Yuffie Kisaragi is an optional playable character in Final Fantasy VII. She is a Ninja and a Thief, wielding a large shuriken.
Yuffie is a Materia hunter encountered in various forests on the Planet. As a rebellious and cocky tomboy, she desires to restore her homeland Wutai to the glorious nation it was before being conquered by the Shinra Electric Power Company. Despite her obnoxious personality, Yuffie is friendly, helpful, optimistic and willingly helps the party in their battles.
Yuffie is one of two optional characters along with Vincent Valentine. As such, she has almost no impact on the game's main storyline, but there are some changes made to various scenes if she is recruited. She can join after being discovered in various forests after the events at the Mythril Mine, encountered as the Mystery Ninja. She wields shurikens in battle for ranged attacks, and her Limits usually involve her hitting multiple foes at once.
Yuffie was born at an unspecified time, but seems to be somewhere around the beginning of the Wutai War. Her mother is never mentioned but according to the "Creation Materials" section in the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega guide, her mother was named Kasumi and died from an illness when Yuffie was young. As a child, Yuffie watched Wutai turn into a tourist resort and grew up on stories on how the area used to be a place of honorable mystique before Shinra's arrival.
In Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, a 9-year-old Yuffie first appears when Zack invades Fort Tamblin, proclaiming herself as "Wutai's Greatest Warrior". Zack plays along with her antics and she runs off. After losing the war to Shinra, Yuffie's father and the leader of Wutai, Godo Kisaragi, turns their hometown into a tourist attraction. This does not suit Yuffie, who thinks about restoring Wutai to its former glory. At some time after the war, Godo is given a list of SOLDIER email addresses and locations of rare treasure by an unidentified blond man (speculated to be Lazard Deusericus or Rufus Shinra in the Crisis Core Complete Guide), but Godo does nothing with the information.
Yuffie steals the information from her father and sends Zack emailsabout rare treasure, intending to ambush him at the end of each mission and either steal from him, or seize the treasure for herself. She fails on both counts when Zack either does not fall for her ruses, or the treasure she finds is not up to her standards. As Yuffie continues to taunt Zack through emails the locations she leads him to become more dangerous, Yuffie getting her information from an anti-Shinra group based in Wutai. On the final mission, Yuffie steals Zack's Bahamut Fury Materia and escapes. She mails it back to him a few days later, not understanding how to use it.
During Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, Yuffie encounters the player Turks in Wutai, where AVALANCHE has set up a stronghold in the pagoda. Pursued by AVALANCHE, she is saved by the player Turk and starts scheming to steal their Materia moments after learning what Materia even is.
Yuffie follows the player Turk into the AVALANCHE base and steals the bomb detonators planted in the pagoda, and the player Turk must chase her and get them back. Yuffie accidentally presses the detonator switch, and she and the Turk must cooperate to escape. Once they rendezvous with Tseng, Yuffie realizes the player Turk is with Shinra and flees.
The party runs into a Mystery Ninja in a forest who attacks them but is soundly defeated. After demanding a second round and having been turned down, Yuffie joins Cloud's party with the idea the others are intimidated by her might despite her loss.
In Junon Yuffie forges a bond with Red XIII after Cloud is unanimously voted to infiltrate the Upper Junon. On the Shinra Cargo Ship, Yuffie disguises herself as a crew member, but suffers from seasickness, and says she does not want to be part of the investigation on Sephiroth's appearance on the ship. In Costa del Sol, Yuffie works part-time at the Materia shop for the day, only to steal the shop's Materia overnight.
Later, when Barret is talking about the fate of his hometown, Corel, which was burned down by Shinra, the party is unanimously sympathetic toward him if Yuffie is not present. If she has been recruited by this time, she will not hesitate to voice her lack of sympathy for Barret, citing he should never have trusted Shinra.
Yuffie has a chance of being Cloud's date in Gold Saucer when the party goes there to retrieve the Keystone. If Yuffie is Cloud's date the two will take part in a play and go sightseeing on the gondola, where Yuffie will kiss Cloud and then get angry at his unresponsiveness.
After Tifa and Barret have been imprisoned in Junon and Sapphire Weapon attacks the city causing enough commotion for the two to escape, Yuffie disguises herself as a news reporter and assists Cait Sith and Barret in their escape.
