#I would sell you all for Sora Kingdom Hearts

[luxmoogle]

Who is your favorite KH character? If you can't choose a favorite (I know I can't) who is your favorite character to draw?

[rikusahoge]

"But be safe. No reckless stunts."

On Sora and Riku's respective recklessness as showcased in the series, and what it means for their relationship

Under readmore because i am going to talk a lot

As an aside: Im going to be pulling from the Japanese text, though I am not a native speaker or really any kind of speaker, so take what I say with a decent amount of scrutiny. I'm more than willing to be corrected on these conclusions!

One line that has stood out to me in kingdom hearts is the repetition of "no reckless stunts!" and similar phrases. If you examine the original text, three slightly different words have been used to mean "reckless", which I'll include below (pulled definitions from Jisho, mostly)

無謀 (mubou): reckless, foolhardy, rash, ill-advised, mad (scheme)

無茶 (mucha): reckless, absurd, unreasonable, ridiculous

無理 (muri): impossible, unreasonable, unjustifiable

Importantly for what i want to talk about is how "muri" is used in situations where a character wants to express that something is impossible (think of a character giving up all hope due to an insermountable obstacle in front of them, they may mutter something like "muri da...") keep a pin in this, it will matter toward the end.

Also note that each of these words starts with "無" (mu), which usually means nothingness or absence of something. The definition of this kanji isnt super important, it's more important that its presence ties these three phrases together in a really unique way as i hope to demonstrate.

what i propose is that both Sora and Riku are depicted as reckless characters, albeit in different ways. The established pattern I've noticed is that Sora: "mucha" & Riku: "muri". I will tentatively refer to "mucha" as "rash" and "muri" as "impossible" (despite that it does also mean other things in some cases! bare with me it'll make sense)

Dialing back a bit, we have seen countless moments of Sora acting rashly. It is one of his key character traits and it tends to get him in trouble. He has a big heart, and is quick to anger.

Sora's response to loved ones and helpless innocents that have been put in harm's way is to repetitively bash things with his keyblade (and ask questions later).

It's Sora's rashness that allows Org 13 to use him to complete kingdom hearts. The extreme end of his rashness is showcased when he stabs himself to release Kairi from his heart.

Tldr. I think it's pretty well established and easy to argue that Sora is one to leap before he looks.

Now, Riku might be a little harder to sell as reckless, because of how well he tends to hide it. He carries himself as a role model for Sora, and tries to be the responsible friend. But if we look at his patterns of behavior, despite how he carries himself, he is quite reckless!

Without thinking of the consequences, he rushes the open door when destiny islands falls to darkness, eventually succumbing to it himself. He lashes out several times at Sora, particularly dangerously when he fires off a dark firaga in Hollow Bastion. He closes the door to darkness with Sora without knowing what would happen to him if he was trapped in the realm of darkness. When Sora is asleep, he sacrifices his form to defeat Roxas, without any assurance that he would ever be able to get his old form back.

We see Riku's recklessness too in the fight against Xemnas. He recklessly throws himself in front of Xemnas twice, hurling Sora away from danger and taking a very nasty blow to the hip. I'd count his dive to save Sora in DDD among these, mostly due to his risk taking behavior when it comes to saving Sora. Finally of course we see it in KH3, with his ultimate sacrifice. (but i think importantly, this scene isn't just recklessness, but I'll explain in a bit)

So tldr. Despite Riku's mask of level headedness and resolve, he has been shown over and over to take massive risks without caring for the consequences. Which is pretty reckless, in my opinion!

Sora and Riku's recklessness, mind you, is also called into question by Yen Sid, who tells Riku the reason he kept Aqua's fate a secret was to keep Riku and Sora from staging a "half-baked attempt at rescue"

He says similar in Japanese, but i want to just note the word he uses when he describes the rescue attempt as reckless (highlighted for ur convenience):

(the highlighted word here is "mubou", it will come back later in an Important way, so keep it in mind)

he's *basically* saying that if Riku, or worse, Sora, knew about Aqua, they would have recklessly marched into the realm of darkness to rescue her. Because he knows they are both ... Like that.

I would be remiss to not mention that Sora's impulsivity and recklessness is something Riku admires! After Yen Sid tells riku not to be rash, and Riku excitedly tells Mickey he's ready to help save Aqua, Kairi observes that Riku has changed, and he's more like Sora. Riku asks if that's a compliment, but I think it's clear that he feels it is. He says it's more Fun to just follow his heart, which is sora-esque. (;_;) This is also something he brings up to Sora when they're on the dark margin together, that he's jealous of how Sora can just follow his heart. It's clear Riku has started to embrace his more impulsive side, to follow his heart like sora does. This is important later!

So now that I have my premise Mostly set up, I'd like to highlight a handful of scenes that I thought were really telling about how Sora and Riku relate to the terms "mucha" and "muri", respectively.

Let's start with Sora and "mucha".

The first instance i have found "mucha" used is in Olympus Colliseum.

lets recall How Herc initially loses his power in KH2, and compare it to the movie.

In KH2, Herc is tricked into leaving the colliseum unguarded by capturing Meg and hiding her in the underworld so that Herc and Sora must go to her rescue. Hades sends a hydra in to destroy the colliseum while Sora and Herc are busy fighting heartless and Pete and rescuing Meg.

Upon seeing the destruction in the colliseum, Herc falls to his knees, and you can visibly see his colors fade to a more ashen complexion, similar to his appearance without his powers in the movie. He calls himself a piece of shit basically and Meg helps him up to limp to safety, leaving Sora to defeat the Hydra (ahem sora helping riku walk in twtnw after xemnas fight anyone)

(Herc even has a second journal entry for his Desaturared form.)

You leave the world after defeating the hydra and jumping up on its back a few times, and after sora d & g are named true heros. Yay. But Herc doesn't have his power back yet, which will later be addressed in the second episode.

Herc's loss of power is much different from the movie. In the movie, he agrees to let Hades take his strength for a day in order to keep Meg from harm, and release her from the contract she had entered with Hades (iirc). This was all so Herc wouldn't get the chance to save Olympus from the titans that Hades revives in order to take Zeus' throne for himself.

Herc still tries to wonderboy his way into rescuing the town, and fights a giant cyclops. While he lacks physical strength and gets pretty much Pummeled, he ends up beating the cyclops with his wit - but in doing so, a pillar is knocked over. It is about to crush Herc, but Meg pushes him out of the way, and is crushed to death.

She gives her life to save him, which in turn returns strength to Herc, because the contract was only good if Meg remained unharmed.

What I'm mostly trying to say here on this tangent is Herc's loss of power in KH2 specifically is very reminiscent of Sora losing his keyblade in Hollow Bastion, which is later echoed in the keyblade graveyard when he feels he loses his strength to fight after losing his friends. I bring up the movie to show how bizarrely different it is from the Kh2 plot, perhaps precisely to make the parallel between Sora and Herc stronger (and the parallel between Herc and Riku, by the way - Herc falling to his knees, losing his power, and giving up, only for Meg to walk him to safety, is a parallel to Riku losing his will to fight and press on after the battle with Xemnas - Sora refuses to let him and in the same Exact way he helps Riku walk on)

So Hercules, when faced with the impossible wavers, and loses his strength and will to fight. This is important so keep it in mind. Impossible/Muri isn't stated here as far as i know, but it's important that he is feeling utterly defeated and unable to win.

The second visit to the world is when we first see the term "mucha"/reckless used as far as I was able to find. Hades casts Meg into the Soul Hole and Herc dives in to save her without hesitating (mechanically to write Herc out of the boss fight, but)

We later see Herc emerge with Meg, his godly aura restored (he is Radiant!) something that *should* have killed him. and should have been impossible. But his desire to save her was so great, he recklessly dives in, without knowing that he will succeed. Luckily, all he had to do to prove he was worthy of godhood and power in both the game and the movie was to use the strength of his Heart rather than his fists, as a true hero does:

Sora scolds him and tells him not to do anymore crazy stunts after this reckless dive to save Meg (screenshot makes it look like herc is saying it sorry lol) and that is where we can see the term "mucha" being used in Japanese:

instead of crazy stunts, Sora moreso says "but don't be reckless (mucha)":

to which herc responds:

"people always do stupid things when they're in love" (note he doesn't repeat reckless, he says "baka" lol)

so here we have a direct link between herc's sacrifice when he dove in to save Meg, the restoration of his power/Godhood, and acting recklessly (mucha), without Fear or Doubt, to save someone he is In Love With. put a pin in this because it's all connected.

Now moving onto KH2.9 and KH3. From the start of the game we are told Sora has lost the Power of Waking, and his Entire goal in the game is to regain it, wake Ventus, and prepare for the battle in the KBG with Xehanort.

The Power of Waking is already a very vague, disney-esque power, essentially the power to free sleeping hearts from slumber (and first introduced to us in DDD, particularly in terms of Riku waking Sora up in a sleeping beauty retelling but I'm getting ahead of myself)

Yen Sid suggests that Sora go to Olympus for clues to regain his power, as Just Like Sora, Hercules also lost his power, but was able to regain it.

It's pretty straightforward, but in the interest of not making this post a fucking novel ill try to keep it short. Herc tells Sora he's not sure just *how* he got his powers back, just that he wanted to save Meg with all his heart when he (recklessly) dove in to save her. The game is trying to tell Sora that it's the Power of Love that brought back Herc's strength, and that Love will be key in bringing Sora's PoW back, too.

Specifically, I think that Herc's story and the other worlds Sora visits are saying that it's True Love that will bring Sora's powers back. Acts of true love in KH3 are framed as courageous, selfless, and performed unconditionally.

Despite the visit to see Hercules, Sora still doesn't gain the PoW. He has an idea of what he needs to regain it, but he has to visit multiple Disney worlds to learn more about the power of true love and sacrifice (well also separation but thats not as important to this post) before he's ready to test it out for himself.

After Arendelle (i think) we get to another important cutscene where Riku, Sora, donald, goofy, & mickey meet up with Yen Sid to discuss the progress they've made on their respective journeys. Sora wants to go to the Realm of Darkness with Riku & Mickey because he's worried, but they Won't let him because he doesn't have the PoW. Riku does the fondest laugh known to man, eliciting a bit of anger from Sora, but explains it's because of what Yen Sid had told him earlier - that had Sora or Riku known about Aqua being trapped in the RoD, they would have recklessly gone in to save her.

he's pretty much directly quoting yen sid here, just like he does in English (saying half-baked instead of reckless too). So basically saying here Sora would have marched into (the dark world) recklessly (had he known where Aqua was) - again using "mubou" like master yen sid.

Interestingly, when we get to Sora telling Riku to not be reckless in the dark world to Riku, he's not repeating the same word for Reckless that Riku is using (Now this might be just a flow of the conversation thing, which i certainly cant confirm as a non-native speaker but i think it's still notable)

Sora says something similar to what is said in English; with a few distinctions. A rough translation would be "but don't overdo it, call me if anything happens" (need I gripe one more time that english localization cuts out sora telling Riku to call him; which is why he spends the rest of the time apart from Riku wanting a call, and why its so unhinged that Riku triangles for sora and basically summons him. I DIGRESS)

This line is translated as "but be safe, no reckless stunts" in English, which serves as a callback to what Sora tells to Hercules in KH2, (further solidifying a herc/riku parallel) but IMPORTANTLY, Sora is NOT even saying the same thing he said to Hercules in the Japanese script. He's saying something else - 無理しないで (muri shinai de), which is usually translated as don't overdo it - but literally means "don't do the impossible". This will be important later when I talk more about Riku so keep this in mind.

We immediately get Donald saying "Sora's the reckless (muri) one" (abbreviating for simplicity) but Jiminy disagrees. In English he says "He's not reckless, he just doesn't think!" but in Japanese he says this:

Which i know im going to butcher any translation I do, but Jiminy is basically saying "[Sora's] not muri he's mucha". That distinction is important enough for Jiminy to make a joke about it. That Riku might actually be the one who is overdoing it/trying to do the impossible (muri), while Sora is the one who runs headfirst into danger recklessly (mucha). Which, i think, is quite fitting, given the actions theyve done through the series.

Importantly we get one more instance of "mucha" which I think really ties Sora's trait "recklessness" together nicely, and puts into perspective what the repetition of these phrases is doing from a story telling perspective.

