#and obviously sora had his thing with namine in com

[holleighgram]

Fuck it. Riku Replica has been living in my head like I found him in the Realm of Darkness, so here's a bunch of canon divergence concepts that I'm too lazy to write into full stories:

1: Repliku doesn't walk away after the Marluxia fight. Instead he also gets a pod and goes to sleep so Namine can fix his heart and make him like the real Riku, but with the Darkness locked away. Sora wakes up and sees Repliku in his pod. He wakes him up, assuming it's the real Riku and they go home to the islands. The real Riku (looking like Ansem) is then responsible for having to stop the Organization and deal with knowing that Sora doesn't even realize that Replica isn't him..

2: Repliku gets his ass beat into the ROD at the end of COM, but ends up on the Dark Margin and meets Aqua. They become friends. She helps him grow out of being a dickhead and he ends up sacrificing himself so that she can follow Sora and Riku into the Realm of Light at the end of KH2. He then gets kidnapped , Norted, and drafted into The Real Org from there.

3. On his his first visit to the ROD with Mickey, Riku finds Repliku, but he still has his physical form but BIGGO DEPRESSION. No angry, just despair to the point of being near catatonic. Mickey and Riku bring him back to Yen Sid's where he just stares out the window, not talking or moving until Sora shows up. And is like "Another Riku??? Can I have him??" Since the real Riku and Mickey are still going back to find Aqua, Yen Sid says fuck it, and let's Repliku go with SDG. The simple fact that Sora WANTS him to come along (even though he isn't real) combine with Donald and Goofy saying yes he can come with them (as apposed to kh1) is enough bring him to near tears. And he goes with them on their adventures and begins to heal and become his own person, with Sora noting how different he is from Riku and even giving him a different name like Kiru, or Cave or some shit.

He gets to save Namine

4. (This one is a Dark Riku/Replitwo Electric Boogaloo one) No Repliku in this one. Dark Riku is the Replica from deep into Castle Oblivion before his heart gets smashed and his memries are the most fucked up. During their interactions he keeps saying the weird shit like "always trying tonworm your way into my heart" and "it never mattered to you" and "I bet you'd all but forgotten about me" and all that stuff from COM. Sora beats him at the KBGY and he tells Sora to finish him off-- that he had already broken his heart, he might as well tear it out of him put him out of his misery. Sora doesn't (obviously) he's just super confused as to why he's saying all these things cause he thought this is Riku Ansem, but is realizing now it's not.

Xigbar, who is fighting the real Riku sees Sora is distracted. He knocks Riku back and takes his shot. Dark Riku, utterly broken and defeated, still notices and pushes Sora out of the way, taking the hit and saving him.

By this time, Riku is back up and back at the fight.

Sora, however is stunned, and as Dark Riku lay fading, he wants to know why he saved him. But all the Dark Riku says as finally fades is "Sora, let's take the raft and go. Just the two of us..." and then he's gone.

These are all up for grabs. If any of them are interesting to you, let me know and I might do some art of them, but not a whole ass comic cause I'm really slow at art and it takes forever.

#kingdom hearts #riku kh #riku #kh riku #soriku #kh3 #kh2 #khcom #repliku #riku replika #dark riku #fanfic #story ideas #canon divergence #au #kh au #sora x riku #sora kh #kh #stories i wont write #help yourself #prompts #replitwo #rikus sacrifice

[blowingoffsteam2]

wait are there hints or anything towards nameless star's name at all? tell me how you got the name hoshi :D

I don’t know if I would call them hints but there are certain details that I think can help us make an educated guess. A lot of people think her name is Sora mainly due to Yozora asking “Why are you using Sora’s name”, as if he already knows a Sora. I think that’s also definitely a possibility but at the same time I think it’s...too easy? And also I would find it a little strange to have Yozora- which means night sky (-zora=Sora) and another Sora, plus our Sora. But stranger things have happened in kh I guess lol so anyway, that’s one possibility. But I lean towards Hoshi for several reasons: The name/word Hoshi means star-> Hoshi+Yozora=Hoshizora=Starry night sky. This is the sort of wordplay Nomura loves and it’s thematically relevant. What is a night sky without stars but an empty dark void...

Also, although Verum Rex is not Final Fantasy Versus 13, Nomura made direct references to it (the shot for shot recreation of the car scene for example) and Yozora is very obviously the thematic equivalent of Versus 13 Noctis, while Nameless Star is the thematic equivalent of Stella, who was cut entirely from ff15. Yozora’s name is also the Japanese equivalent of the latin Noctis Caelum- Night Sky. Hoshi then, would be the Japanese equivalent of the latin Stella- Star. Another detail: she literally wears a star necklace. Also she is in the form of a star right now- the sort of hidden-in-plain-sight clue/wordplay Nomura absolutely loves. The irony of her being known as “Nameless Star” only to be revealed that her name is literally Star is 100% a Nomura move I can see him doing. She is Yozora’s light. The bright star in the night sky.

And tangentially, to go back to Yozora’s “Why are you using Sora’s name” line, there’s another explanation rather than him personally knowing another Sora, if the Nameless Star’s name isn’t Sora. I’ve written a longer thread about this on Twitter, but to sum it up, he knows he made a vow to save /someone/ (hence the kingstagram with the same words he vows to crystalized Sora) but he doesn’t remember who- only that it’s someone important to him. He is told by someone to “save Sora” and one way or another is convinced “Sora” must be the person he’s been looking for. But he doesn’t know what “Sora” looks like at all, and I don’t think he was expecting “Sora” to be a boy either (because after all, his heart probably still remembers Nameless Star, even if he can’t consciously remember). So at first he’s skeptical that this is the Sora he was looking for. But Sora knows who he is, and fate brought them together, so this Sora must be the person he vowed to save. He thinks our Sora is the person important to him. That’s why after Sora is crystalized, he touches him tenderly and vows to save him- not a gesture one would do for a complete stranger, but someone he thinks he knows and cares about. His memories are getting mixed up, just like Sora’s were in CoM thinking that Namine was a precious person he had promised to protect.

#soriku #Hoshizora #Yozora #sorry I kinda went off topic at the end there lol #but I felt it was important to address another interpretation of that line

[natsubane]

i was thinking that i should reflect on kh2

(before i forget what it was like playing the game lol)

i genuinely think kh2 was really fun but i think it's somewhat funny that the most memorable scenes in the game for me were mostly concentrated into the scenes where roxas appeared. (the prologue made me cry at least twice. i had to pause fighting him because i was crying. i cried through his last conversation with axel. when he showed up literally every other time i was fighting back yelling bc they really did a superb job of Getting You Attached To Roxas in the prologue that i spent the whole game getting excited to see him again.) as a character i really enjoyed him and i'm glad to be seeing him again in days... i like how well they showed his confusion and struggles in the prologue and it just. makes him so easy to empathise with and root for him. and also the twilight town trio... i really want to see the real trio interacting with roxas........

i think also with the whole "defeat org13" plot i really wished we got to see the org more because pretty much most of the time when we meet org members it's either sora and co immediately antagonising them (which is for justifiable reasons considering that they worked pretty hard to fix the worlds in kh1 and now they're being told that org13 is fucking around in them again.) or they're kinda just throwing very context-loaded information at me which. isn't necessarily bad but is hard to remember and process all at once... and also the fact that we don't get to see who's talking + i don't recognise all their voices so the whole scene where zexion is being talked to about ansem/xehanort was a whole blur to me HALSDHFSKDLFJSD i didn't hate it, though i feel like a lot of it felt like going straight to fighting without trying to understand the org...

...which ig is also understandable. i did really enjoy the (surprise surprise) scene after beating roxas where sora is trying to process the fight and donald and goofy tell him that Obviously the black coats are trying to deceive him and he shouldn't dwell on it when it clearly made him stop and think and hesitate...

either way. i think after getting through com (reverse/rebirth especially) and also the prologue i was expecting a big character moment or sort of culmination at the end for sora similar to how riku accepts his darkness as part of him and how roxas pieces things together but i guess the ending was a bit. strange to me because it just kinda was an "our hearts are connected so here's a happy ending" which didn't really make sense to me bc. the door to light just showed up because sora read kairi's letter to him? and while i kinda get it, it made me so confused for a while because i was trying to think of a proper explanation for it before just accepting it's just an "our hearts are connected" thing and magic happened (shrugs). that said, while i liked the conclusion sora and riku come to at the end when they're stuck at the... uh.... dark beach place......... where they're happy to bear the darkness so that their friends can continue living in the light, it kinda... felt completely moot when the door to light thing happened. and also i'm glad that roxas and namine got to meet again and i really . really liked seeing them in the ending movie but Man I Really Wanted To See Them More. i feel like i am complaining too much about that

also with riku i felt like i was expecting a lot more screentime from him but i think the way he acted reflected the conclusion he made at the end of com and i really liked that sora and kairi were able to accept him even when he was in ansem mode... like. if that's not friendship then What Else Would Be. in terms of kairi i had to ask mage about her keyblade and their explaining that the game is just allergic to kairi doing anything actually. makes a lot of sense bc i really wished she was also there when sora/riku/the king opened the door at the end!!! (it also made me wonder when riku's sword turned into a keyblade but i think that was also waved off as a "he became worthy of wielding a keyblade again" thing) (and also where the hell did he get kairi's keyblade from. the fact that not even mage knows this one is not comforting lmao)

actually going to talk about gameplay now and i think i remember hearing people say that the boss fights and gimmick battles are what make kh2 Really Shine and i think i kinda understand... the boss fights being made unique with the reaction commands was good and i did enjoy some of them... the others though. i still find it extremely funny how i survived demyx perfectly fine but then i got walled on XALDIN (not to mention marluxia fucked me up so badly i raged on him)

i don't hate com's battle system and kh1 was pretty similar on a base level so i can't say much about comparison but i think . i think it should be easier to level up drive forms. i really think drive form grinding was awful because i Almost Never used drive forms until i realised they gave you movement abilities WHILE I WAS ALREADY HALFWAY THROUGH THE GAME. i played the entire first half WITHOUT DODGE ROLL LMAO. and then i had to grind all of them all at once. awful.

anyway. i did enjoy kh2. i promise i will go back and do the cavern of remembrance and try the data fights + lingering will at some point. it just might take me a while. hrhfhgfhgffdj. it was a good game though i liked it

#blue/- #blue/seafoam #seafoam-playthrough #seafoam-cerulean #seafoam-thoughts #i hope i didn't forget anything

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I feel I should just say that I wrote a bajillion words fic about Sora and Kairi's wedding, post-KHIII... that I was going to keep a surprise, but then I realized people might not like it--because for me to be able to write it, I kind of had to subvert expectations, oddly enough. Because otherwise, I thought I was writing what others probably have a million times, or that I wouldn’t do this epic and long-awaited moment justice--so I’m mentioning it now. And that should probably be the next story I upload? If I don’t post one more thing first?

