Thank you - a big like from me for this post, I wish I could give more! 😭 As a lover and defender of the whole Compilation of FF7 and especially Crisis Core I'm just so tired of the aversion at best, the hate at worst for new characters introduced outside of OG in general.
I have to add a bit of my own ramblings, sorry!
So, I'm not that involved in the different FF7 communities, but have friends in the fandom with extensive knowledge about the compilation, and I have the feeling they're mostly chill with Angeal's existence, being Zack's mentor and such. Only sometimes I venture through tumblr posts or feel adventurous enough to consume fan content, but often I tend to leave again quickly.
Genesis though is a different topic and I came across those who dislike/hate Gen because he's annoying with his Loveless quotes, and then those who outright hate him for how he, supposedly, meddled with and outright destroyed Sephiroth's Nibelheim villain arc by being there in the reactor in Crisis Core when he wasn't in OG - and I can't remember other arguments why they don't like Genesis' existence, it's always one of those two.
I mean, I somehow get it from the viewpoint of those hardcore OG fans, and I guess it's fine to only accept OG as canon, but I'm always sad when I hear others discuss it or read something about the Compilation, where I'm always wondering: Is it just me who perceives characters or events in the Compilation differently or did others play completely different FF7 games than I did? 🙈
For Angeal and Genesis there's so much character building in Crisis Core alone (not talking about Young Angeal and Young Sephiroth in Ever Crisis here, or otherwise this will get even longer) - but the thing is, the player needs to pay attention and not not just blindly rush through the story only - because then yes, Angeal is no more than a guy talking about honor who Zack inherits the Buster Sword from, and Genesis a poetry-reciting egomaniac, I'll admit to that. And on the surface there are many things with which Square Enix weren't really doing their characters a big favour in their depiction, but okay.
If one cares to look a bit closer, pays a bit attention, carefully explores the areas in the game and finds the information hid there, there's so much more - let me think of a few things that are still clear in my brain, because my last Crisis Core (Reunion) playthrough was a while ago. But with how often I played the PSP original, I'm sure I can remember some bits and pieces about Angeal's and Genesis' backstories, a bit about Sephiroth - which people tend to forget (or like to forget on purpose).
Angeal is not someone who's only there to chew off Sephiroth's/Genesis'/Zack's/<insert random SOLDIER trainee here>'s ear to remind them about honor and dreams.
He's a guy who joined Shinra in his teenage years, oblivious to the corruption in the company. He simply wants to support his family - and Shinra's as good an idea as anything else: they're well-known employers and joining the SOLDIER programme, and to him at that point, becoming a soldier was a good idea. Let's not forget here that Angeal mentions to Zack in Chapter 1 that his family was poor - we were also reminded of that in the flashback/hallucination in Ever Crisis (FS Ep. 2). His family was poor, but loving. When we visit Angeal's house in CC and take a look around Zack mentions all kinds of family photos, too, and that shaped Angeal. For example, the man Angeal knows to be his father, the main who raised him, even borrowed money for Angeal's sword as a gift for him when he started his first job.
Due to his upbringing and the values he holds dear, which he also taught the SOLDIER trainees, the impact of Genesis' disappearance first, then the start of his own degradation and finding out that he's also a Shinra experiment... It's so big he started to question everything, his own life choices up until then, Shinra,... No wonder he fled. And to basically witness all this only through Zack's POV in CC makes it hit so much harder in my opinion, as you cannot openly see how much he's most likely suffering, same as Genesis (and later also Sephiroth).
As you mentioned, he was a man with a life, friends, hobbies, which he all had to throw away basically overnight.
And regarding hobbies - yes, they were even mentioned in CC! Granted mostly due to the not too reliable fanclub mails Zack receives, but how does the saying go? There's a grain of truth in every joke - and I for myself can totally see Angeal cooking for his friends on free evenings or weekends, or that he likes to care for plants as a hobby.
