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mr-deblob · 9 months

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Hear me out on this: I honestly think Kairi could be the main playable character in Kingdom Hearts 4

Or at least a significant playable one.

I know that it sounds ridiculous to entertain the idea, especially with how badly she's been sidelined for the past 20 years. But taking into account the structure of mainline games and the current locations of our characters, it starts to look likely for both narrative and game design purposes.

Sora and Riku are stuck in Quadratum

First things first- there's no way in hell Nomura's letting Riku rescue Sora in the beginning hours of KH4. They definitely won't just hop back to the Realm of Light when they find each other. He might make questionable plot decisions, but he's not gonna pass up a chance to torture the two of them even more, especially since *something's* going on with Yozora and the Master of Masters.

In a GameInformer interview he gave, he was asked about how much time we'd spend in Quadratum.

I think it will be a pretty good amount of time since it is set as the initial base within the game. You spend time there and then go to different worlds and then go back there. Because the graphics are more realistic this time around, I feel like there’s more of a realistic daily life aspect to Sora’s life. You can see him go in and out of his room and spend time there. I feel like players will get to see more of the day-to-day routines he goes through.

It sounds like Quadratum will act more like an interlude between worlds, where the developments that happen in the Realm of Light (or wherever else) will cause more troubles to pop in the city. We've already seen Sora fighting a giant Heartless(?) that just showed up out of nowhere. There might be more events like that, or even encounters with the mysterious figures staring down from the rooftops. And when nothing's threatening the world, Sora might simply be living daily life with Strelitzia.

I'm uncertain on how much we'll actually get on the nature of Quadratum since it is just Tokyo, but part of me is feeling like the story beats will be more important than the setting on this side.

Kairi can have a blank-slate start

I'm sure everyone who picked Kairi in that final fight was a bit surprised by how aggressive it was. A strike raid teleport and a barrage of light flooding the battlefield were amazing to see in her first time in the spotlight. We know she can fight, so wouldn't those skills carry over to her next game?

But she's been asleep for a whole year to have her memories explored. They could easily explain the loss of former skills. Besides, the reasons for Sora always resetting to Level 1 are basically on the same scale. If you wanted more reasoning, then maybe Aqua's training is having her develop her own fighting style from scratch. It's very obvious she's trying to emulate Sora in her stance.

We also know that Kairi has her own unique combat pose. They've shown it to us at least twice in DDD and the KH3 opening, but we've never seen her actively using it in-game AFAIK. It sure would be an opportune moment to have her adopt it to signify her becoming her own person independent of Sora and Riku.

If the training time with Aqua seems like it would be too short to warrant Kairi going off on her own, keep in mind that we don't know how much time disparity there is between Quadratum and the RoL It could be synched up or be off by weeks, even months, more than enough to get her through the fundamentals.

Also, a mini-timeskip would give Nomura the chance to give the Destiny Trio new designs again. How Riku gets a new outfit and hairstyle while looking for Sora, I don't know, but he already pushed him through the Shadow Barber Shop. He can probably come up with something.

We still gotta have different Keyblades

Straight-up the title of this section. It's incredibly unlikely that Nomura would cut these, but as before, it's equally unlikely that Sora will get out of Quadratum into the RoL. Disney worlds are confirmed, and unless all of them are entirely new, I don't think there's a satisfying way to justify why he couldn't get help from the inhabitants, try to get off-world, or at least get in touch with someone if he still has his Gummiphone.

So if anyone else could go around to these worlds and collect these keychains, Kairi seems like a good candidate for that.

"But what about Destiny's Embrace?" Fair point. It's still got sentimental value to her and has familiarity. They wouldn't just dump it entirely.

However, I believe (and earnestly hope) that Kairi finally gets meaningful character development now. There's so much we could delve into (and we will later), but her current goal of growing stronger seemingly stems from a desire to determine her fate. For so long she's been carried by the tides of chance, waiting for what will happen rather than actively reaching towards her goals. In the end, it brought her down the path that led to Sora's disappearance, so she can't keep placing her faith in destiny.

Kairi might temporarily retire Destiny's Embrace, or perhaps her new mindset will trigger something in her Keyblade. We've seen that with Riku and the Way to the Dawn. It might be a more basic Keyblade like Braveheart, or she could end up wielding an iteration of the Kingdom Key to represent herself starting anew. Hell, maybe Sora fighting in her place in MoM passed it on to her, or she manifests it from her memories.

It'd be a convenient way to keep giving out new keychains while still making it feel like Sora experienced actual consequences for his misuse of the Power of Waking. They could even have Sora gain access to them through Kairi. His temporary possession of her at the end of MoM could be used as an in-universe way to hand-off the main PoV in a natural-feeling way, and she might be able to send him manifestations of the keychains as memories or something else that could cross over to Quadratum.

