhile, is mostly just a spunky con artist. Her scenes in the games are funny, and the book makes her more sympathetic, but how likable she is will probably depend on how much readers and players can tolerate Yuffie.

Leslie notably stood by while Don Corneo fed women he abused to his pet sewer monster, so it says a lot about how Kyrie is portrayed — her crimes are so much less severe, but she’s still more grating than Leslie. It balances out a bit more in the book, though, since she gets much more screen time than him and her fondness for Evan softens her a bit.

Despite the Title, the Turks Aren’t the Center of the Story

A “Turks” Side Story?

Related

This Classic PS1 RPG is Still One of the Best Games Ever Made

Few RPGs make as huge and impact on players as Final Fantasy VII. Read on to learn why this game is one of the best PS1 RPGs ever made.

Despite the subtitle “A Turks Side Story,” the book really isn’t about them — all the interesting stuff happens with Evan and company. When the scene isn’t focusing on Evan, it’s usually set on the Turks instead. However, they don’t take the spotlight that much — they’re more antagonists than anything else.

Tseng and Elena get the most introspection of the four Turks, and it does flesh them out, but the Turks aren’t the main characters. It also does its best to make them more sympathetic but also establishes that Tseng and Elena aren’t as soft as Reno and Rude. Whether this works, though, is subjective. These are the people who brought down the Sector 7 plate, after all.

If players weren’t fans of the Turks before reading the story, then the book won’t change their minds. In the story, Tseng and Elena are the bad cops to Reno and Rude’s good cops, but that doesn’t say much when both the good and bad cops previously dropped a piece of a city on another part of the city.

Tseng’s as stoic as ever, showing glimpses of empathy when things get really bad but remaining a consummate professional regardless. Reno and Rude fiercely beat Evan when they mistake him for someone who stole a Geostigma drug, but they also try to help him before being stopped by Tseng.

Related

Is the Most Infamous Final Fantasy Game Really That Bad?

Despite years worth of bad press and ridicule, Mystic Quest is actually a pretty fun RPG that’s perfect for younger players.

And Elena’s character has been almost completely overhauled. In the original game, she was an overenthusiastic newbie whose tendency to say too much was usually played as a joke. In The Kids Are Alright, she’s got a short temper and is easily the most prone to violence of the group.

And not in a “token anime girl tsundere” kind of way — she’s a genuine threat whose impulsiveness makes her the most dangerous Turk. She beats one of Evan’s friends into such a state over stealing Geostigma medicine that he needs immediate medical attention to save his life. Elena’s portrayal is more interesting (and admittedly a little less sexist) than her ditzy game version, but it’s also jarring enough that it’s one of the main things readers will remember after finishing the book.

It’s not exactly out of character for her, since the game version of Elena didn’t have much character in the first place, but her personality change is one of the more memorable parts of the story, for better or for worse. In short, The Kids Are Alright definitely fleshes out the Turks, but it’s not a story about them. They’re just the most important pre-existing characters in the book.

While it’s the least important part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story has its charms. Evan’s narration is actually very fun to read and flows very naturally. It’s nice to see that Cloud and his party aren’t the only people in the world who get to have cool adventures.

For fans of Shinra, it gives Rufus and the Turks another chance to redeem themselves. And the team clearly liked Kyrie and Leslie enough to bring them into the games. The main thing is that the Turks can be hard to like — at least one person dies in the book because of them — and there’s not a lot going on with their redemption.

Rufus got his karma in On the Way to a Smile, but Tseng and Elena remain obstacles for the heroes instead of the allies the story tries to make the reader believe they’ll become. Reno and Rude are a little better in the redemption regard, but even they do some pretty heinous stuff in the book. At least they show some regret, though.

But for everyone who dislikes how obstructive the Turks are, there might be someone else who loves that they haven’t lost their edge even though they’re closer to being good guys now. Since Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII still hasn’t been released in English at the time of writing, The Kids Are Alright is a treat for Turks fans.

And for those less fond of Shinra’s finest, Evan’s storyline is worth a read. There’s not much extra lore to get out of the book other than some retroactive explanations for some of Advent Children‘s more confusing elements, but there are worse entries in the Compilation to waste your time on. For fans of the Turks or just anyone wanting more Final Fantasy VII, The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story has some fun in store.

Final Fantasy 7

Systems

Released

January 31, 1997

ESRB

T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes

Developer(s)

Square Enix

Publisher(s)

Square Enix