#and i will admit kh1 is mostly nostalgia

[thefreshprinceofjunes]

happy first anniversary of the announcement of sora in smash, here is a meme im pretty sure i thought of back then (or possibly right after he was released) but never made

notes:

kh1 sora probably also has a percentage of players that just like his kh1 design the best and/or they think its his most iconic outfit considering it was in three games (four if you count days). doubly so if theyre japanese, as it seems to be his most popular form there, or at least its in the most merch. but that made the description too long lol

kh3 is more mediocre than anything else to me tbh

i know wisdom form is in kh2, i just mean its not available in ddd, and the smash model uses soras ddd costume as the base

im ddd in case anyone couldnt have guessed

(pics taken from the smash wiki)

[nadziejastar]

The organization members death were underwhelming. Your thoughts on their deaths???

Yeah, I have to agree. I take it you mean the Organization members in KH3. The True Organization was so underwhelming.

Master Xehanort—The game never properly explained his motivations, so I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about his death. He had a very abrupt “redemption” where he and Eraqus were all buddy-buddy again, which came out of nowhere. I had no idea what was even going on in his boss fight. What were those black-clad figures fighting with him? How did Sora know he needed to trap him using a portal? Nothing was explained. In theory I liked kid Xehanort’s reunion with kid Eraqus. But it didn’t have enough impact because there was nothing building up to it, other than a single scene of them playing chess.

Xemnas—I liked his final words before disappearing, but it felt like they came out of nowhere. There was no evidence Xemnas ever felt that way. Why was he so lonely? It seems like he was supposed to be seen as tragic, but again, there was nothing leading up to it. I felt like we got robbed. We never learned why he couldn’t use the Keyblade. Also I was very disappointed that we never saw Aqua or Ventus react when they learned that Terra was possessed and that his Heartless and Nobody were the ones that were causing all the chaos in the world.

Young Xehanort—This guy was super important to the plot. He was the one who was traveling through time recruiting everyone. Supposedly he was tracking people using the Recusant’s Sigil. He was tracking Sora in KH3D, and the Ultimania said he had his eye on Isa for a long time. Unsurprisingly Young Xehanort is the one who retrieved Isa in KH3D. But he didn’t feel all that important, really. His time travel ability was left mostly unexplained. His death was completely forgettable. We never even learned why he was the Mysterious Figure in BBS.

Ansem Seeker of Darkness—Again, another resolution that felt like it was supposed to have way more building up to it. Why did Riku say he’d miss him? That truly came out of nowhere and surprised me. At first I thought it was Nomura breaking the fourth wall. He said in an interview that he was sad that certain characters would never be appearing again, and he did really like Xehanort. But I did notice that ASoD’s characterization was strange in KH3. Perhaps Riku was meant to be referring to the Terra part of him. After all, the relationship between Xehanort and Terra, and how those two personalities were split was supposed to be important to the cancelled game. And Riku recognized Terra at the end of KH3D.

Vanitas—I got the impression that Vanitas was supposed to be a lot more important to the plot than he really was. He felt so useless in the grand scheme of things. I thought he’d have a lot more to do with Sora, too .Also, in KH3D, he didn’t have a physical form. Sora saw him with Young Xehanort, but he was simply reacting to Ventus’s heart. I think Vanitas was supposed to have a lot more plot involvement, like with Xemnas’s search for the Chamber of Waking. And after Ventus went back to Sora, maybe Vanitas could feel what Sora felt.

He was also Ven’s dark half, which should have been more significant. I always thought Ven would have to go through some kind of character development where he reintegrated Vanitas back into him at the end. But Vanitas just…disappeared. Also, the fact that he looked like Sora was not treated like it was a big deal. Sora was just like, “Oh that’s weird.” Kinda like Roxas and Ventus or Kairi and Xion. It was just…never commented on. I was amused by the fact that Vanitas didn’t suddenly do a 180 after he was defeated. But he still didn’t leave a significant impression on me in KH3.

Riku—When I first learned that Riku was a Seeker of Darkness, I thought it had the potential to create some awesome story moments. But his defeat was ridiculous. I expected Riku to have some kind of clash with his dark half, where he’d get character development confronting his inner weakness. In KH3D, there was a lot of hints that his struggle with the darkness was not over.