Yuffie steals the party's Materia when they enter Wutai, and they must chase her and save her from Don Corneo before she returns them. Yuffie proves herself to her father by beating the bosses of Wutai's Five Story Pagoda, and her father begins to understand the reasoning behind her position.
If Cloud talks to Yuffie right before descending to the Northern Cave for the final showdown against Sephiroth, she will try to make Cloud sign a contract that says when the war against Sephiroth is over, the party's Materia will belong to her. Cloud refuses, saying he gets airsick whenever he reads while flying.
Being an optional character, Yuffie does not appear in the ending FMV. It is later explained that she and Vincent were absent because they went to Midgar to help evacuate the citizens and Shinra personnel before Meteor hit. After placing an injured Rufus Shinra aboard a helicopter, Yuffie warns Vincent to be careful in his search of the Mako Cannon. She later saves him as the building collapses from a lightning strike.
In On the Way to a Smile, following Meteorfall, the group returned to the Forgotten City to pay their respects to Aerith. Following this, the group parted ways, with the majority of the group's destructive Materia being given to Yuffie in name but being kept "for safe custody" by Cloud.
Returning to Wutai with the expectations she would be treated as a hero for saving the world from Sephiroth, Yuffie returned to discover her home town in ruin. Forgetting about fame, Yuffie offered her healing Materia to help those wounded after the Lifestream had passed through Wutai during Meteorfall.
After a while a strange epidemic arose and, believing Yuffie to be the carrier, her father locked her within the family dojo to both quarantine her and protect her from the townsfolk. Freed by Yuri, a childhood friend, the pair left Wutai to investigate the Materia Caves for a Materia that might cure the "Midgar Disease". Calling via cellphone but unable to find an answer on whether one existed from Cloud or Tifa, Yuffie and Yuri explored the caves newly opened when the Lifestream had erupted from the earth.
While finding no Materia within the caves, the pair encountered many monsters. During a battle, a stray fireball released a black liquid from the ground which appeared sentient, and chased Yuffie and Yuri out of the cave, where it infected Yuri with Geostigma. Encountering Nanaki, who was traveling the world, Yuri revealed he had visited Midgar before Yuffie's arrival and that he believed he was the one to infect Wutai with the "Midgar Disease".
Returning to Wutai to discover the township had begun separating those infected from the populace by building a hut at the town's outskirts, Yuffie looked after those quarantined within the hut. Two weeks later, with the number of those infected increasing in spite of the quarantine, it was theorized the disease was not due to infection. Yuri hypothesized only those who had already been sick or injured and were thinking they were "going to die" were infected, admitting that he himself had thought he was going to die when he became infected in the cave. The township was made aware of the black water Yuffie and Yuri had encountered and warned the populace of the possibility of infected water.
One year later, the number of "quarantine" huts had increased to two and the following year Yuffie embarked to investigate the Materia Cave to the north, passing Corel where she ran into Cidand Nanaki while Cid was testing his new oil-fueled airship. After Cid inadvertently left Nanaki and returned to Rocket Town, he and Yuffie continued on to the northern Materia Cave in search of a Materia that might cure Geostigma.
During Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, when Cloud's cellphone is lost in the lake in Forgotten City Yuffie's voice recording plays among others, where she says, "Surprise! It's me, Yuffie", although her voice is difficult to pick out as other pieces of dialogue are being played at the same time. Yuffie mentions the children from Wutai have gone missing, and tells Cloud to call her if he knows why.
Yuffie appears in person along with the other playable characters from Final Fantasy VII during the battle in Edge. She arrives via Cid's airship (still showing signs of motion sickness after parachuting down). She helps the party defeat Bahamut SIN, and brings Cloud's Materia collection from the Midgar ruins aboard the Shera.
During the bonus feature "Reminiscence of Final Fantasy VII", Yuffie sends a "Closed for Business" sign to Barret through the Strife Delivery Service as a way of getting Cloud to take a day off. She seems to call Vincent Valentine in the time after Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children because Vincent asks Cloud to relay a message to her, claiming she has no right to call his phone.
In Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-, having joined the World Regenesis Organization, Yuffie is in charge of the espionage and intelligence gathering. Yuffie works to fight against Deepground in 2010. She is the one who rescues Vincent from Rosso the Crimson in the Shinra Mansion, where the bloodthirsty Tsviets were about to kill him, and takes him back to the WRO Headquarters.
Onboard the Shera, she suffers from motion sickness, and leads the troops from the airships to the ground for the Battle of Midgarto shut down a generator inside the Shinra Building. Yuffie and Vincent go into Deepground to kill Weiss, but are stopped by Nero, who sucks Yuffie into darkness, kidnapping her and Vincent goes to save her, since Nero's darkness does not affect him. Yuffie and other AVALANCHE members aid Vincent in Omega's destruction and she is seen last in 7th Heaven, asking Tifa if she has heard from Cloud, most likely concerning Vincent's whereabouts.
Yuffie came to Midgar under orders from the new Wutai government to work with Avalanche to steal a rumored ultimate materia from Shinra, arriving to the city just after the Mako Reactor 5 bombing, shocked at the supposed megalopolis' state while traveling the deserted monster-infested slums and being creeped out by strange men dressed in long dark cloaks. She arrived at the inhabited area of the slums by following posters of moogles posted by Avalanche to guide her, reaching a local Avalanche division led by Zhijie and ran by Nayo, Billy Bob, and Polk.
Yuffie learned that her partner, Sonon Kusakabe, was not there, though he had arrived days ago, and decided to scout out the area while waiting for him to return. She learned to play Fort Condor, a tabletop tower defense game that had gained popularity recently, and took on Chadley's VR mission. She found a Wutai supporter called Old Snapper, who advertised the Happy Turtle bar with an unusual ad campaign; Yuffie took part and scored a materia for her reward. She impressed Wymer, the local neighborhood watch leader, by venturing into the abandoned factory in the area, despite the monsters that lurked within.
Finally meeting up with Sonon, the two teamed up in their plan to infiltrate the Shinra Building and make their way to Scarlet's weapons research facility in the basement. Sonon was a former student of Yuffie's father, the former leader of Wutai, Godo, who was currently imprisoned while a new government had taken over. Yuffie did not want to hear about her father, but Sonon still respected his old master and agreed to follow Yuffie's lead, even if he was her senior. Yuffie was pleased with her status as "boss" and the mission was underway.
They realized that their goals differed quite a bit from the aims of the Avalanche cell that had agreed to help them; while Yuffie and Sonon felt nothing but hatred for Midgar and Shinra, the Avalanche members sought to liberate the city from Shinra. Yuffie considered it impossible to separate the two due to the city being entirely Shinra's creation. Yuffie and Sonon also learned of the infamous "splinter cell" of Avalanche that also took residence in the slums, which was behind the recent attacks on Midgar's mako reactors. Yuffie thought the splinter cell had the right idea on how to properly attack both the city and Shinra at the same time and secretly thought they should have partnered with them instead.
When Nayo took them to meet their contact who would provide them with fake ID cards to get into the Shinra Building, they were accosted by Don Corneo's lackeys, who were looking for "bridal candidates" to recommend to the Trio back in Wall Market. They took a liking to Nayo, infuriating Yuffie when she was overlooked for "being a kid". They beat the lackeys up, who departed after hearing that they had secured an excellent candidate already.
Nayo, Yuffie, and Sonon met up with a contact in a warehouse who gave them Shinra ID cards. Zhijie had gotten into trouble, however, Shinra having arrested him and escorting him out to the factory in the outskirts. Yuffie and Sonon followed them and saved Zhijie while battling a Shinra mecha built to resemble a centipede. Zhijie said that he had learned that Shinra was going to destroy the Sector 7 slums and Yuffie asked him to inform the "splinter cell" as well. They returned to find the "clinic" ransacked, the locals shocked that an Avalanche hideout had been uncovered in their midst. Yuffie and Sonon made their way to the train station, where the last train heading to topside was about to depart, as the train schedule had become erratic after the recent bombing on Mako Reactor 5. To their relief, they spotted Nayo, Billy Bob, Polk, and Zhijie in the crowd, also leaving the slums.
