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smartzelda · 4 years

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An Essay (mostly for Soriku shippers looking through the Sokai lens)

So first, before you read this, I would suggest checking out my post on the Sokai vs Soriku lenses (https://smartzelda.tumblr.com/post/189934176949/trying-on-different-lenses)

One off, honestly from what I've learned this year, multiple Sokai scenes aren't as romantic as they seem to be either on the surface or because of mistranslation, and there's not much Sokai in any of the games really. The Sokai really comes up and hits you in the face, and it's because Sora will just not mention it even think of Kairi for length at a time, and then suddenly there's a parallel made in Sora's head (looking at you kh2), but even then, after kh2, that doesn't happen anymore. Kh1 is praised as the best game for Sokai, and that's valid. There's Sora wanting to share a paopu, Sora and Kairi promising to see each other again, Kairi giving Sora the lucky charm as a promise they would find each other, and even Kairi finishing the paopu drawing and crying when looking at it. Though, I would not go as far to say that Sora is completely in love with Kairi. First of all, it's because Sora confirms that he doesn't know what love is in kh3, and two, there's not much suggesting Sora's in love with her, and I'll explain why. After destiny islands falls to darkness and Sora lands in traverse town, he spends a couple worlds asking people where Kairi AND Riku are. Throughout the game, except for a parallel or two (though I can't remember if there are any or not) maybe, he expresses his concern for both Kairi and Riku. He doesn't start to switch gears on that till Riku proves he's on the side of the enemy, but even then Sora tries to reason with him so he can get his friend back. Sora does not care for love in this game really. If anything, he cares for his friends. Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't include a few scenes, and it's simple. I didn't include Sora stabbing himself in the heart because it can easily be taken as something different than "an act of true love". As I stated, Sora makes it clear that he cares a lot more for friendship in this game. Riku's possessed by Ansem, and he wants to save Kairi, so it's no biggie that he sacrifices himself for a friend because he would do it for any of his friends. We know that. You probably wonder too why I didn't add Kairi hugging Sora as love on Sora's part, and that's simple too. It could have been on Kairi's part, but Sora confirms in Twilight Town in kh3 that it was the light from Donald, Goofy, and Kairi and their wants for his return that brought him back. It was not simply Kairi's love that brought him back from being a heartless. We could say that Kairi's in love with Sora, but based on the evidence, there's no way Sora's in love with Kairi at this point of kh1, and even if he was, he could not identify it. But because of a couple scenes and the fact that Kairi is Sora's light in this game, I would say he has a crush on her. Also, I'm going to add that he easily could've hopped the gap and gone with Kairi to destiny islands, but because he cares about having his friends all together over just being like "yeah I love you" and going with Kairi, he decides to go find Riku because what he wants is for the three if them to be together again.

Now onto Chain of memories. This game is also attributed to being a Sokai game because people look at it and go, "Well, Naminé replaced Kairi in Sora's memories and Sora is in love with Naminé at the end meaning that he's in love with Kairi", which is not the case. At the beginning when Sora is let into the castle, Sora answers Marluxia's question of who he misses with Riku. We can argue on that forever on why he said that, but I'm still arguing that he can miss Kairi whether she's safe or not and still miss her, even if he misses Riku too and is looking for Riku. He has been apart from both of them for nearly the same amount of time, and if he was in love with her, he probably either would've said both their names, or just Kairi's, but again, that's just my argument. So, continuing on, I admit that during the worlds, Sora does look at the lucky charm and talk about Kairi. However, the beginning of this game still keeps Sora's goal of finding Riku and bringing his friends back solid. Even when Naminé enters Sora's memories initially, his want to find her is because

1. According to his memories she just disappeared

And 2. He can't believe he forgot a friend and wants to find her and make it up to her.

Then, even when Naminé does replace Kairi in Sora's memories initially, he just has a want to find her because she's in danger. When he talks to Repliku and Repliku pushes him away, he acts a lot like kh1 Riku did. Repliku pretends like he loves her and that he's gonna go find her because he wants to drill into Sora that now he's gonna be alone. Initially, Repliku does this to get his feelings across that he feels like Sora left him alone (leftover from Riku's memories) and never cared about him or his feelings. This is where it takes a turn for the different though. Obviously, just switching Kairi with Naminé in Sora's memories does not make him in love with her. No, there's a very specific memory mentioned that marks a sort of turning point for how Sora acts. This is a key memory that relates to why Sora is in love with Naminé (and Riku, but I'll explain). Before this, Sora's trying to get Riku back as his friend. He tries to spur Riku (repliku) to go with him to save Naminé because he wants them all to be friends again. Things don't escalate further, make any idea of bringing Repliku over to his side unattainable, until the meteor shower promise memory comes up.

So anyways, the meteor shower promise is a key memory. Before this memory comes up, Repliku is much like kh1 Riku. He uses Naminé to get to Sora. To get his feelings of being abandoned and left behind by Sora across, he says stuff like "she doesn't wanna see your face" or "you never cared about her feelings", then it slips out that he's probably talking about his own feelings under the guise of Naminé's feelings because he says "you never cared" and "you're always trying to worm your way into my heart". So obviously, he's mad at being abandoned by Sora and is trying to get all that across, but is also trying to get Sora to feel alone cause "look, now you're alone because Naminé and I are together." This is basically what kh1 Riku does with Kairi, and Nomura confirms in the kh1 ultimania that it's not due to love that Riku tries to save Kairi, but because of his feelings of guilt. Kh1 Riku also uses Kairi to get Sora to feel alone and, get across how he feels about being abandoned, and to get Sora back onto his side, thinking about and focusing on him. There's a switch between Repliku's attitude when the meteor shower memory comes up, and neither of them are in love with Naminé until this memory enters. Maybe Sora has a crush on Naminé before this, but as with in kh1 he cares more about friendship than anything else, and he's not in love with her until the meteor shower promise is a memory of her and him. Same with Repliku, after the promise comes up, his attitude changes, and it's clear that he really could care less about Sora (again, I'll explain more of Repliku's side later) and only wants to protect Naminé. There's something interesting, funny even, about this promise, and it's because there's no way this is a memory where Naminé simply replaced Kairi. It's not because Naminé created the memory completely because when she expresses how terrible she feels for what she did, she assures Sora that she didn't create any new memories. The reason that this memory that spurs Sora and Repliku to love Naminé can't have been one with Kairi in it is because the promise was the night of the meteor shower, and Kairi arrived that night. And it can't be that Riku and Sora met her that night because kh1 brings up a memory of Riku and Sora's where they discover the secret place for the first time, and in this scene, Sora asks if he's heard about Kairi, the new girl, the mayor's daughter, wondering if Riku's heard anything about her because they've only heard of her. They knew she came the night of the meteor shower, but had never seen her. This means that the meteor shower promise had to have been between Sora and Riku. Funny that it's not just Naminé replacing Kairi that gets Sora to fall in love with her, but her finally replacing Riku in a key memory. Maybe he has feelings of love from his memories, but even though he knows it's fake now, he still uses that promise to assure her that he'll protect her, and after she does confesses that, he also shifts back to his more friendship approach. He wants to bring Naminé AND Repliku out of it safely, no matter what's happened (don't get me started with Sora telling Repliku that he's his own person with his own heart and feelings and Repliku telling him that he can tell Sora's feelings are genuine and that he can feel them). Sora probably doesn't remember the meteor shower promise after CoM because of the whole memory thing, but because Sora doesn't remember much from when he was so little, it's safe to say that the meteor shower promise was a memory stuck down in his heart and that he has more important memories stuck in the darkness of his heart like Naminé said. Now, it's safe to say that after a symbolism thing, Kairi is still Sora's light cause they do a light tunnel where Riku's to the side and the light shines through Kairi, however, I again would say that his feelings for Kairi are not of love, but a crush.

So, back to Repliku's side, it's obvious at the beginning that Kairi is replaced in his memory with Naminé as well, but he doesn't actually love her, doesn't switch from kh1 Riku acting towards Sora till the meteor shower promise. Basically, he doesn't love Naminé until Sora is essentially the Kairi of his memories and Naminé is the Sora of his memories. Riku has been shown in the future, time and time again, to put others aside, do bad things to people, for the sake of keeping Sora safe or bringing him back. So when Sora is replaced by Naminé in this key memory of Riku's original memories, Repliku could care less about Sora as long as Naminé is safe, and this is illustrated by his switch in not acting like kh1 Riku towards Sora anymore. After this switch, he makes it clear he does not care about Sora and even goes to attack him, fight him, for Naminé's sake before Naminé puts him down with her power. So, again, it's telling that to finally get either one in love with her, Naminé had to replace the other in a key memory of Sora and Riku's

So, now we got days. I'm giving Kairi a pass on not remembering Sora for a year because she at least knew that something was missing. She knew that there was someone besides Kairi and she didn't completely forget. However, it is also telling for Riku how even though he doesn't completely remember Sora, he holds onto his memory of him and his want to protect and bring him back so hard that he remembers that. He still has memories of Sora. This game is also hailed to be a "look a Sokai game" for a couple reasons. First, people take when Riku says that Kairi's most important to Sora. They take it as a "look, even Riku confirms he loves her" when in fact that might not be exactly what's going on. Sure Riku says that, but if he has no hope at all of Sora liking him like that after kh1 and thinks he's in love with Kairi based on his own anxiety of what he did to Sora and what he saw with Sora putting her over him at times and knowing he has a crush, of course he would say that. He would have no hope of Sora liking him and would think he could only love Kairi. He would even suggest that at that point because it's his dark period and he feels like his own presence is bad to Sora and Kairi and Sora deserve each other after what he's done. We also know that you can't take everything a character says at face value because in kh3 Sora and Riku think and even say that Dark Riku IS Riku from when he's possessed by Ansem before it actually comes out that they were wrong and that Dark Riku in the keyblade graveyard is another version of Repliku. So really, it's not that far fetched to think that Riku saying Kairi is Sora's most important person may be a misled observervation or even something he says based on his own anxiety rather than the complete truth. Another is the existence of Xion. Naminé says in com that Sora has to recover memories most important to him to wake up. All these memories involve Kairi, hence Xion's appearance. However, I would argue that these memories would be important to Sora whether it was Kairi or Riku or someone in them. Many are likely important because he lost them and some are for key development (Imma touch on this later again). Not all of these memories are strictly Sora and Kairi only memories since Naminé implanted herself in every instance of Kairi in those memories. Naminé has Sora hold onto the idea of Kairi because since Kairi is the thing missing in most of those memories, thinking about Kairi will return them to normal with Kairi in them. This has nothing to do with whether Kairi is Sora's most important person, so it doesn't mean too much that Xion looks like Kairi. The last reason people attribute Days as a Sokai game is because Rokushi. Yes, I'm serious. Don't get me wrong, I ship Rokushi, but they are not a Sokai clone. Roxas may be Sora's nobody, but he barely shares memories with him at that point and becomes a completely different person with different memories, a differentish personality, differentish motivations, and his own heart. Roxas doesn't care about Xion as much as he does because "she looks like Kairi and he's Sora". He cares about her because of their memories together. And on Xion's side, besides looking like Kairi, she's nothing like Kairi. If anything, she's a smarter Sora and based on Riku's observations in the days novel, she bears similar personality and anxiety stuff to Sora. Then, even then, as with Roxas, Xion is also her own person with her own heart. Whether Roxas and Xion get together or not have nothing to do with Sokai.