Ah, and poor old Genesis... Does everyone remember that, apart from his Loveless-fanboying, he had quite the amazing life in Banora? He and Angeal are often being reduced to just being those country bumpkin best friends from Banora who turned into Seph's sidekicks in CC, but actually Gen was quite the hard worker and totally into the Banora White production stuff. His father was the mayor. When going back to the Banora ruins in Ch. 10 of CC, you can find some of Genesis' old stuff in a corner, prizes he got and also a newspaper clipping where it says he was the one who created dumbapple juice, and that he would love the hero Sephiroth to try his products once - dreams way before they even met.
And no matter what, his friendship to both Angeal and Sephiroth is incredible. From the HD scene in Crisis Core (the one where they demolish the battle simulator) you can tell so much - how comfortable they are around each other, how happy the friendship makes Sephiroth!
And then Genesis' degradation begins and his body literally starts to crack and fall apart. But not only physically - of course this also takes a toll on him mentally when he finds out about past human experiments causing it and that he probably won't survive. It's Shinra's fault and Sephiroth has it better because his experiments were different, "better"... With all these bits and pieces, who can blame him for running, for feeling betrayed? And yet again, the info is there in the game, if the player is careful enough to read it (e.g. when Zack and Sephiroth are in Hollander's lab and Zack examines the notes).
And in the end we have Sephiroth being all alone again after his two friends left. And in my opinion, all of his backstories make him snapping and causing the Nibelheim Incident even worse. He's no social butterfly to begin with. He was used as a test subject and a pretty war campaign face by Shinra, they always treated him as an investment to be used however they like on a whim, not as a human being. He found his first friends in the P0 SOLDIERs, pretty much already "lost" Glenn, Matt and Lucia shortly after. Then on his next big mission he got under Jenova's influence by obtaining Masamune (and he was like what, 15 at that point?), befriended Angeal and probably after that mission als Genesis, only to lose them a few years later because of Shinra's ridiculous experiments. At that point, he has no one to trust and goes into research mode himself, reads book after book for a week in the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim, and slowly goes insane over what he finds there - and he himself is not at fault, as he's very much under Jenova's influence at that point, and in addition, has no social security net or a person he really can confide in. Or at least someone who tells him that his conclusion that he is some kind of higher being is just what it is: insane. Zack is, unfortunately, not a close enough friend to be able to reason with him.
And also let's remember his words before they leave to investigate the reactor in CC: Chapter 7: "Depending on what happens, I may abandon Shinra."
The way he tells it alone (at least in the Japanese voice version) already tells how deeply he is hurt that he's been left alone again with all the chaos that happens at Shinra, and pre-Nibelheim-incident-Sephiroth keeps breaking my heart over and over again.
Bonus: Everybody needs to keep in mind how incredibly young those characters still are - Angeal and Genesis are only about 25(!) in Crisis Core, Sephiroth, iirc, even is two or three years younger. With how isolated he probably grew up, there's no way he has the actual mental maturity to be able to deal with what is happening to him and the people dear to him in an appropriate way. Angeal and Genesis had a life before Shinra, loving families, and Sephiroth had... Hojo, laboratories, physical examinations, SOLDIER training - and that's basically the only thing he's good at, and for everything else, he's trying so hard. He's struggling for a bit of normalcy other people his age have. Until Nibelheim happens. 😢
On a closing note - let's be honest, a similar thing is also happening to (Crisis Core) Zack and the (Compilation) Turks - I often see how they are perceived or used as comic relief only.
Due to Zack's bubbly personality and his big dream of becoming a hero, everybody forgets that to make it to SOLDIER 1st Class, you probably need both a perfect physical constitution and the brains for it, and he managed to make it to 1st at freaking 16 years old.
And I think, mostly thanks to the existence of Advent Children (which I love to pieces, but just can't take serious to some extent), especially Reno and Rude were degraded to two clowns - while they should be scary assholes doing the dirty work for Shinra behind the scenes. I'm thankful that newer installments such as Remake and Rebirth did a much much better job on that, but I can't count the times I got frustrated with how those who were designed as ruthless killers in the lore are reduced to pretty faces by a part of the fandom.
Whoops. Sorry not sorry for getting overboard. Rambling over.
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