I also sort of wrote this fanfiction by accident? As something to just write for fun when I was burnt out on my other work or needed to warm up... but then it just snowballed and snowballed and snowballed. XD

#it 'subverts expectations' just in one way. for example. in that I had Kairi have a crush on riku in the past in this #and obviously sora had his thing with namine in com #so Kairi's realizing that her marrying sora--and him marrying her--is shutting the door on those emotions of both of theirs and those #relationships forever. that in some ways is a bit sad. but that there's SO MUCH MORE she's gaining BY marrying the love of her life #that she realizes more and more as the story goes on until it just gets so sweet that you'll get cavities from it #also where I had their wedding take place who I had officiate and the fact that I had them have pie over cake-in reference to shire folk-is #all different #kairi's also not wearing white--but green--because she's already had sex with sora and doesn't feel like lying that she hasn't. lol

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

so I watched this theory video, and I basically rambled in the comments because it meshed p well with my own interpretation of the whole yozora thing so far. I’m linking the video bc that’s the basic premise of my own ideas, and I’ll be copy/pasting my comment here bc yeah:

“This is the theory closest to my own ideas about yozora. I personally don’t think “Sora” is the Star Girl’s name despite what Yozora says (“Why are you using Sora’s name?”) because it seems too obvious.

In my opinion, the whole Sora-as-the-Stargirl’s-name clue is more of a red herring, although the connection—specifically, the connection Yozora makes between the name “Sora” and the Stargirl—is obviously important.

I do acknowledge that the whole “Sora is the girl’s name” thing could go either way. It could end up being her actual name, or it could not.

Everything else about this theory hit all the points I agree with though! I’ve been waiting to see a theory like this, and I found one only a year late lol.

I interpret Yozora’s situation as similar to Sora’s situation in Chain of Memories. In CoM, Sora was looking for someone important to him: Riku. But the more time he spent in Castle Ovlivion, the more his memories were changed and tampered with (by Namine).

By the time he finally meets and confronts Namine, Sora believes Namine is the person he had forgotten and was trying to find. Only for Namine to disprove that. Sora then assumes, based only on visual “clues” and vague feelings/memories from his heart, that the person he forgot/is looking for is Kairi. And Namine never says no, but she never says yes either (but that’s a slightly separate issue).

To me, Yozora seems to be in a similar situation. His memories/feelings have been changed, due to his heart being replaced. Somehow, Yozora knows he is supposed to be looking for someone. This could be because “he was told to”, and who told him could end up being a person or his heart’s lingering will or whatever you’d call it.

If a person was the one to tell Yozora to “save Sora”, then Yozora would therefore assume “a person named Sora” is the person Yozora is looking for. (And therefore leaving star girl’s name unknown)

If it was Yozora’s heart that “told him” to “save Sora”, the assumption would be the same. Yozora would naturally associate the name “Sora” with “the person he’s looking for”. (Which would likely also mean the girl’s name is Sora)

A Twitter account I saw theorized this misinterpretation of clues and feelings could explain why Yozora acts the way he does towards Sora: cold one instance, warm the next. Why Yozora fights and threatens Sora, only to smile and/or promise to save Sora afterwards.

It’s actually reminiscent of Sora’s behavior towards Namine in CoM. Because Namine was literally a stranger, Sora could only be distantly concerned for her when he wasn’t busy being plain confused. He talked about her as if talking about a random girl, because that’s what Namine was.

And throughout this whole time, Riku is the one Sora treats/talks about like a close friend/someone important to Sora. Because that’s what Riku was.

And yet, by the end of Sora’s story, he’s become so confused and mixed up that Sora believes Namine is the close friend he’s been looking for. And yet, his language doesn’t reflect that, at least not consistently. Similarly to Yozora, Sora speaks to Namine as if she’s just this nice girl he met, but in the same breath he tells her that he promised to protect her, how they were such good friends, etc.

We’ll have to wait and see what becomes of Yozora and his “mission” to “save Sora”. To see if Yozora ever realizes KH Sora is not the person he’s looking for, and everything else that remains unanswered. But I love rambling about CoM and wondering wtf is going on with Yozora atm 😁”

A big chunk of this is based on steam’s theories on their twitter ofc and as always I’m not claiming to be the sole person to ever Think Things.

#kh #micro essay #mini theory #yozora #sora #kh bs #kh3 ending spoilers #spoilers #maybe even CoM spoilers but bruh that game is old #text #rambling

[nadziejastar]

Thoughts on Soranort?

“Hey, I got an idea. Ask your heart. See if it’s got a clue.”

“Well…my heart was aching. That’s why I kept going.”

It was almost too much to bear. The sorrow—the pain, and so many other feelings. A suffering so much greater than anything he’d ever known. Hatred, sadness, anger, jealousy, fear, resentment, anguish, envy, uncertainty, pain, despair. Who did these feelings come from? Roxas? That woman? Those two people called me Ven—maybe him? Or someone else?

“Oh… Thank you, Sora’s heart, for pushing him right into our clutches. Aren’t hearts great? Steer us wrong every time,” Xigbar remarked, mocking as ever.

Personally, I don’t think he would have made a good Nort. But that’s why he was the hero.

Sora was targeted as a vessel because he had pain inside of him. The pain wasn’t really his, though. It was the memories inside of him, which didn’t even belong to him. That’s why I think he’d make a pretty boring seeker of darkness, from a story standpoint. He’s better suited as the hero. I think almost all the Norts were handled VERY poorly, though. The Dark Seeker Saga just turned out to be a huge flop in the end. It was supposed to be all about healing pain. Not just for the missing guardians of light. But the seekers of darkness, too. There was a reason they all got Norted, which KH3 did a VERY poor job explaining. It was because they all had pain that led them to abandoning their heart.

Ansem’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “If he wavers from the path we lay, we destroy him.”

“But in that case…we’ll have to find ourselves another vessel.”

Xigbar barked a laugh. Another vessel…, he says, as if it’s nothing. Just one piece of their grand, far-reaching plan.

“That is why we never have just one iron in the fire,” Xemnas replied matter-of-factly.

KH3 was supposed to be all about Xehanort’s search for a replacement vessel after Sora failed in KH3D. Vessels are not easy to come by, so “reserve members” shouldn’t even be a thing. I think the person they were supposed to be talking about in this scene was Davy Jones. He was a perfect vessel because he didn’t have a heart, but he didn’t die. He cast away his heart because it caused him pain. He would have been like the Beast in KH2, where they were trying to get him to join he organization. 

This world could have felt like it was relevant to the main story. But Davy Jones’ heart got little focus and all anyone cared about was the stupid black box, which isn’t even relevant in this game. The whole idea of the seekers of darkness becoming vessels because of pain got very little attention. When you defeated them in the Keyblade Graveyard, there should have been a sense of healing for each character’s pain and a sense of resolution to their story. The sad remix of the organization music was SO GOOD. Instead, most of them ended on a cliffhanger, which is absurd.

And then there was the heart that nestled close to mine. There, it continued to quietly encourage me. If he hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here now, standing in front of his grave.

Master, did you forgive me? Or maybe I haven’t been forgiven yet and I’m only still here so I can atone? I know there are no answers to my questions and no one has to forgive me for my sins. Even entertaining the thought of being forgiven is so presumptuous of me. A weakness.

The only vessel handled even semi-decently was Terra. His personal pain was given a lot of focus in BBS, so his story didn’t feel particularly incomplete… except when it came to Eraqus. I don’t feel Terra got proper closure with him. Terra didn’t even know if Eraqus forgave him, which is just sad. Terra’s messed up relationship with Eraqus was the whole reason he fell to darkness. It was his doubt that Eraqus truly loved him like a son that made him so susceptible to manipulation. It broke my heart how Terra was reluctant to hug Eraqus at the end.

“Not your concern.” With those parting words, Xehanort strode away. Eraqus slammed a fist into the floor as he watched him go.

Why did I fail to stop him? Is it my fault? Where did I go wrong? Is the darkness itself what beguiled him so? Must this plague steal my dear friend from me?

Then you got Young and Master Xehanort. In BBS, people kinda saw Xehanort as Lord Voldemort. People couldn’t see how Terra could trust him, because he was so obviously evil. But he was human, too. He was Eraqus’s dear friend. I’d be willing to bet it was some personal pain with Eraqus that led to Xehanort falling to darkness completely. Xehanort had no backstory, though, so it was hard to understand why he gave up or why he and Eraqus seemed so happy together in the end.

Ansem talked about some kind of betrayal, but I had no idea what he was even referring to here. 

Xemnas also had pain. He had Terra’s memories, spent years looking for Ventus in the Chamber of Waking. He was lonely, though this is never explored in any way.

I think Luxord probably joined the organization voluntarily. But why? He isn’t loyal to Xemnas. I doubt his original backstory was being some amnesiac Keyblade wielder from the age of fairy tales. He hinted at some personal pain due to “compulsive behavior”. I’m sure he had a sad backstory that caused him to join for his own reasons.

Why am I in the Organization? Well, I mean, there’s lots of reasons, but—oh, right! I wanted friends, right? Oh, no. Wow, actually no, that sounded way uncool but… now I’m thinking back on it and I’m just like, yeah, I guess it kinda was like that, huh.

Aside from the whole old guys’ club going on, it kinda seems like there were a lotta tight-knit groups in the Organization. Y’know, like Axel and Saix, Marluxia and Larxene, Zexion and Vexen, and Xaldin and Lexaeus? And I guess in the end, I hung out with the old guy a lot.

Yeah, so it’s not like it’s a big deal, seriously that’s it. I hate fighting and jamming out is way more fun. Sad stuff, painful stuff, why would I wanna do anything like that?

Let’s assume that Demyx was supposed to be a real member of the true organization instead of Xion (which is what I believe). His Character File story hints that he had pain and also that he became very close to Luxord. Which makes sense because they were some of the only members left after Castle Oblivion. Axel spent all his time with Saix, Roxas, and Xion. So, Demyx and Luxord really had no one else, and probably hung out with each other a lot. So, Demyx might have joined because of Luxord. But this is never explored in any way and Demyx is just a plot device to deliver Replicas.

SYMBOLISM Strelitzia is seen as the flower of freedom, and also represents immortality and paradise.

In early trailers, Marluxia had green eyes in the Rapunzel world, meaning he was not even supposed to be fully Norted before the final battle. So, I think he did join the organization of his own free will. But he had personal pain that led up to it. The loss of his sister. She said she’d carry him on her back, then his final boss form in CoM has him riding atop this strange woman figure. All very interesting. This is something that should have been wrapped up in this saga, though.