Now for kh2. It is indeed true during the Roxas section where Sora's memories are returning to him, they show memories with Kairi in them. Again, I would say it's because these memories with Kairi are the ones he lost due to Naminé's meddling, and it can't be because he's completely in love with Kairi because of one reason. During the tutorial, there's one last memory or memories Sora needs to wake up. We get through all the memories with Kairi, but that's not enough to wake him up. It takes one last memory that we don't see to wake him up, and based on CoM, I would attribute that to be the meteor shower promise between Sora and Riku in which Naminé messed with that memory and replaced Riku. Again, this is a key memory for Sora based on how it's the memory Naminé had to mess with to get Sora to love her and the final memory Sora needed to wake up at the beginning of kh2. In other words, you can say that those memories Sora needed to wake up are all Kairi because he loves her, but that doesn't take into account that Sora needed a key memory between him and Riku to finally wake up, and I doubt a Sokai fan would like to use Sora's important memories being of the person he loves if one of those memories is strictly a key one between him and Riku, so this further goes that Sora probably holds onto most of those memories because they were the ones that were tampered with and he lost because if the meteor shower memory wasn't a key memory and if Naminé hadn't messed with it, it would not have been a key memory to wake Sora up.

So, Sora wakes up and to his knowledge Kairi is safe on the islands. Now he just has to find Riku. So of course, he asks around, and you can tell this want to find Riku gets more and more desperate as it seems like he's not there and Mickey won't tell him what he knows. Every time he comes upon evidence that Riku's alive, he gets incredibly happy knowing that Riku's okay. Now, this is the game where Sora will bring Riku up, but it takes someone else bringing up a parallel or reminding him of Kairi to remember she exists. It takes being told that Kairi's in danger by the Twilight Town squad for him to try to look for her, and that's valid cause he thought she was safe before, but that still doesn't explain him barely mentioning her. That's why all the Sokai moments such as halloween town and potc are such a slap in the face because he doesn't mention her and BAM a love parallel. Even with these parallels though, it seems he's more holding onto the idea of her and his crush on her, rather than who she is now (I'll bring this up again). In Halloween town, yes he only knows her as a child, but he makes no attempt to age her up, showing he's holding onto and remembering her as who she was, not knowing who she is.

Okay, so now onto a very big attributed Sokai scene. The infamous begging scene. Usually it's attributed this way because on the surface summary, Sora begs on his knees before the enemy, begging to return Kairi, telling him that she's very important to him. That scene is very romantic, however, if you disregard everything about Sora. Again, Sora has shown multiple times that he cares more about friendship rn than a crush. Really, there's a couple things that bother me from that scene by just taking it as romance. First, is the way Saïx puts it to Sora. It's a common trope for villains to ask the hero how much they care about something, and the hero takes it as them needing to show how much they care when the villain is just going to hold onto the person/object the hero is seeking in the end, having meant it as the more the hero cares about the person or object, the more incentive the villain has to withhold that person or object. Sora cares deeply about each and every one of his friends, so it can very well be true that this isn't a romantic Sokai confirmation. It could be Kairi, Donald, Aladdin, or Goofy, if Sora thinks that Saïx isn't going to return a friend safely if he doesn't show that they mean the most to him, then he's going to beg his little heart out in hopes that it'll give a better chance of Saïx returning them safely, and I believe it's possible that that's what happened rather than "he begged because he loves her so much."

Okay, so say you don't believe me on the begging scene. That's fine. That's valid. I simply presented another way of looking at that scene. Now, I'm bringing up another infamous scene. It's the subject of many Sokai vs Soriku arguments and a lot of confusion. It's the kh2 reunion scene. So, as I discussed, under the Sokai lens this scene doesn't make a lot of sense. Sora hasn't seen Riku or Kairi in over a year and they are both his best friends, so why is there such a huge difference in his reactions to both of them in the reunion scene, especially considering those love parallels and the begging scene? Under that lens, Kairi is Sora's crush/he loves her, so why does he react that way? Some argue that Sora's reaction to Kairi is cute and Sora's flustered, but that probably isn't it. Kairi hugs him and Sora reacts like he did when Tron hugged him, uncomfortable just because he's not used to that, but as that hug continues, he never leans into it, comfortable, smiling. That uncomfortable look stays, and as Kairi's into the hug, smiling, glad that she's finally with Sora, Sora hesitantly brings his arms around her to hug her back. He nowhere near looks as comfortable and happy as Kairi does, squeezing him. Then, his reunion with Riku. He cries on his knees, and fine, you can say that it's just because they're best friends. I'll take it I guess. It is valid considering he could've been dead and Sora barely had evidence that he was alive and was holding onto that evidence very hard. But through this lens, an uncomfortable hug vs a heartfelt cry on the knees? Some fans have said it's because knowing Riku was there overshadowed his reunion with Kairi, but that's not true. He only knew Kairi was there during his reunion with her and didn't know Ansem was Riku until Kairi made it clear after his reunion with her. Some fans have said it's because Kairi's simply a crush and Riku's his best friend or that Sora knew Kairi was safe on the islands while he basically had no idea whether Riku was okay, but that's not true either. Kairi is Sora's best friend too, so "just a crush" is not an excuse. Also, he knew Kairi wasn't safe on the islands the whole time. He knew she had been in danger and had been captured by the enemy from the Twilight Town game and Saïx. So that's no excuse either. Some looking through the Sokai lens would rather just put it off as bad writing on Nomura's part because if Sokai is meant to be canon, then there's no other explanation. But, I'm going to take a different approach, look through a different lens. Remember before when I talked about Sora being "in love" with the idea of Kairi and who she was? Because Kairi's changed now, she grew up a whole year without Sora and Riku, and Sora's not much different than he was. So my explanation for the sudden shift in Sora's reaction to Kairi for this scene is...the whole time, Sora's been holding onto his crush, onto Kairi as she was, so when he sees her again and that hug ensues, he's shocked, uncomfortable, because this isn't the same Kairi. Kairi's changed. And I believe this is a turning point for his and Kairi's relationship through the series because now Sora has to cope with having to re get to know someone he used to know. He doesn't really have a crush on her anymore because he doesn't know this version of her, and this has to rebuild that friendship in a way. So, even if that begging scene is romantic, or even taking the romantic parallels into account, how he acts in the reunion scene shows that he was holding onto Kairi was, not taking into account that Kairi may be or is different now. And, this is not the first time a "sokai moment" has a different meaning, a more character growth and friendship oriented meaning if you don't look at it with the pretense that Sokai will be canon(Also, for anyone who's thinking about Donald anf Goofy's teasing, they will tease Sora like parents anytime about whoever they think his crush is. They tease Sora about Naminé on CoM, about Kairi in kh2, and Riku in kh3)

And after the reunion scene, there isn't any romantic parallels between Sora and Kairi in kh2 or even Sora seeming to have a crush on her. After this, there's like 3ish "Sokai scenes" I guess. I'll go in order.

First is the RokuNami = Sokai canon parallel that was done with Rokushi in days. There's a scene where Roxas and Naminé emerge from Sora and Kairi's hearts and have a talk. This is normally attributed as a romantic tragedy scene because people look at it as "oh gosh they'll never be human again but at least when Sora and Kairi are together they'll see each other again". But really, it's not that romantic when you look into it? Like, Naminé and Roxas talk about how at least they'll be able to see each other again as long as Sora and Kairi are together, but they kinda became friends sorta during before Sora wakes up and they're the only nobodies left. Naminé is Roxas's only living friend at this point. Roxas doesn't remember Xion, and Axel "died". Of course they'd wanna get to see each other again. They're the only ones. It really doesn't have to have a romantic meaning. Plus, there's no way Roxas and Naminé fell in love. Yeah he spent some moments with her in the beginning tutorial of the game, but it was a bond forged over Roxas wanting to know his past and what it means to be a nobody and Naminé wanting to make up for all the hurt, help him, and fulfill her promise of promise to Xion to protect him. Them becoming friends is plausible, but a few meetings isn't enough time to fall in love. People argue that Rokunami is canon because Sora and Kairi are in love, and that because Sokai is canon Rokunami is canon, and it doesn't make sense. The circular reasoning runs off the assumption of one pair being canon when neither have been confirmed canon by Nomura. Also, again, Roxas and Sora are not the same people. Roxas is "a Sora" but he's got a different heart, motivations, memories, etc like I said earlier. Similarly, Kairi and Naminé, although Naminé is closer to being Kairi than Roxas is Sora, are still their own people, with different hearts, and even Kairi mentions this in kh3. So like Rokushi, even if Naminé and Roxas happen to get together, it isn't a Sokai clone and it doesn't confirm Sokai.

The next one is sorta a Sokai scene? It's during when Riku and Sora are in the RoD on the beach and they receive Kairi's letter. I mean, it could be love on Sora's side? It really more shows the love on Kairi's side, especially since she wrote it while barely remembering Sora. I mean, it's true that after reading it, Sora's heart opens a door to the realm of light to the play island where Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey are. What's interesting though, is that that whole scene isn't framed as a Sora returning to Kairi thing really. Before they return to the realm, it puts focus on how Sora is taking Riku back with him, framing this as a finally Sora's with Riku and Kairi, together again. This whole thing is framed as a group reunion, not a "finally Sora and Kairi can be together". Then, they focus on Riku and Sora together dropping down into the ocean, then it focuses on individual reunions. It frames Sora and Riku by themselves before stepping through the door, then Mickey and Riku, then Sora, Donald, and Goofy, then Sora with Kairi, finally giving her back the good luck charm (effectively closing off the charm thing where Sora had to get to Kairi to bring it back, also symbolizing that Sora doesn't need it because now he, Kairi, and Riku are together again), then finally Roxas and Naminé, going back to them being able to see each other through Sora and Kairi and still be friends. Again, it's fraimed as a whole group reunion and Sora and Riku coming home, the trio being together again, not a Sokai reunion.

The last Sokai attributed scene is in the credits of kh2 when Sora returns to the secret place and sees the finished paopu scene drawing. It's hard to know exactly what Sora was thinking, but I still doubt it shows Sora being in love. Again, as I argued before, at this point since Kairi's different, him reacting or smiling at the action of Kairi having finished it as he does probably incites a reaction like that because the Kairi that did that is the Kairi he knew and had a crush on. The Kairi that did that is not the same Kairi he has to get to know now. Also, I think the fact that he smiled further shows that it probably was just a crush he had on her and not full on love in kh1. When Kairi sees that Sora did the paopu drawing and completed the drawing more at the end of kh1, she smiles and cries and it's heartfelt. When Sora sees that she completed it, he just kinda smiles after putting his hand on it. But then again, the fact that he traces his hand over it means he's probably reminiscing because before he finds that particular drawing, he traces his hand over other old drawings in the cave. Plus, reminiscing can also be attributed to him not having a crush on her anymore. I can look back to moments with my first crush and reminisce over old moments and even remember how it felt, but it doesn't mean that I still like that person that way. Also, I'm gonna add that after Sora bounds out of that cave, he goes over to where Riku is on the paopu tree, and they basically end up switching spots and watch either the sunset or sunrise for a moment together, not to mention that Riku would sit up there in kh1 and look at the sky alone, but Sora coming up there means he's not alone anymore and that their relationship has shifted to be closer than it was in kh1.

Okay, so there's basically one Sokai attributed scene in bbs since Sora and Riku are childhood best friends and they haven't met Kairi yet. It's when Aqua and Mickey save Kairi from the unversed. Aqua puts a spell on Kairi's necklace. Most take it as Aqua meant the spell to take her to "the person" meant to protect her as in someone who would be "her" true love. That's not what Aqua says. Aqua just says that it would lead Kairi to someone's light so they could keep her safe. Based on what Aqua says, this person is effectively any person with a heart of light with the power to keep her safe. Then, according to the Ansem reports, he set Kairi out in hopes that she would lead him to the keyblade weilder, which technically Riku was before Sora temporarily gained use of it in kh1. That means that Kairi could've been lead to the light of either Riku or Sora since they both had a strong light and Riku technically was the keyblade weilder, and based on what Aqua says, it doesn't have anything to do with love.

