#even though naminé and xion only had one scene together it reads like going to ur friend for advice and i know it isnt m/f but still its

[jcmorrigan]

001 - Kingdom Hearts

Favorite character: On the villain side: VEXEN IS BEST ORGANIZATION XIII MEMBER. Shoulda stayed evil, though. I like it when he complains and screams about everything and hates everyone. He's one of my favorite villains, just, like...in general. So fun to write. Also attached to Demyx, but I actually liked him more in III than II because it reminded me of my rawr lolspeek weeb days when I f/o'd him without knowing what f/o'ing was and then transitioned this to shipping VexDem like heck. On the hero side: MY GIRL KAIRI! But honorable mentions go to Sora, Riku, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Xion, Roxas, Lea, Ienzo, any Disney character I loved beforehand (this is way too fuckin many to list), Merlin (OKAY I WILL SINGLE HIM OUT), Yen Sid (I'LL SINGLE HIM OUT TOO), you know what let's also single out the Mickey+Donald+Goofy power trio...just...any KH hero who isn't part of the Yozora stuff or the KHUX stuff. ...Except I also LOVE Strelitzia, and she is the only KHUX-exclusive kiddo I care about but I care about her MANY. (Oh, and there's a least fave I have who's a "hero" but that's a debatable label). I would go on about why I love all of them but...that's too many characters to elaborate on

Least Favorite character: See, I think the real answer is Yozora, but the thing is I just tend to forget about him or not care (unless I'm doing a weird AU where he's Noctis' bratty Nobody, don't ask). He kinda represents the Shark Jump and I don't like watching that scene where he literally petrifies Sora for not being strong enough. But again, I can just kinda forget about him if he's not fed to me through a social-media unit. The one I LOVE TO HATE is Master Eraqus. The man actually triggered me back in the day. He is purity culture. He is the overbearing parent who will not accept you unless you are perfect. He is by and large the reason VAT didn't communicate with each other properly. He was the one who taught Aqua to think in absolutes. He lied to Ventus for years and then insisted to kill him was the only option, and then, when Terra tried to defend his brother figure/friend without knowing WHY Eraqus was doing such a thing, Eraqus didn't offer an explanation and instead switched targets to Terra citing that the problem was Terra's lack of OBEDIENCE. Eraqus is just very "my way or the highway" and uses his moral high horse to justify doing things that utterly lack compassion in any regard, which is something that GETS to me on a deep level, and let me tell you, I hated him for so long until I realized he was actually a super fuckin fun guy to imagine as a Bigger Bad in AUs that either have the KH protags teaming up or have villain protags needing a "greater good lawful evil" figure. And I just have found too many good memes about him cheating at chess and killing children. I have to laugh. Making fun of him is fun. He's a ridiculous character. That said, this recent trend of "erase everything bad he ever did and paint him as the ultimate hero of the saga" makes me raise eyebrows for SEVERAL reasons

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): VexDem, SoRiku, Kairi x Jaune Arc (RWBY), Aqua x Rosalina (Super Mario Galaxy) x Bayonetta, IsaLea, Ventus x Papyrus (Undertale), that was six but they all needed to be mentioned

Character I find most attractive: Ienzo. HOO BABY he is adorable. I saw someone make a Valentine's Day gifset of KH and FF characters shortly after III dropped and seeing his smiling face paired with a romance quote made my heart FLUTTER

Character I would marry: Probably Ienzo, see above. He's also a very kind guy. Favorite redemption in the modern era.

Character I would be best friends with: I hope the Destiny Trio would adopt me into their friend circle the way they've tended to do with every other inter-world denizen they've come across. I would love to have them as my positivity squad. Or, y'know, two positivities and one "it's okay to screw up" guy. Just. I would love to hang out with them. I often worry that I'm unlikable to my faves, but even though I would usually prefer to hang with the villains, I can pretty much guarantee these three would be open-minded about me. (Do I kiiiiinda wanna be friends with Vexen though? Of course I do. He'd hate me but maaaayyyyybe he would see me as one of his pet idiots who makes him look smarter, and we could bond over our fragile egos?)

a random thought: You ever think about that one NPC lady in Traverse Town who refused to tell you where she was from because it was none of her business? You ever wonder where she WAS from? What her world was like? How she ended up being the survivor of the Ansem Apocalypse when it hit her? All I know is that when I read her lines out loud (I used to read KH speech balloons out loud all the time), I gave her a Southern accent for no discernible reason and I stand by it. That woman has a twang.