Sigh, it was so much better when I had no heart. When I didn’t have to worry about things like liking someone. Becoming fond of something is painful. That’s why those feelings were taken advantage of.

I think Larxene loved Marluxia and wanted to be by his side. She didn’t even want to regain a heart because it caused her pain. There should have been resolution to that at the end of KH3 instead of leaving it dangling.

Xigbar had pain, too. He was constantly haunted by his memory of Ventus glaring at him. You could tell that he was jealous of the bonds the other characters had. He commits suicide at the end due to the guilt he has. I would have said that his story was handled well if it ended with his suicide. It was pretty sad. But they reversed it and made it out to be a ruse. Xigbar was just faking his entire personality the whole time and was really Luxu all along. WTF!? I just can’t…

I wanted to be like you. I was jealous of you. Who was I exactly? Did I even exist? I’m just a puppet with no heart whose fake memories were planted in my head.

I was made, I’m artificial, I’m a fake. What do I need to become a real person? Or rather, was I a real fake? I fell into the dark and wandered the world of darkness.

Riku Replica’s story wasn’t resolved well, either. He spends all of CoM being tormented about not being the real Riku and that no doubt leads him to joining the organization. But then after he’s defeated, he gets no closure to his identity crisis. Instead, another “good” Riku Replica comes and rips the “evil” Replica’s soul out (WTF?) and then that story is over. It becomes all about Namine at that point. He sacrifices his only chance at life for her, which is kinda weird and depressing. I would have preferred if Riku Replica gained some kind of peace with being a part of Riku and then going home into his heart, like Xion did at the end of Days.

Whereas Ven’s worries and suffering were proof of his growth, his proclivity toward the light, Vanitas’s own misery was merely a pitch-black morass that brought with it nothing but pain.

We’re so different, but I could feel you every step of the way. I bet you didn’t notice me at all. What does this battle between us mean to you? You probably don’t have a clue that it means our hearts are intertwining. The fight itself doesn’t matter. What’s important is that our struggle makes us feel the same things. You hate me for trying to hurt your friend now, right? And I hate you right back for having friends at all.

Never once is any attention given to Vanitas’s pain. He despised Ventus and was jealous of the fact that he had friends. All the Unversed came from his negative emotions. Ventus told him they were the same and that he needed to come home inside of his heart, but…he doesn’t? Instead of finding some kind of peace by going back to Ventus, he just… disappears. 

The person who probably suffered the most was Axel. Because he’s the one who forgot the most. Being forgotten and forgetting, they’re both painful.

Saix’s pain turned out to be a joke. He couldn’t find some random girl he spoke to a few times, boo hoo, such a sad tragic backstory. He had to be quickly turned into a good guy before the epilogue, so he only joined to “atone” not because of any pain. His real pain was supposed to be about his relationship with Lea.

Cancer is ruled by the Moon, the planet of receptivity. It’s the zodiac sign related to feeling and emotions in our hearts. Cancer is, in many ways, the most sensitive and vulnerable sign of the zodiac. They feel deeply, but they’re not sure what to do about their feelings.

Emotions tend to play a dominate role in the lives of people born under Cancer. Naturally defensive and sometimes afraid of being hurt, they tend to put their heart and soul into all their relationships, and are very faithful, loyal and loving partners. Cancer people are extremely sensitive to matters of the heart. It is easy to hurt their feelings and they become deeply emotionally wounded when wronged, and can take a long time getting over it.

Also, I just really like the idea of Saix as a Seeker of Darkness. Cancers have very delicate hearts and are very emotional people who are vulnerable to pain. 

[themattress]

This is my final response to the toxic waste of space that is intotheventures, aka the KH2-hating anon troll who is literally insane over the fact that KH2 is the most beloved game in the franchise. I didn’t want to pollute the KH Trinity blog with more of his nonsensical bullshit.

(BTW the REAL trinity is Birth By Sleep + 1 + Chain of Memories).

That makes no sense whatsoever, because that leaves a blatantly incomplete story.

What is natural about Sora falling to his knees for Riku? Nothing. 

He wasn’t doing to “for Riku”. He did it because he thought Riku was dead, all the evidence he was getting pointed to Riku having died, and he was overcome with relief that Riku, his best friend, was actually still alive after all. It was not an intentionally-written yaoi bait scene, no matter how fans took it.

What did the added AkuRoku scenes in Final Mix add to the story? Nothing. 

I’m not talking about Final Mix, I’m talking about the original KH2.

But yeah, that scene had no purpose being there.

Also “he made me feel like I had a heart” is cringy.

“Cringe” is the new, ill-defined buzzword this clod throws around to bash KH2.

And how is it cringy? It is quite literally saying what Roxas did for Axel.

Have you looked at a single reaction command? Sora chopping a building in half isn’t a shallow “badass” presentation? It’s all style, no substance, it’s more blatant than anything in any other KH game.

Except in KH3 where you get Keyblades that transform into new weapons of ultimate power, can summon fucking Disney World rides to inflict massive damage upon your foes, has Sora running up walls and even jumping on falling boulders, new reaction commands that feature more flashy “badass” moves, shotlocks where there are even MORE “badass” moves to be pulled off (something that was also in BBS), Flowmotion where you’re flying all over the place...literally everything about KH3 is more “all style, no substance” than KH2. It’s right there in front of everyone’s eyes, and you’re only denying it because you are a hypocritical, intellectually dishonest freak.

Sora became more idiotic (he wasn’t this dumb in DDD, contrary to popular belief, he was just blissfully unaware and let his guard down) and hostile, constantly taunting and insulting his opponents for little to no reason (contrary to popular belief, he was not like this in the other games)

“Contrary to popular belief”, and then you don’t back up your claims. Yes, Sora WAS that dumb - no, much dumber -in DDD, and even in KH3 there were more “lol, Sora’s stupid!” moments than in KH2, with his friends constantly mocking him about it. He was also just as hostile toward opponents in KH and COM, including to the point of killing them, and that’s not even factoring in Roxas combining with him at the start of KH2. There is nothing remotely OOC about Sora in KH2, you’re just whining about him not being the pure, positive soul you want him to be

Kairi became a shallow love interest

And yet she had a shit-ton more mitigating qualities than in KH3, which you deny.

Riku was more sullen

Because behaving exactly like the cocky asshole he was before would’ve indicated that he had no remorse for anything he did and had learned nothing, had suffered no consequences. You say “sullen”, I say “human”.

Namine only appeared for brief scenes and had little personality

How is that a problem? KH2 was never meant to be a big Namine-focused game.

Roxas’ angst was really overdone.

Again, no explanation as to how/why.

Personally, I think his angst over being completely fucked over was proportionate.

Too often he just magically solved the problems of various Disney characters, like Simba.

Yes, which he also does in the other games, including KH3. By this logic, he was a Gary-Stu in the original game because he trapped Jafar in the lamp and not Aladdin.

He’s not a Gary-Stu in DDD because he ended up failing the exam after Xehanort rigged it, and his idiocy cost him greater than in KH2.

I’ll give you that one. Riku was the Gary-Stu of 3D, not Sora.

KH3 connects all of the worlds and is better at not having filler.

Again, how/why? You cite no examples, and can’t defend against the MANY examples of people in their reviews of KH3, both text and video, saying how the Disney worlds are probably the biggest case of them being filler yet, as Sora has literally no reason to be messing around in any of them, and what the Organization gets out of them is incredibly nebulous and ultimately doesn’t really matter either. 

 A lot of things are just brought up and either resolved too quickly (like the “I can’t use the Keyblade!” scene or just dropped (”While you’re there, the nature of that world may tempt you to do something dark. You must resist that temptation at all costs!”).

Again, just like almost every other KH game, including/especially KH3.

None of the rest of the cast really contribute anything, most are just plot devices to pad out the character count. Kairi didn’t do anything better than she did in 1, Riku’s screentime was mostly spent lamenting about his very existence, HPO did nothing anyone else couldn’t have done, same with Namine, their roles are mostly interchangeable and obligatory. Plus KH2 had a much larger cast of OCs than KH1 + CoM so it’s a much more glaring flaw.

Kairi, Riku, HPO, Namine, etc. all do things that Sora absolutely could not do and would have failed in his quest without. You are confusing “screentime” with “contributions” - none of them have the screentime Sora does (because he’s the fucking main character), but they all play the roles they are supposed to for the story. Again, not that different from most other games, including KH3 where there’s an even LARGER cast of OCs, and yet you’re constantly defending that game despite it doing the exact same things you perpetually cry about KH2 doing, and usually doing them worse.

Submit your own character: The Organization.

How the fuck are the villains a case of “Submit your own character”?

Sex scene: Obviously none, but Kairi’s panties are close enough. In no other game was she used for fanservice/sex appeal.

The panties weren’t an actually thing you were supposed to see in-game, and if you think she wasn’t used for fanservice/sex appeal with her equally titillating short-skirt design in KH3, you’re fooling yourself. 

“That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers!” (This sounded outdated in 2006)

He’s part of a computer simulation run by an old man. This is how said old man thinks that teenagers actually talk. It’s actually pretty brilliant.

“Sorry, “Mommy”, your poopsies are toast!” (Cringe)

How?

“Hmph, maybe you should have kept some to yourself.” (This maybe fits Riku, but NOT Sora!)

Again, how? 

“You gonna cry?!” (OOC, and doesn’t make sense in context. Frustrated Jacob even made fun of this line.) ”I guess you think you can psych me out by saying really random stuff!” (Like the above, FJ made fun of it.) “Tough talk for someone who stood on the sidelines while his Nobody flunkies did all the fighting!” (WTF)

Basically “Waaah, Sora’s a meanie-head to the poor Nobodies!” Gag me.

“[Maleficent]’s toast.” (Cringe, doesn’t sound cool in the least.)

So “badass presentation” is bad, yet you hate a line if it doesn’t sound “cool”. Got it.

“Lowlife.” (OOC)

HOW? DEFINE your goddamn TERMS, you utter twat!

“I bet you can’t even fight!” (OOC, just sounds like a prick)

“Just give it a rest! You’re Nobodies! You don’t even exist! You’re not sad about anything!” (He says this after meeting Axel, Roxas, and Namine. Plot hole + OOC)

“Then stop moping and DO something!” (later) “Why stick around if he’s not even gonna try?” (later) “C’mon, Goofy.” (This is too OOC to be Sora.)

Again, you want Sora to be perfect and nice to everyone. Got it.

