I'm planning to write a paper on archetypal patterns in FFVII, perhaps analyzing the story to see how it fits with the idea of the monomyth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth). Other than reading a whole bunch of standard works on mythology, I'm also looking for anything written about story/themes/characters/etc. in FFVII or the FF games in general... just for ideas and inspiration.

I've found plenty of interesting online articles (and forum posts), but I'm wondering if there are any books, papers, magazine articles/interviews, etc. of interest. English or japanese doesn't matter. And yes - I've searched this forum, Google, Google Scholar, Abebooks, ... but have found very little.

Play the game and form your own thoughts.

Yes, thank you, I'll do that. However, as is always the case when you write something in academia, the supporting/conflicting ideas of others can help ones own claims, provide useful criticism, perspectives you hadn't thought of, etc.. and of course, profs love references. :)

This is probably the wrong place to be talking about FFVII lol.

Probably best just playing the game and taking your information from that. If you had any specific questions we might be able to help though.