An unpopular opinion: I don't want KHUX to be canon because I feel it's smaller-scale and takes a lot of mystery out of the worldbuilding. I always assume that the KHverse just includes ALL worlds in fiction, and that includes their thousand-year histories, meaning the Age of Fairy Tales should've happened long long long LONG LONG LONG ago and not five generations. And whatever screwed up the world should've been more than just five people having a fight, and whatever saved it should've been more than just five people getting along, and Daybreak Town really suffers from having to stick to mobile-friendly graphics and therefore is the least aesthetically attractive KH town ever, and I don't like that Lauriam and Elrena used to be such selfless people. I do still love Strelitzia because she's shy and relatable and quirky (sitting on the roof) and she questions authority and if you go with shipping subtext she's probably bi (or pan?), but I don't like the "Lauriam's dead sister for his arc's drama" bit. I liked when Marluxia was angry because he wanted to run Organization XIII but it was in the hands of an idiot who wasn't him. And more than anything I just like imagining that the Age of Fairy Tales was something bigger, further in the past, and more mysterious than something designed for a mobile game. Scala ad Caelum, however, I like a lot better because there IS a lot of mystery there and also it's a very pretty town with an amazing design.

my canon OTP: I really only count the Disney couples as the "canon" ones, so this is a question of picking my favorite Disney couple that shows up onscreen. I hope I'm not forgetting an important one, but I think the title has to go to Aladdin/Jasmine, which is always perfect in everything. (This would be an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY if KH had ever adapted Treasure Planet, and if it ever gets the mind to adapt Treasure Planet then even if I don't care about that game I will immediately declare that Amelia/Doppler takes the KH canon OTP crown. *taps watch* Get on it Squenix)

Non-canon OTP: SoRiku, which I counted as "basically canon" after DDD until III decided it wasn't sure. But I'm just a sucker for how DDD is the two of them all "HE'S GOT MY BACK AND I'VE GOT HIS AND I'D DO ANYTHING FOR HIM SO LONG AS HE'S HAPPY." It's just the best kind of Friends-to-Lovers, except when you take all canon into account it's Friends-to-Rivals-to-Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers and that's a very juicy dynamic. BUT ALSO: VexDem, which is a nostalgia ship SO STRONG I had to accept that it eclipsed my former Vexen ships by a mile and I wanted to go back to my roots. That one, I have a much longer essay about that I'll just have you refer to so I don't repeat myself for pages. To make a long story short, their scene in III was JUST DELICIOUS.

most badass character: OOF THEY'RE ALL BADASS but in the end it's between Sora and Aqua, because Sora gets the widest RANGE of abilities across the series that he masters while Aqua gets the most POWERFUL abilities due to her Mastery (Command Styles seem like they'd be the most OP things ever in-universe and I'm here for it because flashy battle moves make brain go brr).

pairing I am not a fan of: SOKAI, Xehaqus, RikuNami, Vanitas/anyone not evil

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): OH BOY. KAIRI THE MOST. YOU ALL KNOW WHY: lack of screen time, Fridging for drama, forced romance to invite death flags (they really wanted to milk that death to get people talking didn't they?), giving Alyson Stoner ZERO direction to actually follow up on Hayden Panettiere's performance. But then I remember that they made Vexen redeem and lose his entire personality and I just...uuugghhhh. I can't believe he died twice in this series. And then Demyx is FUN but also I know he's flipped sides as well, which means he won't be fun much longer! Xehanort seems to switch motivations to whatever makes him the biggest threat (and several of Eraqus' old flaws seem to be mysteriously glued onto him), Sora isn't a motormouth anymore, Riku just doesn't get anyone who cares about him anymore because everyone's distracted by Sora and Kairi, IS ANYBODY GOING TO ADDRESS THE ACTUAL ISSUES THAT DROVE THE WAYFINDER TRIO APART, oh God Marluxia and Larxene you're good guys now what have they done to you

favourite friendship: I really like each of the trios. But you know what's even BETTER than the trios? If you put...all of the trios together...meaning Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, Terra, Ven, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Hayner, Pence, Olette...and then you added Isa back in there...and you gave them Ienzo...and you brought back Naminé...and you say that Subject X is Strelitzia and you have her turn back up so she can have justice done...AND YOU HAVE AN ULTRA KEYBLADE GROUP OF FRIENDS. As for Vexen, any purely platonic relationship I have for him is a crossover but trust me I have many crossover pals for he

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: See everyone I listed above in the friendship question. They can either mentor me or let me be their big sis/mom. But also, I will GLADLY be Merlin or Yen Sid's daughter. (But also would I kiiiiinda wanna be a VexDem daughter? This is the worst idea. Still wanna try)

[cloudofash]

Kingdom Hearts - Riku’s Possessiveness and Jealousy Part 3

The Counter Arguments

Please read Part 1 here.

Please read Part 2 here.

Please read Part 2 Addendum here.

