Enemies exploding into black smoke

[Necrotica]

This ever get explained? Like I get primals return to aether, but a lot of other enemies also don't leave behind bodies.

I am not expecting there to be permanent corpses all over the game, but it definitely makes a point of showing most dungeon bosses as exploding into black smoke upon being defeated. At first I thought it was supposed to show their ties to the Ascians but that does not seem to be the case. Like why would the giant squid explode into black smoke?

[Bhearil]

On Enwalker is basicallly True Death.

Usually when someone dies their spiritual aether aka soul goes back to the lifestream to eventually reincarnate, but on Endwalker the transformation uses everything a person is to fuel it. When those individuals die even their soul is spent leaving nothing behind, neither body nor soul

[Cilia]

Enemies explode into black smoke so there's no corpse left behind, since the legion of such we'd leave in our wake would bump up the age rating.

[waifugenerator]

Enemies have always either evaporated, phased out or turned into smoke. Going all the way back to the very first Final Fantasy game.

[Vyrerus]

Prior to Endwalker and even in Endwalker with enemies that aren't Blasphemies, enemies will explode into dark purple vapor due to having dark Aether (Most often for Voidsent or Ascian boosted minions). Mainly though it represents aether hostile to the player. Light vs. Dark etc.

In Endwalker, the airy black sludge that pops like a bubble is the Dynamis that was holding together their transformed body flooding back into the environment in its natural, invisible state.

[Atamis]

The last boss of Vanispati doesn't disappear oddly.

[Iscah]

The last boss of Vanispati doesn't disappear oddly.

It does, but in the following cutscene rather than within the dungeon.

[vormela]

I had no idea this was something in every Final Fantasy. I'd rather poof than decay. I wonder how much it saves on graphics to have stuff disappear so quickly instead of laying around.

In Endwalker, the airy black sludge that pops like a bubble is the Dynamis that was holding together their transformed body flooding back into the environment in its natural, invisible state.

Organic Chemistry tomes from Etheirys must be something to behold!

[Theozilla]

Yeah it’s more a FF franchise convention than anything else, a way to show that an enemy has “burned through” their life-force so say (particularly magical ones). While the black smoke dissipation is a more literal process with things like the Terminus Beasts, it’s obviously not what happens to living creatures/organisms, as if it did there would literally be no way to eat food, imagine every time you killed something when hunting and gathering it poofed to into black smoke, there would be no food web and/or nutrient cycle existing ever.