Final Fantasy XIII Commercials Kick Off

Square Enix is promoting Final Fantasy XIII through commercials. Not that they need to or anything. In fact, I'm sure Sony is more interested in the commercials as a means of further pushing the PS3.

The first spot kicked off today. Someone (who's presumably not in America partaking of Thanksgiving festivities with the family) managed to grab it off Fuji TV's sports variety program Sports!

See it for yourself here:

That's Sayuri Sugawara's main theme song in the background. It's not named "Dear My Friends," which you might have heard, but some like to call it that because it has that lyric, easily the worst English lyric a Japanese song writer can include in a song. (The song's real name is "Kimi ga Iru Kara," or "Because You're There.")

It shouldn't come as a surprise, but the commercial has Sony's official PlayStation branding. What may come as a surprise if you haven't been paying attention to the Japanese commercial scene is how different the branding looks now. Sony has been using this branding in place of the classic PlayStation "thud" since the PS3 slimline release in early September.

(Unrelated note: I'm included in the group who hasn't been paying close attention to the Japanese commercial scene. I used to collect commercials but stopped once my damn PSX broke -- Kutaragi you bastard!).

Not interested in viewing the spot in "motion video" form? Then here's a set of screen grabs that someone posted on the internets.

A commercial for the Final Fantasy XIII Elixer beverage began airing a bit prior to this spot. Here it is:

I've been in Japan for 8 years, but have yet to be head butted by a hot Japanese girl, so I can't tell how realistic the spot is.

Just one more spot:

This one is basically a commercial for a commercial. On 12/13 at 23:00, a cable channel will air a special program titled something to the effect of "Closing in on the XIII world." The program will be hosted by Sazh's voice actor (who presumably looks nothing like Sazh).

I imagine we'll be seeing more and more FFXIII promotions as the game's December 17 release date approaches. Expect Lightning to grace the front of some major Tokyo landmarks. They gave one of the primest of prime ad real estates to Crystal Bearers' Layle, after all.