Recoded wise, Kairi appears like once I think? Really, there's no Sokai in this. Kairi's not present, so Data Sora's fretting over Data Riku like the real Sora does starting with CoM and Data Riku acts like days/prereunion Riku. Data Riku constantly apologizes, and when taken over by darkness/the bugs, tries to get Data Sora to leave him be. He'd rather take it all and alienate himself from Data Sora because, like days and prereunion Riku, thinks Data Sora better off without him. If anything, it shows how different things would have been if Kairi wasn't there.

DDD wise, Kairi literally appears like 3 times, and during blank points when Sora decides he's gonna leave with Riku to go to the tower, Kairi gives Sora the good luck charm again as a promise that he and Riku will come back, but unlike in CoM, he doesn't mention the good luck charm the whole time. About the times when Kairi appears, she appears once when Sora says "my friends are my power" while in the presence of Xigbar and Xemnas, and she appears along with the rest of the weilders and people Sora's connected too out of Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the main cast of original characters. Another time, she and Riku appear, and Sora tries his hardest to catch up to both of them. Another time, she appears so young Xehanort can explain that the robed guy was there at the right time at that moment in kh1 when Kairi flies through Sora. Then, the final time, she appears in the secret ending so Nomura could reveal that her keyblade wielding was gonna be important for kh3. Besides those times, Kairi is not mentioned the whole time unless Riku happens to be talking about a time with Sora and Kairi or unless Sora happens to be talking about Kairi and Riku, and I can't remember a single time like that where they mention Kairi by name (though I could be wrong). They pretty much just refer to the other. Also, there are plenty love parallels in DDD, especially the hearts in tune scene, and none indicate Sora and Kairi. Every parallel you can make love or relationship wise in that game parallels to Sora and Riku. And, in the end, we don't even see if Sora brings that good luck charm back to Kairi. It's just not important or brought up in that game

So now, we're to kh3 territory (I skipped 0.2 because Riku and Kairi are there, and the only mention of Sora is Kairi telling Riku that he's more like Sora). I get how this one also seems like Sokai the game, but I would attribute that to the Eng version and its mistranslations. Also though, there's not many Sokai scenes in kh3 anyways, and many I could breakdown as not really being romantic as everyone says.

Literally, there's basically no Sokai the entire game until the paopu scene. So, the paopu scene. The first problem I have labeling it romantic is the framing of the scene. The scene starts out with Sora focused on Riku, even when Kairi says that they should leave him be and that he said he wanted to be alone. It takes Kairi shoving a paopu in Sora's face for him to shift his focus onto her. So then, similar to the reunion scene, Kairi shoves the paopu in his face and he moves back with a look uncomfortablility on his face, and that's valid because that's a valid reaction to having something shoved in your face, but like the reunion scene, that uncomfortable expression stays. Sora looks at the paopu and to Kairi uncomfortably until (in the jap version because the eng version mistranslated it with an obviously romantically slanted line) she just puts it off as a good luck charm. Because of bbs, we know that sharing a paopu can be a romantic or platonic. Based on Sora's knowledge of the paopu though, it's likely he sees Kairi handing him this paopu as a romantic advance. But, when faced with this romantic advance, again, he keeps that uncomfortable look until she just puts it off as something else. And when she puts it off as just a good luck charm, that's when he decides he's gonna share the fruit. If this scene was gonna be romantic, his uncomfortable face would've disappeared into comfortability and a smile after he processed looking at Kairi and the fruit. He would have easily been receptive off the bat. And again, it's not like he's flustered. That look, just like in the reunion scene, is a look of uncomfortablility, not being flustered. So, when Kairi puts the sharing off as something else other than romantic, a simple sharing, he becomes receptive, and they share the fruit, just like in the cave drawing...almost. During the creation of the cave drawing of the sharing, Sora was the one to share first, showing that at that time he wanted to share a paopu with Kairi. But in this scene, Kairi's the one who makes the move, and Sora's not interested in it till he knows it's not binding as a romantic sharing. Also, though they don't take a bite of the paopu in the cave drawing, if you look at that scene closely, Sora's the only one who takes a bite of the paopu. Kairi doesn't take a bite, and no matter how you look at it, if she had taken one, it would be clear to see based on how every point of the paopu is a curve. Now, relating back to the kh2 reunion scene, Sora hasn't had the time to reforge his friendship with Kairi. Maybe they get a week after 2 because in 3 the Twilight Town kids are still on vacation, but not enough time to get to know each other. So really, there's no way Sora's in love with Kairi during this scene because he still doesn't really know who she is yet. My vote is that the real significance of the scene is it's supposed to be a key point showing that now Sora and Kairi are going to rebuild their friendship (because Kairi loves Sora and Sora doesn't really know her anymore), and I'm gonna come back to this later. Also, I forgot to add the fact that the scene can't be a Sokai romance confirming because Sora just states a few worlds back that he's got a lot to learn about love, and I doubt he figured out enough to know whether he's in love with anyone in the span of a few worlds

So, the next scene is the scene where Sora hugs Kairi when Terranort goes to attack her. On the surface and out of context, this seems like, "Oooh how romantic. It's a true love sacrifice", but again, I'd argue that it's really not. First, in context, before Sora does this, Lea goes to protect Kairi, holding up his keyblade to block Terranort's attack, and it does no help because Terranort launches Lea back and goes to attack again. So, Sora could've gone to block the next attack, but he likely realized that wouldn't work because of what just happened to Lea, so he didn't do that. Again, Sora has been shown time and time again to be self sacrificial for his friends, so if blocking the attack doesn't work, and Sora really wants to keep all his friends safe, of course he would just be a meat shield, especially if that's the only option he sees that might work. Also, it can't be an act of true live for a couple reasons. The first is that there's no way he figured out love yet (it definitely would've had more of a focus if he had figured it out) and next is cause of the framing and emphasis of the scene. Acts of true love in kh3 such as Eugene and Rapunzel's and Elsa and Anna's are given emphasis, they feel climactic, the shot is directly focused on it. Sora's sacrifice in that moment doesn't seem much like that. Yeah there's some focus on it, but the focus and framing is put more on Goofy saving them both with his shield. Heck, emphasis and shot wise, Donald casting Zettaflare got more of the attention of a true love's sacrifice. Based on the way this moment is framed, if Sora had died for Kairi like that, it would have just felt pitiful, and definitely undeserving because Kairi just didn't fight back. It wouldn't have felt like an impactful true love sacrifice. Really, after looking into it, this scene is more of Sora being desperate to keep his friends all safe and being lucky Goofy was there to save him

The next scene attributed to being a Sokai moment is just before Riku's sacrifice (which has all that dramatic, climactic, true love sacrifice framing btw). Kairi gets swept up in the demon tide originally after meat shielding for Lea (again showing that meat shielding doesn't necessarily mean romance, especially if you're trying to keep all your friends safe), then pulls around again, reaching for Sora before getting swept back and Sora reaches for her too. Again, a moment that's like, "omg so romantic," but really, no? Sora just watched all of his friends, all the other keyblade weilders besides him and Riku get swept up and he reaches for Kairi in hopes that he can at least save somebody

Okay, so next is the light tunnel scene. This is taken as another Sokai confirming moment cause on the surface it's like, "See! Kairi has been Sora's light all along! She saved him! They're holding hands!" I believe that's not how it is though. First off, Kairi does have a part in saving Sora so he can end up in the final world because Naminé does say that it was due to Kairi he endured, but that's not all. Sora's heart and body both endured in the final world, he just needed to piece himself back together to be whole and have a whole form. Now, we know that Sora's enduring was due to an act of true love, so Kairi must have performed one (even though there's no focus on what it was, so it's probably less important that Kairi did it and more important on who else), but who else may have allowed Sora's heart to endure? Who performs an act of true love for Sora, framing and all? Riku does. Riku's sacrifice has a lot of emphasis, focus, especially considering it happened twice literally, and a third time symbolically for the Final World world title screen (you can check the SRT for more detail on that). So, it's safe to say that Kairi held Sora's body, his form together, but it was because of Riku's sacrifice, telling Sora he believes in him (jap version cause in eng it's mistranslated to "you don't believe that"), that Sora's heart endured. So yeah, Kairi helped save Sora, but it wasn't all her. Now, as for Kairi being Sora's light (as in the light for Sora versus a light), I don't think so. There's more detail on this in the SRT, but after CoM, there's no symbolism for Kairi being Sora's light, and there are plenty of parallels, including exact ones, where Riku is shown to be Sora's light (such as on Sora's station of awakening at the beginning of kh3 when they do an exact, frame by frame, parallel of Riku=light with kh1's opening). You may say that she must be because Sora decides that (but again as with Riku thinking Dark Riku is him from the past taken over by Ansem, character's original thoughts can be wrong, and Kairi also never approves or denies Sora's statement of her being the light) or because she's there in the tunnel, but in the first instance of Sora's tunnel of light the person who is the light is not in the tunnel because they are the light, and they are the one presenting flashbacks, or the person who was the light was presented with the light shining through them. Kairi is in the tunnel with Sora, so that knocks off what happened in the first instance, but in the second instance, the light shined through Kairi. In kh3's tunnel scene, Kairi is spotted off to the side from the light and purposely has to eclipse the light to get Sora's attention. Then, I doubt Kairi gave Sora those visions cause of how she reacts. When Sora receives the visions of the true love sacrifice, she reacts to his reaction as if she had no idea he's getting the visions. To Kairi, she just feels Sora jolt, but when she looks back and sees he's fine, she just smiles, showing she's unaware. If she had purposely given him those visions, she would've probably expected his reaction to seeing the visions and would've initially looked back with a smile instead of concern. Sora also gets these visions from looking deep into the light, not at Kairi. Further that Kairi can't be the light is that she's in the tunnel, and besides when she eclipses the light, she doesn't have the light shining through her like that at all, instead, she's to the side, leading Sora to the light, but if that light IS Kairi, then there's no way she can follow herself, taking Sora with her. Kairi may be helping lead Sora TO the light, but there's no way she IS the light (again, this whole scene is detailed further and better in the SRT and I would suggest taking a look). Also, I would say that Kairi can't be Sora's guiding light rn, because he still doesn't know her as she is yet and still has to rebuild that friendship. About the handholding in that scene though and Sora's reaction to finding her though, first of all, she is leading him, she was the one who initiated the handholding, not Sora, and simple handholding doesn't automatically mean love (no matter how much heteronormativity drills into you that a girl and a guy holding hands = relationship, while two people of the same gender holding hands always equals friendship), and second, Sora wants all of his friends back, together, and alive so when everyone is saved but Kairi, and he can't find her, and finally finds her again, of course he's happy because he finally found her and all of his friends are okay and safe now.

Now, onto the scene where Xehanort kills Kairi. First, I'm going to add that Sora has a hero complex. Whenever a character is presented in danger and/or has a history of that, his reaction is to decide to protect them. Example A is Aqua. Aqua calls Sora out on it. Sora sees her weak, she had fallen to darkness, and his kneejerk reaction is to do all the work, to protect her and fight Vanitas when he shows up. Then, although Nomura has Sora show up for every battle in the keyblade graveyard to drive the story, it can also be telling of Sora's personality. Sora shows up to every battle because as Kairi says, this is their toughest battle yet, and just before he lost everyone in one fell swoop, so if he's there for every battle, he can protect all his friends and make sure he doesn't lose any. This also reaches back to example B, which is the paopu scene. Sora promises to keep Kairi safe. It could be attributed to him "being in love with her" (even though there's no way that's possible at this point), but it could also be his hero complex taking over. If there's anyone who's been kidnapped the most, shown she needs saving, and hung back during fights, it's Kairi, so his hero complex says that now that she's fighting, he needs to be ready to protect her so he doesn't lose one of his friends. Her telling him she would keep her safe is almost a parallel to Aqua telling Sora that he had seen her weak and her going to fight Vanitas because it's her telling Sora's hero complex that she can protect herself and that she can save him too. So, with all that in mind in the scene where Xehanort kills Kairi, it's probably not like "Sora's in love with her and that's why he's so sad and angry when she is killed! It's soooo tragic!" So, really, Sora and his hero complex have gone through all this trouble to make sure no one dies again, to make sure everyone of his friends are safe, and then Xehanort summons Kairi, Sora goes to save her, and Xehanort kills her, effectively ruining Sora goal (since one of his friends got killed), and causing all the stress and desperation he built up trying to keep everyone safe to burst out. So Sora's terribly angry, "Why her?!", because out of anyone who gets to die in the war, why does it have to be one of his friends? After all his hard work, why does one of his friends deserve to die? It's similar to when the Demon Tide killed everyone but him and Riku. He breaks down because despite everything he cares about and has worked for, one of his friends is killed again, and there's nothing he can or could do about it.