In short, your ranting and raving means nothing. Not to me, not to anyone. You can keep up your insipid KH2-hate posts on your fringe blog, you can keep spamming the same messages in people’s ask boxes when they dare criticize other KH games over KH2, but KH2 is always going to be the most beloved entry in the franchise, KH, COM and KH2 are always going to be the real KH Trinity, and you aren’t changing people’s minds on that. Ever.

And now, to quote the great Ansem the Wise:

We’ve said enough! FAREWELL!

#Disney #Square Enix #Kingdom Hearts #Kingdom Hearts II #Fandumb #Stupidity #Too Dumb to Live #Objection #Correction

[yasuda-yoshiya]

So, KH3 is over.

Wow. That sure was a thing.

Closing reflections on both the game and the series as a whole below.

I guess I’m not even really surprised that Xion pretty much got a whole five minutes of screentime in the end after all that build-up. Don’t know what else I expected, Nomura...

You know, KH has always been terrible at pacing, but I still can’t quite believe just how much nothing happened in the first ~20 hours! The Disney filler is fine and all (I mean, the game wouldn’t sell without it), but I have to admit that the initial rush of childish excitement at getting new KH content started to wear pretty thin after four or five worlds of it. Games like KH2 and BBS at least tended to break things up with some big plot events halfway through, right?! I feel like this game really would have benefited a lot from having some kind of breather somewhere in the middle, even if it was just a matter of moving things like the Aqua/Ventus rescue up a bit earlier. They really had to cram a lot into those last few hours, and a lot of things ended up feeling more rushed than they really needed to be as a result. But for all the game’s flaws, in the end I still felt like I was able to leave the characters I cared about most on a satisfying note, and I think I’m content with that.

I really loved the way Axel was portrayed in this game! I feel like they hit a pretty good balance with him in the sense that, yes, he’s obviously realised that he messed up horribly and wants to do better, but he still totally feels like Axel. He’s still very much an obviously flawed and self-centered person who still habitually puts his own emotional needs above others, still wants to frame himself as the hero of the story who will obviously be the one to save Roxas in the end - and I love that the game itself never really buys into that framing. There is honestly not a single scene in this game where I felt like the emphasis was on what a cool and good person Axel is. His constant apologies to Kairi feel incredibly uncomfortable, like he’s very clumsily trying to finally hold himself accountable for what he’s done but still has absolutely no idea to actually handle it. His boasts about being a Keyblade wielder feel like empty arrogant bluster that never really gets backed up. When he pointedly interrupts the big cast reunion to scream “Um, hello, what about ME?!”, it seems more petty and ridiculous than anything. And when we get to the final battle, he repeatedly and consistently fails, on every count. He tries to have a big badass moment rebelling against Xemnas, but Xemnas totally beats his ass, and in the end it’s Roxas and Xion who have to jump in to save him, not the other way around. He has absolutely nothing to do with saving Roxas, or bringing him and Xion back, or even dealing with Saix, despite how much he heatedly promised that he was going to totally do all those things.

In the end, the real crux of his arc feels like that moment where Xion tells him to step back and leave it to them, and Axel just smiles and admits that, yeah, when it came down to it, the two of them were always stronger than him. They don’t need him, and they never did. I love that so, so much. I love the way that when the three of them are left alone together after the battle, he’s just so obviously awkward and uncomfortable and has no idea what to say, until the three of them all just finally break down crying and hugging each other. It felt so totally genuine and powerful and heartfelt, and I couldn’t have asked for more. I really appreciated Axel’s acknowledgement at the end that they had a lot to sort out, and I expect they probably still do, and a lot of it’s probably going to be messy and painful and difficult - but I’m also fine with us not getting to see that onscreen or with the game dwelling on it too much, because in the end, what’s really important as far as the series’ themes go is that they’re all finally here and alive and free to be themselves, and the ending rightly puts the final emphasis on that - on the sheer joy and wonder of them finally being able to live in the world, as people, to be happy and confident in themselves and who they are. Xion showing up at the tower in those beautiful clothes was the point where I pretty much just started crying my eyes out and couldn’t stop for the entire credits sequence. I love that the framing of their final scenes doesn’t really put any real special emphasis on Axel at all; it makes it feel like their happy ending isn’t really about them reuniting with him as a trio (in the way that, say, the BBS trio’s ending is very much framed), it’s about a much broader sense of them being able to live, and to experience the joy of living, with all that entails - that he’s just one of many friends for them now, and that the days of their messed up co-dependent relationship where they all had to desperately cling on to each other to feel human are hopefully over. The only thing I don’t really like about it in the end is Saix being there, but hey, nothing’s perfect. I do wish that things like Xion’s return had been a bit less rushed, and that her and Roxas had more screentime than they did, but all in all, I feel like I definitely got the closure I wanted, and I’m overjoyed with it.

As for the rest of the game... well, I’d be lying if I said the overall plot wasn’t pretty much a giant incoherent mess overall - the finale had way too much crammed into it, a ton of the antagonists seemed to do sudden 180s at the end for no reason, and it was an absolutely terrible choice to spend such a huge amount of time on obvious sequel hooks and cliffhangers (the black box, Subject X, Marluxia and co secretly being ancient keyblade warriors or whatever the hell Chi is doing) in a game that should really have been firmly focused on giving closure to the existing arcs after all these years - but... well, it’s Nomura, and it’s Kingdom Hearts. I don’t think I really expected anything else. But I did feel like the game was generally charming and enjoyable on a moment-to-moment level, the quality of the dialogue and cutscene direction felt like a big step up for the series, and I did actually enjoy the sheer scope and ambition of the final boss rush for what it was. It was absolutely a mess, but it felt like a sort of final celebration of the series and its characters that made me feel really excited and nostalgic in a sort of “bringing out my inner twelve-year-old” way, and there were a lot of great individual moments in there - the RXA reunion, Repliku’s sacrifice, Sora apologising to Namine - that genuinely did manage to hit hard and leave an impact. I guess at this point, KH has been ongoing for so long that it’s just inevitably exciting to see all these stories finally coming to a conclusion instead of just stalling at the same point forever, however weird the execution.

The one big thing I’d say they totally dropped the ball on was the BBS trio; their resolutions just felt completely empty to me, way too easy and simplistic and without any real consequences or acknowledgement of things like Aqua’s fall to darkness and how it impacted on her, or Terra’s rock-bottom self-esteem and the ways Aqua and Eraqus contributed to that. (Hell, when Ansem and Xemnas’s last words gave me much stronger Terra feelings than Terra’s actual resolution did, something must have gone terribly wrong!) They weren’t really ever my favourite characters, so I’m not too upset about it, but I still think they deserved better than they got. And I pretty much just tuned out all the nonsense at the end with Kairi’s unbelievably transparent and cynical fridging (”You require motivation” oh my god get lost!!) and the drama over Sora being separated from her again becuse I just...really didn’t care any more. I’m sorry, I just didn’t. Those two can keep cycling through their same old boring plot forever if they want to, I just don’t care!! I actually barely even noticed Sora disappearing at the end because I was too busy crying over Xion, lmao. Thank god my favourite characters don’t have to live inside those two losers any more. They are free from their nonsense now, and so am I.

So, how do I feel about the series as a whole, coming out of KH3? I’ve spent quite a bit of time revisiting and reflecting back on the older games in the run-up to KH3′s release, and honestly, I think my opinion coming out is more or less the same as it was coming in. I can’t really honestly say that the series as a whole is good, and it’s probably not at all worth the investment for anyone new to the series trying to get into it now - but I do feel that there is genuinely a lot of good stuff in there among all the nonsense, and I’d have to say that my personal experience growing up with the series and following it all these years has been an overwhelmingly positive one, overall.

KH1 was a very conventional shounen story, but a charming and beautifully told one. CoM was a genuinely unique and unsettling game that pulled apart KH1 in a ton of interesting ways, and even if the series didn’t have the guts to really keep going with the ideas it set up, I still feel that it was really interesting and cool as a standalone. KH2 was a mess, but it was an epic mess that I totally loved and obsessed over as a twelve-year-old, and it set up some genuinely fascinating concepts with Roxas, the Nobodies and the Organization which 358/2 Days went on to capitalise on incredibly well. I genuinely find 358/2 Days to be a game that still has a lot of power and resonance for me even now; it’s probably the only KH game I’d say I wholeheartedly respect and admire from a writing perspective, and I still love how comprehensively it tears apart everything KH2 was trying to say (in a way that the series totally was willing to run with and expand on, unlike CoM, which even 10 years later is still kind of unbelievable to me). BBS’s writing was a big step down from Days, but there were still a lot of really cool and interesting characters and concepts in there, and even if KH3 ultimately failed to stick the landing on them, I’d still say that a lot of what the game tried to communicate with Terra’s character in particular has continued to stick with me. Re:coded and DDD were both pretty silly, but they were still totally fun and addictive games (debugging system sectors was great fun, and I can’t hate anything as transparently Pokemon-derivative as the Dream Eaters), and I loved how they both so unapologetically continued down the path Days set up in kicking KH2′s original conclusions about Nobodies to the curb. And KH3, for all its missteps, still managed to cap off the character arcs and themes that I most cared about in a way that was ultimately satisfying to me. The overarching plot might have been absolute nonsense, and the series more often than not a ridiculous and filler-bloated mess, but in the end I really can’t feel anything but happy and positive memories when I look back on any of these games. I can’t really hold the series’ flaws against it too much when it’s brought me so much joy over all these years.

I think the one thing I love and appreciate most about the series, looking back now, really is just how willing they were to scream from the rooftops that the sacrifices Roxas and Xion were pushed into making were categorically wrong, that they deserved to be their own people, right through to the very end. In the end, the series was already pretty much irreversibly going down the path of bringing them back and giving them their own happy endings by the end of DDD - which was amazing - so in the end all KH3 really had to do for me to love it was to just complete that obvious final step, and I was more or less guaranteed to be okay with whatever other nonsense it might do. But even so, there was a part of me that still couldn’t quite believe it seeing their happy ending at the end of KH3; I still almost couldn’t process that this was actually real, that they actually seriously did it. KH2 so obviously wanted its players to uncritically take Roxas’s choice to go back to being part of Sora as a good thing, and even Days left a heck of a lot of wiggle room for people to read Xion’s willingness to sacrifice herself as a positive choice, rather than something she very clearly did not want but was forced to convince herself was okay because she simply wasn’t given any other viable options.