So far I have hopefully connected some dots to build up to the claim that Riku was always in love Sora so no one can say I pulled this all out of my rump. While it’s obviously true that I am a HUGE Soriku fan, I didn’t come into Kingdom Hearts with the intention of shipping. Actually, I disliked Riku at first because I looked at him on the surface, but he's now my most favorite character in the series because of his development and I appreciate KH1 Riku now because I looked back and realized why he was such a brat. When I put together that he possibly had feelings for his best friend everything made sense. By KH2 I was like “Hm...Riku seems to harbor very strong feelings for Sora” and by DDD I was like “Oh hell, this boy is in love.” I know that my arguments will not change everyone’s mind, in fact I’m sure many read everything I said and came to the conclusion “Look at this crazy Soriku fangirl, reaching to make her pairing real!” I get it, such is the way in any fanbase. For this reason I would like to dedicate this part of my Jealous Riku series to counter some of the common counter arguments. I promise to shut up about KH1 Riku and his jealousy after this lol, I'll be focusing on current Riku and the series' future.

First and most importantly, how do we know Riku is possessive of Sora because he is in love with him? Couldn’t he just be jealous of others who claim his spot as Sora's best friend? If Riku was just possessive of his best friend in a platonic way then that would pretty much destroy my theory that he is attracted to and in love with Sora. I would say in Riku’s case, no his jealousy wasn't platonic. Riku’s possessiveness goes far beyond what is normal for a best friend. Let’s look back on the scene where he meets Donald and Goofy. If Riku actually bothered to introduce himself and be cordial with Donald and Goofy and Sora sided with Donald even after he refused to let Riku board the ship then I wouldn’t even be here writing this. Riku would have rightfully been angry with his best friend, angry that Sora chose to stick by a rude duck over his childhood friend of however many years. But this didn’t happen. Riku gave Donald and Goofy a hard look within seconds of acknowledging their presence. Though Donald shows that he’s a jerk Goofy was nice, but neither matter because Riku had already decided he didn’t like either of them. This is not normal jealousy, this is clearly a sign of extreme possessiveness. He doesn’t like ANYONE new to be around Sora or act friendly with him regardless of their intentions.

Some will probably claim "It's Kingdom hearts the writing is just bad". This is something I've seen before and I want to stress that this is not an argument it's an opinion. Some think the writing in the series is good, some say it’s decent, it's all subjective. For the sake of argument, let's run with the idea that someone claims "Nomura didn't know how to properly express Riku's jealousy which is why he seemed possessive" to branch off the "bad writing" idea. I have two counters for this: Sora and Isa/Saix. Sora says himself in KH2 that he was jealous of Riku which is why he always wanted to compete with him and hopefully beat him. Sora exhibited a far healthier form of jealousy, he didn’t care if Riku went off and made new friends, Sora never gave any hard side-eyes to Mickey when he found Riku had started hanging out with him. He didn’t start to hate or dislike Riku, he just wanted to compete with and beat him with his own strength. As for the case with Saix, in KH3 he told Axel that he was jealous of his relationship with Roxas and Xion. His jealousy compares greatly to Riku's, he saw someone he was once best friends with get close to someone else. But Saix specifically says:

This is where he differs from Riku, Saix isn't jealous of Roxas and Xion because he's possessive of Axel. Axel stopped hanging around with Saix, stopped helping him look for their missing friend and started focusing more and more on Roxas and Xion which occurred over a period of time not instantly. This goes back to what I said about rightful anger, Saix had every right to feel upset and abandoned by Axel. His jealousy was reasonable. Sora, at no point, alienated Riku the way Axel alienated Saix. Sora never took Donald's side when he said Riku couldn't come, Sora argued with Donald in Riku's defense. Even prior to that, Sora never abandoned or alienated Riku on the island and even when the darkness was swallowing Riku Sora tried to take his hand and go with him. Sora's and Saix's jealousy shows that Nomura/the KH writers (since they do change) know full well how to write jealousy in several different ways, therefore the argument that Riku's possessive jealousy is somehow bad writing is moot. I believe Nomura knew exactly how he wanted to portray Riku. 

Another counterargument that I commonly see is “Riku wasn’t jealous of people close to Sora, he was jealous of Sora himself he said so in KH2″. First of all, Riku said specifically that he was jealous of Sora because he wished he could “follow his heart” the way Sora did and that could be interpreted in a NUMBER of ways that prove my point but I’ll return to that in a second. Some people took this as meaning Riku was jealous of Sora being a Keyblade Wielder but this isn't possible. Riku’s darkness began on Destiny Islands BEFORE Sora even obtained the Keyblade in fact Riku’s darkness is what caused Sora to obtain it in the first place as confirmed by Nomura.

“That part is also a bit vague. In the Destiny Islands when Riku is swallowed by the darkness, there's a sparkle of light, and next comes the scene where Sora first gets the Keyblade, right? In my setting, the darkness wrapping itself around those two is the darkness of Riku's heart. At the moment when Sora enters that darkness, the light you can see is the light of the heart. Sora, trying to help Riku, struggling in the darkness, touches that light and temporarily the Keyblade goes to Sora. “ - Nomura

Riku could not be jealous of Sora being a Keyblade Wielder if it’s HIS darkness, HIS jealousy that leads to Sora getting the Keyblade in the first place. This point has been debunked.

