Chapter Text
Final Fantasy IX is a colorful, quirky game, set in a cartoony high-fantasy world full of whimsy and nostalgia, with a cast of endearing weirdos, and it is about the crushing fear of one's own mortality.
The theme surfaces early, when the Black Mages learn that someday they will stop, and never start again. It's also a driving force behind the attempted Terran conquest of Gaia – the people of Terra were unable to accept death, and charged Garland with getting them a new planet and new vessels for their souls. And it's the realization that he, too, is mortal that makes Kuja snap and blow up a planet.
An equally pervasive thread in FFIX is that of self-determination. Garnet, Zidane, and Vivi in particular – to a lesser extent characters like Steiner and Eiko – are struggling to define who they want to be, independent of, or even in opposition to, the circumstances that created them. Again the Terrans, Genomes, Garland, and Kuja explore this issue on the antagonists' side: the Genomes were created just to be overwritten by Terran souls, and are not intended to have their own senses of self. Years before the game, Kuja decides that he's a person and won't allow Zidane to supplant him and, for better or worse, sets the stage for the game's whole story.
These concepts aren't unrelated. To have one's own individual identity and choices – to be alive in the world – is a precious thing. And yet, people die. You find your own meaning; you build your own self; someday, it will be taken from you. It is inevitable, and it is unfair.
But it's not the worst that could happen.