After Sora finishes up the remaining Disney world visits, S, D, & G find out that Chip & Dale have lost contact with Riku & Mickey. Sora is very upset at this, and is Determined to save them (Riku) (with all his heart). Sora has NOT GAINED THE POW at this point, and they don't know how to even get into the RoD, so Sora opts to "let his heart be his guiding key" to find his way to Riku and the RoD. (Recklessly I might add, he hasn't called or talked to Yen Sid or consulted anyone about it lol)

He arrives at Destiny Islands and mysteriously finds Master's Defender which happens to be the key to getting him into the RoD. Right? Well. We know from the glossary that the established method of reaching the RoD is with a keyblade of darkness, through dark corridors, or with the Power of Waking.

Others have argued this (see SRT) but it's heavily implied that Sora regained the PoW on his way to rescue Riku. That he used it explicitly to get into the RoD is where people tend to be a little caught up in the details, because it *does* seem like Master's Defender plays a role, which begs the questions - is it a keyblade of darkness? What the fuck was it doing there? etc. (literally saw on a kh wiki that sora got into the RoD because Masters defender was a keyblade of darkness, which is unconfirmed currently lol) It's also not traditionally what the PoW looks like. There's a huge door that appears, Sora isn't using the kingdom key, he doesn't burst out of Riku's chest. Etc.

HOWEVER. I think with the context of the narrative arc Sora is going through, the foreshadowing present in the game, and The Reckless Rescue angle can at least prove that he DID regain his power here, regardless of whether or not he explicitly used it to get into the RoD. I'll try to briefly summarize the points I've seen made before I add my own.

After the visit to Olympus, Sora explains to Yen sid that he didn't regain his power but he still learned a lot. Yen sid stresses again that sora needs the PoW, Sora gets pouty, and Goofy cheers him up by saying "maybe something will trigger it real soon". Shortly after a bit of banter, there is a knock at the door, and Riku and Mickey walk in. The camera kmakes a point to show Mickey off to the side, then pan up to Riku as he walks in to close the door, who is centered in the view (almost as if we are watching from Sora's POV, who is anticipating Riku's appearance in the door).

Putting this side by side is a little unfair, since it's not an immediate jump from Goofy saying this to Riku's entrance, but it's pretty in your face about just what (or who) might be key to reawakening sora's PoW.

We also get some heavy handed foreshadowing in the next visit to Yen Sid's tower, right before Sora tells Riku to not overdo it:

Yeah. and he does, importantly, get the power of waking, not BEFORE he comes to the rescue, but BECAUSE he comes to the rescue.

Now for my contribution since I stole the last two/three points from other posts. Just before Sora enters the RoD, he tells D & G to stay behind and that he has to go alone. (Sigh, yes, this scene is a parallel to Riku using the PoW to save Sora in DDD - it *has* to be him, and him alone) D& G protest, but eventually relent. But Donald doesn't let Sora go without saying this:

(In English, Donald says "you promise to be good?" inexplicably) but in Japanese he tells sora (basically) "Don't be reckless" - aka. No Reckless Stunts, complete with the use of "mucha" (recall Donald in the previous scene was the one to call Sora "muri" before being corrected by Jiminy). This is similar to what Sora tells to herc, so we are pretty much full circle on this scene being a callback to Herc rescuing Meg in KH2.

Like Herc, Sora does the reckless thing. Like Herc, he heroically dives into the abyss to rescue his loved one with all his heart.

Like Herc, Sora regains his power the moment he resolves to rescue Riku, even if it is not made explicitly clear to Sora OR the audience (perhaps the fact that he regained the PoW is why he is able to save aqua, too)

I could probably go on about this and what it means for Sora for a long time, but I think it's high time I actually wrote about "muri" and Riku's recklessness, so let's rewind a little.

I've already brought up how Riku relates to Herc in terms of his recklessness and heroics, but theres a few more things to add. of course. I'll recap with pictures of one of the parallels i've already discussed:

So here i think at least metaphorically, we can argue that Riku has lost a bit of his "power"- or rather, his drive. After everything is over, he just collapses, ready to die or be left behind. Sora WONT let that happen. So Riku asks Sora to lead. He confesses to some of the jealousy and superiority he'd been feeling over Sora for the past few years, and seems to be trying to find a new direction in his life, having now repented Quite a bit for the sins he committed in KH1.

Riku's entire purpose for fighting after KH CoM and KH2 was to wake Sora up, keep him safe while he does his keyblade weilder duties, reunite him with Kairi, and send him on his merry way. Sora refuses to let him leave, and demands that he comes home with him. So he does. but without his jealousy over his feelings toward Sora, or without his feelings of guilt and feeling he needs to make it up to Sora, what is left to drive him to keep fighting?

DDD gives him a pretty strong answer - it's where he both rediscovers his sense of purpose and gains the Power of Waking in the process. And his dream eater powers too. btw

Riku's journey in DDD is, simply put, not really about passing the mark of mastery exam and becoming a keyblade master. it's about remembering What he lives for. remembering his promise to Terra, and how those feelings have evolved - from wanting strength to protect the Stuff that matters as a child, to, in DDD, discovering that the "stuff that matters, like his friends" was Sora the Whole time, and that Sora is actually a "precious best friend" that he wants to protect. It's About recovering his strength, like Herc needs to do in KH2.

So how does Riku regain his "strength"? By Sora-style taking a reckless dive into the deep abyss of Sora's heart to wake him using the PoW.

(Not once was I able to find any mention of "recklessness" here, or any particular language that ties this moment together cleanly with what happens in Olympus Colliseum in KH2, but the repetition of diving down into an abyss to rescue someone (with all your heart. etc) is Enough of a parallel to make the connection between this scene and Herc's dive to save Meg)

It is within the deepest depth of Sora's heart where Riku is interrogated by three pieces of Sora's heart about what he's afraid of, what he cares about more than anything else, and what he wishes - All canon answers involve the mention of "precious" - "taisetsu" (sorry im not explaining this one im going to just assume you know what im talking about if you are a soriku that reads meta you should know.) - to lose something precious, my precious best friend (fuck da english localization for this one), to recover something precious that I lost. It is here that we see Riku's simple "protecting important stuff" become "protecting something precious/my precious best friend" (note that this hasn't quite become "taisetsu na hito"/precious person but hes getting there)

Ansem the wise is there i guess and he tells Riku that his 3 answers are what were the key to waking sora up, and I think, importantly, are what give Riku his "strength" back. He has rediscovered his purpose, which is, to him, protecting Sora (with all his heart)

Continuing into KH2.9 we have another couple scenes that will both complete Riku's development from protecting stuff that matters to protecting a precious person and also continue to make a strong connection between him and Hercules.

It's been pretty well established that these two scenes are deceptively mistranslated, but i'll go over it again

Herc here is saying "taisetsu na hito" which is translated to "person I love most"

The EXACT phrase Mickey uses to tell Riku why he's feeling more powerful and fearless in the RoD, in the literal next scene in 2.9. They were supposed to be VERY CLEAR hit you over the head parallels but, well. SENA said fuck gay people i guess.

Riku repeats what Mickey says into his hand ("strength to protect my precious person") and recalls his promise to Terra, to protect the things that matter. (again it's implied it's always been about protecting sora, he just didn't have the language or understanding of himself yet to know how to say it)

There is absolutely no room for nuance here. This is explicitly framing Riku's feelings for Sora on par with Herc's feelings for Meg eg. explicitly romantic. And that it's his ROMANTIC LOVE for Sora that is what gives him his strength - not just to protect Sora, but also to do THE IMPOSSIBLE

phase ??? of my argument will now commence hang on to your butts. (i wrote this all in one night im tired)

Now that ive Exhaustively set that up. lets actually get back into discussing what I initially set up - riku doing the impossible "muri" thing.

As a reminder, Sora tells Riku to not "attempt the impossible/overdo it" in the RoD. And to call him if he needs him.

So Riku, instead of attempting the impossible in the RoD by facing the demon tide, does call Sora, which ends up being what saves the day! Yay!

I have bad news though! Riku is terrible at listening to advice when Sora is in trouble.

Now recall what I mentioned earlier about the fall of the guardians in the KBG and Sora's subsequent breakdown being a parallel to Herc losing his power in KH2. Sora *fails* everyone here, and he explicitly states he is worthless, without strength, when he loses them. It's very in line with Herc losing his powers in KH2.

(just putting these in here to hurt you and myself)

So, we get the Herc parallel, but it stops here for Sora. He doesn't do some grand self sacrifice for Riku to prove his heroism and regain his "power", but i think theres a reason for that beyond it just being Riku's time for the spotlight but I am getting there.

In the english localization, Sora says "we've lost, it's over". It's a subtle change from the Japanese, where instead of "it's over", Sora simply utters "muri da--" ("its impossible") (in the wettest saddest voice you can imagine)

It's at this moment where I do truly think we're meant to make the connection between Sora saying "its impossible" and Sora telling Riku to not attempt the impossible. It fits in nicely with Sora telling Herc to not do reckless stunts, with the slight change in language from "reckless" to "impossible", and with the impending self sacrifice. Riku knows that beating back the demon tide is impossible. But he does it anyway (compare to how, when faced with a much smaller demon tide, and he was losing, he listened to Sora's advice and called Sora for help instead of attempting the impossible)

So we have Riku's ultimate true love sacrifice for Sora, which both takes his life and grants him a spot upon an alter in Olympus, perhaps symbolically giving him some sort of ascension for his heroic deed. And again tying his sacrifice intimately to Herc's.

Because Sora and Riku are both "herc" and "meg" here I am going to make a little bit of a reach. Recall that I went through the effort of recapping the climax of the hercules movie. for no reason. There is a connection though even if it's loose, and i would kick myself for not including it.

In the movie, Meg, like Riku, protects a powerless Hercules from impending danger in her own act of true loves sacrifice. Her death gives Hercules his strength back (partly due to contract BS but it's still a romantic moment). And her death is what drives Hercules to dive into the Soul Hole to rescue her soul at a potentially great cost, which is what ultimately restores his godhood (showing his strength of heart). Riku sacrificing himself for Sora can be seen to be more like the events of the Hercules movie, Riku standing in for Meg - Sora does have to restore Riku's heart after it's been taken by the Lich, after all, much like Hercules brings Meg's soul out from the Hole. And Riku's sacrifice is what gives Sora the resolve to keep fighting. (not arguing with anyone who thinks it was only kairi because it wasnt lol)

So Riku attempts the impossible here, and ultimately he is rewarded. An interesting nuance is that the phrase "attempting the impossible" isn't meant to be taken as a challenge. From what ive read from native speakers, the phrase Sora uses really is better translated as "don't overdo it" as it is less about proving yourself to be able to overcome crazy obstacles and more about keeping your expectations in check. But Riku is reckless, and following his heart, which he learned from Sora.

I hope I've properly illustrated how Sora and Riku are both painted as reckless in different ways, and how the language used in KH3 is making direct references to Herc's reckless heroics in KH2 and in the actual Disney movie. And how these reckless acts are showcasing how much these two love each other, because I still have one more point to make. Namely, how this ties into Cinderella, and ultimately KH4.

In Terra's route of Birth By Sleep, he happens upon a distraught Cinderella, who has had her dress torn up by her step sisters. She was planning to go to the ball, but cannot, because it is "impossible" (muri)

Terra tries to console her. It's all very reminiscent of the scenes of Herc's, Sora's, and Riku's defeats.

After Terra fights off the unversed summoned by Cinderella's negativity (toxic much..), Out of the blue, the fairy godmother appears and makes everything better. She fixes up Cinderella with a dress and a ride to the ball, and sends her on her merry way.

She explains to Terra that she appeared to Cinderella to show her that her dreams *can* come true and that she typically appears only to people that have a strong belief in their dreams. Terra says he believes in dreams but you have to work for them, to which FGM responds that simply believing in dreams is already a difficult thing on its own. (Ventus also compares Terra to Cinderella. btw. because of his strong dreams)

Now. Sigh. Im not the only person that has pointed this out. The FGM quite literally appears to Riku, but only after a year has passed and they have no leads on Sora, and after it's implied that Riku is starting to lose hope.

In the limit cut, you can see Riku's sad wet puppy dog face as he talks about how hard everyone is working, and how they haven't found anything at all. He says "if Sora is really out there, don't you think we would have found something by now?" - Again, he's losing faith in his dreams of Sora's return. This is important.