Now if we look at what Riku says about being jealous of Sora because he’s able to “follow his heart”...I don’t know about you but doesn’t that seem like Riku’s admitting that he’s jealous that Sora can follow his heart to Kairi? Sora literally spent all of KH1 following his heart, searching for his crush. Even before that Sora was constantly thinking about Kairi and sharing a papou fruit with her even going as far as to draw himself feeding her the fruit. Riku would only be jealous of this if he was in a position where he couldn’t follow his heart. This point about Riku being jealous of Sora actually backs up what I said about Riku being attracted to Sora and learning that Sora is attracted to Kairi, Riku literally can’t follow his heart to his hetero (hopefully bisexual) crush. This would yet again explain Riku's initial descent into darkness - he had everything he wanted, the strongest, the smartest, the admiration of the other Island Children, the only thing he didn't have is Sora himself and he grew jealous of Kairi, of Sora's feelings for her. Now I’m not saying this is true, because Riku could also be jealous of Sora’s ability to follow his heart to his friends in general and not just his romantic crush. You know, the whole platonic thing which is the most likely meaning behind Riku’s words because KH is all about friendships which is why I did not use this as proof in my essay because I have no way to prove or even show evidence of which way Riku meant it. I’m just saying it is still possible Riku was referring to the romantic side of “following one’s heart”, he could have even meant both.

Now that we have established that Riku’s jealousy was definitely possessive, let’s head to some of the other arguments. There is usually the “Riku is straight argument” which runs along the lines of "Riku said he wanted to share the paopu fruit with Kairi so the one he is in love with is her." Or "Riku is about to be paired with Naminé , he is attracted to girls and is therefore straight." I already addressed Riku’s feelings about Kairi in the 2nd Part, there isn’t really anymore left to add. Namine is also easy to debunk. Nomura confirmed in the KH3 Ultimania that Riku only helped Naminé obtain a Replica body to act on behalf of Repliku’s feelings. In other words, as of now there ain’t nothin’ between them. Riku’s only reason for ever interacting with Namine was to help Sora retrieve his memories and he hasn’t really interacted with her too much beyond that. Not to say Square couldn't pull this pairing out of their ass but it would leave much to be desired since this ship doesn't have the buildup that Soriku has. I hope they never go down the route of throwing random pairs out for the sake of pleasing het shippers.

The final common argument that I see literally EVERYWHERE, in just about any fandom, is the inane argument that “You fangirls just want to make everything gay. Such-and-such is a Japanese work and the Japanese put a higher emphasis on male bonding and intimacy and friendship but it’s not gay, these two characters could never be gay. Japan doesn’t accept homosexuality - blah blah blah”

And wheeeeeew chile, there is so much to unpack here. I honestly didn't even want to touch this but since I see it so much in the KH fandom I felt compelled to address this. First of all, it irks me when people act like homosexuality doesn’t exist at all in Japan. Statistics from 2018 claim that about 8.9% of the Japanese population identify as LGBT+ between the ages of 20 to 59. That’s 1.1% away from being 10% of the ages 20-59 population, that is a significant number. It is incredibly ignorant to claim that Japanese people do not accept homosexuality, they are all individuals and naturally there will be close-minded people who don’t but there are many who do. The conservative Japanese politicians don’t accept it, but then again neither do most American politicians. Don’t mistake the views of the politicians as the views of the people.

Now, while it is true that those in Japan have different views on masculinity than some in America (ie: men soaking in a hot springs together, touching or even sitting on each others laps isn’t incorrectly labeled as “gay” like it most likely would be here in the States) this doesn’t mean that Japanese people don’t know the distinction between platonic intimacy and romantic intimacy. They know full well the difference between the two, it’s awful to claim with such arrogance that they don’t know as if they’re clueless. Even within the anime/manga/videogame industry Shounen-Ai and Yaoi exists with men kissing, hugging, touching romantically. As a matter of fact, the Kingdom Hearts novels themselves heavily imply that there is more between Sora and Riku and that Riku does have romantic feelings for Sora. There was a scene in the KH2 novel where Axel asks Riku "What is Sora to you?" Riku is lost for words, instead Namine answers that they're "best friends" for him. Read it for yourself below:

This is the official Kingdom Hearts novel by the way, the writer and artist (Tomoco Kanemaki and Shiro Amano) are both Japanese. Not a random "fangirl's fanfic". And let's not forget that Nomura approves these novels and the manga. They seem to have no problem writing/approving of Riku being canonically gay. You can dislike it all you want but it’s here to stay so get over it. Don't be the person who makes this horrible argument.

The one last counter I want to make is this: If you are against Soriku ask yourself if you would accept the pairing if Riku was a girl.