Okay, so the next "sokai" scene is the scene after everyone returns to the keyblade graveyard after Sora defeats Xehanort. I'm going to redirect you to a post by @blowingoffsteam2 on tumblr because they do a great job of explaining how the mistranslations in this scene make all the difference on how this scene and Sora's feelings are perceived. The post: https://smartzelda.tumblr.com/post/189913559229/at-the-ending-of-kh3-sora-decides-to-go-save

Now, there is one final Sokai scene in kh3, and it's in the ending. In the ending, Kairi and Sora are on the tree, holding hands, and Sora disappears. First, this scene is a direct parallel to Pooh's story book in kh3 and where I talked about how Sora needs to rebuild his relationship with Kairi as seen by the kh2 reunion scene and the paopu scene. In kh3, pooh's storybook is shown to have Sora missing from the cover, and when he sees pooh again, he figures out that it is because their bond weakened. Then, when talking to Merlin, Sora learns that when that happens, those friendships simply need to be reestablished and rebuilt. It's obviously a lesson Nomura wanted Sora to learn if it is directly focused on by Sora and explained by Merlin, so it's not far fetched to think that this lesson may be relevant in kh3, and I'd attribute it to Sora and Kairi's relationship. Kairi and Sora's positions on the tree in that final "Sokai scene" and Sora's disappearance are a direct parallel to Pooh's storybook in which they are in the exact same positions, and in both Sora disappears. This may also symbolize that Sora needs to rebuild his relationship with Kairi as Merlin discussed. Kairi being paralleled with pooh doesn't stop here though, and this is better discussed in a post by @fandomoverflowThe post: https://databoyreekoo.tumblr.com/post/188351277667/kairis-grand-adventure-an-analysis-of-kairisWe won't know more about this scene till remind comes out probably, but from what we have already, the fact that they are on the tree holding hands is not a confirmation of romance. In the end, after kh3, there's no way Sokai's canon because Nomura never stated it himself and all of these Sokai scenes either aren't romantic at all, or can be taken as not romantic (at least on Sora's side).

So really, based on all this, it's safe to say that although Sora thinks Kairi is his light rn, she is not, and that going forward, Soriku has more chance of being canon if we're not going off the assumption Nomura's a bad writer (which it's pretty sad that to make sense of writing choices through the Sokai lens that you have to put Nomura off as a crappy writer for so much) and that Sokai will be canon in the end. I would probably attribute any romantic tension between Sora and Kairi after kh2 to Kairi being in love with Sora and making advances while Sora isn't at that point. I'd say rather than leaning more towards a Sokai confirmation, knowing some of the mistranslations and all the Soriku parallels people have found, Soriku has a bigger chance rn, though Nomura left it open ended at the end of kh3 in a way because we don't know for sure how Sora feels yet because he doesn't know love yet (we'll just have to see). If there's anything you learn from reading this or take back, I hope it's not that "I'm right and you're wrong blah blah". Instead, I hope that especially the Soriku shippers looking through the Sokai lens learn to question, look past the surface, and look for other explanations for Sokai besides taking it for romance. I urge you to stop perceiving everything through the notion that Sokai is going to be canon (especially when Nomura has never stated this would be the case), and instead try to leave it more open ended on your journey to discover Nomura's intentions and where he's taken the series.

I'm incredibly sorry for writing this huge essay

#sorry for writing this huge essay #soriku #didn't tag it as sokai cause target audience

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oveliagirlhaditright · 5 years

Text

I See Myself the Way You Remember Me

Summary: For AO3 user TechnovoreX. They requested Kingdom Hearts III Sora turning into a Heartless, and being unable to revert... and Kairi not knowing it was him, and taking care of this tame Heartless as a pet. But I forgot some of those details, so it's the Master of Masters (Sora) changing the past, so that he remained a Heartless when he stabbed himself with the Keyblade of People's Hearts and then Kairi got the Keyblade and saved the day. KH1 AU, basically, where Kairi becomes the protagonist at the end of the game. And since I forgot TechnovoreX's request for Kairi not to know the Shadow is Sora, she does here. I hope you guys enjoy! And I did put my own spin on some of your ideas, TechnovoreX. I hope that that's okay.

Sora’s PoV

The Master of Masters—who was really Sora from a world line where everyone had died in the Keyblade Graveyard but him—had succeeded in his plans to get Kingdom Hearts, and to save his friends, the Foretellers, and the worlds as he had so wanted to.

And the only thing he still needed to do, was to to use the power of Kingdom Hearts to change some of the life experiences that he’d had with his friends: because through a bit of foresight the Master still had via his eye (had someone else taken it and carried it into an even further future?), he could tell that if things in the past didn’t get somewhat altered, it would end in disaster for everyone.

So Sora closed his good eye, called upon the power of Kingdom Hearts, and set to work.

His first thought—as it always was—being of Kairi.

…

Five Years Previously

Kairi’s PoV

Kairi was horrified; Sora had just turned into a Heartless to save her… And while she’d felt lost in the moment that it had happened, she’d been hopeful that somehow she could revert him to normal.

But after they had found his Heartless right outside the library—and she, Donald, Goofy, and Heartless-Sora had escaped Hollow Bastion with the help of the Beast—she had to admit that that possibility was seeming less and less likely to her.

Donald and Goofy—as much as they loved Sora—were worried that his instincts would take over, and he’d steal Kairi’s precious heart or theirs. But she knew he wouldn’t; deep down, he was Sora and always would be Sora. And that’s all that mattered.

…And she got the sense that he was trying to show her how to use the Keyblade: something she assumed that she must have gotten when Sora had transferred her heart back to her.

When Kairi swung her Keyblade, Heartless-Sora would jump up into the air to try and push the blade even farther for her—to make the blade move in the wide arc that she needed it to… …Hopefully through all of this, she’d find a way to bring Sora and Riku home.

“Sora… I know the other Princesses think that Ansem has gone into the deepest darkness and taken Riku’s body with him… But I promise you that I’m going to get him back! You, too, for that matter!”

This form of Sora just blinked his large, vacant eyes at her. The gaze didn’t say much, but Kairi felt it was similar to when he’d looked at her curiously when she’d woken him up on the beach so long ago.

“…Well, Sora, it’s bedtime,” Kairi decided at last. At first, she’d been unsure about if she was going to let him stay in her room or not… But she knew that they both could use some comfort, so she’d keep him here and just go into the bathroom when she wanted to change and whatnot.

Kairi thought about asking Sora if he wanted to brush his teeth… if he had any—or needed help brushing any hair he might have on this somewhat slimy form of his?—but thought better of it. (she did tie her lucky charm around his right antennaeas an “earring” for him, though)

And speaking of nightly routines… Usually Kairi would have just gone to sleep with her hair messy, but since Sora was here, she thought she needed to be at least a little more presentable for him.

So she brushed her hair, curled up in bed beside Sora, and tried to go to sleep… and to ignore the millions of worries already plaguing her mind.

And she may have been imagining it, but Kairi thought she might have seen Sora’s eyes become a bit more orange than yellow before she lost consciousness.

…

For the next few days, Kairi focused on training with Yuffie and Aerith more than anyone else. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Donald, Goofy, Leon, Cid, or Merlin, or thought that they’d do badly teaching her… But rather, Yuffie and Aerith were both girls—so Kairi thought that they might better be able to help cater to her strengths.

And Yuffie was somewhat close to Kairi’s size and had her energy… and Aerith was as new to combat as the redhead was, so she thought for both of those reasons that this was a good start.

They trained in the underground cavern—Heartless-Sora riding on Kairi’s back the entire time she used “the Key”… which sort of made it harder, in some ways, but she appreciated his moral support—and just within two weeks, Kairi felt enough improved that she thought she could probably take on the End of the World and mostly handle it.

Kairi didn’t believe that her newfound prowess was due to any inherent talent she had… but rather the Keyblade’s own power, and maybe even Sora’s heart, as well.

Kairi didn’t completely understand how the heart worked yet—she was reading what she could about it in the mysterious “Ansem’s Reports”—but she was convinced that Sora’s heart had gone into hers when he’d used the Keyblade of People’s Hearts to free her. After all, her heart had been in Sora’s… so why wouldn’t things get messed up when Sora was trying to free hers by having his go into hers? And since his body—what the Heartless had transfigured from—didn’t have his heart because it was within her… well, that would be why Sora was a Shadow…

This was Kairi’s theory, anyway. But she definitely thought it was Sora’s heart in hers that was causing her newfound jump in combat skills. And how she longed to try and reach out to his heart… Or do for him what he had done for her. But there was no time… The worlds needed a Keyblade wielder to close the Door, and the Keyblade of People’s Hearts had disappeared after Sora had used it, regardless…

Anyway, it was when Kairi had successfully smacked Yuffie’s ninja stars back into her—on the third week where Kairi’d decided that she’d finish this last bout of training and then hightail it into the gummi ship—that Heartless-Sora seemed to be blushing the color of... eggplant? If at all possible?

Aerith was the first to notice this; she was being kind,, in trying to offer Heartless-Sora some of her lemonade—seeming to feel that if she couldn’t heal his heart with her magics, then she could at least attempt to aid his soul.

And just out of the blue, when Yuffie was nursing the blow to her chin, Aerith mused, “I wonder why Sora is blushing.” “What?! Sora blushing?!” Yuffie demanded, before Kairi could get her own words in (she had her own theory about this, after all. That Sora was just flustered because he was a gentleman—he always had been to her—and therefore was just sad that Yuffie had gotten hurt). “Yo! You know what I think it is?! Aerith, Sora totes thought I was Kairi when we first met, since he likes her! And maybe having Kairi accidentally hit my face lodged that thought back into his brain, and he’s embarrassed about it!”

Kairi really didn’t know if Yuffie’s assessment was correct. At all. But her saying this did seem to embarrass Sora as he jumped down from where he’d been on Aerith’s shoulder in eying the lemonade, pulled his antennae over his eyes, and began wobbling towards the entrance to the Magician’s Study… But she really couldn’t focus on that right now.

“Sora… likes me?” If Kairi was being honest with herself, she felt like she was lying in order to act like she hadn’t already guessed that. After all, she had somewhat encouraged Sora and Riku to fight over her, hadn’t she? It had all been in good fun… But Kairi, at least now, doubted that any of it had been real—that instead, Sora and Riku had been fighting over a play-wife and nothing more and nothing less.

And ignoring Yuffie and Aerith’s nods and words in the affirmative, Kairi turned her attention to Sora… Who had stopped just beside the water and looked like he wanted to drown himself in it, yes… but he was also looking at her sternly, for whatever reason.

…And it was in that moment that Heartless-Sora seemed to morph a bit, and got some sort of mane around his Heartless head… and Kairi had no idea what to do with this knowledge, so she ignored it and moved on (she had no time to do anything else).

…

Kairi was fighting, fighting, fighting—trying to defeat enough Heartless to get some sort of Keyhole to form so that it would create a door they could go through—and she was exhausted… and probably not doing as well as she could have been.

