I should really say "began" since it's already the next day in Japan now. For those of you lucky enough to be in Japan over the weekend, you'll still have the chance to visit the FFVII 10th Anniversary Gallery exhibition at Tokyo, Minami Aoyama's Spiral Garden. Entry is free and it's open from 11am to 8pm.

So what's been on show? Well, it looks like SE wasn't satisfied with releasing a second set of Potions alone because they're going to be selling "FFVII Potion Character Cans" too. Each can features the characters from the game and there are 16 designs to collect. The 350ml drink is apparently similar to the potion but is of course fizzy. With only a limited number being produced, each can will cost 190 Yen (US$1.64) available from October 23rd.

Also available in limited quantities from November 27th is the "Final Fantasy VII Potion with Trading Arts Mini". There are 8 designs to collect featuring different character art and the drink is accompanied by a mini figure too. Only 1,000,000 of these minis will be produced and each will cost 934 Yen (US$8).

I know some of this money will go to Suntory the drinks company producing the beverage but, this alone will give them US$8,000,000 at least if every one of these mini arts sell. Quite a nice sum, hmmm?

Anyway, I'm not too interested in the drinks besides tasting them...

Besides the giant timeline that greets visitors at the entrance, there were also of course demos of the upcoming Crisis Core available to try out and the limited edition PSP package on display to entice more collectors and fans alike.

Walking around you could see a small model of Midgar.

Nomura's concept art and storyboard sketches (some of which you can find in the FFVII Ultimania book).

A 1:1 scale of the giant Buster Sword. Imagine they let you try holding this sword and doing the "Victory Fanfare" dance... That would be fun.

There was also a collection of other FFVII related goods on display which I won't post here since you can find most of them at online stores.

Those specially invited to the reception party yesterday had the chance to taste these special cocktails named after FFVII, "One Winged Angel" and "Lifestream". Good? I don't know... Maybe you'll recognise what they used to mix up the drinks.

This Lifestream cocktail certainly looks appeasing.

What really caught my eyes were these A3 sized Advent Children posters! The real charm of the movie for me was seeing those once SD FFVII characters transformed into life-like character models. I really like CGI and still do but rather than having these actual posters in my room, I would prefer an artbook full of different "daily life" scenes of the characters. i.e., Renders for the two "On the Way to a Smile" short stories! Would really like to see something like that done!

小説「オン・ザ・ウェイ・トゥ・スマイル」ためのCG映像が作られたらいいなぁ。
そんな映像がすっごく見たい！

Some of these poster renders can be found in the A4 sized bilingual (English and Japanese) FFVII: Reunion Files book but others seem to be original. Most of them look really good but only thing was... There's something wrong with this render of Tifa in her old FFVII clothing on the left. I don't know but, she looks big and masculine... There's something similar to Lightning in FFXIII about the render. The right version of her is much nicer!

これちょっと男っぽいな。偽者なのか？

If you want a good place to discuss the world of Final Fantasy VII, checkout the Advent Children.net site. I used to hang around there while I was anticipating the movie. A very active forum as far as I remember.

You can find more photos from the event at sites such as FFVII AC Reunion, Gpara, IT Media and Dengeki Online. Photos here were taken from Game Watch.

If I was in Japan, I would have went just to see these items on show.