Fujin

Overview

In Final Fantasy VIII, Fujin is a student at Balamb Garden in training to become a SeeD. She is a close friend of Seifer Almasy and Raijin, and together the three are referred to as the Balamb Garden "Disciplinary Committee." In battle she wields a chakram as her weapon. She also uses wind magic; a reference to her namesake Fujin, the Japanese god of wind.

Personality and Physical Traits

Fujin is easily distinguished from the rest of the Final Fantasy VIII cast due to her unique speech pattern. She speaks in very short, abrupt sentences that often consist of a single word. Although she is not voiced in the game, her dialogue is written entirely in capital letters, indicating that she is shouting, or at least speaking at an abnormally high volume. She breaks from this behavior to speak normally and at length only once during the course of the game.

Physically, Fujin is a slender girl in her upper teens with silver hair cut at neck-length, a blue, long-sleeved shirt, and pants. She wears an eyepatch over her left eye, though no indication is given in the game as to what happened to it. Although there is nothing in the game to confirm the idea, it's possible that Fujin's speech pattern and damaged left eye may be related. A real-world speech disorder called Aphasia, of which there are numerous types, can afflict people when the region of the brain associated with language construction and recognition is injured. This region is located in the left hemisphere of the vast majority of human brains.

Kingdom Hearts

An alternate universe version of Fujin appears in the Kingdom Hearts series under the name Fuu. In Kingdom Hearts II, Fuu is a resident of Twilight Town and is friends with the KH universe versions of Seifer, Raijin (known as Rai), and Final Fantasy IX's Vivi. She, along with Seifer and Rai, are noticeably younger than their FFVIII counterparts, and are about fourteen to fifteen years old. A much more minor character in Kingdom Hearts II than in Final Fantasy VIII, she and the other Disciplinary Committee members hang out in Twilight Town's sandlot and share a rivalry with Hayner, Pence, Olette, and at the game's start, Roxas.

As in Final Fantasy VIII, Fuu speaks exclusively in short, terse phrases. However, her dialogue is capitalized normally, and when voiced is spoken in a subdued, quiet tone. She also wears her hair over her left eye in place of an eyepatch, though it's not clear if she actually has use of that eye.