Really, Kairi knew there was no way she could have been a seasoned Keyblade wielder yet—even with Sora’s heart fighting alongside hers—but she was still trying, and thanking Donald and Goofy for their efforts that aided her with her every breath…

Though Kairi felt bad about defeating Heartless in front of Sora… as if this was somehow a hint to what would happen to him if he lost himself and began attacking his friends. Kairi wanted to tell him that that would never happen, but the words wouldn’t come. So, she just settled on trying to send some sort of telepathic message about it into his heart, as her body focused on the here and now.

…Heartless-Sora’s body was focusing on the here and now, too. For right now, he was clawing Heartless after Heartless for Kairi. She was thinking of kissing him on the head for it, and seeing if that would be enough of a reward. The good thing about the mane he had gotten? That when most Heartless tried to get a hand on him they would just get a handful of that fur instead.

Donald was using gravity spell after gravity spell on the tougher Heartless, but Kairi could see he was about to be knocked-out… And Goofy just seemed focused on sending her as much magic as he could.

In her heart, Kairi saw herself using firaga on these new, larger Shadows that were creeping around her—so she thought this was a sign from the Keyblade that this was what she was meant to do here—but she didn’t know if she had it within her to be fiery anymore…

And just as that thought seemed to enter her head, Sora looked at Kairi incredulously this time. She didn’t know how a Heartless could manage that sort of expression, exactly, but he was a living example of how it was possible.

And taking this as Sora trying to be as verbal with his expertise as he could in his current form, Kairi decided to be brave again and bellowed a “firaga!”—and watched in awe, as a sphere of the flames seemed to dance around her without harming her in the slightest and defeated every enemy in sight.

And there before the quartet, the door to Ansem finally faded into existence. And the friends charged towards it… Sora morphed into the shape of a human again even more as he did so, which Kairi noticed, as she caught his hand with hers.

…

When Heartless-Sora and Kairi were about to say goodbye to each other at Kingdom Hearts—after their heartfelt, temporary farewell to Riku that was still tearing them both apart—Kairi finally figured out what had been going on with Sora and herself.

Because of her guilt for what had happened, she had become a lesser version of herself—turning away from the things she usually would have done.

And Sora had caught onto this, and had tried to tell Kairi about it as much as he could with his looks. This was why he’d transformed when she’d chosen to be clean instead of messy—because he’d wanted to tell her then and there that she was allowed to relax and take it easy—and had even been altered when she doubted his feelings for her, and the embers in her heart.

Sora—perhaps via their connected hearts—had evolved for her, so he could be more himself and everything she could ever need… But since he was still in darkness, he was almost becoming a humanoid version of darkness incarnate now.

And while as a Princess of Light, Kairi should have been sad about this and even have her worries… she couldn’t.

Sora was Sora—and would always be Sora—and that’s all that mattered.

And how could she see something awful in this, when his intentions were so noble and pure?

He’d evolved for the last time—now pretty much being the boy he once was, even as a Heartless… though his eyes were still yellow, and he still couldn’t really speak—when Ansem (who Sora was now almost like, and yet also so different from him) had dared to try and make her fall by saying that Riku’s “Giving up already? I thought you were stronger than that!” was for Sora and Sora alone, and could never be directed at her. That no one would ever tell her anything positive at all…

It had been then that Heartless-Sora had somehow learned to fly—and flown up from their plummet, with Kairi in his arms—and said the first thing he’d been able to since he’d received his awful curse: “No!”

They were at the pinnacle moment now, where Kairi had been thinking strongly of letting Sora go back to the Islands since he was mostly himself… and since she didn’t want him to be in danger until she found some way to turn him back.

But, having just lost Riku the way they did… this plan they’d come up with, when the Princesses had told them what had happened when the Door to Darkness was closed, went up in smoke.

Sora and Kairi couldn’t be without each other on this journey… they just couldn’t be, despite it all.

Kairi—even in her inexperience—had saved the world because of their bond and surely that was something to be celebrated. And Sora had defied the laws of nature entirely to become a new kind of champion for her and the worlds.

Sora and Kairi’s places remained with each other.

Just as the earth came apart beneath them, Kairi reached forward and grabbed Sora’s hand… and found a way to fly herself this time—Donald and Goofy following after her.

And a winding road appeared behind the four, with each of them deciding to hold onto each other’s hands this time as they traveled along it.

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whereissora · 5 years

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My Favorite Sora and Riku BroTP Moments

First off, I don’t ship Soriku. Sorry, but I just don’t. I have never gotten a romantic vibe from them EVER and I really enjoy how they interact and work together like a pair of brothers. There are plenty of other tumblrs that post Soriku, and I assure you they’re not hard to find.

Riku is sexy and important and Sora is a literal drop of sunshine, and I love both these boys so much. I really enjoy how much Riku’s character arc reminds me of Zuko from ATLA and how he embodies the “protective big brother” cliche which can be seen in a lot of animes. Likewise, Sora is a wonderful protagonist and the way he adores and actually listens to Riku makes me want to give Riku a thumbs up:

Good job, Riku, on somewhat-raising Sora. He’s wonderful in a million amazing ways~

I know Sora has parents alright, im just messing around~

And so, as I write this, I will be viewing Sora and Riku in a very platonic manner. These two are close to the point of being real brother’s, and since Kairi does play a part in their relationship, she will be mentioned here and there.

Just know that even if you ship SoRiku and I ship SoKai, doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy this list! This is a BroTP post, not an OTP post, but you may find one of the reasons you ship SoRiku on here even if I have a different understanding of the moment in question.

I will be leaving comments open, with one request: you may say whatever you like in response to this post so as long as you are respectful about it. So please, no character bashing, no ship bashing, and definitely no harassment or bullying. I will block any guilty party and/or close the comments for this post.

10) Encounter in the Land of Dragons

Sora spends the majority of KH2 looking for Riku, and eventually, Kairi. By the time he makes his second trip to “The Land of Dragons” (I’m super tempted to write China, here) Sora has still yet to encounter Riku despite all the extra behind-the-scenes help Riku keeps giving him.

They finally run into each other here, but Sora assumes its a member of Org XIII given what he seems to be doing and what he is wearing. Riku casually warns Sora to watch his back by pointing at the heartless, which Sora then takes out. After the fight, Riku makes this hilarious gesture, like he’s saying “well, look at that. You’ve become so dependable,” then runs off. Sora gives chase until losing sight of him at which point he wonders aloud:

“That guy...”

“No...! Why... Would he...?”

Sora thinks that it’s Riku he just met, and kinda reaches for him as he calls his name. He says “Riku?” in a way that doesn’t hide how cautiously hopeful he is, and is overjoyed later when he hears from the emperor that the guy in the black coat “was kinda rude.”

Sora, YOU’RE a little rude.

9) Riku demands to know what Diz wants (with Sora)

Diz is a pretty suspicious character, and Riku trusts him about as far as he can throw him. Unfortunately, the only people Riku trusts implicitly are comatose, absent, or far away. He can’t wake Sora up on his own, so he begrudgingly accepts Diz’s help.

Near the end of Sora’s reconstruction, Diz expresses his thoughts over Sora waking up in a way that’s... mildly creepy.

Diz doesn’t really care for Sora as a person. He’s a means to an end. Riku isn’t stupid--he can tell. His priority is doing everything he can to help Sora wake up. But the minute Diz says Sora’s name--in a tone that makes it abundantly clear he is being used, like Roxas is--Riku takes a seat like “Don’t you f***ing dare. What do you want with us, anyway?” And says the polite version of that.

8) Riku visits Namine

I’m not sure whether Riku knew to go see Namine on his own, or if he was summoned there by Diz. But either way, Sora’s awakening is taking way too long.

After leaving Castle Oblivion, Riku began investigating the Organization since they literally forced Sora into an indefinite, comatose state. Namine promised to look after Sora, and when they meet again, Riku, gently, but firmly, reminds her of this, as if to ask “What’s taking so long?”

There can’t be a good reason, so he needs to know. That way, he can help.

Unfortunately, the situation is that some of Sora’s memories currently reside in two different people. Namine carefully explains that there is no way to help Sora without harming them, and if they try to do that anyway, Sora will wake up only to realize no one remembers him.

Here, the camera shifts from Namine to Riku while keeping that one line on the screen, making it clear that’s not an option for them. Sora cannot wake up to find out he’s been forgotten--they are not willing to risk that.

This leaves just the worst possible option, and that is to kill two people.

A role which Riku now resigns himself to.

This might have been higher on the list if not for how SAD it is... For everyone involved.

7) Sora remembers how they grew up together

KH1′s ending broke a lot of hearts (cough not as much as III cough) and final mix’s version just twisted the knife with this little scene. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not remember seeing this little Sora-flashback first time around.

The door has been shut and locked, leaving Riku and Mickey stranded in the Dark Realm. Sora looks on as he recalls his childhood spent growing up alongside Riku, how they laughed and ran together, and this scene couldn’t possibly be more heart wrenching--

Hears Project Destatis D.B. themes and variations playing in the background~

👏Thank👏you👏Everglow👏

You, too @projectdestati

6) Sora and Riku fight the final battle together

I love all the little scenes in this fight.

You get a lot of these two protecting/supporting each other here.

At one point, Sora is nabbed by Xemnas and is having his HP drained, and you get to fight as Riku in order to free him.

When Xemnas starts firing those light-rods or whatever they’re called at Sora and Riku, the boys stand back to back as they deflect them.

This leaves them so drained that Xemnas is able to kick Riku back and attack Sora, but Riku pulls Sora out of the way AND TAKES THE HIT HIMSELF.

Sora and Riku use their combined strength to shoot Xemnas out of the sky.

And on top of all that, you get this:

SORA AND RIKU STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT TO FIST BUMP!!!! This is canon. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!!

It’s as if they’re each telling the other:

“No worries! I’m here.”

5) Riku meets Xion (twice)

For the sake of keeping this list to my top ten, I’m including Riku’s first and second meetings with Xion as one reason. I know, I know, I’m kind of cheating, but I really can’t choose between these two.

While investigating Org XIII, Riku must wear their coat. It allows him to move about without detection. Ironically, this also gets their attention since he’s Riku, he’s not one of their members, and he’s clearly opposed to them. They send Xion to take him out, but he defeats her and is both disturbed and concerned by her appearance.

Xion demands to know why Riku is dressed as one of them, and he answers:

“To make sure my best friend... Sleeps in peace.”

Riku is determined to protect Sora, who is vulnerable in his sleeping state, no matter what Riku is forced to wear, or who he transforms into. This may partly be due to the fact that:

Riku was the one who opened the DTD and destroyed the islands.

Riku is the reason Kairi’s heart was separated from her body and went into Sora’s for shelter.

And Sora ultimately had to stab himself through the heart to free her and complete the keyhole in Hollow Bastion.

And all of this led to the creation of Roxas, Sora’s Nobody, being born. Sora wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for Riku’s actions. Heck, without Riku, Sora never would’ve gotten the keyblade, which has made Sora a huge target for Org XIII. Riku carries that guilt with him everywhere he goes throughout Days, as he struggles to help Namine complete Sora’s reconstruction.

The next time Riku meets Xion, she’s run off from the Organization because she learned what she really was. She tries to ask Riku where Sora is and he outright tells her:

“That secret stays with me.”

Riku says this in a way that makes it clear he would die before he handed Sora over to the enemy, and isn’t willing to risk Sora’s safety for anything.

Riku, buddy, you’re a priority, too.

He never blamed Xion or Roxas for the Organization’s actions, though, because just like Sora, these two were being used. So when Xion asks “Do you hate me for taking your friend away from you?” Riku’s answer is:

“Nah... I guess I’m just sad.”