I do not have the strength to go through and find all the times Riku told everyone to believe in Sora in KH3. It's a lot. And the last thing we hear him say Near Sora, is to let him go on his suicide mission to save Kairi - to BELIEVE in Sora (#wish).

So one, we know the dream Riku believes in is Sora, and two, we know he is starting to lose his belief in his dreams, like Cinderella before the ball, when he dress is destroyed.

Right after it's clear their is no lead through the data from Org 13, FGM appears, just like she did for Cinderella. And she tells Riku that His Dreams Are Literally A Key To Find Sora (that hes quite literally been #dream drop distancing into sora's dreams while hes in unreality is already so much without the FGM being there to explain this to him but KH is crazy!)

One last thing to really drive this home. The FGM brings Riku and Kairi to the nameless star to bring the three keys together.

And what does she tell Riku, before he leaves?

"Be careful. Do not attempt to do the impossible."

---------

if you read this whole thing... well... im proud of you. I know i definitely missed stuff, because it would be so hard to go through all the games and really dig for the use of this term especially when I dont speak japanese at all. and because i wrote this all in one night. But dont hesitate to comment or reblog if you have anything to add. I freaking love kingdom hearts

[thedeliverygod]

because I really need to sell these/acquire some extra money, I've dropped the prices of the Kingdom Hearts figures I posted about previously

I have sold 2 of them so the ones left are:

Terra (Bring Arts): $90 for buy now Halloween Town Sora (Formation Arts): $70 for buy now Space Paranoids Sora (Formation Arts): $30 for buy now KH2 Sora (Static Arts Gallery): $60 for buy now

Pictures are in the linked post above.

offers are turned on for each of these as well. but also please don't try to super low ball me as the buy now prices I've listed are generally already below what I could find listed for most of these figures by other sellers and/or are close to what I paid when purchasing them (especially when considering I had them all shipped directly from Japan).

While I could really use money, I would like to at least come out even you know :/

If you can't afford to purchase anything/aren't interested but think you know someone who might know please reblog<3 thank you~

[princess-of-the-corner]

Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix Recap: Agrabah (Only Second Rate)

Okay so… It turns out that Agrabah has the lower battle level, so we’ll actually be heading over there first.

If you did NOT clear Agrabah’s first episode before clearing the Battle of 1000 Heartless, you’ll be forced to play through it NOW instead, at which point the second episode will unlock.

Remember how the first game would change some cutscenes in skippable worlds to reflect Maleficent’s and Riku’s current states in the story? Maleficent disappearing from cutscenes in Olympus Coliseum and Monstro after her death, and Riku’s and Sora’s interactions in Monstro becoming FAR more hostile if you put its story off for long enough?

Yeah, KH2 doesn’t do that, so Pete will STILL be antagonizing Sora and causing trouble even though they’re supposed to be allies against Organization XIII.

And turning Jafar into a Heartless would be counterintuitive to working together against Organization XIII.

Oops.

Anyways, upon disembarking in Agrabah (assuming you’ve cleared the first episode), the first thing the player sees is red smoke billowing out of the concrete box Jafar’s lamp had been sealed in last time we were here.

The Peddler, here a distinct character from the Genie, is on the ground, trembling before the thunderous smoke, Jafar’s no doubt empty lamp laying on the floor next to him.

Iago flies into the dungeon to check in on all the ruckus, just in time to see the newly freed Jafar bellowing with laughter at his newfound freedom.

Jafar stops laughing and turns to Iago.

The camera zips up and out through the boarded-up ceiling of the dungeon as Iago screams in fright.

We cut the Peddler’s shop in a textbox cutscene, which now has gilded walls, a gilded roof, and a gilded floor. The shelves are stocked with valuable treasures, there are piles of gold coins behind the counter, and the Peddler also has a giant, bejeweled trophy that’s roughly the same size as Sora for some reason.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy beam right in there for some reason.

Donald looks around, surprised by how spiffy and shiny everything is, only to bump into a valuable-looking vase/urn/pot (not sure which).

“You break it, you buy it!” the Peddler warns, before noticing it’s just Sora, Donald, and Goofy, at which point he casually greets them.

Sora remarks that he made out like a bandit, but the guy we JUST saw release an evil genie insists he is just an honest merchant who earned all of this through hard work. Which I guess is… Theoretically possible… Given that the only other people who could POSSIBLY be paying customers are Princess Jasmine and Aladdin. Possibly the Genie if he doesn’t feel like magicking something he wants into existence. So, he could PROBABLY make a killing by virtue of being the only other person in town, and the only one selling anything.

Goofy remarks that everything certainly looks nice, and the Peddler reveals that everything is on sale.

Sora decides to cut to the chase, asking if the Peddler’s seen anyone in a Black Coat, hoping to learn if Organization XIII had been there.

The Peddler denies it, and thus Sora and co decide to keep looking.

We then fade into a voice-acted cutscene, where Aladdin, Abu, and Iago barge in.

“Sora! Don’t let him get away!” Aladdin shouts as Abu charges the Peddler, who somehow managed to escape.

Sora asks what’s going on, and Aladdin reveals that the Peddler released Jafar from his lamp.

Cue Sora flashing back to a bunch of Jafar scenes that never happened in Kingdom Hearts I, Chain of Memories, their Manga adaptations and novelizations, or any Aladdin media unaffiliated with Kingdom Hearts. Even though we had flashbacks to KH1!Agrabah in Roxas’ prologue. But hey, the Bandit Heartless from KH1 and COM appear here, so that’s a neat touch!

We then fade back to a textbox cutscene as Aladdin warns SDG to be careful.

“Jafar may be out to take over Agrabah again,” he explains, “But I’m sure he wants revenge too.”

Sora remarks that he’s probably still sore about the whole “getting sealed in a lamp for all eternity” thing.

Aladdin elaborates that Iago saw the whole thing, and tells him to spill it.

Iago insists that he’s already told Aladdin everything he knows.

Aladdin threatens to never talk to Iago again if he’s being dishonest, and that gets Iago to admit that he knows where Jafar is.

When asked to elaborate, Iago starts tripping over his tongue, but at Aladdin’s urging, he says Jafar’s at the Desert Ruins.

Sora declares they can get the jump on him, and tells Iago to lead the way.

Aladdin has rejoined the party!

Inside the Peddler’s remodeled shop is Vexen’s Absent Silhouette. The LAST Absent Silhouette.

Challenging it transports Sora, Donald, and Goofy to the sight of Vexen’s final battle: The Re:Chain of Memories version of the Old Mansion’s gate.

The Absent Silhouette transforms into Vexen in a flash of ice, and Vexen telekinetically levitates his shield in front of him.

His opening move is to surround Sora with a stream of data and encase him in a block of ice. In order to escape, the player must use the “Struggle” Reaction Command 10 times, which will produce the “Smash” Reaction Command. “Smash” prompts Sora to shatter the ice.

Vexen, however, is completely invincible, meaning Sora, Donald, and Goofy will have to chip away at his shield’s HP before they can damage him.

Worse yet, at all times, an Organization Sigil is crawling along the ground, and will scan Sora’s data whenever it’s below Sora’s feet. Vexen can teleport the sigil directly to Sora by freezing him, forcing the player to break out of the ice all over again.

There’s a data bar in the upper corner of the screen. It starts at 0, but if it’s filled, it’ll increase to 1.

When that happens, Vexen will spawn a Replica of Sora’s Anti Form, known as “Clone Sora”. Just like Sora’s Anti Form, it can instantly zip to Sora’s location and hack at him with its claws. Worse, this animalistic copy will get MORE health every time the Data “levels up”. If it’s destroyed, then the level-up will instead revive it with the boosted health it would’ve gotten if it had still been alive.

Fortunately, the Data Level caps out at 5.

Additionally, Vexen can summon various Ice Attacks both when he’s been disarmed, and will restore his shield after retaliating, so be careful.

Vexen’s Shield and Clone Sora are both considered bosses, and as such can only be defeated by Finishers, Limits, and/or magic.  None of which Sora has access to in Anti Form, which he has an increased chance of entering when using Drive Forms due to Vexen being an Organization member.

Additionally, Clone Sora can FUSE with the Shield to perform powerful attacks, in a dark mockery of Drive Forms, so be aware of that.

When Vexen is defeated, his absent silhouette fades into snowflakes.

Sora’s rewarded an Armor Slot, Donald +3 Max HP, and Goofy and Item slot.

Additionally, it leaves behind a Lost Illusion and the “Road to Discovery” recipe (1 Lost Illusion, 1 Tranquility Crystal, 3 Tranquility Gems, 5 Tranquility Stones, and 7 Tranquility Shards). This recipe allows the Moogles to synthesize Vexen’s Shield, Frozen Pride, meaning Goofy can carry the weapon of a guy who was violently immolated in front of Sora about a year ago!

…

Anyways, in order to progress to the Desert Ruins, you need to exit the city through the front gates.

Upon getting there, our heroes discover (in a voice-acted cutscene) that the Desert Ruins are covered in a raging and suspiciously localized sandstorm.

Iago very loudly and hammily (even for him) suggests that they’re gonna have to turn back now.

Aladdin instead remarks that they’ll have to find another way, to the ruins, at which point the Genie zips in from out of nowhere to remind him that his best friend is a reality-warping genie who can EASILY wipe a little sandstorm away.

“Want to see a little something I like to call ‘Sandstorm Sweep’?”

SDG all answer to the affirmative.

“Take it away, Genie!” Aladdin encourages.

The Genie prepares to hammily end the sandstorm, only to get disappointed when he sees that it’s JUST a massive, localized sandstorm covering an oddly specific region of the desert, remarking that just “one lousy sandstorm” is too easy, proving his point by poking the air behind his head without even FACING it.

The magic zips on over, swirls around and encompasses the entire whirlwind of sand, and casually dissipates it.

SDG and Aladdin are no less wowed, and Iago annoyed, and the quintet swiftly realize that the Genie vanished while they weren’t looking.

“How about giving me a challenge next time, eh Al?” a genuinely board and somewhat stir-crazy Genie requests.

Just head in the direction of the ruins from the Palace Wall to skip past the boring desert travel.

Our heroes arrive at a mound that overlooks the ruins, which are all askewed at weird angles and partially buried in a MASSIVE pit/crater in the middle of the desert, which’ll make traversing them rather tricky.

“Now what’ll we do?” Aladdin asks.

The Magic Carpet swoops in from out of nowhere to give them a ride.

“Nice timing, Carpet!” Sora greets/lampshades.

Sora hops into Carpet and flies down into the valley/pit/crater, and a watery shadow of Jafar’s sorcerer/vizier form materializes in a puff of shadow as Agrabah’s battle theme starts playing.

Now it’s time for THIS game’s Magic Carpet ride!

Use the left shoulder button to lock the commands and control the camera, and the right shoulder button to lock the camera and control the command menu.

Sora can use the attack button to attack enemies from a distance. The left stick moves Sora front, back, left, and right, while the right stick moves Sora up and down.

As soon as Sora flies near Jafar’s shadow, it teleports away, seals Sora inside a box of invisible barriers, and spawns in a swarm of Rapid Thrusters.

Sora can use the attack button to charge an enemy from a distance, and still has access to his magic via the Command Menu. If he jumps, he’ll land back on the Carpet. Basically, his gameplay is almost identical to his on-foot gameplay, you’re just controlling his movement with the Magic Carpet instead of moving Sora around.

As soon as the last Heartless falls, the barriers drop, and Jafar’s shadow reappears.

You now have to chase it around the ruins.

Whenever Sora gets close enough for the targeting reticle to appear, Jafar’s shadow will fly to its next “stopping point”. Sometimes, when his shadow reaches these points, Jafar will start channeling his magic through it to cast a spell. It will not flee while doing this, allowing Sora to interrupt the spell by attacking it, though this will prompt it to flee to its next stopping point.

When Sora corners it in front of an invisible barrier, Jafar will drop the barrier and have his Shadow flee through narrow valley/corridor to a large tower in the middle of a sinkhole/sandpit (I don’t know my terminology), sending flying Heartless at Sora to try and slow him down. You don’t have to defeat them, you JUST have to reach Jafar’s shadow on the roof of the tower.