And this kind of goofy shounen-adjacent series having a lot of disturbing and uncomfortable subtext beneath the surface of its seemingly conventional plotlines isn’t exactly a rare thing in itself, but I feel like it’s pretty uncommon to see a series like this go so far in explicitly bringing out that subtext and making it into text - unambiguously shouting from the rooftops and making it outright unavoidable canon that, no, Days was in fact not just a tragic story about people with no hearts who were always just tragically doomed from the start to sacrifice themselves and return to the “real people” they came from, but was in fact a story about perfectly real and complete and valuable people being subtly and systematically brainwashed into believing that they had no hearts and were less real and valid and important than others, about the horrible things those kinds of beliefs can do to people and about force them to willingly dehumanise both themselves and others to cope. Xion’s story was not a beautiful tale about accepting her true nature as a part of Sora’s memories and willingly returning to him, it was a story about a person who absolutely deserved and wanted to live for herself having her entire identity and self-confidence crushed and destroyed, about her being pushed into becoming actively suicidal even by perfectly “well-meaning” people. Roxas’s tragedy was in fact not just that he “didn’t get to meet Sora himself” before getting assimilated back into him - him being assimilated into someone else in the first place was the tragedy, because giving his own independently developed self up should never have to be something anyone has to do. Namine merging with Kairi was not a beautiful happy ending, it was an incredibly depressed and guilt-ridden person taking the first excuse she had to fade away because she no longer saw any value in herself and her existence, and Sora and Kairi uncritically validated that perception of herself by accepting her merge with Kairi as right in a way that they absolutely shouldn’t have.

None of this is reduced to subtext or interpretation, KH makes it all outright canon by implication - and not only makes it canon but actively sets up the entire main thrust of its epic multi-game arc to be about setting these mistakes right and bringing these people back and validating them as full human beings in their own right. And honestly, I just think that’s incredible. I love it, and I’ll always be grateful for it, and a huge part of what lets me keep coming back to games like 358/2 Days and still being able to fully appreciate them even now is having that knowledge that these interpretations are not just me reading too much into the text, but that they have been outright objectively confirmed as the correct readings within the series itself, over and over again, and only more and more and more explicitly and unavoidably as time has gone on. I honestly can’t express how much it means to me that KH is so loud and unambiguous about how much it loves and values and holds up these people as real and important, whatever their origins, whatever the fanbase might have to say about how bringing them back is “fanservice” and “ruining their original conclusions”. It’s so important to me, and I’m so thankful for it.

So yes, overall, I think I’m content with this game, and with the series in general! As long-awaited series finales go, I’ll definitely take it over things like Homestuck and Zero Escape’s efforts any day. I feel pretty much happy ending my time with the series on this note, and while I probably will still end up checking out whatever Nomura does next, I think it will probably be more out of vague curiosity than any strong investment by now, which is fine - the plotlines I cared about most within the series have now been pretty definitively closed, to my satisfaction, and I doubt anything else it does will manage to interest me nearly as much, but I’m sure I’ll still be willing to pop in again in a few years anyway for old times’ sake. For now, I am free, and I’d have to say that feels pretty good! I’m willing to forgive Kingdom Hearts a lot just because it’s brought me so much joy over the years, and I can’t think of any other series that has managed to stay emotionally significant to me for as much of my life as this one has. So in the end, all I can say is: thank you, Tetsuya Nomura! Keep on co-opting those beloved Disney movies to indulge your absurdly convoluted shounen anime nonsense, you wonderful, ridiculous man.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts iii

[olivemeister]

Since you are answering KH asks, how long were Isa and Lea in the organization 13? How old are they in KH3 along with the other characters? I read somewhere that Sora's age was confirmed for the game but the other characters weren't.

well here are some concrete things we know (tl;dr at the bottom):

the fall of radiant garden was 9 years prior to kh1 (stated by leon in kh1, backed up by later content)

bbs takes place 10 years prior to kh1

isa and lea are ven’s age in bbs (ven was recently confirmed as 16 in bbs)

nobodies continue to age (the old interview stating they didn’t is clearly no longer applicable, ienzo and namine quite clearly aged despite being nobodies)

radiant garden did not fall until after ansem the wise was usurped and cast into the realm of darkness

isa and lea became ansem the wise’s apprentices specifically (not ansem sod)

ergo, isa and lea must have become ansem’s apprentices immediately before apprentice xehanort turned the apprentices and joined the organization shortly after it was formed. this is supported by ddd where lea wakes up human again in the same place that all of the other apprentices are waking, and he expresses confusion over braig and isa’s absence. this indicates that, while the pair of them were not seen in the flashback where xehanort stabs and turns braig, they were in fact turned at the same time. obviously that’s not confirmed, but the fact that they all reform there and we see the original apprentices were turned there seem to add up pretty concretely to “this is where isa and lea were turned as well”.

the “9 years between radiant garden’s fall and kh1″ is supported by the use of ienzo’s child model in ddd’s opening cutscene. we know there’s an adult model for ienzo in the game, so it holds significance that they brought the child model into the game’s code specifically for the scene of the apprentices being turned. it is never used in another scene in ddd, which means it was a conscious decision and likely intended to confirm that the timeline from kh1 stated by leon is still canonical.

the timeline of how long it took for ansem the wise to become aware that the apprentices had been turned is unclear, but it seems unlikely that they were nobodies for long before forming the organization. however long the apprentices were nobodies before ansem was cast into the realm of darkness does not actually matter, though.

regardless of how long isa and lea were nobodies and organization members, they continued to age the whole time between bbs and kh3! we know this because ienzo was turned as a child, and by the time of zexion’s defeat he was quite clearly a young adult. namine also visibly ages between com and kh2, putting her in line with kairi’s visible ageing.

roxas and xion are stickier, but doylist explanation: giving them two models to express ageing in a game with low-poly models would be pointless, because the differences wouldn’t be discernible on the ds’s display. likewise, making them “14y/o” models for half of the days cutscene movie wouldn’t really be justifiable because they would never be used again.

“this is the opposite of what you said about ienzo though”, you might note, but i’ve gotta say it’s more significant when a change is made that requires more work/more space being taken up in a handheld title than when it isn’t. for example, bbs does not give ven, terra, and aqua different models for the flashback sequences despite it being stated that four years pass between ven arriving in the land of departure and the game’s plot beginning. this is bc bbs was shoving right up against the psp’s limitations, not an indication that 14y/o aqua was identical to 18y/o aqua.

ienzo is a “normal” nobody, and he ages. namine is an “anomaly” nobody, and she ages. doylist reasoning again is “roxas and xion were ageing, we just couldn’t dedicate the time and resources towards making new models for them”. days and bbs were in production at the same time, so roxas and xion not having two models apiece is likely for the same reason the wayfinder trio doesn’t visibly age over a longer period of time. they aren’t nobodies, so at the very least terra and aqua should be ageing naturally (there’s no indication that ven’s heart trauma halted his ageing either). the fact that this is not shown likely does not have a watsonian explanation possible. the doylist explanation is “fuck we ran out of space” and that’s most likely the explanation for days as well.

with this in mind, or, tl;dr:

ven, isa, and lea are peers close in age in bbs + nobodies age after being turned + 10 years from bbs to kh1 = isa and lea are in their late 20s by kh3. if we assume they were both 16 in bbs, which seems a safe bet, they would be 28 in kh3. either way they’re quite definitively adults.

so stop shipping them with teenagers you weirdos

#kh #cxnxpxs

[intotheventures]

KH2 is fanfiction (Revision + Addendum)

A response to khtrinityftw (BTW the REAL trinity is Birth By Sleep + 1 + Chain of Memories).

It contains:

- Yaoi bait: Yeah, there’s a difference between male relationships that fangirls seize on for yaoi shipping and relationships that are actively being written in a way that baits them. Sora/Riku and Axel/Roxas in KH2 was not in any way intentionally written to deliberately draw these fangirls in, Nomura didn’t even verbally acknowledge that he was aware of KH fangirls’ existence until after KH2 was already made. If you compare Sora and Riku’s dynamic in KH2 to their dynamic in 3D, there’s a very vivid difference. One is natural, and the other is true “yaoi bait”.

What is natural about Sora falling to his knees for Riku? Nothing. What did the added AkuRoku scenes in Final Mix add to the story? Nothing. Also “he made me feel like I had a heart” is cringy. 

- Shallow “badass” presentation: This is one of the terms this loser has NEVER defined, nor why it’s so bad, nor how the other games in the series beyond that he will defend at every turn in his never-ending quest to scream into the wind that KH2 is the devil are any better despite having even more blatant “badass” presentations.

Have you looked at a single reaction command? Sora chopping a building in half isn’t a shallow “badass” presentation? It’s all style, no substance, it’s more blatant than anything in any other KH game.

- Flanderized characters plus emo MC (Roxas): Again, no examples of how characters are Flanderized, nor anything backing up his repeated claims of how Roxas, a character with a very legitimate grievance to suffer angst over, is “emo”.

Sora became more idiotic (he wasn’t this dumb in DDD, contrary to popular belief, he was just blissfully unaware and let his guard down) and hostile, constantly taunting and insulting his opponents for little to no reason (contrary to popular belief, he was not like this in the other games), Kairi became a shallow love interest (was better in the manga though but not like she was in KH1′s game, unfortunately), Riku was more sullen, Namine only appeared for brief scenes and had little personality, and Roxas’ angst was really overdone. 

- Gary-Stu MC (Sora): No examples of how he’s a Gary-Stu, or if he is then how he isn’t one in the other games.

Too often he just magically solved the problems of various Disney characters, like Simba. He’s not a Gary-Stu in DDD because he ended up failing the exam after Xehanort rigged it, and his idiocy cost him greater than in KH2.

- Rushed pacing: No clarifications at to what he means and how it’s rushed (if anything, I’d say the pace can be too slow at points), or why he obsessively tries to tear down KH2 to prop up games with unquestionably worse pacing (like KH3, the game whose story barely has anything progressing in the beginning and middle, just the end.)

KH3 connects all of the worlds and is better at not having filler. A lot of things are just brought up and either resolved too quickly (like the “I can’t use the Keyblade!” scene or just dropped (”While you're there, the nature of that world may tempt you to do something dark. You must resist that temptation at all costs!”).

- A large cast, yet 90% of it is the Sora show: So 90% of the game is about the main character you play as for literally 90% of it!? No shit, Sherlock! And once again, failure to define how this sets KH2 apart from every other game where Sora is the main character.

None of the rest of the cast really contribute anything, most are just plot devices to pad out the character count. Kairi didn’t do anything better than she did in 1, Riku’s screentime was mostly spent lamenting about his very existence, HPO did nothing anyone else couldn’t have done, same with Namine, their roles are mostly interchangeable and obligatory. Plus KH2 had a much larger cast of OCs than KH1 + CoM so it's a much more glaring flaw.

Forgot to add a few more:

- Submit your own character: The Organization, as well as Hayner, Pence and Olette.

- Sex scene: Obviously none, but Kairi’s panties are close enough. In no other game was she used for fanservice/sex appeal.

