Supernova

Supernova
Sephiroth using Supernova in Ultimate.
User	Sephiroth
Universe	Final Fantasy

Supernova (スーパーノヴァ, Supernova) is Sephiroth's Final Smash.

Overview

Sephiroth swings his sword forward while saying 「星に帰れ」 ("Return to the Planet"), catching up to three opponents. A cutscene initiates in which he transforms into Safer Sephiroth, as the opponents face toward him with their backs to the screen, followed by summoning a meteor that passes through a planet and into a star, causing the star to explode and destroy an Earth-like planet. The trapped opponents are then inflicted with 32% damage and a random status effect as defined by the table below (no two opponents suffer the same effect):

Effect	Description	Duration	Odds of occurring
			Ground	Air	Offstage
Sleep	Puts the opponent to sleep.	8.67 - 22 seconds	10	5	N/A
Flower	Inflicts the flower effect on the opponent.	6.67 - 30 seconds	10	10	10
Mushroom	Reverses the opponent's horizontal controls.	6.67 - 25 seconds	10	10	N/A
Shield break	Instantly breaks the opponent's shield, stunning them. Because it is a shield break, Jigglypuff is sent extremely high due to its unique shield jump, potentially KOing it via the upper blast line.	6.67 - 20 seconds	13	10	N/A
Slowdown	Slows down the opponent.	6.67 - 25 seconds	10	10	10
Launch	Simply launches the opponent with more knockback than usual.	N/A	20	20	20

If more than three opponents are hit by the first slash, only the first three hit will be trapped into the move; other opponents will instead take 7% damage and moderate knockback.

Instructional quote

Move List

Swing the sword forward in a wide range. If it hits an opponent, Safer Sephiroth will appear and deal massive damage with a supernova explosion that can also sometimes inflict status effects. The first swing can hit up to three opponents.

Origin

The battle against Safer∙Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII.

Supernova as seen in the aforementioned game.

Safer∙Sephiroth is the form that Sephiroth takes during the third phase of the final battle in Final Fantasy VII. This is the body that Sephiroth was creating for himself in the Northern Cave, as part of his plan to wound the Planet with Meteor, bait the lifestream into emerging to heal the wound, and merge with it to become a god. Despite this being the second-to-last phase, Safer∙Sephiroth is considered the final challenge of the main story, since the fourth phase pits Cloud against a metaphysical Sephiroth in a cinematic battle that cannot be lost.

Supernova, formatted as "Super Nova" in Final Fantasy VII, is Safer∙Sephiroth's ultimate attack. The Final Smash is a heavily abridged recreation of the move from the international version of FFVII, which has become infamous for its ability to draw the battle out: it has an excessively long and elaborate animation (taking a full two minutes to execute), Sephiroth can use it multiple times during a battle, and it causes the player to sit through the animation of their party's health dropping, which can take a significant amount of time when they have reached their level cap. The move involves summoning a meteor to ravage the galaxy and turn the Sun into a supernova that engulfs the Planet, dealing damage equal to 15/16 of the party's current HP and inflicting Confusion, Silence, and Slow on them. Safer∙Sephiroth additionally can deal more status elements with Pale Horse like Frog, Sadness, and Small before Super Nova starts. The original Japanese version of the move has a very different and much shorter animation (clocking in at 20 seconds), and the damage it deals is not proportional to the party's HP, making it possible to wipe out the party.

The Final Smash is able to trap up to three opponents at once, referencing the number of available party member slots in Final Fantasy VII; when the move is activated, the three trapped players will face Safer∙Sephiroth, as the party does in the boss battle.

Sephiroth's quote when performing Supernova, 「星に帰れ」 ("Return to the Planet"), refers to how in Final Fantasy VII, the souls of the deceased are said to return to the Lifestream, the Planet's life energy, where they rest and can alter or communicate with the Planet's physical plane.

Gallery

• 

  Sephiroth using Supernova as shown by the Move List in Ultimate.

• 

  Sephiroth using Supernova against Ness, Bowser, and Robin.

Trivia

• Using this move against Mr. Game & Watch will show his model in 3D, as with The Mighty Jinjonator, Triple Wolf and ARMS Rush. This is likely because their cinematics manipulate the Z-axis in such a way that it disregards the model flattening effect on Mr. Game & Watch.
• This is the fourth cinematic Final Smash for a DLC character in Ultimate that can catch more than one character, after All-Out Attack, Gigaslash and Progenitor God Ruptured Heaven.
• Supernova is one of four Final Smashes to incorporate a pre-rendered cinematic, along with All-Out Attack, Gigaslash and House of Boom. Like these Final Smashes, it is rendered at 30 FPS rather than 60, possibly as a space-saving measure, and removes damage percentages for its duration.
  • Unlike All-Out Attack and Gigaslash, the game can be paused during the cinematic, a trait that is shared with House of Boom.
  • Consequentially, if the player enters the HOME menu and reenters, part or all of the cinematic is skipped, leaving the modeled effects out of sync.
• Supernova is the longest cinematic Final Smash in series history, at around 8 seconds, beating the previous record held by Gigaslash, which was around 7 seconds.
  • This mirrors Supernova's infamous length in the international version of Final Fantasy VII, with the move taking just over two minutes to play out.
• Like in the original Final Fantasy VII, a series of mathematical equations appear in the background at the start of the move. Unlike the original, which applied equations in the field of astrophysics to determine the overall conditions needed to perform Super Nova (which infamously based the conditions around if the celestial body that would trigger the supernova was operating on a two dimensional plane, which was a flat circle, as well as ignoring that the Sun itself in astronomical terms is designated as a main sequence star, and itself is unable to go supernova due to a lack of mass), the equations depicted during the sequence instead are well-known formulas that apply to quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, and spacetime, such as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem and the Einstein gravitational constant.
• After the move is successfully completed, Sephiroth assumes his fighting stance from the original Final Fantasy VII before performing an animation based on his victory pose as a guest party member during the Nibelheim flashback.
• Due to the nature of their idle animations, the following characters Marth, Lucina, Roy, Toon Link, Rosalina, Bayonetta and Sephiroth appear to face to the left instead of toward Safer Sephiroth.

Names in other languages

Language	Name
Japanese	スーパーノヴァ, Supernova
English	Supernova
French	Supernova
German	Supernova
Spanish	Supernova
Italian	Supernova
Chinese	超新星
Korean	슈퍼노바, Supernova
Dutch	Supernova
Russian	Сверхнoвая

References

Sephiroth's special moves

Neutral special	Flare / Megaflare / Gigaflare
Side special	Shadow Flare
Up special	Blade Dash / Octaslash
Down special	Scintilla
Final Smash	Supernova