Women Are Beautiful.

（画个鬼……面具）

She starts to in the train graveyard. But when she looks up there are no tears. We hear her voice shake a little bit a few different times. But still no tears.

"Genesis Rhapsados isn't as bad as everyone thinks"

Hear me out on this. Is he the most well written character in Crisis Core? No. He was retconned into one of the most significant plot points of the original game in a way that felt inorganic, his story after modeoheim kinda dragged on, his dynamic with Angeal and Sephiroth isn't given enough room to breathe, and overall he definitely failed as the main antagonist of this game due to a myriad of reasons. Though does this mean that he was overall pointless? Surprisingly enough, no.

You see, while Shinra as a whole is the main antagonistic force in Crisis Core when you really look at it, that's all the company is in this game, a force. Zack meets different executives, he works alongside different members of the company, he saves Hojo, he fights alongside other SOLDIERs, hell he even fights alongside Sephiroth before he does insane. Shinra Inc is the villain here, but there's nobody to serve as it's face like there was in the original, there's no President for you to confront. Genesis bypasses this issue.

Genesis from a conceptual standpoint IS Shinra, or more accurately he's a blend of the kind of people Shinra recruits and the harm that they cause. He fell for the propaganda, he wasn't the closest to his family, he found some camaraderie within the company through Sephiroth and Angeal, he was passionate, he was affable sometimes, and he was ambitious. He wanted so badly to be the new Sephiroth, to be that legendary poster boy without knowing what that entailed. Little did he know, he and Sephiroth had more in common than he thought.

Genesis was the literal prototype for Sephiroth, and a failed one at that. He was injected with Jenova cells as a baby, and when Shinra didn't get their desired results they just gave him away. He doesn't learn about this, until his body starts degrading after a really bad wound from a heated sparing match. So naturally, when he learns this he throws aside his previous ambitions and defects from the company. His goals; cure his degradation and burn the entire company to the ground. That's what motivates almost all of his actions throughout the game, even the Nibelheim scene.

Not only that, but he also serves a fitting foil and darker counterpart to Zack in a similar way to how Sephiroth was a fitting foil to Cloud. Both ate up the Shinra propaganda, both had big dreams of being "heroes," both were crushed by the harsh reality, and both carried cynicism near the end, but their differences are just as prominent. Zack's motivation for joining the company came from a genuine desire to do some good, and even when he's on the run with Cloud... that desire doesn't go away, it simply morphs into something else. Genesis on the other hand joined for the glory, and when he discovered that he was not only a monster, but a mere stepping stone in the creation of Sephiroth, he ultimately chose to lash out. Much like Sephiroth after him, Genesis chose to feed into his worst traits. Which brings my point...

Genesis to Crisis Core is what Sephiroth was to the OG, but instead of being an encapsulation of the parasitic nature of Hojo, Shinra, and Jenova, he's an encapsulation of those that Shinra ensnares into its ranks and the harm that the company causes. He enters Shinra a man with aspirations and dreams, and leaves it as a decaying demon with the only slithers his former self. He leaves with a justified hatred for the company, a self-hatred of the monster that he is, and a literal illness that is destroying him physically and mentally. He is rotting and he is willing to do whatever it takes to stop rotting and avenge himself. That is Genesis at his core.

As for how this point could've been hammered home better? After he "dies" in Modeoheim, give him a form to personify that.

If the devs wanted him in Nibelheim, have him appear when Sephiroth and Zack leave the reactor in a new horrific form. Have him appear before Sephiroth and Zack as a near demonic creature, horns, wings, humanoid features, rotting flesh, snake-like eyes, the whole deal. Have him by unrecognizable at first to almost anyone, but Sephiroth (if they wanted to go there). Overall, just have that one wing be more than just a callback to Sephiroth's wing from Advent Children and beyond. Let it be the first reflection of the monster that Shinra shat out.