This is from Cloud's perspective, who is in denial and coping.

Aerith is everyone's friend, yet at the end she only talks to Cloud. Whenever Cloud looks, Aerith is conveniently there. The reason why he's not upset, is because he geniunely thinks she's still alive. We saw how Aerith looked briefly from Tifa's perspective, and her eyes weren't open. Regardless of whether the blood is there or not, she is dead either way.

They deliberately did not directly show the iconic scene where Cloud drops her body into the water. Why? Because from Cloud's perspective, he's not grieving her death at all.
Let's not forget that when Aerith was actually alive, she was someone who didn't want to put her friends into harm's way, and straight up told Cloud to forget about Sephiroth and focus on himself. Yet now all of a sudden she's asking him to promise he'll fight Sephiroth?


Also to be clear, a spirit Aerith does exist somewhere, as that's who saved Zack. Sephiroth sent him to a world that was about to be destroyed, but he escaped thanks to Aerith's help. However, that is not the same Aerith that Cloud has been seeing after the fight. He is actively repressing her death, just like he did with Zack's.

I definitely don’t think she’s dead, not spiritually. Her body is dead, but she definitely appears to be a lifestream ghost, her soul still existing in the lifestream, and because the lifestream is so strong in the land of the Cetra. Remember she says that they’re in the land of the Cetra when Cloud asks if she’s okay getting back on her own. (in the Japanese dialogue, the English dub and subtitles were a bit more ambiguous about that) That’s why she was able to go around checking on everybody like we saw in the final cutscene, and Nanaki was able to sense her slightly. But she couldn’t go with them because the lifestream isn’t strong everywhere, and certainly not on the Tiny Bronco in the sky. She’s still standing there in the field after the Bronco has taken off and left, and she never disappears the whole time. If she was in Cloud’s head, she would have disappeared suddenly because he wasn’t there to hallucinate her anymore. She only “disappears” when we shift to somebody else’s PoV since they can’t see her, but as I pointed out she’s still around even after Cloud has left and isn’t there to hallucinate her anymore. The reason Cloud can see her and nobody else can is probably because of his exposure to Mako, aka lifestream, from Hojo’s experiments, or however it came about if they don’t stick to OG lore there; this is probably also why he alone (besides Zack, who also has Mako exposure from being in SOLDIER) gets swept up in the alternate space/universe things like there in the final battle, and that cutscene in space or wherever after you beat Sephiroth in Remake. Similar things happened in original 7 as well, like Cloud’s spirit being pulled into the lifestream to fight normal Sephiroth one last time at the end. Tifa doesn’t have the emerald eyes like Cloud and SOLDIERs so her dive in the lifestream at Gongaga wasn’t strong enough, and nobody else in the party has Mako exposure thus they can’t see her.
Another point that she’s not just in his head is that she didn’t come with them. If Cloud refused to believe she’s dead so strongly that he’s seeing hallucinations, his mind probably would have gone the extra mile and convinced itself that she continued to travel with them and that he just conveniently never sees her interact with anyone, like that one guy in Mason’s mind in Call of Duty Black Ops and many other movies/anime/games where the MC hallucinates someone is there and the hallucination never interacts with anyone else. Plus having Aerith be a constant hallucination as he traveled would have been more in line with the story of how his mind is broken.
And if Aerith was a hallucination, why would we be seeing her going around checking on everyone in the first place? That was all completely out of Cloud’s PoV.
And to address Shadow’s point about Sephiroth above, Cloud HAS to face Sephiroth at this point. He’s literally going to destroy the world. Cloud CAN’T just forget about him and focus only on himself. Also note how she stopped and hesitated before turning around and cheering him on, like she didn’t want that to be his priority. Also it was Cloud’s saying he’d do it, it’s not like she asked him to do it. She didn't try to convince him otherwise because she knows that at some point he has to face him whether either of them like it or not. But that hesitant step when he said he’d defeat Sephiroth tells us all we need to know that she wishes it didn’t have to be so, and that she know beating Sephiroth is probably best for Cloud’s sake too.

Which brings me to Cloud; as it is we can’t for sure tell whether he’s in some form of denial or not, but he definitely sees her spirit. The question is whether he’s in denial or if he actually knows he’s seeing her lifestream ghost. He could have realized that she has returned to the lifestream as they had been talking about quite a lot in the last two chapters. Which would explain why he’s not surprised she can’t come with them, since she can’t follow them where there’s less lifestream. We’ll have to wait until part 3 to see if the way he talks about her reveals his state of mind there.

She visibly disappated by Cloud's side after the Sephiroth fight ended. That might have been a lifestream ghost, but everything after was Cloud in denial.

Why would Aerith's body wake up just because Cloud tells her to, right after she just disappeared on him?
And why would she conveniently reappear right after Cloud just dropped her body into the water, just as he gets one of his eerie headaches with static effects?

Of course he's not surprised, because the Aerith he made up tells him exactly what he wants to hear.
The same Aerith who just told him to forget about Sephiroth and focus on himself hours ago is now overjoyed that he's promising to go fight Sephiroth again at the Northern Crater?

