FF7 Rebirth’s Tetsuya Nomura reveals his favorite Final Fantasy Magic cards

Mere weeks before Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover launched last June — eventually selling $200 million worth of product in a single day — Wizards of the Coast sat down with Final Fantasy creative director Tetsuya Nomura to discuss his role in developing the set. The company published the interview on March 10. In it, Nomura talked about reviewing several hundred pieces of art for the set over the course of three or four years — and revealed which cards he was the most impressed by.

Nomura worked with Wizards reviewing cards adapted from Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, and 15. When asked by principal narrative designer Dillon Deveney about the most impressive art he reviewed, Nomura referenced two distinct versions of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7. Nomura worked as the main character designer on the 1997 game and contributed to the narrative as well. “Here are several pieces that I remember very fondly,” he said, referencing Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER and Sephiroth, Planet’s Heir. “These were ones that I approved instantly, no feedback or revisions at all.”

The Planet’s Heir version of FF7’s villain appears in one of the Starter Kit decks and is illustrated by Magali Villeneuve. Against a dark, cloudy background, Sephiroth steps to the right and looks ready to swing his wickedly long sword, Masamune. His flowing silver hair billows in the wind. It’s a decently powerful card that can wipe out a bunch of weak creatures at once and grows stronger whenever an enemy creature dies, though it doesn’t exactly make for a top-tier commander.

The other card is the ultra-rare borderless art variant of Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, which is illustrated by MAJI. Many Final Fantasy heroes and villains got this style of art treatment in the set, with a solid color background and the Roman numeral of the game they’re from positioned right behind the character. Aside from the various Traveling Chocobos that have sold for thousands of dollars, the surge foil version of this Sephiroth is the single most expensive card from the set, with a current market price of $484.

Here, Sephiroth stands front and center in a defensive stance, hair swirling as he holds Masamune with a backhanded grip, the sword stretching behind him. The background would be blood red if it were just a shade brighter. Despite being mono black, Fabled SOLDIER is hugely popular in commander. EDHREC lists it currently as the 36th most popular commander in the game. If enough creatures die during a single turn, it transforms into Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel, the final major boss of FF7. The base version of this card zooms out from Sephiroth’s topless, mutated final form, but the borderless variant gets up close and personal with Sephiroth’s eight-pack.

Nomura also illustrated his own version of Fabled SOLDIER as well. When asked why, he brought up his ongoing involvement with the FF7 remake series — he served as game director for the first title before moving to creative director for Rebirth. Everybody loves Sephiroth, Nomura included.

“I work on so many projects and games, and everyone comes to me asking ‘Hey, can you make me a character like Sephiroth?’” he said. “It makes me think that everyone must really love him! In that sense, he’s a character that is approachable to both old and new fans, and the fact that so many people keep coming to me asking for ‘Sephiroth! Sephiroth!’ must mean people love him.”

Whereas MAJI’s depiction emphasizes Magic’s typical approach to Western fantasy realism with sharper details and textures, Nomura’s art feels more like a stylized character study, reflecting the anime-influenced design language that defined Final Fantasy 7. There’s a menacing look in Sephiroth’s eyes, and he looks like he’s about to swing his sword down on the camera. His One-Winged Angel looks like some kind of devastating anime god.

“In game development, I draw artwork so that the entire team can imagine how the characters move in-game and what their backstories are from the art piece,” he said. “With cards, people already know the characters to some extent, and they have personal feelings and attachments from playing the games, so you have to make sure there’s no disconnect between the pieces and people’s expectations. So, for this piece, I drew with that awareness. I used the fans’ existing understanding as a base and added other elements on top, layer by layer, to stir their imaginations.”

Image: Wizards of the Coast

But it wasn’t all about Sephiroth. He also called out the art for Locke Cole, done by artist akagi. It depicts the Final Fantasy 6 thief creeping down the stairs in some sort of dungeon or castle with two knives drawn. “This card here is based off a classic pixel-art game, and it’s probably the first time in history where that pixel art has been reimagined as 3D fantasy art, so the card plays to people’s nostalgia and their imaginations,” Nomura said. “It gets them thinking ‘Ah, this must be that dungeon in the game …’ It’s simply wonderful.”

A fair number of cards from the Final Fantasy set also recycled some of Nomura’s previous art work for the video games. Those include Sephiroth, the Savior; Lightning, Lone Commando, and Cloud Strife.

But the cards Nomura highlighted show how Wizards’ artists often took a different approach. They don’t just copy original designs, but instead reimagine them through Magic’s own fantasy lens. For a crossover built on nearly four decades of RPG history, that balance between nostalgia and reinterpretation was key.