The Buster Sword is an egregiously large blade first featured in the beloved Squaresoft PlayStation console game Final Fantasy VII (1997). It appears in the opening scene on the back of hired mercenary, Cloud Strife, who is employed by the eco-terrorist group Avalanche. Avalanche battles to save the planet from the corrupt megacorporation Shinra: a global energy supplier, pharmaceutical company, political enterprise, arms manufacturer, and private military company.

The Buster Sword enjoys supra-franchise status. It’s a resonant feature throughout Final Fantasy’s expanded universe—appearing in mobile and console spin-offs, animated films, a recent remake, and in adjacent Square Enix properties.[1] Appearances in unaffiliated franchises and broader pop culture are often endearing wink-and-nods to both the sword’s highly unrealistic size and FFVII’s lasting fandom.[2]

The game’s initial eco-vigilante scenario would have struck a chord with audiences of the late ‘90s: 1995 marked the hottest recorded year on the planet, and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change insisted “a discernible human influence on global climate.”[3] In addition to climate anxiety, FFVII also addressed mental health in response to trauma. The main character is revealed to have severe PTSD from his employ in Shinra’s military program as a 3rd Class SOLDIER. Both the player and Cloud himself gradually realize his life’s narrative is a fiction woven to compensate for acute memory loss brought on by witnessing numerous violent deaths.[4] His Buster Sword originally belonged to one of these casualties, Cloud’s mentor Zach Fair (who received it from his own fallen mentor). After Zach’s death, Cloud’s emotional and cognitive trauma leads him to unwittingly appropriate Zach’s career as a 1^st Class SOLDIER.

Cumbersome as it is, the Buster Sword is a hybrid symbol of nostalgia (both within and outside of game play), friendship, inheritance, and the mental and emotional “Strife” of its wielders. An ever-growing archive of weapons enthusiasts and cosplayers attempting to re-make this impossible object is a testament to its varied legacies and to individuals’ corresponding desires to take up and wield all that this heavy burden has come to represent.[5] While the Buster Sword is seemingly laid to rest at the end of FFVII: Advent Children, it’s continued re-emergence ensures its weighty legacies remain in flux.