When I first played KH3D a long time ago, I was actually annoyed because I thought they were dragging out Riku’s struggle instead of just accepting he was a good guy. But I think I kinda see where they were going. Riku did need closure on what happened to him in KH1. Sadly, he didn’t get that. Instead, the boss battle with his dark self was treated as this weird Riku/Naminé shipping thing, which really caught me off guard. I had NO idea what was going on with the weird Spirit Riku. That just made no sense and I really wondered what the hell Nomura was smoking when he wrote those scenes. In hindsight, I just see it as a contrived excuse to bring Naminé back. But when I first played KH3, Riku Replica’s death really left me scratching my head.

Marluxia—I couldn’t really feel anything for Marluxia’s defeat because I had no idea why he was even there. He received almost no backstory. So even in KH3, to me he was little more than “the flower dude”. I was aware that he was in KHUX, but I had no idea that game was going to be so important when I played KH3. Silly me, I was under the impression that the HD remasters were made to give players everything they needed to prepare for KH3.

KHUX was included in the form of a movie. And I mistakenly thought that movie was created to give players all the info they needed from KHUX that was relevant in KH3. But that really wasn’t the case. Apparently, I was supposed to know all about who Strelitzia and Skuld were, which I did not. When speaking to the Nameless Star, I admit I didn’t have a clue who it was and I had a hard time caring, since they had absolutely nothing to do with THIS plot arc.

Larxene—Larxene was the same as Marluxia for me. She was little more than “the bitchy chick”. I was looking forward to learning more about her and Marluxia, but that didn’t happen. Apparently she was just tagging along with him? That’s why she was a Seeker of Darkness? I thought that was lame. I read on the wiki that she had a sister or something.

But you see, if those types of things were supposed to be relevant, why was none of it included in the HD collections? That was baffling. In KH CoM, Marluxia and Larxene wanted Sora so they could use the Keyblade for something. They both seemed pretty amoral. In KH3, they made Marluxia seem like Isa or something, where he lost his heart, was possessed the whole time, and needed to be saved. Then he would be absolved of all his sins. But unlike with Saïx, that was never really hinted at? I never got that sense from Marluxia.

Luxord—Again, why is this person here? How did he become a Seeker of Darkness? Who is he? What was his life as a human like? I had a really hard time caring about his boss fight because he felt like he was just included for nostalgia. Same with Marluxia and Larxene. They just needed a few familiar faces to fill out the ranks. I’m sure that there was originally supposed to be a good reason he was a Seeker of Darkness, but they obviously had no time to get into that. I like Luxord. I think he’s really cool and gentlemanly. But we still know nothing about him.

Xigbar—His “death” was also lame. The moment he jumped off the ledge was made to seem all dramatic and final. And you know, I would have really liked if it was left like that. Xigbar committing suicide truly was the perfect ending for him. But surprise! It was all revealed to be a ruse. Why did he have to pretend to kill himself? Wasn’t he supposed to be a Nobody? Why didn’t he vanish after his defeat like all the other Nobodies did? Made no sense.

Saïx—Well, it’s no secret that I hated his “death” and everything else about his characterization in KH3. His whole subplot was USELESS. The whole point of his story was so Lea would have someone to rescue, so his training as a Keyblade wielder paid off. Terra, Aqua, and Ven had each other to go home with. Sora, Riku, and Kairi had each other to go home with. Donald, Goofy, and Mickey had each other to go home with. Isa was Lea’s person to bring home. Lea’s home is NOT Twilight Town. And he’s not going to be hanging out with Roxas and Xion all day.

Lea was supposed to bring Isa back. That means taking the initiative, like he did in KH3D. It was heavily implied that he needed to be saved. Even on the clock tower, Lea said he was dragging him home. Isa was the original person Lea promised to bring back. But…he did nothing of the sort. Lea didn’t bring Isa back OR drag him home. Saïx came to the good side on his own after having a random change of heart for no discernible reason. Lea forgot all about him until he randomly showed up on the clock tower. He wasn’t concerned with bringing him home. His relationship with Lea and his boss fight were treated with almost no seriousness whatsoever. Instead of a fight to the death, Lea casually said he’d clobber him tomorrow, like they were going to have a boxing match or something.