Jafar’s shadow will then cast a barrier over the roof of the tower, locking Sora in with a bunch of flying Heartless, and then vanish in a puff of darkness. The barrier will not drop until all of the Heartless have been destroyed.

After that’s done, a monument will appear on top of the tower in a puff of darkness. Examining it with a Reaction Command reveals three pictures of various “switches”. These “switches” consists of sets of floating orbs at various points in the ruined city, and Sora has to use different spells to hit all of them at once. Fira if they’re a ring, Blizzara if they’re a horizontal line, and Thundara if they’re in a vertical line. Be warned, they HAVE to line up so the spell will hit all of them in one blast, and they start out in a “3D diamond” formation until Sora gets close to them. There are three Switches total, and each of them will require a different spell.

They get color coded when you’re close, so it’s more about timing and defeating the nearby Heartless so they don’t get in the way.

When all three switches are hit, a doorway into the tower opens in a flash of light, and Sora is given 45 seconds to get in.

Entering the tower takes Sora, Donald, Goofy, Aladdin, and Iago to the “Ruined Chamber”, which has a Save Point, a large chest containing a map of the Ruins, a second large chest that contains the final Torn Pages, and all of your party members as NPC’s you can interact with.

Going deeper into the Ruined Chamber reveals that Jafar isn’t there.

Some nudging from Aladdin and Donald gets Iago to fess up: Jafar intimidated Iago into luring Aladdin, Sora, Donald, and Goofy to the ruins. (Thus, why Iago was so reluctant to say anything back at the Peddler’s Shop, he was debating whether or not to tell the truth in that moment, but his fear of Jafar won out. Him suggesting they turn back was him trying to NOT go through with it without blatantly defying Jafar’s will.)

Iago was too afraid of Jafar to NOT go along with it, but Aladdin cuts off Iago from disclosing what Jafar THREATENED to do to instead ask where he ACTUALLY is.

Iago, still terrified of what Jafar might do to him, but also feeling guilty, admits that Jafar is PROBABLY attacking the palace now that all of his enemies are sufficiently distracted, and then goes right into describing how scary Jafar’s eyes were, but nobody’s having any of it.

Sora points out that Iago can’t really be their friend if he’s trying to play both sides just to save himself, so it’s clear that at this point they KNOW he cares enough about their opinions for that to actually sting.

Iago, while backing away from the others as they tell him off, accidentally triggers a trap, causing the entire ruined city to start rumbling.

The Magic Carpet swoops in to take them away, and we get an on-the rails escape sequence ala KH1’s trip to Agrabah.

Unlike that one, however, Sora isn’t flying out of a cave, so we instead get the carpet swooping around and between buildings and diving near the ground for no apparent reason.

Waves of Heartless appear to impede Sora’s escape, and they get sent flying away on the blow that gets them into low HP, causing them to go splat (or well, “poof” since they’re made of metaphysical vapors instead of squishy guts) against the first hard surface they hit. Heartless can also be knocked into each other to deal damage, which is the only way Sora can take out the Fat Bandits that spawn.

Additionally, some of the towers topple over when Sora flies near them (though the carpet will always maneuver Sora out of the way before he can get hurt), again making me question why the Magic Carpet is going for the scenic route instead of taking them straight for Agrabah. It makes for a fun gameplay sequence, but a VERY confusing story sequence.

Anyways, the Carpet collapses form exhaustion once they reach the Palace Walls, and Aladdin tells it to rest up.

Iago tries to rally everyone up to go get Jafar, but they’re all still mad at him.

Reminder, the Palace Walls should PROBABLY be called the city walls instead, as the gate just leads to the Bazaar, so you’ll have to go through there first.

Past the Bazaar is Agrabah (again, confusing names are confusing), and just outside of the loading zone for the palace is the Peddler.

You have to use the “Interrogate” Reaction Command to progress the story in a textbox cutscene.

The Peddler instantly realizes they’ve caught on to his tricks, but is more of a gracious loser about the whole ordeal, agreeing with Sora when he says that you can’t keep shady stuff a secret for long, and helpfully explains everything:

He had snuck into the palace to “borrow” some treasure, when he heard a voice.

The voice had ordered the Peddler to “Release me!” and claimed to be the TRUE Sultan of Agrabah when the Peddler asked who he was.

The Peddler laments having fallen for such a tall tale, proposing that he must’ve been under Jafar’s spell.

Sora sarcastically asks if he’s SURE the treasure had nothing to do with it, and the Peddler, to his credit, admits it MIGHT have influenced him a LITTLE bit.

“But Jafar, he never gave me a thing…” the Peddler continues.

Sora wants to know where he got the treasure from then, and the Peddler explains he got it from a man in a black coat.

Organization XIII had, for whatever reason, bribed him to tell no one of Jafar’s return, as they claimed they would turn Jafar into a Heartless and destroy him, thus meaning there was no reason to worry Agrabah.

Sora is just incredulous that the Peddler bought that.

The Peddler reminds Sora that he’s a merchant, and thus will buy anything if the price is right. He points out that the only reason the transaction fell through is because Iago had seen him release Jafar.

“Oh, you’re so kind…” Iago replies (possibly sarcastically, there’s no voice acting so I have no clue), before sulking/sighing when SDG+Aladdin just turn to look at him.

You can now continue to the palace, where Jafar has chained Jasmine to the door.

“Just wait, Jafar!” Jasmine snaps, “You’ll get exactly what’s coming to you!”

“Indeed I will, Princess…” Jafar agrees, “All of Agrabah will belong to me, while you…” He laughs. “You my queen, shall weep at my side for all eternity!”

Jasmine pulls on her chains and tries to glance over Jafar’s shoulder.

Jafar glances back (just in case), before turning his attention back to Jasmine.

“Right about now…” he grabs her chin, “Your precious Aladdin is whispering your name with his last breath.”

Cue Jasmine noticing Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Aladdin have showed up to thwart Jafar, prompting Jafar to notice them as well.

“What was that you were saying, Jafar?” Aladdin taunts as SDG ready their weapons.

Jafar notices Iago perched on Goofy’s back.

“You dare defy me!” the wicked genie snaps as the eyes on his cobra staff light up, “You useless bird!”

He aims his staff at Iago and Goofy, prompting Goofy to raise his shield and Iago to cover his face with his wings.

Jafar then fires the blast at Aladdin instead, only for Iago to fly out and take the hit instead.

The quarter drop their guard to check on Iago when his smoking body hits the ground.

“Iago!” Goofy calls out.

“You’ll all be joining him very soon!” Jafar announces as he raises a pillar of thundering smoke and swirling magic around himself.

With a groan, he transforms back into his genie form, hovering above his enemies as “The Encounter” starts playing.

He throws a tower at Sora and Aladdin, prompting the two to flee as the Magic Carpet flies at them to help.

Jafar teleports into the skies above Agrabah, and cackles as he demonstrates his phenomenal cosmic power.

Sora and the Magic Carpet confront him.

Boss time.

Jafar’s attacks mostly consist of yeeting debris from destroyed buildings at Sora, spinning around, throwing glowing punches at Sora, shooting fireballs at Sora (when at 70% HP or lower), and raining lightning on Sora (at 40% HP or lower).

Basically, he does not fully exercise his phenomenal cosmic power.

Although his desperation attack DOES have him transporting himself and Sora into a dark void where he telekinetically yeets destroyed buildings at the kid, so that’s a plus.

Anyways, to make attacking Jafar easier, you have to fly past his glowing hands and attack his abs. Once his abs run out of HP, Jafar will crouch over and clutch his stomach, allowing Sora to use the “Roll Up” Reaction Command to grab the tip of Jafar’s tail and wrap him up with it.

When that’s done, Sora can use “Spin Burst” to make Jafar spin until he’s dizzy, at which point he’ll become stunned, allowing you to attack his head.

When he recovers, he’ll briefly paralyze Sora through sheer force of will.

All of Jafar’s attacks can be guarded PERFECTLY by Reflect.

You can damage him at any time by attacking his head and shoulders, but defeating his abs and making him dizzy will make damaging him easier since he won’t be moving around as much.

As you are riding the Magic Carpet, Sora controls EXACTLY as he does in the Desert Ruins.

Defeating Jafar grants Sora the Fire Element, upgrading Fira into Firaga.

“No…” Jafar groans as his body glows and sparks, “How can I BE defeated again, by a pack of filthy street rats?”

“Don’t mess with street rats!” Sora shoots back as he flies back to the palace with the Magic Carpet.

Jafar can only groan and shout as his body pulsates, until it explodes into a burst of magic sparkles.

Its genie destroyed, Jafar’s lamp evaporates into black smoke before Sora, Goofy, and Aladdin can reach it.

Cue Genie materializing in a flash of magic sparkles, lamenting that they fought Jafar AGAIN and didn’t even invite him.

Aladdin apologizes, noting that things happened a LITTLE fast.

Genie lamented that he had new moves he wanted to show off (possibly referring to the Limits he can do as a Summon).

“But, Genie, we still need your help!” Donald points out.

“Who’s gonna fix Agrabah?” Sora asks.

He’s not kidding, there’s rubble everywhere, a wall in the background has a MASSIVE hole in it, Jafar REALLY did a number on the city during his duel with Sora.

Genie is PUMPED up, ready to not only fix Agrabah, but TOTALLY remodel it into an upgraded version of itself.

“You won’t even recognize it when I’m through with it!”

“Just like it was, please,” Aladdin begs sheepishly.

“Really?” Genie asks, “Same old, same old?”

Aladdin and Sora nod.

“All right.”

Genie sends out sparkles to apparently fix Agrabah, but as the game doesn’t load up a different map, they just use a cheated camera angle to keep the battle damage out of sight.

Genie requests that Aladdin let him install a swimming pool or two next time.

Sora receives the Wishing Lamp keychain (+4 Attack, +3  Magic, Jackpot: Increases the drop rate of Munny, HP, and MP orbs by 50%).

The next cutscene loads back into an undamaged Agrabah as Sora, Donald, Goofy, Aladdin, and Jasmine gather in front of some stalls, with Iago sulking in the shadows.

Sora remarks that Agrabah seems to be back to normal, and Aladdin thanks Sora for his help.

Sora somewhat playfully tells Iago to behave himself, “Got it?”

“I most definitely got it! No more lookin’ out or number one!”

Iago also admits to a bit of an insecurity of his, while he’d LIKE to be Aladdin’s friend, he’s not entirely that he can do anything to help Aladdin the way Genie can. He’s not JEALOUS of Genie, he just feels inadequate.

Sora points out that friendship isn’t exactly all about “service”, and that it’s usually enough to just enjoy each other’s company and have fun together.

Aladdin asks what SDG do for fun, and Donald and Goofy demonstrate their “funny faces” to answer him.

“That’s… not quite what I meant,” Aladdin replies, mildly put off.

Sora remarks that they should probably head out.

Iago tries to say something, but his lower jaw and upper jaw don’t QUITE match their movements, and he instead just ends up feeling some pain in his beak.

Goofy checks in on him, and Iago remarks that he can at least still fly.

Goofy still follows after Iago to catch him, just in case, only to walk right into and break a stall, prompting the others to wince.

The Genie takes that in his cue, ready to fix-up/upgrade something, asking Aladdin to at LEAST let him add a freeway or something.

Aladdin insists that everything’s fine, but Genie’s APPARENTLY going through some magical reality warping withdraw and starts shooting around magical sparkles everywhere.

“Sora! Donald! Goofy! You guys are too much!” Genie declares, “If you’re ever in the mood for some more cosmic razzle-dazzle, gimme a shout, okay?”

“You got it!” Donald replies.

Aladdin remarks that Sora’s done it again and asks him not to forget about them.

“I won’t,” Sora promises.

“And Sora… about that friend of yours, the one you’re looking for…

“You’ll find him,” Aladdin declares, “Trust me.”

And with that, Agrabah’s story has finally concluded.

Next time, we STILL don’t go to Halloween Town, because we still need to return the last page to Pooh’s book.

See ya then!

-

All of those fights sound like an absolute pain in the ass.

Though ‘defeating his abs’ sounds hilarious.