This Jealous Riku series focused heavily on Kingdom Hearts 1 but there is content across the entire series which could also act as strong evidence for Riku’s feelings. I could go on for years about how much evidence there is in this series. You can find such evidence plastered all across the net, I will probably touch upon some of it myself. This marks my series' conclusion, I hope the evidence I provided and the counter-arguments I’ve made show that Riku is truly in love with his best friend and that it’s not impossible that Riku could love Sora in a romantic way. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this!!

[iamoncewas]

KH3 ending interpretation

KH3 ENDING SPOILERS derp lol

Thought I'd put this here, since like many others, the ending made me extremely angry at first. Now I know better. Or, I think I do anyways. But the man who thinks he knows something, knows nothing... lmao.

Sora says he knows what to do to find Kairi. Mickey objects, and warns him that using the power of waking improperly again might cause him to be lost forever.

Everything Sora says here seems to imply he's chosen Kairi over Riku, even after experiencing Riku's act of self sacrifice (twice). Even Riku seems to think so, his expression seems quite sad.

But despite whatever Riku is feeling, he convinces Mickey to let Sora go. He is demonstrating another quality of true love here: trust.

Then Sora opens and enters a keyhole, and he does find Kairi's heart. Where exactly, I'm not sure. My going theory is that her heart took refuge within Riku as a result of Aqua's enchantment on her necklace, like it took refuge within Sora in KH1. Her powers as a princess of heart are largely unexplored so this is a tough one. Anyways...

The 2 Destiny Islands scenes are clearly seperate, as you can tell by the position of the sun.

However, it's not technically 2 different times but 2 different places, even though both scenes seem to take place on the island.

Wherever Sora found Kairi's heart, he brought it to the same datascape of Destiny Islands that Riku went to in DDD. The one that Ansem the Wise hid inside Sora's heart, where Riku saw Xion, Ventus, and Roxas. Kairi's heart is inside Sora's heart, and she's safe. When he said they would both be back, he was telling the truth. Her body seems to have been destroyed, but the gang has access to replicas now so... no big deal I guess.

I think Kairi would be perfectly content to just stay in Sora's heart though. All she ever wanted was to be close to him. He can protect her that way, and she can protect him. She is always close and she would never be alone again. Basically everything Sora was talking about before he left.

A tear rolls down Kairi's face, but she is smiling, showing that she's crying from happiness. Then Sora starts disappearing, and again, neither of them are particularly upset by this. They hold hands and calmly look into each others eyes as Sora vanishes. This is because Sora disappearing is merely him leaving to go home, exiting the dive into his heart.

I have a feeling that right before this they had a very heartfelt conversion about their dear friend Riku.

This also means Sora can still dual-wield.

Now this is something I wasn't sure about since Oathkeeper wasn't in KH3, but now they're adding it in the DLC so it ties in well.

Kairi seems to look at her hand for a split second before the credits start to roll, and she appears to be holding something.

I think it's her Wayfinder.

We last saw it in Blank Points, she gave it to Sora before he and Riku went to do their Mark of Mastery exam. And it looks like Sora gave it back to her here. Since it symbolizes Sora's promise to Kairi to always come back to her, this is significant.

No more promises. Those are for making other people happy.

So then when everyone on the beach stops what they're doing and look out over the ocean, they're seeing Sora coming home. This is why Donald runs toward the water excitedly, and why Naminé smiles. Riku and Sora said they would thank her together.

It's also why the last person shown, from that scene, is Riku. His expression is hard to read, as usual, but he seems mildly surprised perhaps? A small lift of the eyebrows.

He is seeing Sora coming home, alone (physically anyways), and realizes Sora is coming back to be by his side. Because that's his destiny.

Right after this is when something happens that brings Sora and Riku to the secret ending scenario.

This will go similarly to the Verum Rex commercial from Toy Box. Watch the commercial, replace Yozora with Riku, his two party members with Donald and Goofy, and the female character with Sora. Yozora even rides through a tunnel of ice, just like how you can ride Blizzard spells with Flowmotion. Instead of Gigas, they will most likely be attacked by Liches.

I might just be obsessed, but I find this unnamed female character looks more like Sora than Kairi. There is also a shot I find interesting, of her crossing her arms across her chest, as if her heart were in pain.

Sora looks at his hand in the secret ending to show us that, even though he's in Shibuya, there's no timer there. But that's not the only reason...

[angel-with-a-pipette]

I know nothing about KH3, but I'm a huge Rokunami fan and people keep telling me it's dead and not explaining (I even ask for spoilers). Is that true or are they exaggerating?

Alright, I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible, but since you're okay with spoilers, I will include as many as I think are needed.

TL;DR: Rokunami being dead is an exaggeration, but there is a possibility that Rikunami might become canon in future games instead. Both are equally possible in my opinion.