Then he had a “redemption” that was so lazy and poorly planned, it had to happen off-screen. Isa was never meant to have a redemption, so one had to be shoe-horned in, using the secret reports of all things. Obviously Isa was a very low priority in KH3. It also made no sense. If he wanted to atone, why did he become a Seeker of Darkness? Could he not bring back Roxas and Xion AFTER Xehanort was defeated? They weren’t Guardians of Light, so they weren’t needed in the final battle. They didn’t need to come back anyway, but still. It was just done for fanservice. And apparently he fought Lea in the final battle because he was too stubborn and embarrassed to admit that he wanted to “atone”. It was all an act. Everything about Saïx was a total waste of screentime IMO. I’ve never seen a work of fiction give a character such a transparently ill-fitting and contradictory backstory in my entire life. I’m not even being hyperbolic, either.

[hashtagkairideservedbetter]

My main issue(s) with KH3

Spoilers abound, so please don’t read if you haven’t beaten the game or don’t want any negative opinions influencing how you see the ending/ the game. I did enjoy several parts of KH3, but this post is focused on things I had issues with, and if you don’t want to see criticism of your media please look elsewhere. 

This is how I interpreted the game as someone coming into KH3 with KH2 being the last game I played, and a playlist of youtube videos spanning lets plays, summaries, and humorous deconstructions as a codex. 

Here’s the thing. I’ve seen several people already break down how KH3′s story and pacing could have been handled better. Specifically, to more comprehensively tie in the 10,000 plot points that needed to be covered in a way that actually helps connect the main characters. I’m not going to get into all of that, because frankly I can’t fake knowing enough about the background lore of Kingdom Hearts to know how to better juggle all of the intermediary games into KH3. 

Most of my grievances honestly lie with the handling of the Destiny Trio and the Disney Worlds. 

I’m going to do a read more on this because it’s gonna be a long one. (Also very much a train of thought, so disorganized, sorry). 

So. Sora. Protagonist of the game (mostly. kind of?). 

A cheerful ray of sunshine.

A Keyblade wielder who has overcome traumatizing ordeals that tore him away from all he loved and knew at least twice now for over three years. 

A continuity disaster stuck being pinballed back and forth between happy goofs and hollow tragedies every thirty minutes in between busywork battles and off-scene disney films for 85% of KH3. 

I understand that Sora’s greatest power is supposed to be his optimism, as it’s sort of the prerequisite for going through disney worlds where people sing about their problems. I get it.  

However, there’s a difference between, “I’m naive and happy and oblivious and that’s why I’m a guardian of the light,” and “I have battled true darkness and felt true loss and decided that choosing to be kind, choosing to embrace joy in new experiences and relationships, is a bigger middle finger to the darkness than anything else.” Guess which one I prefer. Guess which one I was thinking would finally be Sora’s character arc. Instead he’s happy, happy, happy, happy... and then suddenly in the eleventh hour having a mental breakdown. 

Sora is written into a loop every game of kind, naive, but unchanging (”Don’t ever change, Sora”). That was endearing when we were both 14, but after almost twenty years it gets tiring to watch Sora get hit with a reset button every time you meet up with him again. There’s a scene in the gummi ship early on in the games where Donald asks Sora to “take this seriously,” and Goofy remarks that they seem to be stuck in a rut as Donald and Sora have the same conversation over and over again before entering the first series of Disney worlds. Sora knows he needs the power of waking in order to help his friends and free those trapped in his heart, but seems content to just drop into various worlds and wing it, and hope that it all sort of works out. 

And then when it does work out, and Sora uses the power to save everyone, he’s immediately told he’s doomed now? Like, what was the point of him being able to use this to connect with people if he’s doomed. Why did they want him to have this. What’s the point then of Sora having these strong connections. 

Each world makes a big scene about the friendships and connections that Sora makes so easily, but in KH3 there never seems to be enough time for Sora to actually pay them any attention unless the person is right in front of him. Sora seems to make connections for the sake of making connections in KH3, and the ones he has, he does very little to advance or reconnect with.  

Like, the whole point of 100 Acre Wood this time was apparently that Sora’s connection to Pooh was weaker for some reason. I honestly didn’t understand the reason or how it was magically resolved just from Sora showing up and saying hi? But whatever. 