[zdbztumble]

Yet Another Kingdom Hearts Revisit, Part V

This playthrough has been a blow to my pretensions of having a good memory. I'd completely forgotten that King Triton isn't the only good Disney character from outside Disney Castle who knows something about Keyblades and Keyholes. It makes perfect sense for the Genie to have some insight into them, but I really like that he knows less than Triton does. It's better for pacing reasons that he doesn't, but it also fits his character - I can't imagine that a magical being who spends so much time contemplating mid-20th century American pop culture while stuck in his lamp would keep his ancient legends straight.

Of all the Disney worlds in the series that try to condense their source films into the game, KH I's Agrabah is the most successful IMO. It's really the only level in the game that did so. Olympus Coliseum, Halloweentown, Monstro, and Neverland feature original stories, and Wonderland, Deep Jungle, and Atlantica use only pieces of their films (to greater and lesser degrees) in their stories. Agrabah has almost all the major elements of Aladdin in it: Aladdin's street rat origins, Jasmine's escape from the palace (albeit under entirely different circumstances) and her love affair with Aladdin, Jafar's scheming to take over Agrabah, the quest for the lamp in the Cave of Wonders, Genie's comedy, his freedom, and the three wishes. Even "Prince Ali" gets worked in. The only thing left out from the film is the finale where Aladdin and Jasmine get together.

Why it works here compared to later worlds in the series is that, despite using so much of the film, all of those elements are re-contextualized to fit the time frame that KH I had to work with and, more importantly, were modified to fit the needs of KH I's larger story. There's no room to fit the "Prince Ali" element proper into the plot, and if the attempt had been made, it would've been an abridged version lacking the comedic texture that makes it work in the movie, and it would have distracted from Sora's story and the plot of the League of Disney Villains. It was much better to make that a brief mention and have the three wishes applied to the battle with the Heartless.

And speaking of battling Heartless - Aladdin's in my Top 3 for Disney world battle partners in the entire series. The dude rocks. And Jafar makes for one of the more challenging two-part bosses in the game. Kurt Zisa is, for my money, the most difficult secret boss in the game, Sephiroth very much included. And that's (usually) a good thing! I like having to shift between physical and magical strategies, and I like that he's a boss that let you get good value out of the Summons (sadly, I wasn't able to duplicate my last playthrough, where I beat him with multiple Summons instead of just Tinkerbell and dumb luck at dodging his vertical spin after she bought me a free life).

Part of me wonders if Monstro and Agrabah shouldn't have been reversed in order. On the one hand, Riku nabbing Jasmine makes for a good shock and a sense of foreboding; the player knows how far gone he is at that point, but Sora doesn't. But why does Riku need the quest for the seven princesses explained at the end of Monstro when he's already captured one of them?

And I might as well cover Monstro in this post, as I don't have too much to say about him. This is one world where I agree with the complaints about KH I's platforming. I appreciate that the bowels of a space-whale should be a claustrophobic place, but the chambers are too small and too packed with crap to make the concept work in an enjoyably challenging way. Instead, it's just tedious.

Storywise, however, Monstro is a great turning point for Sora and Riku. Taking a cute Disney character hostage might be an easy way to sell moral decline, but it's so much more effective than three minutes of lore gibber-gabber by one-note pricks in black coats. And whichever executives at Square and Disney are responsible for giving the final OK to these games' plots should have made the staff re-watch this scene ahead of every scripting session since KH I. The first game as a whole works against later characterizations of Responsible Riku being the one to clean up after lazy, do-as-he-pleases Sora, but that scene and this world demonstrate most clearly how big a retcon that change was.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

For some odd reason, I decided to look up and see if they were selling jewelry online for a lot of the Square Enix characters we all know and love (a lot of the girls, namely, but also some of the boys). And I was looking for fan-made ones, and also products done by Square Enix themselves, and I was honestly surprised by all I found.

First of all, Square Enix has actually made a lot of such merchandise themselves (for a pretty penny, of course, but it's still pretty neat). Like, they even made Ashe's necklace from Final Fantasy XII, which I was not expecting, oddly enough. Partly because a large part of me wasn't even sure it was a necklace I was seeing in her design, until today when I saw two artist renditions of her done by Akihiko Yoshida and Ryoma Itō, as opposed to just staring at her 3D model and trying to figure out if the jewel I was seeing was a necklace or part of her shirt.

Though, oddly, neither fans nor Square Enix have made Garnet's necklace... or, at the very least, I couldn't find one on Amazon nor Ebay today.

There also doesn't seem to be Shiki Misaki's pendant (which sadly doesn't surprise me, since TWEWY and Shiki herself aren't that popular), the Nameless Star from Kingdom Hearts yet, or Kairi from Kingdom Hearts... and that one vexes me so, when we have had Sora and Roxas' necklaces sold for years.

...I guess for the heck of it I'll spell out all I did find today.

Aerith's new necklace from the Remake series, fan done.

Squall's necklace fan done and professionally done by Square Enix.

Rinoa's necklace fan done... Though since at least the Griever part of her necklace is Squall's (as he gives it to her in the story), you could buy the professionally done pendant that was done for Squall and just give it to Rinoa and lie and say it was for her if you wanted. LOL. It's the same thing and you would be covering your bases there.

Also, a certain fan made a necklace inspired by Rinoa:

Tidus' necklace fan done and professionally done.

Yuna's necklace fan done and professionally done.

Ashe's necklace, as I mentioned above, professionally done.

Snow and Serah's engagement necklaces fan done and professionally done.

Lunafreya's necklace professionally done.

Sora's necklace fan done and professionally done.

Roxas' necklace fan done and professionally done.

[minijenn]

What would you think of a Dreamlight Valley X Kingdom Hearts Crossover?

I mean KH basically is Dreamlight Valley except instead of a life sim it’s a JRPG lol. But still I would sell my left foot to have Sora be added to Dreamlight Valley oh my god that’s all I want if he can be in Smash why can’t he be in Dreamlight Valley too

[strayheartless]

Okay so here’s the thing…

I know everyone is freaking out about Riku being taken out of kingdom hearts but y’all need to calm down for various reasons.

This wide spread panic is fuelled by the fact that we have had no news on the games in a while and so we are panicking over nothing.

Namora has already told us there is a lot we don’t know about Riku and therefore it would be commercial suicide to take him out of the games. Square knows this; Disney… well Disney’s stupid enough not to listen fans but they are not dumb enough to get rid of a cash cow. Riku is a big selling point for KH fans. As much as we are invested in Sora’s journey we are ALL also collectively interested in Riku.

There is literal set ups in 3 and MoM that tell us he is MASSIVELY important to the events of KH 4 and Sora’s arc specifically.

And this is the most important one so listen closely. I’ll say it loud for the people in the back. SCREEN/GAME RANTS IS NOT THE PLACE YOU SHOULD BE GOING FOR RELIABLE INFORMATION ABOUT KH OR ANYTHING ELSE! How do I know this? Well because I used to be in the marvel fandom and I got ridiculously used to bullshit articles with nasty tag lines that made the fandom squawk in horror every week. These people are paid to stir the pot my dudes. They know the same as we do.

The article is someones opinion. It’s not an unbiased source using article relating news directly from an “inside source” or Namora. It’s someone on the internet saying “hey I think I can predict Kingdom hearts. Let me tell you why Riku’s looking musty!” It. Is. Conjecture. Not fact.

I get that we are starved of news and so we’re all jumping on the panic wagon, but just take a deep breath. It’s just an opinion article.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

I posted 53,811 times in 2022

That's 11,910 more posts than 2021!

350 posts created (1%)

53,461 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@prismatic-bell

@hearts-guided-key

@lunarlegend

@thatrandombystander

@neato-burrito-scream-dorito

I tagged 5,180 of my posts in 2022

#my husband is so beautiful ugaiz 😍 - 358 posts

#bobbi's being weird again - 348 posts

#art - 342 posts

#the great artscapade of 2022 - 309 posts

#my art - 298 posts

#precious chocobean - 158 posts

#heralds of the queue - 118 posts

#friend oc - 106 posts

#untitled gunpla comic - 90 posts

#khdr spoilers - 88 posts

Longest Tag: 141 characters

#he's taking his li'l paw and putting it on my hands or my arm and then meowing and staring at me like 🥺 because i'm not actively petting him

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Day 185 and it's a super important day, y'all! It's @lunarlegend's birthday!!! Happy birthday, Luna, I drew you a Stella, hope you like it!!! :D

14 notes - Posted July 4, 2022

#4

Jim "Treasure Planet" Hawkins is trans and you can't change my mind. My evidence? His theme song. The whole damn thing. But most specifically the lines "I want to tell you who I am. Can you help me be a man? They can't break me, as long as I know who I am" and "they can't tell me who to be, 'cause I'm not what they see."

18 notes - Posted March 29, 2022

#3

Hey y'all, can you do me a favor and check out my bestie's Etsy shop? She just got laid off from her job and she could use the financial help, especially with holidays coming up.

She's got a lot of cute designs, like this shirt here and this cool mug that I'm gonna get for myself when I get paid and a purple pillow and y'all know how I feel about purple (it's the best color, you should get the pillow). There's more, even a paraffin wax candle if you want one of those! She's got a couple Halloween designs for you Halloween lovers out there, too!

See the full post

25 notes - Posted November 17, 2022

#2

I keep thinking of how cruel of an insult "also-ran" is to Lea. To anyone else it's meaningless drivel—hell, I kind of lol wtf'd at it at first—but to Lea? Axel? Who's whole thing is "got it memorized" and wanting to live on in people's memories forever? To be called so worthless and forgettable that the only thing you can say about him is "yeah he was there, too, I guess"? Fuck, that must have hit like a blow to the gut.

And it was a deliberate choice on Xemnas's part, because he knows Axel's whole thing. He knows Axel's primary motivation is to matter and be remembered. But who remembers the also-rans?

It erases everything Lea has accomplished and relegates him to a true nobody—not a Nobody, but a nobody, nobody special, nobody worth mentioning, nobody worth caring about—all in two syllables specifically chosen to punch him in the gut.

On the surface, it seems like a weird translation choice. Something anachronistic, or maybe even a mistranslation, but I don't think it is. I think the translators picked the exact right insult—one that would be a hard miss to anyone else, but undermines everything that Lea is. And the more I think about it, the more it makes me hate Xemnas for that deliberate cruelty (and applaud the translation team for selling it).

Idk man I'm just having weird Lea/Axel feels today

31 notes - Posted May 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I just realized something, and I kind of feel dumb for only now realizing it, but if you only play the numbered Kingdom Hearts games and Dream Drop Distance, you're experiencing the story how Sora experiences it. You know just as much about what's going on as he does.

The side games are only necessary if you want to fully understand the whole entire story, but if you only care about Sora and what Sora's doing and how the story affects Sora? No need to play Roxas or Xion's part of the story, or Terra, Ven, or Aqua's part of the story, or the Age of Fairy Tales, or even Data-Sora and pre-CoM memory-wipe Sora's stories. Sure, Coded and CoM and Days help, but Sora doesn't know what happened in them. He wasn't there. He didn't directly experience Coded and Days, and he's forgotten CoM (though the memory links reside in his heart). But the side games—again, except Dream Drop—were either about other characters, or were written so you don't have to play them to understand everything Sora does. Maybe there was a scene or two (baby Sora and Riku meeting Aqua) that is relevant, but he was also, what, four? Who remembers random strangers saying weird things to you when you're four? It happens all the time, adults are nuts and you don't have a whole lot of life experience so everything is weird to you anyway.

Or maybe I've been cooking on an empty stomach for an hour and it's starting to get to me. Idk. I expect I'll feel the same after I eat, though.

92 notes - Posted April 13, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[violethowler]

I posted 11,097 times in 2022

That's 7,720 more posts than 2021!

27 posts created (0%)

11,070 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@prismatic-bell

@hyena-frog

@blowingoffsteam2

@athingofvikings

@pixel-creates

I tagged 4,280 of my posts in 2022

#kingdom hearts fanart - 771 posts

#soriku - 556 posts

#kingdom hearts meta - 307 posts

#voltron legendary defender - 288 posts

#voltron fanart - 258 posts

#sheith - 232 posts

#current events - 228 posts

#kh sora - 227 posts

#signal boost - 182 posts

#kh riku - 157 posts

Longest Tag: 89 characters

#but it always feels like they're trying to use it to invalidate ppl who ship soriku alone

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Constructing Kingdoms Episode 12 Now Live On YouTube

My original plan was to wait until saturday to post this, but since the video’s done and the big Thanksgiving gathering I’ll be attending doesn’t start for a couple of hours, I figured “why not?” and decided I’d surprise my followers by publishing my newest Constructing Kingdoms video 2 whole days early.

