mako

The essence of Mako plays a very important role in the world of Final Fantasy VII, and Aerith's story. Like money or electricity, it is something that everyone wants to get their hands on. It is the very energy of the earth. Another name for it (which people are commonly confused with) is Lifestream. They are one in the same, only Lifestream is the raw material of Mako - while Mako is what Shinra uses to power the human-made things of the earth, and store in Mako reactors placed all over the planet. (Examples of places holding functioning/dead reactors are: Fort Condor, Gongaga, Nibelheim, Midgar, and Mount Corel.)

The Lifesteam, or Mako, is virtually what the world is made of - consisting of all the souls of every single organism on the planet- from humans, to plants and animals - everything. It is a never-ending cycle of energy - when life dies, their energy returns to where it came from - the planet. New life is created in the Lifestream, and when that life dies it repeats the process and so on and so forth.

The conflict here, is that the Reactors in Midgar are constantly sucking Mako from the earth to use it for personal gain - whether it be to power some machine or inject in humans (which I will discuss later on). So as the reactors continue to suck energy faster than the earth can replenish, the earth is slowly dieing away. This is why at the beginning of the game, Cloud and AVALANCHE are trying to destroy the reactors and stop them from literally killing the planet.

The Anceints (also known as Cetra) were the very first race exsiting on the planet, Lifestream holds their sacred knowledge and understanding of everything. This is the main reason why Aerith (who is the last surviving Ancient) can communicate with the planet and souls that have already passed on. Sephiroth, (who's ambition throughout the game is to gain this knowlegde and power from the Lifestream and become a God) tries to look for The Promised Land (see Cetra), where one can find an infinite amount of Mako engery - where he can gain the power he seeks. Yes, Mako is heavy duty stuff - can turn people crazy.

One thing that most people immediatly notice about Cloud was that his eyes had a special "glow". Incidently, this particular glow is called a "Mako Glow" - meaning that his body was injected with the very substance, giving him more strength and stamina than a normal person. This was a supposed gift what was given to all SOLDIERs who fought for Shinra. One might call it Mako Testing - but not the extreme that Professor Hojo (see Enemies) went to. He would take massive amounts of Mako and test it on people (even his own son), and watch how it effected people. Results would be terrible mutilation and absolute monstrosity of human beings.

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