Me:

Xion is the reason Sora cannot wake up! On top of that, because Xion exists, Riku must see to it that both she and Roxas meet their ends if he ever wants to see Sora again. And despite all that, Riku doesn’t hate her.

5) “Don’t be so reckless. Do you want to end up like Riku?”

Halfway through KH2, Saix implies that Riku has ended up in a dire situation, causing Sora to react with alarm. As far as Saix knows, Riku was taken out by Roxas, and he’s more than happy to let that slip to Sora who has been searching everywhere for him.

With or without his memories of C.O., Sora’s last real memory of Riku is watching him be trapped in the Dark Realm when they closed the door together.

The Dark Realm is basically the KH version of Hell, and it’s not the place for hearts of light residing within still-living individuals. From what Sora’s seen of the Dark Realm, it is crawling with dark sides, and even if there is a light within the darkness, the Dark Realm is not a safe place to be.

So hearing Saix say “Do you want to end up like Riku?” has a pretty powerful impact on him. Aside from his own firm belief in Riku’s strength, Sora has been given every reason to believe Riku is dead. There’s no sign of him anywhere, no word of him from anyone, and the last place he was seen in is a relatively fatal environment.

And now he has even less reason to hope Riku is still alive.

4) Riku rescues Sora in 3D

Say what you will about 3D, but the bro feels are HEAVY in this game.

Once again, Sora is lured into one of the Organizations traps.

And again Riku attempts to protect him from this trap.

Again, he failed to reach Sora in time. It is only with the help of Donald, Goofy, Mickey, and Axel that he is able to retrieve Sora before it is too late.

Sora’s heart was trapped in darkest abyss, leaving Sora’s empty body in a sleeping state, similar to what Ven suffered through for over a decade. Yen Sid theorizes that Riku, who unlocked the seven sleeping keyholes within Sora’s dreams, now has the ability to retrieve Sora’s heart and wake him from his sleep.

Come to think, maybe this has something to do with why we see Riku looking for Sora in the KH3 secret movie instead of Kairi?

It’s insanely dangerous to venture into the abyss, but Riku goes anyway and is successful in rescuing Sora.

3) Did I mention that Sora called for Riku when YMX nabbed him?

Sora’s afraid! He’s steeming in darkness and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open because he knows there’s a chance this will be the last thing he sees! He’s aware that if his body is turned into a vessel, he’ll be used to hurt Riku, Kairi, and everyone else he loves.

So what does he do? He calls for Riku!

Riku has been taking the exam with him, and if there’s anyone who can pull him out of this mess its Riku, the same person who has almost always come to his rescue.

And Riku does that just that.

I actually really enjoyed 3D just because it was fairly dark, and heroes can’t succeed all the time. Plus, Riku got to play the role of the one who has Sora’s back no matter what and was rewarded with the title of Keyblade Master for his trouble.

Sora deserves to be Master, too--

2) Kairi reunites Sora and Riku in TWTNW

This scene has me in tears, even now.

As mentioned before, Sora has been given every reason to believe Riku is dead.

He saw someone in the Land of Dragons who was using Riku's keyblade, and was kind of acting like Riku. But was that really him? Or just another member of Org XIII messing with him?

What did Saix mean when he warned Sora not to be reckless like Riku was?

King Mickey made a promise to Riku, but what sort of promise? And why won’t he say anything about Riku?

What happened?

Where is he?

Thanks to Kairi, Sora is able to reunite with Riku properly. Riku wasn’t even going to say anything to Sora--he still feels ashamed of himself for betraying Sora, and for looking the way he does. But Kairi takes both boys hands and has Sora close his eyes, and Sora is able to finally figure it out:

Riku was always close by, helping him. He just looks a little different.

Sora raises his head, and his eyes first widen then scrunch up as the tears come.

He takes Riku’s hand and falls to his knees.

Once he’s down there, he can’t hold himself together anymore and just starts weeping.

This is part of the reason people ship SoRiku at all, and heck, I might have too if not for SoKai and the fact that Sora is a super affectionate person.

Also, it’s pretty clear by how relieved and tearful Sora is that he more-or-less believed Riku was gone. He looked for him, but couldn’t find him anywhere. The organization loves to mess with him--maybe that guy who was behaving like Riku in the Land of Dragon’s killed him and stole his sword. Maybe the reason Mickey won’t say anything is because the truth is too much.

I have best friends that I’ve grown up with, too. If they were to vanish like Riku did, and I went from country to country in search of them, and then if I finally found them after being told everywhere I went that they were gone... Well, I’d be more of a mess than Sora because I’m not as strong as him.

Sora manages to choke out that he looked ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE for Riku. To which Riku answers:

This earns a shocked little gasp from Sora, because it’s kind of a slap in the face to Sora’s efforts to locate Riku.

Not that Riku is trying to be cruel here. Sora doesn’t understand yet that Riku only pushed him away in order to protect him. And when Sora demands, “Why didn’t you let me know you were okay?” Riku calmly explains that he couldn’t stand for Sora and Kairi to see him like this, with Heartless Ansem’s face. The face of the man that possessed him and nearly killed Sora and Kairi.

But they don’t care what he looks like, because it’s still Riku on the inside.

1) Riku protects Sora in KH3

Gosh, this was such a heavy moment.

Sora and Riku were just forced to watch as all their friends were whisked away into the Demon Tide. The last person to go was Kairi, and once she’s gone, Sora falls to his knees lets out a scream that destroyed me physically, emotionally, and mentally.

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We have never seen this side of Sora before, and neither has Riku. Just after Kairi is taken away, Riku is standing nearby, staring out at the demon tide, apparently in shock. We can’t see his face, but Riku grew up with Kairi, too, and he’s clearly distressed by what just happened.

But Sora screams his heart out and Riku immediately rushes to his side. He kneels and listens as Sora gives up and claims he is worthless without the others. Riku’s expression is soft at first but slowly hardens, and after Sora cries over his failure, Riku quietly gets up and tells him:

“Sora, you don’t believe that.”

“I know you don’t.”

Riku then walks forward without another word, and singlehandedly keeps the demon tide at bay.

Sora cannot find the strength to get up and help, but Riku doesn’t yield. He screams in defiance as the shadows overtake him, determined to protect Sora until the end.

Overall, I just really like how Riku has Sora’s back no matter what and how Sora quietly acknowledges that in KH3 when comparing Riku and himself to Anna and Elsa:

youtube

These two are bros for life.

#Sora #Riku #Kairi #Elsa #Anna #Kingdom Hearts #video game series #brotp #bros for life #i love these boys #riku is sexy and important #sora is literal susnhine

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rxcusant · 5 years

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Lol explain Kingdom hearts to me. Like all of it. Cause I'm confused as fk. Not KH3 tho cause I'm still going through it.

buckle up lads

so theres a buncha keyblade masters called foretellers and theyre all runnin round like headless chickens cause their master disappeared and nobodys telling each other anything so they all start fightin (except this one guy luxu voiced by max mittleman, he grabbed a box and high tailed it outta there) and then it sparks a keyblade war for all the light in kingdom hearts i think ??? and then i legit forget what happens from here because i hate ux with every fiber of my being but it made this cool place called a keyblade graveyard, its pretty dope.

fast forward 1000 years and we got the cool wayfinder trio all living in land of departure about to take their mark of mastery except terra doesnt pass because Mark Hamil Said Darkness Sucks. also we meet this old guy Xehanort he kinda sucks a lot. theres these enemies called unversed rolling around and mark hamil tells aqua and terra to go stop them but ventus said HEY IM COMING TO and ran after terra so aquas left to be the mom to bring them both home idk and its revealed ventus is made of pure light and xehanort literally split the darkness form his heart and it made vanitas-- hes responsible for all the unversed, he sucks, we dont like him but we love him-- in an effort to forge this thing called the X-Blade (PRONOUNCED LIKE KEY BLADE I HATE THIS SERIES) that will open the door to kingdom hearts, and the x-blade can only be made when pure light and darkness clash, and like... restart the keyblade war and bring about balance?? idk. And xehanort wants to live long enough to see this happen so he literally possesses terras body. Cool! Just what the poor guy needed. Ven and vanitas fight and ven sacrifices himself so he goes to take a Very Long Nap and vanitas just dies like the bitch he is. But ven’s heart finds his way to baby 5yo sora who decides HEY ILL HOARD YOU IN MY HEART FOR THE NEXT 11 YEARS and thats why roxas looks like ventus. Aqua yeets him in the land of departure and then like..locks the world up and it turns into castle oblivion. meanwhile terra and aqua punch each other and terras about to fall into a darkness pit but aqua sacrifces heself to get him out and so she ends up trapped there for 11 years and terra??is now terranort and has amnesia and this old dude Ansem The Wise finds him and adopts him and an apprentice. yeah. bet he wont regret that decision ; )

10 years later kh1 happens and sora and riku and kairi are chilling on destiny islands until it explodes and riku fucks off to the darkness and kairi fucks off to soras hearts -- i hope she said hi to ventus in there-- and sora ends up in traverse town where he meets donald and goofy. YOU SEE king mickey of disney castle also fucked off because worlds are disappearing to darkness and he left donald and goofy a note to go find The Key cause thatll help. so they do and they journey around with sora and become good buddies i love the trinity trio so much. eventually they meet riku at hollow bastion again and hes been posssessed by this dude Ansem whos not Ansem the Wise but is actually Xehanort’s Heartless (i hate this fucking series) and they find kairis comatose body chillin in the corner and they have a fight scene thats engraved in the memory of Everyone whos ever played PS2 KH1 KAIRI! KAIRI! OPEN YOUR EYES! ITS NO USE. THAT GIRL HAS LOST HER HEART. SHE CANNOT WAKE UP. oh my god why didnt they add a skip scene button. anyway they punch the possession outta riku and sora stabs himself with the keyblade to release kairis heart BUT it also releases his own heart which created his nobody, Roxas, who got vens heart???who thats why he looks like ven?? and it created namine who is kairis nobody because??i honestly forget i hate this goddamn series. anyway soras a heartless for a few minutes but kairi got her heart and life back and wanted to get some sweet sweet screentime and so she saved sora and restored him Thank you kairi. so sora dumps kairi off at traverse town and goes to give Ansem / Xehanort’s Heartless a good ol ass whopping ad they win and restore the worlds but kairi and sora are separated again I’LL COME BACK TO YOU, I PROMISE! I KNOW YOU WILL! WHEN YOU WALK AWAY YOU DONT HEAR ME SAY PLEAAAAAAASE OH BABYYY DONT GO oh also riku and king mickey and sora closed the door to kingdom hearts and trapped riku and mickey in the realm of darkness, that was a thing.