My two least favorite worlds were Corona and Arendelle, for the same reason. There was no believable connection between Sora and the characters there. For fuck’s sake, the combat ally you get in Arendelle is the snow monster, not even a main character.

Sora is like the living embodiment of the B99 clip of Rosa with her dog. He just met Elsa and spoke a whopping five sentences to her, but damn if he won’t climb a mountain five times just for her to save herself without ever talking to him again. Like, literally that is the only interaction Sora has with Elsa. Same thing with Anna, and in her case I literally had to mute my tv so I could track what she was actually saying since they decided to shove two songs from the movie into this game.  

You spend the majority of your time in these worlds trying to play catch up to the leads as they have their movie play out around the bend in the road in front of you, out of your sight. Props to Disney’s ego that they think I remember the beat by beat plots of their films when they came out 9 years ago (Tangled) and 6 years ago (Frozen). I actually had the thought of going and watching Tangled just to remember what Flynn and Rapunzel got up to while Sora wandered around a marsh and had a pointless conversation with Marluxia. 

(Also, getting real tired of the “Good to see you Sora” “Who the fuck are you?” “Oh that’s right you don’t remember that game haha it’s fine it was a gameboy game nobody even knows what those are anymore.” That shit was getting old midway through KH2.) 

To be fair, the PoTC world suffers from the same problem as the other two. Sora shows up, sees everyone for thirty seconds, gets separated, and while we’re dicking around trying to find white crabs on the islands there’s a whole movie going on that we don’t see or participate in. I feel really bad for anyone who did not keep up with that franchise because I only watched the third movie the once and I was confused as hell. Also, the whole time I was finding the crabs in Port Royal all I could think about was this ProZD video. 

I just. I’m 26 years old. These movies hold no nostalgia for me, and maybe that’s the problem. I already had a connection to Aladdin, Peter Pan, etc, so I was maybe more willing to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the interactions. But those Disney worlds also felt more tied in to the plot. You can make the argument of Marluxia and Larxene putting pressure on Sora to find the Wayfinders so that six princesses of heart aren’t used as backup... but where are the other three? Anna, Elsa, Rapunzel, and Kairi make four. Where’s Merida, Tiana, Moana? Mulan or Pocahontas even, since Moana was probably too recent. (But probs not, as it was probably starting development in 2014). If that’s going to be yet another subplot, shouldn’t you at least see it through?  

My point is, I can distinctly recall prior games mostly keeping to the established script in the disney worlds, but still letting Sora really get in there and interact with the characters. The heartless, nobodies, etc were a real wrench in the works for the plots, and had an actual effect on how the story was told and the order of events. Sora felt more involved in cutscenes and was an active participant in the world’s events instead of just a bystander. 

In KH1 and KH2 there was a dialogue happening between the villain of each world and a greater evil. Hell, in KH1 they were a unified council! In KH3 they’re puppets who don’t even talk to the bigger bad like Randall or Mother Gothel, or are there for a whopping thirty seconds like Hans. It makes it more and more obvious that the Disney worlds are just being shoehorned in as a contractual obligation than for any real purpose anymore.

 The only world that’s appeared in all three games, Olympus, was especially jarring. Like, you could tell there was a lot of corners cut on what VAs they could get for this game, as Phil does not speak once. Meg spends more time making eyes at Hercules and nodding than showing any of the sass she has from the film. (This was a thing in KH2 as well tho so I can’t complain about them continuing to drop the ball on even background women characters-- Oh wait, I can, because they’ve had T H I R T E E N YEARS to get it right.) 

Which I guess is as good a segue as any into Kairi Time. 

Listen. Did I mention I’m 26? Yeah. I started reading fanfic on livejournal. I was there when AO3 first got its start. I’ve seen the shipping wars. I know the dark past of Soriku vs Sokai.

I couldn’t give less of a fuck. 

These characters are still 16 and I am now 26. I’m fine with them trading noogies and maybe being able to kick back and play some Mario Kart. Kairi would wipe the floor with both of them because she had time to get good enough to beat Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie combined between KH1 and KH2. 