Of course Cloud isn't surprised, because she tells him everything he wants to hear.

How do you explain Nanaki was able to sense Aerith in the last cutscene? She's definitely a lifestream ghost. She doesn't confront Cloud about her death for the same reason Tifa never confronted him about his inconsistent memories: too afraid his mental state is going to deteriorate even more. Of course, this is just delaying the inevitable. And the reason she's okay with him chasing after Sephiroth is because there's nothing she can do about Sephiroth anymore now that she's dead.

I'll make a prediction: Cloud will be a boss battle in the third game after Sephiroth mindbreaks him.

The Nanaki comparison only makes Cloud look even worse.

Keep in mind that Nanaki has also been experimented on by Hojo, and that despite that, he still could not see her.
"Sensing" her is also questionable if you pay attention to his body language. He raises his head, but doesn't turn toward where Aerith is supposed to be.

There's also multiple occasions where Aerith disappears when Cloud isn't paying attention.
You can see here that when Cloud is looking in Nanaki's direction, Aerith is there:
https://i.imgur.com/1bIgqt5.png

But then when he's looking at the colorless materia in his hand, Aerith is gone:

https://i.imgur.com/wAJUpwN.png

If she were a ghost, she would be there regardless whether Cloud is paying attention or not.

Nanaki literally says "Aerith" right as she walks by him.

And Aerith is still there after the Tiny Bronco takes off and Cloud is long gone. The shots where she disappears is to make it clear the other party members don't see her, that's all.

If what you say is true - that Aerith was there whenever Cloud saw her there, then that means Cloud's perception is correct, Tifa is the asshole, and that invalidates his breakdown and redemption later in the story.

The reason why Sephiroth was able to break Cloud in the original later in the story is because Tifa's reaction was there to validate that Sephiroth's depiction of the Nibelheim incident was true (i.e. Zack was the SOLDIER, not Cloud).. If Cloud wasn't proven wrong, he wouldn't have started to doubt himself enough to believe that he was Sephiroth's clone.
It's the fact that Cloud's lies caught up with him that leads him to break down, then own up to it later.

Sephiroth has to own Cloud with an event that an eyewitness can verify whether it's true or not. In original, that was Tifa and Nibelheim incident, but in this remake he can just as easily use the entire party against Cloud by showing Aerith's death.
If Cloud's perception is correct, then he has no reason to start believing Sephiroth.

The thing is, Cloud believes Aerith is alive, while she is in fact dead. That's more than enough to break him down. Sephiroth can just have him believe he's the one who showed him visions of Aerith while no one else could see her and he'll think he's crazy.

Tifa's case is interesting, because in Rebirth, Sephiroth does everything in his power to make Cloud distrust her and think she's an imposter, so his plan seems to be different than in the OG where he used her to confirm his lie.

he knew Tifa could save Cloud like in OG. By making him distrust her, it could make it even harder for Cloud to piece himself together. He specifically targets these 2 because they were the main cause of his downfall in OG

His plan is to get Cloud to bring the Black Materia to the Northern Crater where is true body is. That hasn't changed from the original.

In order to do that, Cloud needs to
1) believe that he needs to go up north to where Sephiroth is, and
2) be isolated enough from his friends that they won't confront him or try to fix his memories before then.

Remember what Aerith told Cloud before she left to go pray? To forget about Sephiroth and focus on himself.
Sephiroth won't get the Black Materia if Cloud never heads north.

And yet heading up north is exactly what Cloud plans on doing now, just like Sephiroth wants, and this version of Aerith is suddenly all for it. You really think that's what Aerith wants?


And similar to the original, Tifa won't confront Cloud over the difference in their memories.

Aerith is dead now. The situation has changed, Cloud is needed to stop Sephiroth. And I don't think she knows he has the Black Materia, she was hanging around the others when Cloud realized he had it and he quickly hid it inside his sword.

Nanaki sensing her right when she tries to touch him completely excludes the possibility of her being a mere hallucination. It's too big to write off as coincidence.

It's also highly likely that after dying and becoming one with the lifestream, she regained the memories/visions from the future the Whispers took away at the end of Remake, so she knows how instrumental Cloud is in bringing down Sephiroth and can't just let him sit this out like she had originally planned.

What has changed? Aerith was praying to stop the Meteor and still is. Her job didn't change even after she died and she knows it.
The situation only changed for Cloud's party because they don't know exactly that Aerith was summoning Holy and thought she failed the moment she died.

Also if the Aerith in the ending had knowledge of the future, then she would've known that Cloud has the Black Materia and that Sephiroth can't summon it yet. You can't have it both ways where she knows the future but doesn't know where the Black Materia is at the same time.
The simplest reason why is that this Aerith only knows what Cloud knows.



The Aerith who does have knowledge of the future - the alternate timeline one who gave Cloud the Holy materia, and the one who told Cloud she wanted to find the "real" him, disappeared by Cloud's side after the fight with Sephiroth. We may see her again, but that's not who's talking to him now.