As you can see from the thumbnail, this month’s video is dedicated to our Mistress of All Evil herself and the role she plays in the context of the series’ overarching narrative. 

31 notes - Posted November 24, 2022

#4

Wait. What happened with Bob Koplar and Voltron? There were reasons as to why it was so bad?!

There absolutely are. 

And before I go any further, I have no clue if you already know who Bob Koplar is, but if you do, then this little explanation will just be for anyone reading this who doesn’t: Bob Koplar is the current head of WEP (World Events Productions), the company that made the original show in the 80s and owns the Voltron brand. Dreamworks at the time of the Netflix Voltron series’ production only had the rights to adapt the existing Voltron material and did not own the brand outright. All scripts/episodes for VLD had to go through Bob for approval (by his own admission, although the video where he acknowledges this has sadly been deleted from Youtube). 

So with that explanation out of the way, the reason the final season of Voltron is so bad was because the showrunners and writers at Dreamworks had a very specific story they were trying to tell, while based on comments made by cast, crew, and Koplar himself over the years, Bob wanted 1) a glorified toy commercial to sell toys to 6 year old boys, and 2) a successor to the previous Voltron series, Voltron Force. 

Based on all the evidence found in and around Seasons 7 and 8, the crew’s plans for the final seasons would have involved revealing that Lotor was still alive in the Rift, that he was innocent of the crimes he had been condemned for, and that he would reconcile with Allura and Team Voltron before joining them in the final battle against Honerva. 

Bob found out about this while the crew was making Season 7 and ordered them to change it. Based on interview comments and the history of the Voltron brand, the most likely reason was because he wanted Lotor to remain a villain so he could be reused as the antagonist of a sequel series. The crew complied and removed much of the content surrounding this plotline from Season 7, but then reworked it into Season 8 and tried to push for their planned ending anyway, banking on the fact that by the time Bob found out they’d defied him it would be too late for him to do anything. Instead, the showrunners were forced to cut out multiple episodes’ worth of footage and then rearrange what was left in order to have the number of episodes their contract with Netflix obligated them to release. (A summary of the most notable evidence of changes within the season itself, along with a rough outline of what the final season should’ve looked like based on what was removed, can be found here)

And this all happened after production was already completed, as even the animators and most of the voice actors were surprised by the version of the final season we got. 

Bob has also been implicated by multiple interviews with cast and crew as pushing back against the crew’s desire to include queer characters and relationships in the show, and prevented them from including any same-gender romance between the paladins. 

If you’re interested, the group of fans behind much of the research into the Bob-mandated editing of Voltron Season 8 has put together a few reconstruction videos depicting an approximation of what the unedited versions of certain episodes would have looked like. 

31 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

#3

The newest episode of Constructing Kingdoms is now live on YouTube!

I’ve made no secret on the channel that I look at the series through a Soriku lens, and this is the month where I finally break down the narrative evidence for Sora and Riku to be the endgame romance of the narrative.

At just over 42 minutes, this is my single longest video to date. It’s been a labor of love for the last 2 months, with many nights spent staying up past midnight when I had to get up early for work the next day. But it was all worth it in the end, and I’m proud of this episode.

Be sure to stay to the very end for a post-credits surprise! ;)

59 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

#2

Constructing Kingdoms Episode 10 Is Live

The 10th episode of Constructing Kingdoms is now live on YouTube. In this episode, I’ll be discussing a particular character archetype I’ve noticed pop up in various KH theories several times over the years, the most common interpretation of how the series will implement it, and my own interpretation, incorporating key details that are typically overlooked. 

This will be my last episode for at least the next few months, as I’ll be taking a break once I upload this so that I can recharge and focus on other projects that I let fall by the wayside in the last eight months I’ve spent focused on making these videos.

71 notes - Posted March 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Timeline of KH Dark Road

So the whole time I was watching the finale of Dark Road, I was keeping track of when all of the “X years later/ago” scenes took place, both in relation to the main story and in relation to the rest of the KH saga. Since Xehanort’s conversation with MoM is specifically identified by Remind as being 75 years before KH3, I decided to use that as the base point.

So without further ado, here’s a timeline of Dark Road’s major scenes:

85 years before KH3: Epilogue scene of baby Xehanort on Destiny Islands with Player

78 years before KH3: Xehanort leaves Destiny Islands

77 years before KH3: KH3 Xehaqus chess scene

76 years before KH3: Main Dark Road story

75 years before KH3: Xehanort goes on his first world tour post-Dark Road and meets the Master of Masters

74 years before KH3: Xehanort returns from his first world tour

72 years before KH3: Xehanort goes on a second world tour to prepare for the Mark of Master exam (the 4 years later scenes)

70 years before KH3: Xehanort and Eraqus become Keyblade Masters. Eraqus is bequeathed Master’s Defender while Xehanort is given No Name.

69 years before KH3: An unknown crisis occurs in Scala that makes Xehanort desperate enough to try and summon Kingdom Hearts (his fight with Eraqus in the trailers)

21 years before KH3: Xehanort and Eraqus argue over Xehanort’s plans to start another Keyblade War, ending when Xehanort scars Eraqus’ face (as seen in BBS flashbacks)

12 years before KH3: Xehanort finds Ventus in the Keyblade Graveyard and takes him as an apprentice

11 years before KH3: Xehanort brings Ventus to the Land of Departure. BBS happens a few months later.

Some quick observations about the timeline of events:

In his conversation with MoM, Xehanort indicates that his training is nearly finished and the Mark of Mastery exam is coming up soon. But according to this timeframe, he didn’t become a master until 5 years after the conversation. Then I remembered that after failing the exam in BBS, Eraqus tells Terra that “there’s always next time”. Indicating that another Mark of Mastery will be held at a later date and Terra can retake it then. So there are two possible reasons for this discrepancy between the game’s stated timeline and what Young Xehanort says to the Master. Either something happened that caused Odin to delay the exam, or both Eraqus and Xehanort failed and they had to wait a few years before he would allow them to retake it.

The time of when Xehanort found Ventus means that Ven was only living in the Land of Departure for a few months before the start of Birth by Sleep, even though the prologue on Destiny Islands where Sora healed Ven’s heart happened when Sora was still a baby. Since Dark Road emphasized again that time moves at different speeds on different worlds, this means that while 4 years passed on Destiny Islands, only a few months passed in the Land of Departure.

107 notes - Posted August 28, 2022

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[psychicdragoncoffee]

Thoughts on Chain of Memories [Long Post]

It's been a while since I've made any post regarding to any games I've been playing. When it comes to Chain of Memories I haven't been really playing it a lot and I haven't been in the mood to post about any other games I've been playing. Just haven't thought of posting updates here in general.

So while I am here I thought I would go over how I play Chain of Memories as well as some general thoughts of the game itself.

The reason it takes me so long to finish the game is that Chain of Memories is one of my least favorite games in the series. Most Kingdom Hearts games I would have daily game sessions until I finish the game. Chain of Memories I can lose interest for weeks before I pick it up again.

So in a quest to replay everything it makes the process take a lot longer. [Note, I started replaying the Kingdom Hearts series probably back in in February this year. It's June and I just recently entered endgame with Sora's part of the story.

[I don't think I started on Chain of Memories right away. I started on Final Fantasy VII before Chain of Memories. I happened to remembered that I didn't even finish Final Fantasy VII before I went on to play Chain of Memories. I did go though most of the game. So I'm pretty much in endgame of Final Fantasy VII but got stuck on the chocobo breeding.]

But to get onto the point. How I, as a lazy gamer play RE: Chain of Memories.

The card system might be a pretty scary concept. But overall it isn't too hard to work with. Of course I'm not a person to take full advantage of what the deck could do. That's okay. You don't need to make a complicated deck to be able to beat the game.

Sleights

This is something I never really put to use until endgame when I obtain the move "Trinity Limit". That being said I normally focus on HP and CP [Card Points] before I would be forced to light sleights when leveling up.

Stocking Cards

This is something I usually don't do unless dealing with a boss battle. Mostly since I don't think it would be worth losing cards in normal battle against normal heartless.

When I do stock cards I'd normally try to start the stack with either Donald or Goofy [Or any other friend card] instead of an attack card. At least until I get into endgame when I'm using Trinity Limit whenever I can. [The move requires you to start the stack with an attack card. The order of the other two don't really matter as long as it is a Donald and a Goofy.]

Premium Cards

I try to avoid these at all cost. Especially since when used in battle they will disappear until the next fight of use a Mega Potion or something like that.

[I had quite a few experiences in which I go into the premium rooms and leave with almost all my deck being replaced by premium cards.]

It doesn't mean premium cards are useless. I do sometimes use them for placeholders for better cards later on. They also get you a log more moogle points when selling them back.

Decks

How I structure the deck is that I gradually replace the cards with ones with a higher value. By the time I get to the endgame I would have a deck with all 9s. I also don't really use 0 cards if I can avoid it.

[meltykarasu]

Kingdom Hearts: The Novel review

Written by Tomoco Kanemaki, illustrated by Shiro Amano.

The Bottom Line: A reasonable, if slightly abbreviated, adaptation of the original Kingdom Hearts.

Unlike the last novel I discussed, FFVII: On the Way to a Smile, this novel is directly based on a then-Squaresoft, now-Square Enix video game, rather than being a bridge between a game and its sequel — in this case Kingdom Hearts, originally released for the Playstation 2, rereleased in Japan as Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix which was finally released overseas (much later) as part of the 1.5 HD ReMix collection.

Kingdom Hearts, for the uninitiated, is a series about a bunch of Tetsuya Nomura-designed anime characters who gallivant around a vast galaxy whose worlds are comprised mostly of the settings of Disney films, interacting with the characters and plots of these films in a wider quest to stop, for the initial arc, a man named Xehanort from recreating an ancient apocalypse.

As a result of its strange intersection of Disney characters and settings combined with Square's RPG pedigree, aesthetic sense, and overall game design, it has cultivated a sizeable fandom.

The original game, Kingdom Hearts (aka KH1), and its novel, begin the story of Sora, who is thrown into a grand adventure when his homeworld is destroyed and he is separated from his best friends. He meets Donald Duck and Goofy, who are themselves the members of a royal court with Mickey Mouse as their King whom recently vanished, leaving behind instructions for them to search for the mystical Keyblade which Sora now wields.

I'm generally not going to discuss the writing quality of these as I go through each novel — the translation is very good and seems to have been referencing the original game's localization heavily. I think that the fight scenes are very abbreviated, but by comparison, the games have bombastic boss fights — many of which only appear for scant paragraphs in this novel. The actual dialogue and character interactions, when not pulled from the game, are generally good and in-character.

I would like to highlight the illustrations by the incomparable Shiro Amano, who manages to capture all the various styles of Disney movies while capturing the Kingdom Hearts characters in their own fantastic style. (This is also a selling point of their work on the KH manga adaptations.)

Would I Suggest Reading This Over Playing The Game:Not really. KH1 has some clunky game design — the mazes of Wonderland, Deep Jungle, Monstro, and Atlantica come to mind immediately, but I think that it's a really good game if you don't mind sometimes referencing a guide to ensure you've tripped all the proper event flags to open up certain areas.

The novel neither adds nor seriously subtracts — conspicuous in their absence are the Olympus Coliseum, Halloween Town, and Atlantica segments of the plot, none of which add anything major to the plot. It's a clear matter of pagecount, however, and the plot is decently conveyed, with sections of the characters puzzling over Ansem's Report, which explains much of the character's methods and motivation.

[themattress]

Not for me!

If anyone wants to know why the kingdom hearts fandom has a lot of bad takes and everything in that regard just know it's all kh2's fault

Or, y'know, it's the KH fandom's own fault.

Kh2 is the reason why everyone thinks the disney worlds are filler

Except that half the visits in KH2 were NOT filler, and objectively speaking visits to Disney worlds in other games such as the latter half of BBS and all of KH3 are filler because the story provides no proper context as to why they're even being visited at all.

why people think Sora "fell off" after kh2

How is that KH2's fault if he did, in fact, fall off after KH2?

why people think the series is just cool anime stuff but with disney characters

Another user responded perfectly:

Yes, that's what the series was supposed to be. It trying to go beyond that because of some pretention to greatness Nomura has is missing the entire appeal.

and why people think Kairi still has relevance all cause she has a keyblade

No. They don't.