and then chain of memories happened. theyre in castle oblivion!!! whoa!! we meet the organization for the first time! whoa!!! we meet namine!! whoa!!! so like namine has sora-memory powers and can tinker with his memories and the memories of everyone hes connected to (AND HOLY FUCK IS THAT BOY CONNECTED TO A LOTTA PEOPLE NAMINE IS VERY POWERFUL) and the organization is making namine rewrite soras memories as he progresses throuhg castle oblivion to turn him into marluxias pawn so he cna use sora to like..overhtrow the organization, i think?? i hate this seriees. but it all works out in the end except soras memories are so scrambled he decides to sleep for a year to get all the right ones back. MEANWHILE RIKUS IN THE BASEMENT OF CASTLE OBLIVION and hes fighting his own demons i mean darkness i mean ansem i mean xehanorts heartless and he meet up with mickey a few times and then he meets DiZ and he also meets a replica of himself--yeah by the way the organization is making replicas, That Sure Wont Ever Be Referenced Again : )-- and its this game that rikus like YEAH I CAN USE THE DARKNESS AS POWER AND STRENGTH and HES GONNA WALK THE ROAD TO DAWN and then every riku rper put dawn in their url and i got confused trying to keep them all straight lord please help me im a little ol sammi

then we have 358/2 days for the DS which i never replayed cause it was tedious af which is all about the organization and roxas’s time in the organization and meeting his best buds axel and xion and saix standing in the corner being a jealous little binch PLEASE SAIX JUST BE NICE THEYLL GIVE YOU ICE CREAM TOO IF YOU ASK POLITELY Xion is another replica except shes a replica of sora but something got messed up and she got his memories of kairi which is why she looks like her but with black hair for whatever reason, i think nomura just wanted a cool goth girl to add to the series and we all thank him for it, and she and roxas become so close they kinda start influencing that weird memory shit going on and xion keeps trying to leave the organization to set things right but axel always gets stuck with the icky jobs and we got the iconic GO ON YOU JUST KEEP RUNNIN BUT ILL ALWAYS BE THERE TO BRING YOU BACK and i think around this time roxas is also super fed up with the organization and decides FUCK YALL IM DONE and punches saix and leaves. but xion finds him and they have a cool boss battle sequence got i love you xion you are a POWERHOUSE but roxas defeats her and she dies and its the saddest thing in the world AND NOBODY REMEMBERS HER WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ABOUT!!!! anyway roxas decides hes gonna punch kingdom hearts next cause it was xions last wish but riku, who is sporting a cool blindfold for edge, is like HEY WE NEED YOU TO WAKE UP SORA and roxas is all SORA THIS SORA THAT I DONT GIVE A FUCK and tey fight! and riku loses cause roxas has two keybladees! OBLIVION IS THE BEST KEYBLADE IT LOOKS SUPER COOL I LOVE IT SO MUCH WOW but riku rips off his blindfold and summons the darkness and he takes on ansems, xehanorts heartless, appearance and he squeezes roxas until he passes out and then they yeeted roxas into a data twilight town for a few days.

so enter kh2 with the 6 hours roxas tutorial in the data twilight town until he goes to find sora and returns to him. SO FINALLY AFTER AN ENTIRE YEAR sora wakes up with all his proper memories and so does donald and goofy and theyre like COOL LETS GO FIND RIKU AND KING MICKEY and they go journeying around the worlds again to stop the organization. meanwhile axels gettin desperate to see his best friend for life roxas again and kidnaps kairi but shes like HEY I AINT HAVING THAT and runs off and ends up in twilight town but axel finds her and kidnaps her anyway but then saix kidnaps her to the world that never was. and so soras like WE GOTTA GO SAVE KAIRI AND RIKU NOW cause by the way earlier like midpoint of the game maybe Mickey was like SAY FELLAS DID SOMEONE MENTION THE DOOR TO DARKNESS and its one of my favorite quotes in this hell franchise, so like THYE KNOW KING MICKEY IS OK that just leaves kairi and riku and stopping the organization. so they find kairi and they find riku and sora cries a bit and im just happy the destiny trio is together again. And DiZ showed up again, hes actually ansem the wise, and he talks about computers and hearts and research and xemnas, the organizations leader, is likeI WAS YOUR APPRENTICE! BUT YOU DIDNT LET ME DO ILLEGAL HUMAN EXPERIMENT SON HEARTS SO I KICKED YOU OUT AND RREMOVED MY OWN HEART AND THATS WHY THERES A HEARTLESS AND A NOBODY OF XEHANORT and ansem the wise is like YEAH BITCH and he explodes and riku turns back to normal but he also really needs a haircut. so they go punch xemnas in his zebra coat and riku and sora chill in the realm of darkness for about ten minute son the beach, i guess aqua was hanging out somewhere else, and they get a message form kairi in a bottle and the door to light opens and they go home and it was literally!!!!! a better fucking ending!!!! than kh3!!!!!!!!! thats my tea!!!!!!

so then we have KH3D, dream drop distance, which begins telling us ‘hey when you kill a heartless and a nobody that person is gonna be recompleted so uhhhhh xehanorts coming back Thats Not Good, make sora and riku do their mark of mastery test in the realm of sleep to get the power of waking’ and thats the whole game but its great because flowmotion! dream eaters! TWEWY TWEWY TWEWY T W E W Y!!!!!! playable riku!!! fun worlds!!! soriku!!! except KH3D’s fatal flaw is THEY INTRODUCED TIME TRAVEL INTO THIS FUCKING COMPLEX HELL HOLE I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM FOR THAT. anyway rikus been doing a great hecking job!!!! except sora ended up in twtnw and kept chasing the dreams into the deepest pit of slumber and the organization broke his heart so they use him as one of xehanorts vessels [gesutres to my blog with will smith arms] yeeah babey. and riku is understandably like HEY GIVE ME MY FRIEND BACK and xehanort is like FUCK OFF TWINK and mickey and donald and goofy and axel, whos been recompleted as lea, arrive and steal comatose sora back form xehanort and xehanort monologues about the X-Blade split into 20 pieces- 7 of light, 13 of darkness- and so hes gonna make 13 vessels of darkness with his heart inside them and the guardians of light gotta gather 7 lights to clash and bringg about the keyblade war or bring about kingdom hearts, i-- i literally hate this series so much Why do you think i went on a year long hiatus??? i needed to calm the fuck down-- either way xehanort yeets off with his darknesses and soras STILL comatose and rikus like I WILL DIVE INTO HIS SLEEP AND SAVE HIM BECAUSE DEARLY BELOVED IS PLAYING AND if i continue this joke someones bound to get mad at me for ‘’’pushign a soriku agenda’’’ BUT YKNOW WHAT, RIKUS A REAL MVP AND PUNCHES A NIGHTMARE VEN AND SAVES SORA AND SORA HUGS HIM AND ITS GREAT AND I LOVE MY SONS SO MUCH and the kh3d ends with them saying ‘hey look kairis gonna do something!’ but Little Did We Know.

and thats your summary of what the fuck happened in kingdom hearts. i hate this game so much.

#outofxiii #long post #i didnt have to answer this like i did. ive been making a video all day long and im so close to finishing #i could have linked the Good Enough Summary of Kingdom Hearts video and went back to my own project #but no #here i am. i actually went and did this. i hate myself and i hate kingodm hearts #nobody come into my ask like Um Actually [x] Happened because its 2am and i assure you i do not care!!#Anonymous #!questions

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regalia-of-wisdom · 6 years

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Why Vanitas and Marluxia can come back if they want to and Nomura didn’t retcon.

‪Ok so on twitter I said that I wasn’t gonna write this bc I didn’t wanna be called a KH3 apologist but then my friends were like “you’re a kh3 apologist anyways just do it” so I did it. I love KH and theorizing and analyzing everything and it’s great, but also it’s 2 am, and also Nomura really needs to consider writing these things down somewhere before releasing these games. Also stop recycling villains, dammit.

Sorry that I can’t line break. I’m writing on mobile rn :/ it’s a long post.

‪Ok I’m too lazy to go on the wiki or something and re read these but on the very first KH (or maybe it was in the Secret Ansem Reports in KH2...?? ANYWAYS IN ONE OF THOSE) it is stated that, according to the metaphysics of the Kh universe, a person is made up of a body, a heart‬, ‪and a soul. Bc the main lore of kh doesn’t mention it much not many players seem to remember or know what the “soul” is, especially since it’s clearly not supposed to be the same thing that westerners think of as a soul (that would be a heart in KH-metaphysics)‬.

‪So all we ever get in the series is people losing their hearts, which is synonymous to someone going fucking catatonic and emotionless bc they don’t have a soul (think Kairi in KH1), or just overall disappear bc of darkness related hijinks that cause complications.‬

‪Like, Kairi in KH1 was alive, y’all. She had a breathing pattern and open eyes and everything, she just didn’t have a heart. She’s the only example we have of this (unless you want me to include Aurora in BBS lol), because she’s the only one whose body wouldn’t react to darkness related hijinks (Darkness, as you all know, is quite annoying).‬ This means that, clearly, not having a heart doesn’t mean you’re a corpse. It’s probably more like you going in a coma. Nobodies in Org XIII aren’t walking corpses. They’re just ppl without a soul. (AKA a heart). They’re like, psychopaths? Sam in that one season of Supernatural? you know, just a bunch of ppl that don’t have to deal with pesty issues like guilt or ethics.

(If you’re wondering why Kairi’s catatonic body in KH1 isn’t a Nobody it’s bc Nobodies are dependent on Darkness. Only hearts that have turned to heartless (darkness) create Nobodies, and Nobodies are born with the ability to open dark corridors and control heartless and do whatever they want. Like, they technically have access to both light and dark (and. Void? I guess?) but they’re very obviously leaning more towards the side of darkness. Not that they’re inherently dark creatures, but that they are just yet another life form in KH that owes its existence to Darkness. Kairi, as we all will never forget, has no darkness bothering her and complicating her life. Sora’s the one that had enough darkness and body and soul to spare to create two nobodies out of thin air. What the fuck dude.)

Of course if you played DDD you’d be like “uh, but Xemnas said that Nobodies can grow hearts uhhh” and id be like yeah he did and it makes a lot of sense especially if you had watched/Played Re: Coded and payed attention to the juicy lore bits instead of the main plot like I’ve been saying forever. However unimportant the plot is, Re: Coded’s storyline literally exists to say that anything with a Body and a (what KH calls a) Soul (Like, say, the person made out of data that you’re playing as throughout the game) has the ability to grow a heart and become a person. The entirety of Jiminy’s Journal becomes a world a la Winnie the Pooh, obtaining its own heart. Like, it’s a book and it was made and it’s kind of fake but it developed its own sense of self, and developed a heart. Like, it was literally pointed out to us. Data Sora lives beyond his programming (just like, hey, Tron.) bc he developed a sense of self. A personality. A heart. He even makes his own Keyblade, that’s how much heart he mad. With a lesson like that being thrown at us, why wouldn’t the Organization XIII Nobodies eventually be able to develop their own sense of self? To go beyond what they thought their “original” selves were like, and become able to feel? Not to say they do, mind you. I think a lot of them, or all of them, like Axel in the beginning of Days, were so stuck on what they thought their original self was like that they were just following through the motions and doing what a data program would consider its “programming”. Axel only began to grow a heart once he stopped trying to be Saïx’s friend, and started to go beyond what his memories were telling him he should act like and do what he felt like he needed to act like.

Anyways now at this point you’re probably like, “what does this have to do with Villains in KH always coming back…” and I’m gonna get to that jeez hold on a minute, I just felt like I needed to explain what a heart was for this to be clearer to people. What are the functions of a heart, and what it ultimately serves. I needed to explain this, because losing a Heart does not mean you are dead, losing your Soul does.

The Soul in KH should probably be referred to as Spirit, as I think it reflects the idea better, while keeping basically the same word. (Unfortunately we already have things called Spirits in KH, and they’re adorable darkness creatures, so.) It’s supposed to be the energy that makes something move. It’s the Will to Live. The fact that the soul seems to be synonymous with will is important, bc only people with a “Strong Will”, that become heartless, create Nobodies. The Will in this case is clearly the energy source that provides a body with sustenance. With life. Pinocchio was given a soul by the blue fairy so he could move (the heart, I think, he made himself due to Geppetto's own feelings). The love of children give the toys in Toy Story a will to protect, love, and be played with. Terra’s will was so damn strong, it reanimated his armor. Terra’s Will to live makes his armor move on its own. Look, it’s even called The Lingering Will. What does this mean? That only a body and a heart that has lost its soul, that loses its energy source (its lifestream, I suppose) undeniably dies.