- Dialogue that is either cringe or OOC: There is so much of this I don’t know where to begin.

“That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers!” (This sounded outdated in 2006) “Sorry, “Mommy”, your poopsies are toast!” (Cringe) “Hmph, maybe you should have kept some to yourself.” (This maybe fits Riku, but NOT Sora!) “You gonna cry?!” (OOC, and doesn’t make sense in context. Frustrated Jacob even made fun of this line.) ”I guess you think you can psych me out by saying really random stuff!” (Like the above, FJ made fun of it.) “Tough talk for someone who stood on the sidelines while his Nobody flunkies did all the fighting!” (WTF)

"[Maleficent]’s toast.” (Cringe, doesn’t sound cool in the least.) “Lowlife.” (OOC) “I bet you can’t even fight!” (OOC, just sounds like a prick) “Just give it a rest! You're Nobodies! You don't even exist! You're not sad about anything!” (He says this after meeting Axel, Roxas, and Namine. Plot hole + OOC) “Then stop moping and DO something!” (later) “Why stick around if he’s not even gonna try?” (later) “C’mon, Goofy.” (This is too OOC to be Sora.)

It also has elements of a songfic (KH2 Atlantica).

#anti kh2 #anti khtrinityftw #kh2 critical #khtrinityftw critical #kh2sucks #khtrinityftw sucks #and people say he was ooc in 3d? this is really off the mark #kh2 sucks

[zdbztumble]

What would you do if you were giving free reign over a KH Disney Plus series?

I can't say the answer would be very exciting: I'd do a traditionally animated adaptation of the first KH game, with as much of the original cast as possible (we'd probably need to forgo Haley Joel Osment for that season, since he'd never be able to replicate his child-voice from back then). Care would need to be taken in just how much of each Disney world is used to avoid filler and keep the story tight, but there's no need to reinvent what worked so, so well.

Assuming that was successful, later seasons would adapt CoM and KH II, though here, I might try and smooth out some of the retcons and contrivances and bridge certain gaps - maybe depict the birth and discovery of Roxas and Namine, for instance? And assuming I'd have this degree of license from Square, I'd take the step of ignoring Days and inventing my own storyline for Roxas and Organization XIII that would intercut with the events of CoM. HJO would come back after Sora hits puberty, obviously, and it'd be nice to bring some of Kairi's manga adventures into the KH II seasons as well. Depending on budget, I'd love to have the Pirates world of KH II done in live-action, with the real Pirates cast, and a real dog and duck for Goofy and Donald.

And, assuming I had total carte blanche, I'd wrap things up by ignoring KH III and just use this instead.

#kingdom hearts #ask #what if

[angel-with-a-pipette]

So...Uh... Can I say why I'm happy the series is giving Roxas the chance to be his own person? It's because any time KH2 looked at Roxas' situation from any perspective but his own, it always treated it like it's a good thing Roxas was assimilated into Sora against his will, and because he's not a real person, he should be glad that he got the chance to exist even though he doesn't deserve to. It's disgusting. Particularly when Namine losing her selfhood is treated as a happy ending.

Oh, you can always come forward and speak your mind! I’m always happy to engage in a conversation about my fandoms :)

I definitely see where you’re coming from there. Everything is depicted as a happy ending, but it wasn’t necessarily the happy ending people wanted to see for them. But for their perspective, it was.

Naminé never had a free will of her own, first she worked for Marluxia, then DiZ got her and she was pretty much always a tool that could be disposed of any time. Especially DiZ’s words were harsh (please excuse my lack of accuracy here, I only played CoM one time because of THAT CARD SYSTEM and I might have forgotten a lot that happened there) and made her truly believe that she was an abomination. She was called a witch earlier anyway, so she basically believed it and I think she did long for returning to her actual somebody, to end this kind of existence. She speaks to Roxas about being whole again and I think she very much meant it. That was what she learned during her existence and I honestly believe that it was a happy ending from her point of view. She was back where she supposedly belonged. She made peace with that and while obviously the audience could picture her living her own life, it’s likely she couldn’t (to be fair though, we never see her think about anything like that because the game doesn’t focus on that).

With Roxas it’s kind of the same except that he is struggling with the fact that he’s a Nobody a lot and it first takes his inner fight with Sora to come to peace with the fact that he is a Nobody and supposedly only able to exist with Sora. He somehow finds peace after that fight, with himself and with Sora, and again, it is shown as a “good” ending, but I understand when people aren’t satisfied with it and wish for a truly good and happy ending for both of them.

And I see that a lot of that games paint the Nobodies to be horrible creatures, but that was the point.The audience was supposed to thing they were abominations, but we were also supposed to see Demyx, who didn’t want to fade, Axel who gave his life to give Sora (Roxas) a chance and Roxas himself who was so desperate to live, who we had seen making friends, being happy, being a normal human being. We were supposed to question DiZ’s hard words and even Sora’s attitude - the boy who normally makes friends with everything and anything the world throws at him.

We also gotta be fair here that while DiZ and Sora both were wrong, they not only had valid reasons to be angry (DiZ because his apprentices cast him away and allowed for their home world to be destroyed, Sora because they a) keep making trouble for the worlds which leads to Riku still missing and b) kidnap Kairi as leverage over him and refuse to let him see her), but they both corrected their views. Ansem the Wise saw that he was wrong in harboring so much hatred and Sora got to see the other side.

I think they did transport to the audience that what happened might have been better for the worlds since Sora is the one who keeps the light safe, but they were also supposed to see that a lot of wrong things were going on and the Nobodies were treated wrongly. It might not have been executed perfectly, there is a lot glossing over and short deliveries.

So now onto your second part (I thought I’d break this up a little)

There's also the fact that Riku never apologizes to Roxas, or shows regret for ABDUCTING him and seemingly learning nothing from kh1 (and this is from someone who considers Riku his favorite character), even BOASTING about defeating him in kh2. And while Riku gave Xion a chance to say no, he never gives that same choice to Roxas. Heck, Roxas seems to view himself as being subhuman in DDD and I'm so, so GLAD that that's not depicted as a good thing.        

I think Riku’s oppositional treatment of Roxas and Xion probably stems from the fact that 358/2 Days has been released after KH2 :/  Riku had already reacted the way he did with Roxas, they couldn’t take that back and I guess to avoid a repeat of the same story line, they made him go another way with Xion? I can only speculate there, maybe they did realize that his treatment of Roxas doesn’t fit his character arc, maybe they wanted to spice things up, maybe Riku was hesitant to do anything but as soon as he got all of Sora’s memories in one place, he felt forced to finally act, maybe Riku actually had a hard time to do something about Xion because she looks like Kairi and Roxas doesn’t look like Sora (although we are led to believe in KH2 that they are basically twins with different hair, so I don’t really know).

But there’s also the fact that with Roxas, Riku is forced to take action immediately. Roxas was basically on a suicide mission, he wanted to free Kingdom Hearts and go after Organization XIII which would’ve let to his destruction. Riku wasn’t aware of the fact that this would’ve led to the restoration of Sora, so he captured Roxas before he could do so. Though I think we can actually doubt Roxas’s destruction would’ve helped Sora become whole again as his Heartless technically has never been truly defeated.

Aaaanyways, again, I see where you come from and it would’ve been interesting to see Riku react for the first time in one and the same game to both Roxas and Xion. Like it is now, I really find it hard to compare because 358/2 Days messes with a lot of KH2 and frankly, I have huge issues with that.

I do however very much agree with you that I’m glad Sora doesn’t view Roxas (or ‘good’ Nobodies) as subhumans anymore and wishes for Roxas to exist on his own. Hell, I would’ve loved to see the fight and actual struggle between Sora and Roxas from their KH2 fight, Coded and the Dream Drop Distance moment in a separate game actually. I mean I’m glad as it is that it has been addressed (AND THANKFULLY NOT ONLY IN CODED), but... I would’ve preferred that over 358/2 Days? :X I’m sorry, I have too many issues with being underwhelmed with it as a part of the series, as a standalone game, the story would’ve been fine for me xDDD

I hope my ramblings have been somewhat understandable? I do understand the other side too, though, and I am very much on the fence whether or not I want Roxas and Xion (and Naminé, let us never forget about her) to be Somebodies in KH3. I do think that their storyline is finished and all of them found peace in their own ways, but I also see and understand that people wish for them to have more, to have a real chance at life.

#Roxas #Naminé #Riku #Xion #KH2 #DiZ #KH #Days #KH3 #anonymous #Alja answers

[nadziejastar]

If BbS V2 really was what you theorized they might have been better off planning it as a series of shorts. A game about filling in the gaps of other games was probably a very hard sell for executives, regardless of how much the overall saga would benefit from it. With shorts it would be perfectly normal to jump around, there wouldn't have to be a flimsy excuse to shoehorn in Disney worlds if they weren't necessary for the story, and it might even be cheaper if 2D animation was acceptable.

— So what will it be?

I can’t say that quite yet, but it will be more “official” than a side story. I actually told the producer this recently, and he said “…what?” It’s the mystery KH. (laugh) Of course, I am also thinking about KH3.

— In an interview in the KH Days Ultimania, you said ‘I’m thinking of a mystery KH that made the producer go “what??”‘. Was that KH3D?

No, it wasn’t. I originally planned to make that after KHBBS, but we ended up making KH3D and the project was stopped. It’s a shame, but we won’t be starting that project again.

I think you are correct. The premise of the game seemed very weird and that’s probably a big reason why it got cancelled. But the story still really needed all the loose ends tied up in some way. FFXV got a short animated series called Brotherhood. I totally think KH3 could have benefited from something like that to fill in all the blanks. And fans would love seeing a 2D animated version of KH. I know I would.

The biggest issue the series had was that it was spread out across so many different handhelds. But the HD collections solved that problem. If the shorts were included in the HD collection, or made freely available, it could have worked really well. It’s no worse than making so much of KH3′s plot tie into Union X, which is less accessible than Brotherhood, for example.

A game about “blank points” was probably just too weird from a gameplay perspective, which I understand. I also agree about the Disney worlds. That also seemed like it might have been an issue. KH games suffer when the Disney worlds aren’t incorporated well. This isn’t an issue in games that feature new worlds like KH1, KH2, KHBBS, or KH3D. Even Days was mostly fine IMO. The worst offenders were CoM and Re:Coded which felt like the Disney worlds were just obligations and their plots were tired rehashes. KHUX Disney worlds were also very strange, too. Even 3D was weird since it used sleeping worlds. Stuff like that is why the series gets lambasted as being too confusing/convoluted.

— What about the missing 0.3?

We thought to tell the story of 0.5 with all three characters, but instead we decided on 0.2 with a focus on Aqua.

