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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 10 months

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Psycho Analysis: Master Xehanort & His Many Incarnations

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Kingdom Hearts is probably one of my favorite series ever made. It is a unique blend of Square’s JRPG goodness and the magical whimsy of Disney in one of the most baffling and unlikely crossovers of all time, and manages to deliver a wild (and occasionally convoluted) story about light, darkness, and the power of friendship that keeps you engaged even when things stop making any fucking sense—a frequent occurrence, especially in the later games.

Ah, but what is a Square JRPG without some hammy villain out to destroy the world? Enter Master Xehanort, the evil old man. A scheming Keyblade master who desires to rewrite reality to balance darkness and light, he is the ultimate enemy Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the rest of the Mouseketeers must gather up their strength to fight. Truly he is a Square villain through and through.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

You didn’t think this was going to be so simple, did you? Master Xehanort could give Lord Voldemort a run for his money in the soul-splitting department, because grandpa here is able to make an entire Organization XIII with nothing but himself by Kingdom Hearts III. While some of his Xehanorted followers like Marluxia, Luxord, Larxene, and Xigbar are not going to be discussed here (we’ll be saving them for the inevitable Organization XIII Psycho Analysis somewhere down the line), we will be going over the original game’s villain Ansem, Seeker of Darkness; Xemnas, the leader of Organization XIII from Kingdom Hearts II; Young Xehanort, the time traveling bastard version of Master Xehanort; and Terra-Xehanort, the ‘nort who is responsible for the creation of those first two guys.

Also, full disclosure here: I never finished Birth By Sleep and I didn’t play the twelve quadrillion spinoffs between II and III so my knowledge on some of these guys is down to simply reading plot summaries, watching cutscenes, and so on. Still, I can’t let the voters down, so lets dive to the heart of the matter and talk about the convoluted villain from the most convoluted JRPG franchise around.

Motivation/Goals: Somehow Xehanort’s plans are both incredibly simple and also extremely confusing at the same time.

Thanks to Kingdom Hearts being a relatively simple black-and-white conflict where “light = good, dark = bad,” Master Xehanort’s schemes are a lot less confusing than they initially appear. It goes like this: Master Xehanort saw there was too much light everywhere and decided that the universe needed an equal amount of dark and light. To this end he sought out Kingdom Hearts to utilize its limitless power to reshape reality, but as his plan went further along he became corrupted and consumed by darkness, leading to his council of clone nonsense and all the Heartless, Nobodies, and schemes throughout the series as he now sought to end the world and reshape it for seemingly his own amusement.

Real simple, right? WRONG. At the end of the third game he’s confusingly revealed to be a well-intentioned extremist all along, and he just wanted to bring balance after all! Never mind all the fucked up evil shit he did, never mind how obviously sinister the dude is, never mind how his younger self is the most soulless bastard around, just ignore all that because Grandpa was really just trying to help in his own messed up way. And, yeah, this was how he started before every game after showed him going to even more fucked up extremes to achieve his goal, so... yeah. It doesn’t help that the last game tells us he thought the darkness in everyone’s heart was the issue, as opposed to the previously-established “tyranny of light.”

Performance: As if this man wasn’t convoluted enough, his voice actor situation is nothing short of pure insanity.

Ansem, Seeker of Darkness was initially voiced by Billy Zane in Kingdom Hearts. Out of all the ridiculous stunt casting going on in that game, Zane was probably the best actor aside from Hayley Joel Osment and Hayden Panettiere (and certainly a better and more fitting choice than Lance Bass as Sephiroth). Unfortunately, he was one of the big names who was tossed aside when the sequel came out in 2005, which stings really bad considering his career was obliterated a year later for starring in the film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, a Turkish film that showed the ugly side of the American occupation of Iraq (and also featured Gary Busey as an antisemitic caricature) during the height of the patriotic fervor surrounding the War on Terror. His career has yet to recover to this day, and it’s sad he didn’t have an iconic video game villain role to fall back on.

Of course, it’s not all bad; his replacement, Richard Epcar (Old Man Joseph in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the title character of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, and Myotismon and Etemon from the first season of Digimon) certainly tore into the role with gusto, hamming it up as Ansem and delivering the sort of magnificent villain performance you would expect from a man who played an evil Elvis monkey. He’s so good in his role they even gave him Terra-Xehanort to play as well! Twice the Richard Epcar for the price of one! Young Xehanort is decidedly less messy, but still changed from David Gallagher in Birth By Sleep to Ben Diskin going forward. Diskin, of course, is most well known for playing Numbuh One in Codename: Kids Next Door and Young Joseph Joestar in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Kinda funny how both Josephs are playing essentially the same guy at different points in his life.

