Tifa's Breast Size Change

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Part of a series on Final Fantasy VII Remake. [View Related Entries]

About

Tifa's Breast Size Change refers to a debate around the slight change in the design of Final Fantasy VII character Tifa Lockhart. The debate went viral online in June 2019 following the trailer premiere for the then-upcoming remake of the game.

Origin

On June 10th, 2019, game publisher and developer Square Enix presented the trailer of the upcoming remake of 1998 video game Final Fantasy VII during its pre-E3 press conference.^[1] In the trailer, the character Tifa Lockhart was shown.

Spread

On the same day, multiple threads highlighting the slight change in breast size of the character were posted on 4chan's /v/ board.^[2]^[3]^[4] These included both posts expressing complains about the change and posts mocking such complaints (examples shown below).

In the following days, posts expressing disapproval and ridiculing the complaints found on /v/ and other gaming forums were posted online, primarily on Twitter^[5] and in /r/Gamingcirclejerk subreddit.^[6] For example, a Tweet made by user @LossThief on June 11th, 2019, gained over 680 retweets and 1,400 likes in three days.^[7] A June 13th, 2019, post by Redditor joshnix poking fun at the reactions gained over 7,300 upvotes in one day.^[8]

Testuya Nomura Interview

On June 18th, 2019, the news site Famitsu published an interview with Square Enix director Testuya Nomura, in which he revealed that the ethics department for the video game company told developers to restrict the size of Tifa's chest. The following day, Twitter user @aitaikimochi tweeted a translation of the interview (shown below).

I briefly translated the Famitsu summary of the new Final Fantasy 7 Remake notes by Tetsuya Nomura! He comments on many things about the new remake including newly designed cross-dressing Cloud to Tifa & Aerith's roles in the game, + more! Enjoy~ #FF7R https://t.co/3YcaZEJC0L pic.twitter.com/l6R8mau0rS
— ☆オードリーAudrey☆ (@aitaikimochi) June 19, 2019

That day, the gaming news site Eurogamer^[9] published an article titled "Square Enix has an ethics department and it told the Final Fantasy 7 remake developers to 'restrict' Tifa's chest." Meanwhile, Redditor Thatmoddergrim submitted a post titled "Square Enix has an Ethics Department and it told the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Developers to "restrict" Tifa's chest" to /r/KotakuInAction.^[10]