Honestly, I can’t even think of how Disney worlds would be incorporated into a lot of the “blank points” story. Nomura said KH0.5 was supposed to feature all of the wayfinder trio. Does that mean they would be playable? I dunno. Aqua was in the Dark Realm. That was a very unconventional world. It had Disney-themed locations, but it’s still not technically a Disney world. Story-wise, it was also unconventional, since she just spent all that time talking to herself until she briefly teamed up with Mickey.

I have no idea what Nomura planned to do with Ventus. Dream world? Or flashbacks to how he met Xehanort? Or he just wasn’t gonna be playable? Then there’s Terra, who was living as apprentice Xehanort and possessed. I don’t see how that functions gameplay-wise, unless it was something weird like you playing as the Lingering Will or something. There was the whole subplot of Namine communicating to the Lingering Will, which was poorly handled.

— Which worlds did Pluto travel when he had that letter?

I can say that he appeared in worlds that do not appear in the game [KH1]…. well, other than the current worlds, there are other worlds that the Heartless erased. The End of the World did not exist at first and is a world that is made up of erased worlds put together. Also, there is that place the door to Kingdom Hearts appears. At first that was another world, so that means that Sora and the others are now residing in that world which returned to what it once was.

— After debugging Traverse Town, the King says to Sora, “That day, your travels began here. Also on that day, I was here too.” Does that mean that the King was in the same place at the same time as Sora adventured into Traverse Town in Kingdom Hearts I?Seems so. What he was actually doing becomes the previously mentioned “blank time period”, but in this title, it’s implying that the two crossed paths in the same place.

Mickey probably would have been playable. In Blank Points, we saw him in the Dark Realm, and his blank period in Traverse Town was something Nomura specifically said he wanted to show. I guess he might have visited Disney worlds with Pluto and we could have played in those? I don’t know if that world that was shown in the end of KH1, the grassy place with the crossroads, was supposed to be important. It sounded like Nomura wanted to explain why Pluto was there with Mickey’s letter, though.

— About the World of Darkness and such, you haven’t gone into detail. Could you possibly talk about some of these things? Does the beach at the beginning and end of KH II have some connection to the World of Darkness?

Presently there are 4 main untold stories to consider: “the period of the King’s absence”, “the period of Riku’s absence”, “Roxas’s time in Organization XIII” and “Xehanort’s past”. In this case, the story of “the period of the King’s absence” is set in the realm of darkness. I am examining a way to tell these 4 stories so I might be able to find a way to tell them soon.

Young Xehanort’s past was another blank period. Him visiting Disney worlds is…possible, I guess. The best candidate for visiting Disney worlds is Riku, though. Nomura said he wanted to cover Riku’s period of absence, which probably includes KH1-2. In KH1, he was a bad guy and in Blank Points, he was shown in Neverland. Monstro is another possibility and that might have been intended to connect to the Monstro subplot in KH3D with Dark Riku. We also saw Riku in Twilight Town watching Roxas and Xion, so his Days period is open. Then there’s his period of absence in KH2, which opens up those worlds. In the novels, we know Riku spent most of his time in KH2 with Namine and Axel, and he also kept an eye on Sora, like during The Land of Dragons and the Beast’s Castle.

I didn’t notify you but you might’ve already heard from Yen Sid-sama. I’ve come to train to become a Keyblade wielder. Until now, I’ve only been waiting for you guys to come back from your journey. Maybe with this I can at least help out a little.

The magician Merlin-sama can use magic that surpasses time. Here, we can forget about the flow of time. Isn’t it great? Lea’s training with me. He apologized to me over and over again. It’s alright, I’d say, but he’d keep on apologizing…

At first I was a bit scared but as we trained together we started talking to each other. I found out Lea also has a best friend he wants to save. I felt like, he’s not a person that I can bring myself to hate…

Sometimes….. He’d stare at my face, so I’d ask him, what’s wrong? “I don’t know, but I feel like it’s something I must recall”, he’d say…

Your journey is a journey that will help many people and the people you’ll meet from now on. I have a feeling these people you meet will also need your help. The journey might be hard but please stay as the cheerful and bright Sora I know. Because your smile, will save many hearts…..

Then there’s Lea and Kairi. I guess we could have played through their training and the world could be based on The Sword in the Stone? I figured that was what the forest area in KH3 was supposed to be, but I dunno. Then they could have flashbacks during their training. I think we were definitely supposed to get more scenes of Lea and Kairi talking to each other, where she learns that he has a best friend he wants to save. It was obviously referring to Isa. KH3D was all about Lea looking for him, and he summoned his Keyblade immediately after learning that Isa was a vessel.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see where that subplot was going. Lea was training to rescue Isa. Roxas being Axel’s “best friend” in KH2 was supposed to be a red herring—a pretty well-written one at that. People just didn’t pick up on it due to Roxas’s popularity bias. I doubt Lea would have told Kairi all the details of him and Isa being human test subjects. Like, she still didn’t understand why he didn’t wanna take off his black coat in KH3. But he’d tell her enough to know that he has a best friend who is a vessel and we’d learn what happened. It would have made their closeness in KH3 a lot more understandable if Kairi knew about his past. In his heart, he could tell that Kairi was Xion, too. And that’s how I’m gonna do it in my fanfic. :)

After KHBBSV2 was cancelled, Lea had no backstory anymore, so I guess we were just supposed to conclude that Lea was referring to Roxas in Kairi’s letter when he said he wanted to save his best friend. Which is just…dumb and insulting to the audience’s intelligence. Lea knew even in 358/2 Days that Roxas looked like Ventus. He said he kept it a secret from Roxas, so he obviously knew for a long time. It sounded like he realized it as soon as he met him, which is why he got so nostalgic for his childhood right after meeting Roxas.

Before he started his training with Kairi, he also knew that Ventus was one of the lost Keyblade wielders they were all looking for. Up until Yen Sid’s tower, Lea thought that Ventus was going to remember him as Axel. That’s how he was going to reunite with “Roxas”. He had no reason to think he needed to rescue “Roxas”, since that was Sora’s job and he was handling that. Of course he was referring to Isa in that letter.

Eh, I dunno. It’s possible we’d get to play as young Lea during his flashbacks in Radiant Garden. During the experiments, maybe he was tasked with Heartless clean-up duty inside the castle. He doesn’t have a Keyblade, though. Just his frisbees. It’d be unusual to have him be playable, but not impossible. If so, that opens up the castle, like the Hollow Bastion areas from KH1. All in all, the gameplay part of BBSV2 seemed pretty strange and the Disney worlds didn’t seem completely necessary, either. I think a series of animated shorts could have worked phenomenally well.

[nadziejastar]

It really bothers me that the "Axel the assassin" angle has been quietly gone. In CoM he was deadly, KH2 goes so far as to call his underlings Assassins, in Days you can make the argument that he's going out of his way to not let the kids know about that side of him, but by the time of KH3 he's completely lost any sense of danger and is instead the comic relief.

Ugh, I hate it too. Everything about Axel suggested that he had a horribly tragic backstory, along with Isa. Axel’s been reduced to comic relief now. What a crock. Talk about character assassination. No pun intended. He was the only one along with Isa who was recompleted with the black coat on. And he can still use the corridors of darkness as a human. But not just use them. This is important: He can create them.

Riku: I’ll open a path!

Mickey: You don’t belong in the dark realm anymore, Riku.

Riku couldn’t do this after getting rid of Xehanort’s Heartless.

Ienzo: There’s no place that he could go now that he’s human. He has no means of leaving this world.

Mickey: The dark corridors—

Ienzo: Are beyond his faculties and mine now.

And in KH3, when everyone is looking for Even, Ienzo says that they can’t use the corridors of darkness anymore, either. They could only do it as Nobodies. So, it’s not a technology thing. Apparently it’s extremely rare for regular people to have the ability to create these corridors. What made Lea so special? Sadly, I highly doubt this will ever come up again.

My choice to befriend darkness here in the midst of nothingness was a sound one. The moment I stared straight ahead with a calm heart, neither rejecting darkness nor fearing it, I gained a newfound power. A superhuman power—the power of darkness. It is likely Xehanort and the others were enraptured by this power, eventually becoming its prisoners. I do not intend to allow my heart to be devoured by the darkness, as they did, of course. With this new power, I uncovered a “corridor of darkness” that connects the realm of nothingness to the outside world. While it is still difficult to come and go as I please, my banishment is now a thing of the past.

DiZ learned how to use the corridors when he was trapped in the Realm of Darkness. He calmly accepted the darkness without fear, and then gained the ability.

Riku: No vessel, no help from the Heartless… So tell me, how’d you get here?

Beast: I simply believed. Nothing more to it. When our world fell into darkness, Belle was taken from me. I vowed I would find her again no matter what the cost. I believed I would find her. So, here I am. She must be here. I will have her back!

Then there was the Beast. He used a corridor due to his desire to find Belle.

Nomura: There is one more method, the use of the “Dark Corridor”. There are those who are on a fallen path, essentially not being on the path they should be. Only those who can be said to have a Dark existence or an In-between existence can make these doorways. On rare occasion those with particularly strong feelings or hatred, such as the case with Beast and DiZ and perhaps others like them can open these paths. However you must be careful when coming into contact with such darkness. As such, if you use these paths too often you will be completely swallowed by darkness. Sora has used these paths several times before, but the degree of frequency hasn’t allowed the darkness to stain his heart, so you can think of the influential power of darkness as being dependent upon the strength of the persons heart.

But Nomura specifies that it’s strong feelings of hatred that open these paths.

The distant days spent in that beautiful paradise are an illusion to me now. How long have I been here, banished to the realm of nothingness? It is only by relying upon my anger and hatred that I have been able to retain my sense of self here where all existence is nullified. My heart is being overcome with hatred toward my apprentices, possessed by the darkness, and with the anger I feel for stupidly allowing myself to be betrayed. Is this darkness, eating away at my heart? I cannot continue to idle away my time here. What are Xehanort and the others attempting to do? I must unravel the mystery of these Ansem’s Reports, intercept my apprentices, and defeat them. That is my mission…the only way to repay the world for my sins.

DiZ wanted revenge, and the Beast wanted to murder anyone who took Belle. It’s all consistent with Lea being a subject on the experiments of the darkness of the heart. He’s a very unique person to be able to create the corridors of darkness. Being recompleted didn’t instantly get rid of his hatred.

Lea: You know what? I’ll bring ‘em back myself.

Ienzo: Huh? How, exactly?

Lea: Why do I always get stuck with the icky jobs?