No one, absolutely no one in KH, has lots their soul. Ok, not true, obviously there are some exceptions, particularly regarding the Disney villains, but I’m talking abt the story original characters that Nomura loves to recycle so much. No one has lost it bc pretty much almost no one we fight is ever a complete human being. They’re always missing vital parts of themselves. Ansem the Seeker of Darkness was humanoid Heart walking around. Xemnas and the Organization were a few bodies and souls walking around with maybe a mini heart or two. Vanitas is literally the most incomplete being I can think of. He’s literally half a heart, half a body, and half a soul. The dude is a mess. Master Xehanort… MX is clearly using loopholes and luck to keep himself surviving this long. By now, he’s made a complete and utter mess of Terra, who got literally split into 3 entities for 10 years, while he himself is really only a floating heart and a soul ruining everything. Young Xehanort is a complete being that should probably watch out for decapitation or something, but we can certainly rule out that Riku would kill him because I mean. Y’all have met Riku, right? Also he’s just obviously alive lmao.

The fact that these beings are incomplete is important bc the keyblade, our weapon of choice, is a mysterious artifact that serves very specific functions. It opens and locks anything, specifically the hearts to a world and the pathways that lead to other worlds. It seems to exist to bring balance and stability to… anywhere it’s at, really. It’s a magical item with magical intentions. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and say what I’m about to say as if it’s proven fact that I read in an interview or deduced myself or something, I will admit that my next point is in theoretical territory, but that doesn’t make it any less likely or probable. And that is that the Keyblade can not kill people. That is to say, it can not kill a soul. It can only break apart, or reunite parts of a person, but not destroy them. “Killing” heartless restores them to their original state: a heart, and killing nobodies does the same. Xehanort and Sora stabbed themselves to get their hearts out of their bodies and created heartless and nobodies in the process. It’s like the laws of thermodynamics or something. It seems to me that that is the nature of a keyblade.

So, inclusion, nobody has died in KH. The end. This is unnecessarily long but I get like that sometimes. There is one last point that I have to address but I might do that tomorrow, if anyone gives a shit by then. Good night!

#KH #Kingdom Hearts III #kh3 #kingdom hearts meta analysis #long post #why do i always have something to rant about #all the time #GOD

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derekscorner · 7 years

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Kingdom Hearts “Shipping” Analysis

Okay, so I got into some interesting talks with someone from KHPlanet.com and with my friend @blackosprey over shippers in the series. We delved into interesting territory and it got my mind thinking-

I’ve been around since KH1 launched in 2002, I’ve see nearly two decades of this now but I’ve never put it into analytical view like I did theories...until now.

You see, I’m not much of a shipper myself. I’ve never really had a good view of such sub groups. Especially after the way the fans of Bleach & Naruto had behaved recently. I would never say it’s wrong, but I do feel it’s given too much importance. People base their entire feelings on a series out of two characters, regardless of whether it’s even a genre of story that focuses on romance or not, and then throw tantrums when it doesn’t work out.

This baffles me. 8 months ago Bleach fans even went as far to burn their merchandise. It was very ignorant for several reasons, 1 they done have your money, 2 the story is over and throwing a tantrum like a toddler won’t fix it and 3 it’s the authors story. You can say “OOC” all you want, but the creator made these people, what is “in character” for them will always be their say not yours.

So rather than “OOC” it’s more like they aren’t acting as you wanted these characters too, not them actually being “out of character”. Granted KH isn’t those fandoms, at least not yet, not sure if it ever will be given how many fans it’s lost due to it’s console spread. The remixes aren’t sparking back much life to forums so I can’t tell.

Anyway, you’re likely wondering where I’m going with this. If you’re a reader of mine previously, you know I’m building a point. That point being, “shipping is strong”. While KH isn’t other fandoms it does have a constant shipping war, or debates rather, that have lasted and changed for 15yrs now.

The KH shipping fandom in particular has two larger camps. You have those that say there is no undertones and it’s all purely friendship and you have those who have some ship they ride with undying, if not scary, fervor.

It’s these two sides that I’ve always somewhat never understood. I’m an analytical man, to me both sides are behaving in extremes rather than logic. You see, each game in the series has had a little of everything.

“What!? You’re just a hater!”

No, no, be calm child. I have a lot of issues with KH but shipping isn’t one of them. What I mean is each game is inconsistent. The people on the “platonic side” are right in that the series main focus is friendship. It always has been, this needs to be accepted.

On the flipside, the “shipper side” is also right. Undertones do exist. We see this all the time. For this post I will focus on the “oldest ship”, SoKai. (hear that @anheiressofasoldier I’m talking SoKai, enjoy~)

It’s by far the oldest ship in the series thanks to Kingdom Hearts 1. It began there. And no, I don’t say this because Sora stabbed himself and became a heartless for Kairi. I say this for the subtle reasons. Scenes such as Sora & Kairi’s moment in the cave, or how Kairi’s heart chose Sora to hide in specifically, or the cave drawing of the paopu fruit, or how Riku openly teases Sora on screen.

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Riku also uses this plot point again in the foot race. Saying the “winner gets to share a paopu with Kairi”. If you win, yes you can win that race, Riku scoffs it off as Sora being too serious.

“Well tha-”

Ah ah ah! Sssshhh I’m not done. Let me continue. These things are there, they are in-game, they exist, no amount of headcanon will change this. However no amount of headcanon will make these more than this, undertones.

You see, the ship that started all of this isn’t really that much of a ship. Undertones for something more are hinted but here’s the thing- They’re all on Sora’s end. This is something that exists in several games, Chain of Memories and Days also emphasize this.

It’s always Sora’s feelings of Kairi that we are told about. It’s never her own. This is due to the bad writing at times since Kairi herself is woefully underused. Her “clones” have literally had more relevance going beyond KH1.

“But what about Sora x Riku!?”

Yes, what about it? To be honest I think my friend Osprey described this phenomenon best. I quote;

Though come to think, it reminds me of a post I saw a while back. It was talking about the weird phenomenon when it comes to writing romances vs relationships. A lot of writers don't really know how to deal with romance, treating it as something super-special and not really giving it a lot of character and presence.

Whereas with friendships, they run the whole gamut of human loyalty and affection because it's just more familiar territory. And as a result, the so-called friendships get more emotional power behind them than the romances do.

... That's basically what happened with Sora and Riku, I think. Rather than trying to make Riku a super-special person to Sora or w/e, he was just portrayed as a valued and loyal best friend. Which feels stronger and more organic than what Nomura was going with in regards to Kairi.

That is a very compelling point, perhaps very true tbh. Anyone knows friendships are easier to write. You can make two character out of thin air, throw them in a setting and say they're friends. So long as you portray them actually behaving like friends, it's believable. That's the difference between them. Romance has to be built, friendship doesn't.

You could make the case of platonic friendship being the closest of course, although it depends entirely on the people. Romantic lovers can be the closest due to their close nature, but platonic can be just as close for it's pure nature.

If you wanted to treat KH like it's written well then you could view it from Riku's view. Just imagine half the shit Riku pulled, yet Sora still cared. For someone who was through the emotional ringer, that would be quite compelling for Riku's loyalty. You could even make it a case on Sora's personality. If it came to the heart stab scene he truly would do that for anyone, shippers need to accept that fact. However, it's also true the feelings of Sora are told to us to everyone BUT himself. For examples;

• Sora couldn't wake up because his memories of Kairi became Xion, that means he values Kairi so much that she's the specific reason his heart won't wake. Not because he's missing memories of Riku or others, but Kairi. (this scene here, click me)

• In CoM, Namine specifically points out she can't replace Kairi. Trying to do so only amplifies his feelings for her and Namine points out to him that even with his memories gone, his value of her is so strong it overrode her magic. This not only gave him a glimpse of Kairi but changed her charm back to normal. (around 2mins in this scene here, click me)

• In KH2, before SoKu set sail, Donald & Goofy tease Sora about Kairi in Port Royal and he even daydreams of her in Halloween Town. (this scene, click me)

“You’re just trying to prove SoKai, what’s your point?”

My point is this implies an interesting facet about Sora. Ignoring the ignorance the games have given him lately, it shows that normally Sora is open with everyone, he values everyone, even Roxas who he's never properly met.

In contrast, it also foreshadows that he's not as open with Kairi because the feeling isn't friendship. It's more special to him than the rest and he isn't as open because, like any man, he doesn't fucking know how to be.

Women are mysterious creatures, we men don't know how to approach them. Some claim too, some try too, but more often than not we fly blind.

It’s in defining Sora and Kairi’s ties that we see how the others work. Yes Sora stabbed himself for Kairi, but Sora would literally do this for anyone. He is just that nice and he values his friends lives.

Yes Sora cried for Riku, but you have to remember that Sora thought Riku was dead or bad off. We as the players seen Riku but Sora wasn’t ever sure of Riku’s fate.

Riku in turn pulled some bad shit in KH1. His guilt has carried over up to KHDDD. Despite these mistakes, Sora never held it against Riku and even cried knowing he was okay. To Riku, who’s been through an emotional ringer, this would be quite compelling. In Riku’s eyes, Sora deserves the best of loyalty. Which we see in KHDDD. Riku values Sora to the point that KHDDD was almost as SoRiku as KH1 was SoKai.

Then this bleeds into Sora and Kairi’s “clones”. Roxas, Namine and Xion all have their own minds but they also aren’t natural beings. They sprang from Sora & Kairi and aspects of them bleed into the nobodies.

• Xion was the “Kairi Sora remembered” and to that extent Roxas kinda treated her as “his kairi”. Xion herself displayed Sora’s trait of self sacrifice and loyalty.

• Namine was “Kairi’s Shadow” and due to Kairi’s bond with Sora had actual powers over Sora’s memory. Namine in a sense, is the embodiment of Kairi’s hold over Sora.

• Roxas also had unique bonds to Xion and Namine, these weren’t so much bonds of romantic nature but them feeling the effects of Sora’s bonds to Kairi.

In Summary

The point I’m making is that when I analyze the story and the arguments of various ships in the series, I don’t see it. Instead, what I see is mishandled relationships. Yes KH2 and KHDDD had borderline SoraxRiku material, however other games emphasize Kairi’s importance to Sora.

The series constantly goes back and forth and this lack of consistency tells me that there are no romantic points in this story. If I had to place any value, it’d be that Sora himself has a crush on Kairi.

Her importance to him is highlighted regularly and his behavior around her isn’t as open as he is with Riku, Donald and Goofy. If you watch, Sora treats Donald and Goofy the same way he does Riku. The difference is Donald and Goofy are just as big a dork as Sora is, so when Sora hugs them or acts silly so do they.

I can’t claim there’s a ship or couple in the series because there isn’t any. There is no actual romance, just undertones. And even then, while I think Sora holds Kairi in special regard I don’t know what Kairi thinks.

We hardly see Kairi in this series and we don’t get a real solid glimpse of her view. Couples are mutual, if I only see things on Sora’s end then I can’t say there is one.

Even then, all the importance of Kairi to Sora isn’t even told to us BY Sora himself. It’s told to us by others, such as Riku in Days or Namine in Chain of Memories.

Everything truly is connected back to Sora, for better or worse. The nobodies behave the way they do because of Sora, some like Xion even have their “real” faces determined by his feelings for other people. (in this case, Kairi)

I think people see what they want to see more than what is actually present. Whether you ignore undertones as a “platonic shipper” or whether you ignore things outside traditional ships because they’re your OTP. I’m also highly doubtful you’ll see any confirmation on such things, at least not till a final game, if ever, happens.

P.S Yes I didn’t bring up Kairi’s moments in KH2. She did show favoritism towards Sora but at the same time she seemed a bit too obsessed in that regard to me. It’s hard for me to take Kairi’s KH2 personality seriously since the Kairi we’re introduced to in KH1, albeit brief, showed a more natural and equal concern for both her friends.

Then again Kh2′s script was...questionable in several areas so meh. Personally I’d need to see Kairi truly developed more as a character to see SoKai as anything more than her simply being Sora’s crush.

Welp, internet keeps dying. Better post while I can. Farewell dear reader~

#kingdom hearts #long post

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