I was pondering this earlier as I replayed FFIX, what is Vivi really? He is not a normal 'doll' or maybe he isn't even a doll. I've also come up with a few reasons why he might not be a doll at all as well.

1. He has more magical power than any doll - okay, granted he COULD be the prototype doll for the rest. Still his magical powers and multitude of spells is exponentially different than the mage dolls. If the others were truly created after him, then there would be no reason why the other mages cannot use Meteor, Flare, Slow, Stop, Poison, Bio. I'm sure the staves you find in the game for Vivi are NOT the only ones, you can buy lots of them.

2. He has feelings and feels anger and compassion - The other dolls in Black Mage Village do too yes, but only to a certain extent. Vivi came with all of his emotions, the dolls eventually grow into them. Remember when the two mages hatched the chocobo egg? Afterwards they felt something but couldn't describe it, Vivi never had that problem at all.

3. Lastly, Vivi was 'fished' outside of Quan's Dwelling, supposedly snatched off of a airship or a boat transporting the mages. If you go back to Quan's Dwelling and look over the edge where he fished Vivi out, there is a bubbling area down there. If you have access to a Ocean Chocobo, then you can feed him a Dead Pepper and dive down, in there is a treasure chest full of mage gear, elixers and ethers. It is quite possible Vivi was placed in there and guarded by a magical spell during some kind of Black Mage Massacre perhaps in an attempt to save him. There are oxygen bubbles down there so it is possible for him to live down there, perhaps Quan knocked open the chest a bit and Vivi was grabbed out of it.

Those are my arguments, I believe that Vivi is a true pure-blooded Black Mage. Not some worthless doll created by Mist or the Iifa Tree. What are you comments? Do you agree with me or believe I am totally wrong?

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Well, I was ready to say that he was an earlier prototype of the other "dolls" under the Quan's Dwelling argument; that's an excellent point and one I hadn't considered.

Althought it is said in the game that the prototype before the current black mage was designed to live a bit longer than the others and



*SPOILER*





Vivi dies...it's kind of proven in the Japanese version. Supposedly there's more than one way to say "I" in the language. Vivi used one way that none of the other characters used. In the ending "letter", that same form of 'I' is used. And it's also speculated that the ending doesn't take place too long after the final events at the Lifa Tree, so Vivi didn't have as full a life as a human being on Gaia.




*END SPOILER*





But it's nice to think of him as an actual black mage. I mean, there were "real" blue and red mages in the game...why not black mages?

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[glow=red]\"No... You\'re not a devil. Devils never cry.\"[/glow]

I think Vivi is not like the other black mages. I think he actually is the real thing not just a prototype or a doll. I think the other black mages were made from the tales of old black mages. They didn't even look much like Vivi, except for the black faces.

I agree he wasn't any normal Black Mage, and even though he MIGHT have died in the ending of the game he was certainly a pure-blooded black mage. It doesn't really matter if he did or did not have the same life spand as a human on Gaia because Vivi is in fact not human, and since noone really knows how old Vivi is in the beginning of the game one cannot tell if his life has been long or short. Either way he felt emotions and other experiences that the "dolls" did not, he simply cannot be a doll.

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[glow=limegreen]\"Don\'t take life to seriously you\'ll never get out alive\"[/glow]

did i miss something because i dont remember him dying

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bah

Vivi fell off the shipment of prototype dolls...

I don't think that he died....he certainly managed to figure out a way to reproduce. If I remember, the "baby" Vivi's are the size of Puck...Vivi was bigger than Puck. And since BlackMage's arent made anymore...

what did the Japanese version say to confirm his death?

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I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ\" -Gandhi

\"Some men see things as they are and ask why? I dream things that never were and ask why not?\" -Robert Francis Kennedy