The games that came after kh2 aren't held in as high of a regard cause everyone expected the future games to be like kh2 when they're very clearly not. Most of the kh3 criticism I saw basically boiled down to "this should have happened like it did in kh2"

KH3 is the next mainline numbered title, so comparing it to the previous mainline numbered title is kind of unavoidable, just like there were many KH1 vs. KH2 debates back in the day. As for the other games, if you really think not being like KH2 is the only reason they're criticized, then you are being willfully ignorant of the actual criticisms.

Every game after kh2 is doomed to be compared to kh2 like how every final fantasy game after ff7 is doomed to be compared to ff7 cause of how it popped off the way it did

FF8 still sold well and its reputation has improved over time, FF9 didn't sell well but was always a critical darling and its reputation has also grown, and even for their times FF10 and FF12 were big successes without any comparisons being made to FF7. And need I say anything about FF14, which miraculously went from a huge bomb to, once revamped, the most successful MMORPG of our time? The notion that FF7 being the most popular FF game somehow damaged the rest of the franchise is simply untrue.

Imo kh2 more or less essentially ruined everyone's perception of what kh is and is also one of the biggest examples of showing the dissonance between what the fans want to see vs the story Nomura wants to tell and that dissonance gets stronger with each game

Refer back to what I said before. The problem isn't what the fans want to see, because that's what the series sold them on. The problem is, in fact, the story Nomura wants to tell. He isn't the sole creator of Kingdom Hearts, there was a huge collaborative effort involved. So him taking full creative control to steer it in whatever random direction he wants regardless of how much it matches what the series was conceived as and sold as...of fucking course that's going to alienate people and create dissonance. If Nomura wants to tell a story like this, he should find another outlet...or, in the case of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, just accept that it's not happening rather than try to force it into a series it has absolutely no business being in.

Kh2 was the turning point in the series that basically told everyone that the story wasn't going the way they think it would go and it completely went over everyone's heads and I think that needs to be talked about

Yeah, no. That would be Birth by Sleep.

Anyway moral of the story is stop skipping kh cutscenes. That's why y'all confused and why y'all don't know things.

No, you condescending twat. People can watch all the KH Cutscenes and still be confused and not know things because the clone-filled, body-jacking, time-traveling, computer data-heavy, reality-hopping events that are all part of some omnipotent villain's master plan that they just watched make no sense. You can pretend it does, but you can't change the truth.

If I see any kh4 criticism that sounds like "it should be like kh2" I'll bitchslap you to the moon I've had enough of the comparisons

Kingdom Hearts IV shouldn't have to be like Kingdom Hearts II.

It simply should be like Kingdom Hearts.

But it's not going to be. It's going to be like Versus XIII. That's the problem.

If anyone wants to know why the kingdom hearts fandom has a lot of bad takes and everything in that regard just know it's all kh2's fault

Kh2 is the reason why everyone thinks the disney worlds are filler, why people think Sora "fell off" after kh2, why people think the series is just cool anime stuff but with disney characters, and why people think Kairi still has relevance all cause she has a keyblade (/hj about the Kairi point but also not really)

The games that came after kh2 aren't held in as high of a regard cause everyone expected the future games to be like kh2 when they're very clearly not. Most of the kh3 criticism I saw basically boiled down to "this should have happened like it did in kh2"

Every game after kh2 is doomed to be compared to kh2 like how every final fantasy game after ff7 is doomed to be compared to ff7 cause of how it popped off the way it did

Imo kh2 more or less essentially ruined everyone's perception of what kh is and is also one of the biggest examples of showing the dissonance between what the fans want to see vs the story Nomura wants to tell and that dissonance gets stronger with each game

Kh2 was the turning point in the series that basically told everyone that the story wasn't going the way they think it would go and it completely went over everyone's heads and I think that needs to be talked about

Anyway moral of the story is stop skipping kh cutscenes. That's why y'all confused and why y'all don't know things. If I see any kh4 criticism that sounds like "it should be like kh2" I'll bitchslap you to the moon I've had enough of the comparisons

[videogame1up]

Ranking Smash DLC based on my own excitement (The definitive list)

12-Terry

I don't especially like fighting games, and I don't like playing as Ken or Ryu also doesn't help I had never heard of Terry or his game. I couldn't care less about Terry being in smash

11-Byleth

I like Fire Emblem, I hadn't played three houses when Byleth was announced but when I did I enjoyed the game. The problem with Byleth is that 8 Fire Emblem reps is just a bit too much, I think everyone would have been happier with literally anyone else making it in over Byleth

10-Min Min

All I'm saying is that there's a mummy looking dude in Arms that we could have gotten. Min Min looked unique, that's where my excitement capped at for her

9-Piranha plant

"Lol, okay"-Me when Piranha plant was announced

8-Kazuya

"But you said you don't care about fighting games and that's why Terry was at the bottom of the list" That is true, but I've also heard of Tekken, also he looked fun to play as to me, and he is.

7-Pyra/Mythra

I play as Pyra and Mythra for the story. Also her moveset looked unique and fun and i liked the stage she came with.

6-Joker

Also the first DLC that people got excited over (No disrespect to Piranha plant outside it's fairly low ranking) Persona crosses over to Smash? I didn't see that coming, did you? Joker was a great starting place for DLC, not the most hype character we will end up getting but a pretty exciting starting point none the less.

5-Hero

With how long running and significant of a series Dragon Quest is, it's really no surprise to see Hero make his way in. Fun fact, in Japan the newest Dragon Quest games are sold on weekends, because so many kids would skip school on the launch of a new Dragon Quest game. I'm kinda of a sucker for sword fighters, i like seeing new sword fighters added in smash (Don't tell the smash community i said that though) Hero looked like a fun sword user, with plenty of alt costumes to please fans, and a really unique down B, whether or not i like Heroes Command menu he can pop up, is for another list.

4- Steve

I think, like many people i got a lot of fond memories with Minecraft over the years. In High school i remember a friend getting so mad at another one of our friends because he went in and destroyed the wall he had spent the better part of an afternoon building, in college me and two of my roommates set up our own server, open our bedroom doors and yell at one another as we were playing, to this day i still play online with a couple of friends from time to time, Smash Ultimate is a celebration of gaming as a whole, Minecraft is the also the best selling video game of all time, seeing his inclusion felt like a fever dream and a no brainier at the same time

3-Sephiroth

"I really want Sephiroth in"-a friend

"Idk i don't see it happening, that would be really cool but probably not for ultimate"

2-Banjo and Kazooie

I'm going to be completely honest with everyone for a second, i actually don't care for Banjo and Kazooie, i beat the game from start to finish, i just did not love it. So why was i more excited for Banjo than pretty much everyone else? Because while i didn't love the game, i did love that music, i also liked the design for Banjo and Kazooie and viewed them as a great fit for smash. Banjo would have likely been in back in Melee or Brawl had Rare not been bought up by Microsoft, i also knew the overwhelming fan support that Banjo had online, I'll be honest it was hard not getting swept up and excited for Banjo and Kazooie finally making their way back home.

1- Sora

I made this list because I wanted to discuss how excited for Sora i am and how deeply sad i am that there's going to be no Utada Hikaru singing simple and Clean as Sora destroys what he thinks is a heartless but is really just Mr.Game and watch. To say I'm excited for Sora being in smash really just does not do it justice. That first Kingdom hearts game is a real contender for favorite game of all time, I've attempted a speed run (I wanna say i can beat that first game in under 5 hours) Sora was a character I would have loved to see make it, but with Disney I really didn't think we would get Sora, also the DLC had been getting a lot of love from Square and i fee like Sora was really pushing our luck. BUT NOPE HE FUCKING MADE IT IN BITCHES.

WHEN YOU WALK AWAY YOU DON'T HEAR ME SAY PLEASE OH BABY DON'T GO SIMPLE AND CLEAN IS THE WAY THAT YOU'RE MAKING ME FEEL TONIGHT IT'S HARD TO LET IT GO

YOU'RE GIVING ME TOO MANY THINGS LATELY YOU'RE ALL I NEED

With 12 characters making their way in i know my list won't be exact same as yours, i would love to hear who were you excited for? Who did you not care for? Was it Terry?

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Lucifer/Satan

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Please allow me to introduce this villain. He’s a man of wealth and taste...

Satan, or Lucifer, or whatever of the hundreds of names across multiple religions, folk tales, urban legends, movies, books, songs, video games, and more that you choose to call him, is without a doubt the biggest bad of them all. He is not just a villain; he is the villain, the bad guy your other bad guys answer to, the lord of Hell. If there’s a bad deed, he’s done it, if there’s a problem, he’s behind it. There’s nothing beneath him, and that’s not just because he’s at the very bottom of Hell. He is the root cause of all the misery in the entire world.

And if we’re talking about Satan, we gotta talk about Lucifer too. They weren’t always supposed to be one and the same, but over centuries of artistic depictions and reimaginings they’ve been conflated into one being, a being that is a lot more layered and interesting than just a simple adversary for the good to overcome when handled properly.

Motivation/Goals: Look, it’s Satan. His main goal is to be as evil as possible, do bad things, cause mischief and mayhem. Rarely does anything good come from Satan being around. If he is one and the same as Lucifer, expect there to be some sort of plot about him rebelling against God, as according to modern interpretations Lucifer fought against God in battle and was then cast out, falling from grace like lightning. When the Lucifer persona is front and center, raging against the heavens tends to be a big part of his schemes, but when the big red devil persona is out and about, expect temptations to sin, birthing the Antichrist, or tempting people to sell their souls.

Performance: Satan has been portrayed by far too many people over the years to even consider keeping count of, though some notable performances of the character or at least characters who are clearly meant to be Satan include the nuanced anti-villain take of the character Viggo Mortensen portrayed in The Prophecy; the sympathetic homosexual man portrayed by Trey Parker in South Park and its film; the hard-rocking badass Dave Grohl portrayed in Tencaious D’s movie; Robin Hughes as a sneaky, double-crossing bastard in “The Howling Man” episode of The Twilight Zone; the big red devil from Legend known as Darkness, played by Tim Curry; the shapeshifting angel named Satan from The Adventures of Mark Train who will make you crap your pants; and while not portrayed by anyone due to being entirely voiceless, Chernabog from Disney’s Fantasia is definitely noteworthy in regards to cinematic depictions of the devil.

Final Thoughts & Score: Satan is a villain whose sheer scope dwarfs almost every other villain in history. It’s not even remotely close, either; Satan pops up in stories all around the world, is the greater-scope villain of most varieties of three major religions, and his very name is shorthand for “really, really evil.” Every other villain I have ever discussed and reviewed wishes they could be a byword for being bad to the bone. Even Dracula, one of the single most important villains in fiction, looks puny in comparison to Satans villainous accomplishments.

Satan in old religious texts tended to be an utterly horrifying force of nature, until Medieval times began portray him as a dopey demon trying to tempt the faithful (and failing). Folklore and media have gone back and forth, portraying both in equal measure – you have the desperate, fiddle-playing devil from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and the unseen, unfathomable Satan who may or may not exist in the Marvel comics universe who other demons live in fear of the return of. Satan is just a very interesting and malleable antagonist, one who is defined just enough that he can make a massive, formidable force while still being enough of a blank slate that you can project any sort of personality traits onto him to build an intriguing foe.

One of the most famous examples of this in action is the common depiction of Satan as the king of hell. This doesn’t really have much basis in religion; he’s as much a prisoner as anyone else, though considering how impressive a prisoner he is, he’d be like the big guy at the top of the pecking order in any jail for sure. But still, the idea of Satan as the ruler of hell was clearly conceived by someone and proved such an intriguing concept that so many decided to run with it.

I think that’s what truly makes Satan such an interesting villain, in that he’s almost a community-built antagonist. People over the ages have added so much lore, personality, and power to him that is only vaguely alluded to in old religions to the point where they have all become commonplace in depictions of the big guy, and there really isn’t any other villain to have quite this magnitude on culture as a whole. It shouldn’t be any shock that Satan is an 11/10; rating him any lower would be a heinous crime only he is capable of.