Masters and Maleficent will go wild

The KH3 ending brought back the Lost Masters through some unexplained mechanic. It also implies that they'll be the main antagonists of the new arc, but they're currently in the Realm of Light. I don't know how much Sora could do from the other side of reality. Not to mention Maleficent making even more schemes.

So the Keyblade wielders and their allies will have to defend against them and whatever other enemies crop up in their wake. But why would Kairi be the one pursuing their main goal? Why not Master Aqua, or at least one of the battle-hardened wielders?

Depending on the numbers, it'd be easy to say the other wielders are busy defending the worlds from the new threats, that they're spread too thin to take up whatever role Kairi would theoretically take. Maybe her status as a Princess of Heart could come up as another reason why it'd have to be her.

In any case, whatever Luxu has in that mysterious box spells bad news. The fact that there are going to be five ancient Keyblade Masters carrying out the Master of Masters' plan spells catastrophic news. Perhaps the missing Master Ava could work from the shadows to stymie them or to help Kairi on her quest.

Also, the Heartless are still gonna be wreaking havoc even if the Masters aren't. That will practically always be true, especially now that Xehanort's not controlling them all. Maleficent is going to do what Maleficent does best and use this to her advantage. With all these potential villains in the RoL, someone's gotta take care of them.

New worlds can develop Kairi further

Now that KH3 is finished and out of development hell, they're now free to consider new Disney properties, even those beyond 2014. And there's quite a few that could easily be connected to Kairi's desire to grow beyond her past and choose her own path:

Moana - Island girls who want to seize their destinies to see what lies beyond everyday life, both struggling with self-doubt. Also have grandmas who know more than they let on.

Coco - How memories connect us, that we can be together in heart when apart, the pains of love and separation. Fighting for your dream even when you're alone.

Encanto - Especially heavy exploration of breaking from the roles others place on us and that we take on, acknowledging and expressing emotions we hide from others.

Brave - "If you had the chance to change your fate, would ya?" Besides that, accepting that people can grow apart, that we each take our own paths, that it doesn't need to break our bonds.

WALL-E - Be open to change, don't let familiarity keep you stuck. Trust in the future, trust in yourself, break through the limits of your past. Go on even when all seems lost.

Frozen 2 - Self-determination and independence, grieving what has been lost, righting the wrongs of the past. Pain is a fact of life, do not let your fear of it keep you from doing what is necessary.

There's likely other films that could fit or other themes of these movies that parallel with Kairi, but these are rife with potential. Plus, the trend of female protagonists with little to no romantic storylines could let Kairi be perceived as more than Sora's love interest or someone to be saved.

Kairi is finally free to change

I don't think it's controversial to say that Nomura really mishandled Kairi's role in the series up til now. She's been stuck in character limbo, and even if we know more stuff *about* her since KH1, we haven't really gotten much *from* her. She's never had enough focus to really showcase her inner world, but I don't think it's due to disinterest on Nomura's part. Instead, I think that it was a result of very poor planning of her arc and his weakness at indirect characterization.

From the start, he probably had an idea of where he wanted to take Kairi's character. He must've, at minimum, pinned down the major strokes of her backstory involving Radiant Garden given the brief mention of her not remembering her home and the flashback with her grandma in KH1. KH2 and BBS both manage to flesh her out a bit more, and even her portrayal in the first game seemed to hint at something going on beneath her surface. Even so, she still outwardly appears as the same cheerful, kind, caring girl from the beginning of the series. I don't think Nomura decided to completely rip those seeds of growth from her character, but he has at least stifled them up til now.

In comparison to all the other main and supporting characters in KH, Kairi is noticeably lacking in any major character insights. From what I've seen, even people who dislike how the female cast is written can tell that the story is practically avoiding any chances for Kairi to verbalize her emotions. The conversations we do get with her almost always shift focus to the other person's feelings. If it does focus on her, the thoughts she does express tend to explore her relationships with other people instead of letting us know more about Kairi herself. As to why he'd make this writing choice with her, there's two possible answers beyond him just not wanting to deal with her.

The first is that he's trying to characterize her through her lack of characterization, that she's a people-pleaser who tends to put others' needs and wants before her own. We've already seen shades of this in KH1 on the dock and when Sora tells her to stay behind in Traverse Town.