The train was packed and Yuffie suffered from motion sickness while nervous over the ID scan. Fortunately, the fake IDs that Avalanche had provided for the two worked and they passed on unobstructed. Sonon told Yuffie about his younger sister, Melphie, who died near the end of the Wutai War when a Shinra combat drone went haywire. Melphie had tried getting people to safety when it began indiscriminately attacking bystanders. Yuffie realized that Sonon was trying to act as a surrogate elder brother toward her and rejected being compared to his sister.
Making their way into the Shinra Building, which was swarmed by reporters, Yuffie and Sonon used their guises as Shinra employees to find a vacant elevator. Scarlet, the head of Shinra's weapons development, stepped into the lift with them. Realizing that Yuffie and Sonon were Wutaians, she derided their society. Rather than raise the alarm and have them captured, she sent them to her research department for use as test subjects against her latest mechas. Sonon was enraged that he had missed an opportunity for revenge, blaming Scarlet for Melphie's death. Yuffie calmed him down, reassuring him that they would get another chance. The duo made their way through the facility, destroying Shinra's weapons and stealing every bit of materia they could get their hands on, but could not find any "ultimate materia". Scarlet followed their progress through security cameras, puzzled over what they were after, before confronting the two "in person" via a hologram and, soon after, in her personal war machine.
After being defeated, Scarlet remained unfazed, disappointed that her creation had not fared as well as she had hoped, but recognizing what needed to be improved in its design. Sonon went ahead while Yuffie stayed to interrogate Scarlet, who claimed that Shinra did not have any "ultimate materia", as such projects had been postponed in favor of a more immediate project: the dropping of Sector 7 plate. Yuffie did not at first realize the magnitude of this, but when she heard that Sonon was in trouble, she rushed to help him and relayed the news, having learned that "dropping the plate" meant Shinra was going to destroy 1/8th of the metropolis, killing many of their own citizens. Scarlet deployed Deepground SOLDIERs on Yuffie and Sonon and released Nero the Sable to pursue them to see what would happen. She also trapped them in a Combat Simulator with maximum pain level, but the two made their way out by destroying the projector.
Yuffie and Sonon came upon a sight of carnage, where Nero had killed his fellow Deepground SOLDIERs before turning his focus on the intruders. Yuffie tried to keep her cool, even though she was unnerved by their assailant's mysterious hold over the abyss. The Shinra scientists sent to monitor Nero lost control of him, but Yuffie and Sonon prevailed and started making their way out. When Nero reformed himself and came after them again, Sonon noticed and flashed back to when Melphie died. He gave up his life to make sure Yuffie got away, who realized that Sonon had saved her to make up for the time he was unable to save his sister. Outside, Yuffie saw Sector 7 plummet to the ground before breaking down in a mess of tears.
Yuffie left Midgar on a chocobo. Not wanting to give up on her mission of fighting Shinra, stealing their materia, and restoring Wutai's glory, she planned to have new companions join her. Yuffie travels from town to town before reaching Junon, where she is hired by Rhonda and accepts a job to assassinate Rufus Shinra during his inauguration as the new president of Shinra.
Yuffie takes a boat to sail off to a path to reach Upper Junon when she is attacked by the Terror of the Deep and nearly drowned as Priscilla gets Cloud and the others to help her while Mr. Dolphin takes her to shore. Though Cloud was about to give her CPR at the behest of the townspeople, Yuffie comes to and assumes he was a pervert while getting defensive. But Yuffie changes her tune upon recognizing Tifa and Barret, meeting the group the following day to suggest a team up while informing them of her mission. Infiltrating the inauguration as a camerawoman, Yuffie takes to the rooftop and proceeds to launch her shuriken at Rufus as he offered Cloud's group a reprieve since they have a common enemy in Sephiroth. However, the assassination is foiled when Heidegger sees the shuriken and is grazed getting Rufus out of harm's way. Yuffie manages to elude Shinra soldiers by disguising herself as one of the Sephiroth-clones boarding the Shinra-8, only to be locked with them before they are mutated into Necrotic Entities. She escaped being shot by Captain Titov, going incognito in Costa del Sol before helping Cloud's group when Hojo nearly captured them. Soon after, after a bit of bluffing, Yuffie joins Cloud's group.
In the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke,
She is reprised by Mae Whitman in the English dub and Yumi Kakazu in the Japanese dub.