Spoilers from here on out (I hope the read more functions properly since I'm on the phone right now)

[[MORE]]

The whole Rokunami situation is rather curious to say the least. I will tell you that I got quite the Rokunami vibes in the beginning of the game. There is a moment when Sora stands in front of Twilight mansion and stares at Naminé's window and we get this vision of Roxas that overlays his physical appearance, to give us this deja vu of him looking up there in KH2. In fact, the scenes play out pretty similarly as Roxas was pulled out of his musings by Pence while Sora gets spooked by Hayner, Pence and Olette!

Now my memory is rusty given how I played the game only once (crazy, I know! Now I want to wait for the 1.07 update to play again!!), but Roxas and Naminé are usually brought up together I believe? I don't want to add in shipping drama so I will star out X*on's name, but since Sora doesn't remember her and doesn't want to actively bring her back, this of course also kind of serves to give us a vibe of Roxas and Naminé being this package deal that belongs together - just like the two people most desperate to bring them back. Sora wants Roxas to finally be his own person and Kairi expresses her desire to bring Naminé back, too. And well, additional spoiler alert, those two at least become an official item.

I don't remember when, but I distinctly remember the game stating that Roxas misses Naminé (and me aaaaw-ing at that).

Now, while they are mentioned several times, we don't get to meet Naminé or Roxas until nearly the end of the game. Sora meets Naminé and she gives Sora a pep talk to help him pull through his next task - and Sora does the same for her (since he meets her before she has her own body). She feels like nobody wants her, but Sora starts off listing how many friends want her to return - mentioning Roxas among them - as well as "somebody else" who wants to see her again.

This is kept vague. What does happen however is that Repliku appears to help our heroes in defeating one of the Seekers of Darkness. Since many of them are time-disposed versions of Sora's old enemies, they use Replica bodies to manifest in our timeline (remember Ansem SoD being in a weird, brown coat because he had no body). Repliku could have used the body to become his own person - but he asks Riku to give this body to Naminé. Repliku then fades from existence for her (please don't ask details about this because the whole Riku thingy is really confusing to me. 4 Soras and they all make sense but give me three Rikus and my brain shuts off).

When all is said and done and the fighting is over, the ending begins, accompanied by Dearly beloved I believe, so all is very symbolic. We see the Disney characters return home and hug their loves, we see Roxas on the Twilight clock tower with his friends. We see Naminé wake up in Radiant Garden and then step out of the building (having woken up in her own body for the first time). We then see Riku pick her up and it is all framed in a way that seems romantic. His gummi ship touches down in front of her, he extends his hand in a knightly manner and accepts her putting her hand into his, something the frame focuses on before the scene shifts and "Don't think twice" starts to play.

The entire KH cast is in that scene - yet Roxas and Naminé aren't shown to acknowledge each other at all. Neither are Riku and Naminé though, actually Roxas and Riku spend time together while Naminé and Xion spend time together. The scene cuts out before the second verse starts.

So yeah. It is a mess. To me, it seems like at least the beginning of KH3 was meant to hint at Rokunami. Repliku is undoubtedly still in love with Naminé and the question is how much of this is transferred to our actual Riku. I mean, Sora knowing that "somebody else" wants to meet Naminé could be a huge hint that the boys talked about her (and I do believe Riku is suspiciously missing from the number of people who are Naminé's friends - I think he even mentions Ansem the Wise??), because why would Sora know about Repliku missing Naminé? In fact, it is implied that Riku never tells Sora about meeting Repliku and to be honest? Not that Sora would know who he is anyway since he forgot everything that happened in Castle Oblivion.

But there is also the possibility that Riku is just acting on Repliku's last wish and is thus so nice to Naminé - not to mention he is the only human at the end of the game with access to a gummi ship as far as we know.

Another thing that might hint at Rikunami is the clear Noctluna of Noctstella vibes they give us. Riku looks like a Noct clone and Naminé fits Luna's/Stella's color scheme pretty well. There's also an entirely new character with a new love interest that I won't go into but let's just say he looks like a mix of Sora and Riku and his love interest like Kairi and Naminé?

Then again there is the fact that Roxas specifically said he misses Naminé, yet they don't even interact in the credits, which is quite curious. It makes no sense and I can imagine Nomura did this to have the KH3 credits be Sora and Kairi's big moment on the screen and to further their romance. I can absolutely imagine Roxas and Naminé getting a moment in a future game, maybe even in the DLC, though this is unlikely with how the rest of the game progresses, that will further their romance instead.

I mean, despite what some R*kushi or Rikunami shippers might make you want to believe, R*kushi (being the most popular and widely accepted rival Roxas ship, I swear I'm not trying to stir up shit) hasn't been brought up either in the game so it's not like Rokunami is definitely done for real. I think both Rokunami and Rikunami are possible at this point in time and while I would be fine with Rikunami, my heart definitely goes out for Rokunami.

[nadziejastar]

Did you finish reading that KH3: A Conclusion without a story article? If so, what did you think of it?