In the former, it comes across as her trying to convince herself to go along with the plan about the raft, telling herself that she's ready to go wherever and holding onto the idea that she can always come back to Destiny Islands. Even so, you can hear a hesitation and uncertainty in those words. The only parts where she lets her fears bleed through are when she tells Sora not to change and arguably when she jokes about just the two of them taking the raft. Kairi tests the waters to see if Sora would be willing to go along with her alone before backing down. I don't think she'd actually go through with it, she's not that type of person. I can't say for certain that she hasn't entertained the thought, even if only half-seriously, but it's clear that she said it to avoid her thoughts on how Riku's changed. Kairi doesn't want to show Sora her doubts, especially when they're so close to setting sail. The only assurance she allows herself is asking Sora not to change, to stay her familiar friend, before shifting to expressing apparent excitement at setting sail.

When Sora and Kairi make their promise with the Wayfinder, she's afraid of how their friendship with Riku will have changed if he comes back. Still, she's willing to go help save Riku after seeing Sora's resolve to do so. When he tells her no, she pushes back, telling him that they have to stick together. She only starts to relent when Sora tells her that they won't be alone even if they're apart, then gives up entirely when he says she'd be in his way. Her laugh almost seems like an automatic response to cope with the hurt that statement would naturally provoke. Before he goes, she makes a compromise between their wants, getting Sora to promise that he'll return her Wayfinder to her- that he'll come back after everything's done. Then she tells him that she's always with him wherever he goes, taking Sora's statement and using it to reassure herself more than him. She doesn't want to inconvenience the ones she cares for, so she changes herself, adapting to their desires and opinions to ease any friction between them.

The other answer would be that Nomura's plan for her required her to retain her starting character traits until certain conditions were fulfilled. From where we are in the story, I'd wager that he she needed to be separated from Sora and Riku and for her to gain a meaningful motivation get stronger, at least according to Nomura's standards. The first half of that has been true for almost the entire series, as sad as it is, but we've only just now fulfilled the second. It's possible that he underestimated how long he would need to keep Kairi relatively unchanged for whatever he had planned in the future, causing her to be a static character for all this time.

Now, she's had to confront her fears head-on, needed to acknowledge the feelings of weakness and inferiority getting shattered by Xehanort gave her. It's Xehanort's fault that Sora disappeared, but she might partly blame herself for needing to be rescued rather than saving herself. Her tendencies of staying out of everyone's way and going along with their plans wasn't enough to keep Sora out of harm's way, to protect him. That failure can drive her to grow strong, to realize that valuing herself doesn't mean having to devalue others, that caring for yourself is an act of kindness for those who care about you.

I will acknowledge that even if these answers are accurate, reasonable intentions still don't excuse a sloppy execution. Nomura has skill in weaving a character's motivation into their actions and personality to add depth. However, he often relies on the characters voicing these out loud instead of letting the audience draw their own conclusions from what's presented. While this works well-enough for the series, it means that any indirect characterization he tries to do often ends up falling flat. Aqua at the Keyblade Graveyard is the biggest example of this. It's clear now that her time in the Realm of Darkness left her with some serious PTSD and that the massive storm of Heartless caused her to freeze up at the sight, but the way it was shown pre-Re:Mind ended up frustrating more people with her inaction instead of having them understand why she didn't act.

I'd argue the same thing's been happening with Kairi throughout the series up until now. A character like Kairi isn't inclined to express their unfiltered thoughts, leaving her to rely on indirect characterization to be fleshed out. Combine that with a weakness at subtle storytelling and a severe lack of focus and screentime, and you'll leave your audience almost nothing to discern about her character without close examination. Not to mention, any frustrations or disappointments or boredom regarding her character would only serve to make people even less willing to engage with her, especially stretched out over two decades.

Hopefully, Nomura feels free to put his plans regarding Kairi into motion now that she's gained the space for agency beyond Sora and Riku. I even think Nomura himself is aware of his struggles with nuanced character writing, something he hopes to fix. If you haven't heard, he brought on Akiko Ishibashi, the writer for Neo: The World Ends with You, to help write KH4. Anyone whose played that game can tell you about the amount of depth and complexity the cast of that game had, and her ability to transform one-dimensional archetypes into fully-realized people. I have little doubt that she'll breathe new life into the world of Kingdom Hearts, and I think that we'll see the start of this change through Kairi first and foremost.

In the future

This all sounds like wishful thinking, and it is, but I hope that it's not entirely unfounded. I'm mainly making this before any major trailers drop because, if this does happen, I can't imagine them hiding it for too long.

Maybe Nomura will finally give Kairi the screentime she deserves, and if he doesn't... well, guess we'll go through even more years of rightful disappointment in Nomura's handling of her.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 4 #kh #kh4 #kh4 speculation #kairi #kh kairi #kingdom hearts theory #kh meta #character analysis #character writing #fan theory #speculation #game theory #akiko ishibashi #tetsuya nomura #please please please Nomura #don't prove me wrong here #let us know you care about Kairi

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