Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Elena Is Somehow Only 18 Years Old

thegamer.com:

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Ultimania, a book on the game's development, is out now in Japan. This reveals a bunch of interesting notes that the devs made while working on the project, including the canonical ages of all the characters - and there's one in particular that fans have found very surprising.

According to fan translations of the Ultimania, Elena is listed as being just 18 years old. This makes her the youngest Turk by far, with the rest of the gang being either 29 or 30. It's also way younger than most fans were expecting since this puts her far closer in age to Yuffie than any of her allies.

As many have pointed out in the replies, this makes her behaviour in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth even funnier. Like, sure, who among us didn't have a bad day at work at the age of 18, and immediately started drinking your problems away?

We can add this new info to what we already know about the Final Fantasy 7 gang and get a good idea of how old everyone is supposed to be. There are way too many characters to go over here, but here's a quick overview:

Character ages aren't all we got from the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Ultimania, however. The book also goes over the fate of a certain character at the end of the game, so I'll give you a quick spoiler warning before we go any further,

Spoilers for the ending of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ahead.

So, did Aerith kick the bucket this time? Well, we don't know, and that's the point. The book confirms that yes, Cloud did see Aerith after her death, but the rest of the party didn't. The Ultimania says that there are multiple interpretations of this, such as the theory that she is alive in another universe, or the the less optimistic idea that Cloud is just hallucinating. We'll have to see if this is definitively answered in the next game, or if it's left open to interpretation as it is now.