He was feeling enough hatred at this moment to open a corridor. He must have been feeling like the Beast. He wanted Isa back, like the Beast wanted Belle. But not just that. He would murder anyone in his way. His intentions on bringing Braig back were probably not so nice. So why does he have so much hatred compared to the other members? Well, here’s a passage from the KH2 novel. It’s after Sora leaves the castle during the 1000 Heartless fight.

Just after Sora and his friends rushed outside because of the noise…a man in a black cloak stole into the empty computer lab.

The screen displayed a picture of a man with a white beard.

Axel quietly pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of bright red hair. He squinted, leaning closer to peer at the screen.

But there was something else that grabbed his attention more than the man in the picture—something about the computer system itself.

The interface looked familiar. It was a lot like the one the computers in the organization headquarters used. That wasn’t the only thing giving Axel déjà vu. He stared at the screen…

He recognizes the computer from the data Twilight Town.

“…What are you doing here?” said a voice behind him. Axel spun around to find another man in black standing there. Seeing that Axel was ready to fight, the newcomer pushed his hood back and shifted his shoulders.

“Ansem… Oh, Riku, it’s you.” Axel breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing the face. “Don’t scare me like that, okay? I got people after me, y’know.”

“Well, if so, you should be a little more cautious.” Riku pulled up his hood again and went to join Axel in front of the computer. “You’re weak anyway,” he added, and a small laugh escaped him.

“Wh— Hey, I just let my guard down for—”

“So this is Ansem’s computer?” Riku interrupted Axel’s protest.

“Who’s the man in this picture?”

“Beats me.” Axel shrugged.

Hold up. Axel doesn’t recognize Ansem the Wise?

“…I thought someone in the organization would be more help.”

“I’m not in the organization!” Ignoring Axel, Riku began typing on the keyboard, and the screen displayed some data about the man. It seemed Sora and the others had left the information unlocked.

How were you an apprentice if you don’t even recognize Ansem the Wise?

“…Ansem? …That’s the real Ansem?” Riku murmured, reading the text above the picture. Beside him, Axel stayed quiet. A little while back, when he and Riku had exchanged information, they’d both come to understand that the man who called himself Ansem had only stolen Ansem’s name.

And he only found out recently from Riku that Xehanort wasn’t really Ansem? People just dismiss it and say the novels aren’t canon, but I don’t think that’s a satisfactory explanation at all. They do deviate from the games, sure. Axel and Riku are working behind the scenes in the KH2 novel. But the story only deviates in ways that enhance canon.

Like, in the KH2 novels Namine can tell that Axel has a heart. Axel is way more important and has more interaction with the good guys, and his relationship with Saix got more focus than it did in KH2. Stuff like that. The writer was obviously told the whole story ahead of time, and wrote the novels to be consistent with that. If Lea was envisioned as an apprentice, surely the writer would have known that as well. She was one of the main scenario writers for Days. She basically created Xion. Of course she’d know if Lea was an apprentice.

“Oh!” Axel blurted.

“What is it?”

“I remember now! The screen looks like that computer in Twilight Town!” he exclaimed with certainty. The details of the system interface were the same. The one in Twilight Town had seemed more advanced, though. As if this one was its predecessor.

“It has the same layout and the functions. That computer was managing Twilight Town, and this one is managing Hollow Bastion. Both of these systems were developed for town administration. There’s no way anyone else could’ve designed this. It has to mean they both have the same creator.” As Axel rushed to explain, Riku only kept staring silently at the computer.

“…So where did the real Ansem go?” Axel said finally.

“There is one person whose true identity we don’t know,” Riku muttered. At that, Axel looked up from the screen, meeting Riku’s eyes.

They’re talking about DiZ. Axel doesn’t seem to know anything about Ansem the Wise. But he does know about using the dark corridors—the D.T.D.

#kh meta #kh axel #kh lea #kh ansem

[yasuda-yoshiya]

I haven't delved much into KH lore, but I think there's something wrong when the main character is shoehorned into a plot that's essentially the same from the previous arcs repetitively along with a character that seems to be the love interest, while several others you never got to play as (or very temporarily playable), gets much further characterization and their new resolutions. The only ones that are interesting in Sora's party is Donald and Goofy btw. Anything about Riku and Mickey though?

Hmm, well, strictly from a storytelling perspective, I think I basically agree with you! Pretty much all the really interesting plot developments and character moments in KH3 are completely divorced from the person whose PoV you’re stuck inhabiting for most of the game, and Sora pretty much spends the whole game doing absolutely nothing of any importance while all the actual plot progression happens away from him. And in terms of what makes a good story, yeah, that’s basically terrible, but I honestly feel like I can basically understand why they did it because frankly, Kingdom Hearts as a series is in a very weird position at this point. The main appeal of the series to the vast majority of the casual audience is its supposed “Disney magic” and getting to explore the worlds from various Disney movies, but the actual main plot of the series at this point is an absolutely impenetrable and convoluted mess of original characters and plot threads that’s about as far away from any kind of “Disney magic” as you could possibly get.

With that in mind, it pretty much makes sense to me that they’d want to just shove the main plot out of the way entirely for most of the game and just focus on Sora’s random adventures in Disney worlds, because it’s honestly gotten to the point where the presence of the main plot actively detracts from the supposed central appeal of the game for most people. It allows KH3 to be enjoyable as a stand-alone experience to the average person who doesn’t give a crap about the overarching mess of the Kingdom Hearts plot and just wants to enjoy some Disney fanservice (and let’s be real, this probably describes at least 80% of the people who actually bought the game). Games like KH1, Days and BBS could manage to do a passable job of integrating some characterisation and plot development into the Disney stuff without being too jarring to the casual audience, because those games told basically self-contained stories. You don’t need to be a KH Lore Maniac to follow, say, Ven’s character arc through BBS. But KH3? KH3′s plot is all about tying up loose ends and resolving the stories of various characters from other games. Nothing about KH3′s plot makes any sense or has any real impact as a standalone, and it would probably be a fool’s errand to even try to make it work as one, because it just has way too much baggage from the ongoing series-wide plot that it has to resolve. So rather than trying to give Sora a quest that actually ties into the main plot in some way, they just decided to put the plot to one side and lean into unapologetic filler instead. I can sort of respect that.

The way I see it is… well, let’s put it this way. As a Kingdom Hearts fan, I could totally draw up an alternative outline for KH3 that has Sora making more of a meaningful journey and progress throughout the game, and integrates the main plot into the Disney stuff better. The focus of KH3 is about Sora saving the hearts and healing the pain of the people connected to him, the people whose pain was forgotten until now. So why not make the plots of the Disney worlds focus more on having him come to understand these people better, to get more of a focus on why it’s so important to bring them back? Let’s have the Olympus Coliseum chapter involve a subplot where, say, Sora finds out from Phil about the time Roxas spent training there in Days, and Phil talks about how much potential he showed and how he really misses the kid. Let’s spend more time explicitly drawing a connection between the toys having hearts in Toy Story and the way Xion developed her own heart despite being an artificially created puppet. Let’s parallel Rapunzel’s situation in Tangled with Namine’s in CoM, and make the plot of that world about Sora regaining the memories he lost from CoM (heck, Marluxia’s even right there and briefly brings this up in the actual game already!), reminding him of just how much Namine suffered and how much she deserves to be saved. And so on, and so on.

And that would probably make for a much more solid and cohesive game, and give the overall plot a lot more weight… but could you actually realistically present that kind of plot in a way that wasn’t totally alienating to the casual audience? Are you really going to be able to give enough emotional context for the average uninitiated player to grasp and care about all these different plotlines just through flashbacks and exposition? Are there really that many people who actually want to see the plot of Tangled used as a vehicle to revisit the plot of a 2004 GBA game, or are people just going to be frustrated at these hugely popular Disney movies being taken over by weird anime OCs they don’t care about? Professional reviewers are quite understandably panning the game already just for the very minimal intrusions of the convoluted main plot into the Disney stuff “breaking the magic” as it is, so it’s hard for me to imagine that any more of that would really be well-received by and large, however much the story might technically benefit from it. This is the sort of problem we run into when a game has to try and simultaneously appease two distinct audiences with entirely different priorities. Giving the main plot a very minimal presence for most of the game and then shoving the entire resolution into the last few hours is an imperfect solution, but I’m also not really sure what else they could realistically have done, given the setup KH3 had to work with.

In the end, I’m basically content with the compromise. I think they did a decent job of making a game that stays mostly enjoyable and accessible as a wacky Disney adventure for the casual audience, while still tying up most of the big overall plot threads that needed to be tied up in a reasonably satisfying way (a few very questionable writing choices aside… but it’s Kingdom Hearts, what else is new). It would have been nice to have had more build-up and substance to these characters’ resolutions, and to actively focus more of the game on them, as you suggest - but the more time the game spends pandering to overall series fans, the more time it also spends alienating everyone else. I think in the end we just have to accept that the build-up and context for their resolutions was in the previous games, that the people who really care about the series’ story will have played those games already, and for the people who haven’t, it just probably wasn’t worth devoting too much effort to trying to make them care within KH3 itself. That’s my take on it, at least.

On Riku and Mickey... hm, well, aside from them obviously being OTP material as always, neither of them really got to do much in this game? So I don’t really have much to say about them in particular. I thought the idea of Riku feeling a personal connection to Aqua’s plight as someone trapped in the darkness was sweet, but then they didn’t really do anything with that or let them actually interact at all in the end, so it felt like wasted potential. The BBS characters in this game were just a big disappointment in general, really! They could easily have done much more with them than they did, without even changing the structure of the story much... but, uh, I’m talking about Riku, sorry. I feel like Riku’s never really done much for me as a character, beyond like, KH1 and maybe CoM. I can see the outline of his arc on paper, and it seems fine and potentially interesting, but the execution has always felt pretty by-the-book and lacking in nuance to me. They talk very generally about him “falling to darkness” and such, but they don’t ever get beyond that into actually having him wrestle with his guilt over specific things, like his time working with DiZ or kidnapping the princesses or contributing to Roxas and Xion’s sacrifices, so it all feels a bit too broad to particularly connect with - and it’s sort of hard for me to really give weight to things like “I wore a blindfold for a whole year because I couldn’t stand looking at myself”, when that’s juxtaposed with him flipping right back to being a perfectly functional and confident hero without much apparent struggle or lasting difficulty after just a few platitudes from Sora. It’s sort of like they flip between being broadly melodramatic about his issues and shrugging them off completely? So he’s never really clicked with me, personally.

Meanwhile, Mickey is kind of hard for me to take all that seriously as a character beyond the memes, since... I mean, he’s Mickey Mouse, so there’s a big mental block there, lol. But even if I put that aside and look at his writing in KH in isolation, he never really felt like a particularly deep or interesting character or anything, I think? His relationship with Riku is very sweet, though!

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts iii