I loved reading it. It was a fantastic take on KH3. There was pretty much nothing that I disagreed with.

By the time you leave Olympus, Sora hasn’t learnt how to restore his powers; and the frustrating part is that he never explicitly does.

I completely agreed with this. Sora’s journey in KH3 should have been about learning the power of waking. But even in the scene where he finally does learn it, there’s no real reason why. He didn’t seem to learn anything on his journey.

Even the villains are given no progress – a subplot about Pete and Maleficent looking for a mysterious black box goes nowhere, and Organisation XIII (the primary antagonists) only put in a brief appearance, spouting their usual brand of vaguely ominous dialogue. To compound these issues, the protagonists are ultimately left not knowing where to go or what to do next. Only two hours into the game, and the plot has no sense of momentum or direction.  

Yep. The black box thing annoyed me so much. The Organization was also a huge letdown. We don’t get to learn the real reason why Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx, and Luxord joined until KH4!? Something went very, VERY wrong in the Dark Seeker Saga for that to happen. 

By comparison, Kingdom Hearts II’s opening was significantly slower paced – to the point that it was a detriment to some players. However, so much more was achieved in a similar space of time; II’s initial hours establish the game’s tone and major themes, as well as introduce a large cast of brand new characters (while simultaneously reintroducing old ones in new contexts).

Yep. I liked KH2′s opening, slow as it was. The prologue of KH2 felt like it had more plot than almost all of KH3.

And this is one of the core problems with Kingdom Hearts III; even if you look past a threadbare narrative for Sora and company while they adventure through the self-contained Disney worlds, there is nothing going on outside of that either. In Kingdom Hearts II, both Riku and Mickey were operating behind the scenes, aiding Sora from the shadows and setting key events in motion. In III, however, these same characters spend most of their time expositing plot points and passively waiting for the big battle at the end of the game – and that can be said for almost all of our heroes.

I also agree. This problem would have been mitigated if every character got their own time to shine using the power of waking. Riku and Mickey could have had a subplot together, showing how Riku got his new Keyblade. They should have saved each other from the darkness. 

If there’s a job to do, it’s up to Sora to do it. With a couple of key exceptions, every character apart from Sora, Donald, and Goofy is presented as almost comically useless – yet our protagonist remains the butt of every joke.

Yep. Everyone other than Sora was useless. Aqua needed to save Ven, but all she did was get knocked out in the battle with Vanitas. Ven needed to save Terra, but he didn’t really do anything. Sora did all the work. Lea needed to save Isa, but he did nothing in his fight. He got shoved to the side while Roxas and Xion took over. Kairi saving Sora should have gotten more focus. 

The villains reveal that the only way Sora can release Roxas is by giving into the darkness, and sacrificing his own heart. Self-sacrifice is nothing new for Sora (he did the same thing in Kingdom Hearts I to save his love interest Kairi), but this had the potential to be an interesting plot point, as it gives him a selfless reason to be tempted by, and potentially give into, the darkness. But it’s never brought up again. 

Yep. Early scenes in KH3 make it seem like the game did originally have an actual plot at one point. Xigbar was luring Sora into a trap, so he’d fall to darkness. But it’s never brought up again, LOL. It’s crazy.

In fact, ‘saving Roxas’ is scarcely discussed until the end of the game (King Mickey telling Sora to “let the rest of us worry about Roxas and Naminé for now”, essentially dropping the subject after only the second Disney world). Ultimately, Roxas’ heart just leaves Sora’s body of its own volition in the final act, making the player’s time here, once again, feel largely pointless.  

And yes, saving Roxas was handled very badly. This is because, IMO, saving Roxas and saving Ventus was supposed to be one and the same. There shouldn’t have been a separate “saving Roxas” subplot.

In interviews, Nomura discussed the struggle of dealing with so many characters – even citing the cast size as one of the main reasons that Final Fantasy cameos were omitted[2]. The real problem, though, is that nothing is done to mitigate this challenge.

Yes, exactly. And treating Roxas and Ventus as separate characters only exacerbated this problem.

Upon leaving Twilight Town, the player finally begins their true journey – travelling to various worlds based on Disney properties and beating back the forces of darkness. But there’s no real set up for this; no distinct reason *why* we’re visiting these worlds. 

Mm-hm. I think the issue was that we were supposed to learn more about Ansem the Wise’s data in KH0.5. That was supposed to give Sora a quest in KH3: search for the “Key to Return Hearts”. Once that game got cancelled, Nomura had no idea how to write KH3′s story any longer.

So around 3-4 hours into Kingdom Hearts III, the story still lacks a clear sense of direction and purpose, and hasn’t yet established any clear themes or deeper meaning.

Yeah, it’s sad because there was an underlying theme in the Disney worlds: the power of love and its ability to restore what was lost.