Master Xehanort’s VA situation is, without a doubt, the biggest tangled mess of them all. When he first appeared in Birth By Sleep, he was portrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy, a man who needs no introduction and who spent his time going up against the dude voiced by Mark Hamill. Finally we get to see the ultimate battle, Spock vs. Luke Skywalker!

Alas, Leonard Nimoy sadly passed away in 2015, leaving Master Xehanort in an awkward spot. Thankfully, they had an excellent backup in mind for when Kingdom Hearts III finally rolled out: Rutger Hauer, a man who needs no introduction (Ok, maybe he needs one a bit more than Nimoy; he was Roy Batty in Blade Runner and the eponymous character in Hobo with a Shotgun). Unfortunately, his performance wasn’t quite as good as Nimoy’s, though not bad. The fact he was able to carry the burden of voicing a character previously portrayed by a universally beloved actor to a solid finish is an impressive feat only matched by Greg Baldwin wrapping up Iroh and Aku in Mako’s honor. Truly a decent note to go out on!

...Except there was DLC, which featured an appearance from Xehanort. And wouldn’t you know it, Rutger Hauer sadly passed away in 2019, leaving Xehanort voiceless once more. Who could possibly fill the shoes of two incredible sci-fi actors who starred in some of the greatest film and television roles of all time? I’ll tell you who: The guy who voiced Mr. Clipboard in Foodfight, baby!!!

Motherfucking Christopher Lloyd of all goddamn people is now Master Xehanort, and honestly? It’s just perfect. Xehanort looks like he would have that sinister snarl Lloyd gives villains like Rasputin and the aforementioned CGI abomination. This is truly a match made in heaven! Let’s just hope he doesn’t sadly pass away right before he needs to record more lines too.

The only one of these dudes with a consistent VA was Xemnas, who had Paul St. Peter from beginning to end. He previously appeared in a Psycho Analysis when I talked about the Pillar Men, as he voiced the best one (Wammu); it seems playing the best Xehanort squad member was practice for playing the best massive Aztec vampire. You might also know him from Digimon, where he’s played characters such as Wormmon and Leomon. The man has incredible range and never turns in a dull role.

Final Fate: This is one of the most contentious aspects of the guy. All of the incarnations get a pretty interesting sendoff in the third game as most of them come to some sort of epiphany in regards to their lot in life, with Ansem and Xemnas both getting rather tragic farewells where the heroes feel a bit of sympathy for them and Young Xehanort going out gloating to Sora and being an absolute bastard. But Master Xehanort, the big bad who has tortured and enslaved and destroyed and caused untold chaos and devastation in his quest to create a world that fits his idea of balance? He… peacefully goes into the afterlife with his best friend. Needless to say, gamers were pissed this dude had a peaceful ending despite all of the shit he did, especially when he didn’t really meaningfully redeem himself to earn it.

Best Scene: These are the bad guys in an action RPG series, what do you think their best scene is? Their boss fights, duh! Ansem, Seeker of Darkness has his massive marathon boss fight at the end of the first game, where he summons a Darkside and turns into a giant Heartless ship, and if you’d like to count his time possessing Riku there’s that ball-bustingly difficult battle in Hollow Bastion too; Xemnas has his super hard bonus boss fight in the Final Mix of the first game and then his action-packed final battle in the second one, which features you fighting him while jumping down a skyscraper, slashing buildings in half, and a whole lot of lasers; Young Xehanort has his bonus battle in Birth By Sleep and main story fight in Dream Drop Distance; and then all of them get great final duels in the third game, which culminates in the awesome final battle against Master Xehanort himself. The man is incapable of dropping the ball when it comes to boss battles, no matter which incarnation you’re facing. Plus, you get to live out this memetic SpongeBob quote every single game you beat him up in:

Outside of the fights, I think Young Xehanort takes the cake out of the incarnations with the scene where he is verbally flayed alive by Woody of all fucking characters.

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Final Thoughts & Score: Let’s go one by one, shall we?

Ansem, Seeker of Darkness

The first Xehanort we encounter, and honestly it’s hard not to feel a little nostalgic about him. This was our first Kingdom Hearts villain! He’s the one who got us all stuck for hours in Hollow Bastion as kids because Ansem-Riku was an ungodly pain in the ass! And Billy Zane’s fantastic performance led to an unending avalanche of memes, with basically every single line of dialogue Ansem said becoming a meme; Hell, the reason I didn’t bother with a “Best Quote” segment up there is because I would have just been rambling off quote after quote from this guy. And Richard Epcar was obviously no slouch when he took up the role, keeping this original baddie as cool as ever up until his genuinely sad demise in the third game. He’s essentially your average generic JRPG villain elevated by a great vocal performance, cool design, and interesting twists, and for that I think he deserves a nice, fat 8.5/10. The only downside to him I can really think of is that he is overshadowed by Maleficent (who is a way cooler villain), but being overshadowed by Maleficent is a fate all Disney villains must accept.