But see, the true sign of how amazing he is is the sheer number of ways one can interpret him. You have versions that are just vague embodiments of all that is bad and unholy, such as Chernabog from Fantasia, you have more nuanced portrayals like the one Viggo Mortensen played in The Prophecy, you have outright sympathetic ones like the one from South Park… Satan is just a villain who can be reshaped and reworked as a creator sees fit and molded into something that fits the narrative they want. I guess what I’m trying to say is that not only is Lucifer/Satan one of the greatest villains of all, he’s also one of the single greatest characters of all time.  

Now, there are far too many depictions of Satan for me to have seen them all, but I have seen quite a lot. Here’s how Old Scratch has fared over the millennia in media of various forms, though keep in mind this is by no means a comprehensive or exhaustive lsit:

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” Devil: 

I think this is one of my favorite devils in any fiction ever, simply because of what a good sport he is. Like, there is really no denying that Johnny’s stupid little fiddle ditty about chickens or whatever sucks major ass, and yet Satan (who had moments before summoned up demonic hordes to rip out some Doom-esque metal for the contest) gave him the win and the golden fiddle. What a gracious guy! He’s a 9/10 for sure, though I still wish we knew how his rematch ended…

Chernabog: 

Chernabog technically doesn’t do anything evil, and he never says a word, and yet everything about him is framed as inherently sinister. It’s really no wonder Chernabog has become one of the most famous and beloved parts of Fantasia alongside Yen Sid and Sorcerer Mickey; he’s infinitely memorable, and really, how can he not be? He’s the devil in a Disney film, not played for laughs and instead made as nightmarishly terrifying as an ancient demon god should be. Everything about him oozes style, and every movement and gesture begets a personality that goes beyond words. Chernabog doesn’t need to speak to tell you that he is evil incarnate; you just know, on sight, that he is up to no good.

Quite frankly, the implications of Chernabog’s existence in the Disney canon are rather terrifying. Is he the one Maleficent called upon for power? Is he the one all the villains answer to? Do you think Frollo saw him after God smote him? And what exactly did he gain by attacking Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts? All I know for sure is that Chernabog is a 10/10.

Lucifer (The Prophecy): 

Viggo Mortensen has limited screentime, but in that time he manages to be incredibly creepy, misanthropic… and yet, also, on the side of good. Of course, he’s doing it entirely for self-serving reasons (he wants humanity around so he can make them suffer), but credit where credit is due. The man manages to steal a scene from under Christopher Walken, I think that’s worth a 10/10.

Satan (South Park): 

Portraying Satan as a sympathetic gay man was a pretty bold choice, and while he certainly does fall into some stereotypes, he’s not really painted as bad or morally wrong for being gay, and ends up more often than not being a good (if sometimes misguided) guy who just wants to live his life. Plus he gets a pretty sweet villain song, though technically it’s more of an “I want” song than anything. Ah well, a solid 8/10 for him is good.

Satan (Tenacious D):

It’s Dave Grohl as Satan competing in a rock-off against JB and KG. Literally everything about this is perfect, even if he’s only in the one scene. 10/10 for sure.

Robot Devil:

Futurama’s take on the devil is pretty hilarious and hammy, but then Futurama was always pretty on point. He’s a solid 8/10, because much like South Park’s devil he gets a fun little villain song with a guest apearance by the Beastie Boys, not to mention his numerous scams like when he stole Fry’s hands. He’s just a fun, hilarious asshole.

The Howling Man: 

The Twilight Zone has many iconic episodes, and this one is absolutely one of them. While the devil is the big twist, that scene of him transforming as he walks between the pillars is absolutely iconic, and was even used by real-life villain Kevin Spacey in the big reveal of The Usual Suspects. This one is a 9/10 for sure, especially given the ending that implies this will all happen again (as per usual with the show).

The Darkness:

While he’s more devil-adjacent than anything and is more likely to be the son of Satan rather than the actual man himself, it’s hard not to give a shout-out to the big, buff demon played by Tim Curry in some of the most fantastic prosthetics and makeup you will ever see. He gets a 9/10 for the design alone, the facty he’s Tim Curry is icing on the cake.

[fizzingwizard]

So............ Episode 39 is a fever dream xD I think the writers were high. It’s probably better enjoyed while high as well, if you’re not eight years old. Bahahaha.

But HEY they really went for it. They were like, this is the concept, we are not backing down, YOU’RE GONNA LIKE IT OR ELSE. Man. Ballsy.

I can’t say whether this episode was Good or Not Good - I think it’s more in the liminal zone of “you wish you could forget but never can” memedome. Lol

It’s a Jou ep and we can say, for sure, that the episode certainly embodies Jou’s potential *cackles*

Note: Episode 40 won’t air until 3/21.

Pic of the Day is Taichi because, as usual, I capped him too much.

Taichi: Pretty sure we all just ate hallucinogenic mushrooms by accident but just gonna smile through it

More below!

First Tailmon lectures the kids on the importance of taking a break to rest. Basically, Tailmon is me. Hey, writers, are you reading my blog? Lol.

They pull up to what turns out to be a Digimon burger restaurant. The fact that Palmon didn’t know what burgers until they went to the simulated human world is dealt with pretty much by saying she just doesn’t get around much lol.

They find many Digimon enjoying burgers made by the Digimon after my heart, Burgermon.

The Squirtle Squad is there too.

Taichi also is me.

Sora comments on how this place reminds her of a place from home, to which Mimi responds that she’s never been there as she usually travels by plane ??????????????????????

I know she’s rich but does she take a plane to the grocery store xD

The kids st down to enjoy some burgers, all except for Yamato, Koushirou, and Hikari, who didn’t listen to Tailmon’s lecture and are still working. Even Tailmon doesn’t take her own advice.

Jou suddenly notices something strange. He stands, glasses shining.

Jou: Why is no one eating the fries!

Taichi: I’m eating them.

Jou: i dON’T MEAN YOU!!!!!

His blood pressure skyrockets. Fries are the main reason to go to a burger joint. Why is no one eating the fries??

Taichi: Like I said, I’m eating them.

Jou: NOT EVERYTHING’S ABOUT YOU!

Meanwhile, Yamato’s group realizes Komondomon is very dirty when he accidentally creates a small sandstorm out of his fur. They meet another Komondomon who is sparkly and bishie and find out there’s a car wash service by Lunamon nearby, so they take Komondomon to get washed.

HEY WRITERS, YOU’RE READING MY BLOG RIGHT??? I asked for this before. Bahahaha. BATHE KOMONDOMON 2021

Lunamon also tries to bathe Gabumon, but he’s not interested.

Gabumon: I don’t need a bath!

Yamato: Uh, are you sure?

Jou’s indignation over the not eating of the fries turns out to be because, sometimes after cram school he sneaks off to a burger restaurant and eats fries and just has a moment for himself before he goes home. His special time with fries keeps him sane in a cold, cruel world.

Then this abomination appears. Potemon. He both is a potato and loves eating potatoes. Uh. That’s. That’s kinda wack

Jou instantly clicks with Potemon due to their mutual love for potatoes. I thought we’d get an explanation like “no one here eats fries because we save them all for Potemon” or something, but it seems like... Potemon is really the only one who likes them... idk man this episode makes no sense

Then Burgermon makes a sad announcement... They’re going to discontinue the fries!

Burgermon: Selling fries is a net loss for us because no one eats them.

Taichi: But you don’t sell anything, it’s all free.

Burgermon: Yes but if we DID sell them it WOULD be a net loss because no one eats them

Then Hikari’s like “quit being so lazy!” and the others are like “you literally told us it’s important to rest” and Hikari’s group is like “KOMONDOMON NEEDS A BATH ALL PLAY AND NO WORK MAKES JACK A DULL BOY” and Taichi’s like “but my name is not Jack”

Gomamon tries to help Jou cheer up by reminding him of his image as a leader. Tailmon is surprised... but accepts her new leader lmao.

I mean, how could you not admire his authoritative figure?

There’s a running joke from this point about the word suberu (滑る) which means both to slip like in the tub and to flunk an exam. So, for Jou, it’s the equivalent of a curse word lol. Mimi is the number one offender, the little witch bahaha.

Potemon has gone to cry over not being able to be a cannibal anymore, until he is consumed by potato rage. His eyes glow red and he evolves to...

... Jagamon, another potato Digimon, but larger. He is a Perfect level WHAT. Does that mean Potemon was Adult level??? Or he was so upset he just jumped two levels in single go without any extra help from Millenniumon?? i think this guy might be the real Big Bad y’all

Jagamon throws potato bombs around and stuff starts to get wrecked.

Taichi: This seems like an overreaction!

Agumon: To be honest I get it. I’d probably act the same if I couldn’t have my favorite food anymore.

Taichi: But your favorite food is every food.

Burgermon and Lunamon bravely rush out to stop Jagamon, but then, when rescued by Taichi, instantly agree to turn tail and run bahaha.

Not to be outdone, Yamato rushes in to save this little guy, Pusurimon, who looks up at his hero with eyes full of wonder.

Taichi then asks Yamato to lead the evacuation which pretty much means “stop stealing my fans”

Meanwhile Birdramon... helps???... Blimpmon...

I didn’t even know there was a Blimpmon...

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised...

....

Jou realizes that Jagamon is Potemon and begs the others to help him save the little potato head.

Taichi notices that Lunamon’s bubbles are peculiarly strong for bubbles and stop the potato bombs from exploding. I mean, he and everyone else figures it out just by using their eyes. Jou then instantly takes over and starts giving orders like he’s a got a shrewd plan.

Jou: I have a plan!

Mimi: What is it?

Jou: Use the bubbles to stop the potato bombs from exploding!

Mimi: Funny, that was my plan too!

Jou... What a coincidence!

Tailmon receives Captain Jou’s orders and promptly evolves to Angewomon. She shoots her arrow into Zudomon’s hammer and tells Jou to infuse it with his strong feelings.

(A quick not funny aside - now we know Angewomon can do this. It makes perfect sense for both her abilities in 99 Adventure and the abilities we’ve seen from the holy Digimon thus far this season. Bit of a strange way to have it confirmed but xD)

Jou does just that, infusing Zudomon’s hammer with his passion for fries and the deep connection he felt with Potemon as potetomo “potato friends.” Then he freaking picks it up, leaps into the sky which has suddenly become dark and stormy even though it was blue five seconds ago, and slams it into Jagamon’s skull.

Jou: I AM THOR, SON OF ODIN, AND THIS IS MJOLNIR! YOU WILL RESPECT THE HAMMER!

Mimi: I THINK THIS MIGHT BE OVERKILL!

But it works. A swift blow to the head and Jagamon is back to his normal potato-loving self. We all just accept this.

They now have a surplus of potatoes, thanks to Jagamon’s power to spontaneously generate them. Never mind that they also EXPLODE. Apparently that does not affect how delicious they are to eat.

I figured at some point someone would say the reason the fries were being discontinued was due to lack of potatoes, and the arrival of Jagamon would solve all their problems. But if they ever did say anything that, I missed it. Was a bit odd.

The end!

So, YEAH, bonkers episode. But Jou is the hero we all want to be in our hearts. And everyone loves fries. Which makes this the most relatable episode yet lol.

Did I like it? No, not really. But I think that’s because I am not eight years old xD I do appreciate the Jou-related humor though. Def can’t say this episode was boring! And, among other things, nearly everyone got to talk do stuff - only Koushirou and Takeru didn’t have much of a role this time. And the joke with Tailmon accepting Jou as her leader was pretty funny and cute and I hope it sticks. And I really did love the way Jou relied on Mimi at the end - it was just silly, not meaningful in any way, but it was funny and my Joumi heart enjoyed it :P

Next episode, again, won’t air till 3/21, and it looks to be a Sora episode. (Last week I surmised that ep 40 would kick off the next big arc, but I had totally forgotten Sora hasn’t had “her episode” yet. Sorry Sora ;_;)

The preview looks light-hearted, though perhaps not quite as silly as this week.

First they will go to Jurassic Park!

Where Sora and Taichi will impress the dino bird kingdom with their soccer prowess!

And Mimi will continue to relax.

Jou: What happened to all play and no work makes Jack a dull boy?

Mimi: Um, excuse me, I’m a GIRL.

Koushirou: You all know you’re using that phrase the wrong way, right?