The point is, I don't care one way or the other about shipping. If my 15 year old self were here, they would be horrified I wasn't over the moon when Kairi and Sora finally shared the paopu fruit. As it is, I kind of stared blankly at my screen and went 'huh, there's gonna be a lot of fanfic fixing this moment.'  From both sides, I think, because even if you're into Sokai you gotta admit that moment did not feel romantic. It felt forced. Like "Oh hey, we've been putting this off, huh. Welp, here we go!" 

It doesn't help that I really, truly, don't like whoever Kairi's VA is in this game. Like, she sounds so ditzy and soft. Get that shit out of here. The dialogue and voice acting in this series has never been its strength, but honestly, I cringed my way through every interaction between Kairi and Axel because of how stilted and bad their conversations were! I’m definitely not saying that Kairi’s voice was stellar in 1 and 2, but at least her voice was clear, and had personality, and by the end of 2 was actually fairly strong. She sounded strong, and determined to be fighting with Sora and Riku, green as she was then, in the World That Never Was.

Whenever she talked in the third one I just sort of grit my teeth and wondered why someone on the production team wanted Kairi to sound so weak. 

Then they killed her at the labyrinth and I said, ‘Ah, that tracks.’ 

I played FFXV, so I guess shame on me for not seeing the signs when the girl love interest is about to be capable and not needing the hero to save her. She gets taken! And killed. Fool me twice, shame on me. 

I actually saw people excited about that Verum Rex thing and after seeing the Noctis ripoff reaching for the Luna ripoff covered in purple light I laughed, and laughed. And then sighed and reached for a stiff drink. 

All this to say that while I’m angry but not truly surprised that Kairi was once again shafted, I’m all the more pissed that they did it in the laziest, most insulting way possible by hinging it all on Sora needing a reason to fight Xehanort. Like, really???? Really. That’s your angle. The man-pain trope is so painfully overdone. Please. It’s 2019. Come into the future with us, Nomura. 

And I feel bad that all of the stuff I just wrote mostly revolves around Kairi being Sora’s romantic interest. But that’s because that’s all this game allowed her to be! Princess of light what? Bequeathed Keyblade wielder in her own right who??? Every battle she and Axel share with Sora they get their asses kicked in 30 seconds flat, so maybe Merlin should have left them suspended in time a little longer. Maybe long enough to convince someone out there in the universe that these two deserved to be competent. 

Hell, not just competent. Amazing. Kairi deserved to be able to stand on her own two feet and hold her own. To be running alongside her boys and not just be an object for them to tussle over or save. As Aqua’s somewhat successor, she deserved to be a terrifying wielder of battle magicks and flurries of light magic. 

To be replaced by Xion was just insult to injury. Like, I’m very happy that Xion got her heart back and was reunited with Roxas and Axel, but she didn’t need to be brought back at Kairi’s expense. The world won’t implode if the replica and actual person inhabit the same space. 

Which is leads us to our third member. 

Riku. To be fair. Riku got the most growth as a person out of the three of these kids, easy. We finally see a Riku who is confident in himself and his journey, and willing to take everything he learned along the way to help Mickey, Aqua, and even his own replica. However.... 

He doesn’t seem to give two shits about Kairi anymore? Did they even talk, like, once during the whole game? I can’t recall a single instance where Sora, Kairi, and Riku were in the same place together where it was just them, and they held an actual conversation. Hell, where they even said “Hi, how’s it going? What have you learned, had any good food lately?” 

God, even when Kairi was taken, and then when she was killed, Riku had one moment of anger, and then was completely, like, chill again, and back to talking Sora down. Like, what? I don’t want any love triangle bullshit, but Riku and Kairi were friends as much as Sora and Kairi and Sora and Riku are friends. 

And that’s what bothered me the most about the disappearance of Kairi introducing this bullshit narrative of Sora abusing his power of waking. He spent two games trying to get him, Riku, and Kairi together. But he doesn’t want Riku to help him get Kairi back? And Riku’s just going to let him go?! After all Riku has done and learned about falling to darkness and clawing yourself back to light and peace, he’s just going to let Sora do the same?

I call bullshit. 

And this is why when Sora suddenly faded out of view on the beach next to Kairi I slowly leaned back in my chair, dropped my controller into my lap, and flipped off my tv screen with both hands.