Xemnas

Kingdom Hearts II is the best game in the series, and Xemnas is the best Xehanort incarnation of them all. It’s not even particularly close, really. Chronologically your first encounter is that sick bonus boss fight in the first game, and from there he goes into the second game as the big bad and gets the most fucking awesome boss fights imaginable, putting the final battles from the first game to shame. Dude can make lightsabers pop out of his hands, how is he not the best Xehanort? Organization XIII were really cool, and Nobody did it better than Xemnas… which is what I would say if so many of the others didn’t have a lot more personality than him. Yes, he’s a great final boss and he’s super badass and he fits into the big Xehanort scheme, but if I’m being honest he never really felt as compelling as a lot of the other Nobodies. Luxord, Xigbar, Axel, they all felt a little more fleshed out and interesting, y’know? Again, though: Lightsaber hands. You can be as vague a villain as you’d like if you have lightsaber hands. Sometimes a simple and fun villain can be great, and a 9.5/10 is a good score for Mr. Mansex here.

Young Xehanort

There is an inherent tragedy to the other Xehanorts. They lack a heart, they lack emotion, and in their final moments they become aware of their own limitations and reflect on their nature, gaining understanding before dissolving away. But not so with Young Xehanort! Homeboy straight up doesn’t give two shits when he’s beaten, because he knows when he dies he’s just gonna go back to his own time and grow up to be the big bad of the series! If you didn’t get the picture in his final moments, let me spell it out for you: Young Xehanort is an unrepentant cunt, and I love him for it. His unique time powers, the voice performance by Ben Diskin, and the infamous verbal beatdown Woody gives him all help make him one of the more memorable incarnations of Xehanort, and I think that warrants an 8/10 at least.

Terra-Xehanort

This guy is the greater-scope villain for the first few games as he is the source of both Xemnas and Ansem, one of the most hideously powerful incarnations of Xehanort due to being a combo of, well, Terra and Xehanort, and nearly singlehandedly kills all the heroes; Donald has to pull out the God-tier magic of Zettaflare to beat him back. The thing is, as I never played Birth By Sleep all the way through, I don’t really fully grasp the sheer scope of his existence beyond knowing he’s a nasty piece of work. I don’t know if I can fairly rate him without all that context; I think, tentatively he deserves an 8/10 if only for the impact he had on the rest of the series.

Master Xehanort

Finally, we get to the big boss. As I’ve said, I never finished Birth By Sleep, but I did play through the third game and Dream Drop Distance, so that counts for something, right? I don’t hate Master Xehanort or anything—it would be hard to since he’s voiced by three of my favorite actors—and he has excellent boss fights, but I can’t just rank a villain entirely on how fun it is to beat the shit out of them. I think his motivations are stupid and messy and he ends up feeling really nonsensical at the end, with his redemption being so rushed it almost feels like what internet weirdos think Steven Universe is. Without him, none of the assholes above would even exist, and yet he gets to go peacefully into the great beyond while Sora yet again gets cockblocked and tossed into a different dimension. Going into this review, I was certain I’d rate him lower because of how bad his ending was, but… nah. He’s too much fun to beat up and just an enjoyable evil overlord character with one of the most convoluted apocalyptic schemes I’ve ever seen, so while he may be hard for me to love, he’s even harder for me to hate. 7.5/10.

Overall, I’m not sure if I’d necessarily call Xehanort one of the all-time greatest JRPG villains—he doesn’t quite measure up to Square’s iconic enemies like Sephiroth or Kefka—but it is pretty inarguable that he is a great, memorable, and iconic antagonist. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia talking, but kicking the shit out of this dude again and again and again across fifty different bodies he’s jacked for his wacky schemes has been fun from day one. I kind of wish the focus on him didn’t eventually overtake and overshadow the Disney villains like Maleficent and Pete, but for what he is, he’s a fun foe. He doesn’t really keep things simple and clean, but the way he’s making me feel tonight makes it hard to let him go.

#Psycho Analysis #Kingdom Hearts #Master Xehanort #Xemnas #ansem seeker of darkness #young xehanort #Leonard Nimoy #rutger hauer #Christopher Lloyd #paul st. peter #billy zane #Richard Epcar #Ben diskin #terra-xehanort #Youtube

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