No, Aerith isn’t wearing the hair bow Zack gave her

In Crisis Core, we meet an Aerith who is conspicuously bow-less for the first time in her video game character career. Sure enough, Crisis Core has Zack buy Aerith a pink bow to wear. Origin story of Aeris wearing a hair bow? Not quite.

First, Aeris may not be wearing a hair bow at the moment she meets Zack, but she has worn hair bows in the past. In the original game, a flashback story told by Elmyra shows Aeris at two ages accessorizing with her trademark ribbons (one green, one yellow). Arguments that this was effectively retconned by Crisis Core are undermined by the fact that Final Fantasy VII Remake not only preserved the flashbacks of Aeris wearing hair bows in childhood, but doubled down – changing the color of Aeris’s yellow bow to a pink one.

So too is dismissed the suggestion that Aerith wears pink because of Zack.

Crisis Core begins when Aerith is 16 years old, and Zack buys her a pink bow. We see this bow in her in-game model as well as in promotional artwork and merchandise.

But there’s something unusual about it. It’s a dark, reddish-pink color, and includes two ribbon ends hanging freely in addition to the “rabbit ears” on either side of her ponytail. This is markedly different from the bow she wears in the original game and in Advent Children.

Could this account for artistic interpretation solely within the game itself? That explanation doesn’t work either: we see present-day Aeris wearing her trademark light-pink bow in Crisis Core‘s own ending.

It simply is not the same bow. (If it’s intended to be the same bow, then there’s only one explanation left: Crisis Core is messy and inconsistent. Either, or both, explanations could be possible.)

Not only is Aeris not wearing Zack’s bow present-day, but she is also seen wearing a bow during the events of Before Crisis, when she is 17 years old. This bow is also not the one Zack gave her – the shape remains different, and it’s red.

So Aeris stopped wearing Zack’s gifted bow not long after receiving. Sorry, Zerith fans. But Aeris clearly says in Crisis Core that she will “always wear” the bow Zack gave her, right? So what happened?

The answer to that question is, of course, a mistranslation. In the Japanese version of the game, Aeris never says she intends to wear the bow forever.

ありがとう、ザックス。
これ、ずっと大事にする。

Thank you, Zack.
I’ll always treasure this.

Aerith, Crisis Core (Japanese version)

So there you have it. Aeris simply said she would always treasure/cherish Zack’s gift. She never vowed to wear it forever, so it’s no surprise that she has a new one by Before Crisis, and another one by the time Final Fantasy VII begins. Nor did Zack inspired this fashion trend in her – we clearly see that she wore bows as a child, and it’s an important way to keep her precious Holy materia with her. Perhaps, at best, Zack re-inspired her to incorporate bows into her wardrobe.