Kingdom Hearts III cleverly tries to frame its story through the lens of a chess match between two Keyblade Masters, Eraqus and Xehanort, when they were young. The game even opens on this scene, highlighting its importance. But chess has rules; logic; a clear sense of direction. Kingdom Hearts III’s narrative is akin to two people who don’t know how to play chess. They understand that they have to defeat their opponent’s king, but the rules of how to move their pieces, how to actually reach that coveted checkmate, are completely unknown to them. The characters in this game feel like pieces on a chess board with no rules; aimlessly moving back and forth across a limited space, until both players finally decide enough is enough and agree to bring their match to an end.

LOL. Yep. The fact that Xehanort had “reserve members” showed he had no idea what he was doing.

Stick to your guns – don’t be afraid to explore a good idea, or to develop the plot outside of your main protagonist. When so many previously proactive characters are in play, the story shouldn’t feel so static, or entirely dependent on the protagonist’s actions. The way your protagonist reacts to events and changing circumstances is just as important as the ones they play an active role in creating.

That’s why I liked the spin-offs. KH3 suffered from forcing you into only Sora’s perspective. Even Nomura said that the Keyblade Graveyard should have had everyone fighting their own battles.

Simply put, the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III have no tangible impact on the game’s core narrative.

Sad, but true.

“In the end, although I had a hand in it as well, the flow of the dialogue and the stories of each world were largely handled by the level design team.” While I very much appreciate this standpoint of ‘gameplay first’, as well as the act of involving multiple teams in the execution of the story, these statements do prove my point. Set-pieces and events are one thing, but if there was a specific story to tell – with outlined themes to be explored, character conflicts to evolve, and goals to be achieved; all developed evenly throughout the entire game (Disney worlds included) - you would imagine the scenario would be built around balancing those narrative elements with the individual tales of each level.

Very interesting. The story in the Disney worlds was largely decided by the level design team? Wow.

Despite major villains such as Young Xehanort, Vanitas, and Marluxia making multiple appearances in their respective worlds, they generally just spout off trite exposition and then either disappear or summon a boss fight. Some villains don’t even know why they’re there, while others introduce plot points (such as the Black Box or the new Princesses of Heart) that are never utilised or expanded upon. As the game features at least thirteen main antagonists, these early appearances should have been integral in establishing their personalities, motivations, and the threat they pose to the player (as well as our heroes). In execution, though, they seem like little more than after-thoughts that offer hints of personality, but never go beyond the superficial – and certainly contribute nothing to the main narrative. This, I believe, is because Kingdom Hearts III doesn’t have a story to tell, but was instead content with treading water until its grand conclusion.

Yep. I had no idea why Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord were running around in the worlds. Why are they back? Other characters, like Saix, were given flimsy “motivation”. All in all, the organization members were supposed to be vessels by the time you fight them in the KG. Hollowed out containers for Xehanort’s heart. Victims of mind control who you are supposed to have pity for. But they never felt like it.

Kingdom Hearts III’s meandering and vapid progression during ‘the Disney loop’ supports my argument that the game lacks a complete narrative and was merely concerned with reaching its final act. I believe this is most evident by the way in which the player is made to jump from world to world without any direction or purpose. Consequently, the majority of Kingdom Hearts III feels content to aimlessly ���go through the motions’, setting a repetitive, humdrum pace and ultimately lacking the sense of narrative depth and genuine value that is integral to a great RPG.  

Yeah, I believe there was–at one point–an actual plot for KH3. But after BBSV2 was cancelled, a huge portion of KH3′s plot was pretty much scrapped along with it and rewritten.

Everyone’s heard of the three-act structure; a model that forms the foundation of popular culture’s favourite stories. Act 1 features the setup and exposition; an ‘inciting incident’ to get the narrative moving. Act 2 is the confrontation; a midpoint which challenges the protagonist, pushing them to their limits. And finally, Act 3 is the resolution; concluding the plot, along with any character arcs introduced in the previous acts. While this structure doesn’t necessarily need to be adhered to, I believe it possesses something that Kingdom Hearts III sorely lacked – a midpoint.

Yep. KH3 had no mid-point. Scala ad Caelum could have worked as the mid-point. And it could have been another hub world like Radiant Garden. KH3 probably originally had this, but it was scrapped.

This is especially a shame, as Aqua’s fall into darkness – resulting in a twisted form that externalises all of her loneliest thoughts – is one of the most dramatically compelling aspects of the game. And that’s despite lasting for all of 10 minutes (a decade of solitude and suffering are seemingly erased by a few whacks from Sora’s Keyblade).

This is true for all of the characters that needed to be saved. Nobody really used the power of waking on anyone. It’s was just whack, whack, okay you’re saved.

And this is ultimately the problem with the lack of a true Act 2 – the characters aren’t explored or challenged when they need to be. The narrative refuses to escalate until its final act, at which point it feels like going from zero to sixty in a matter of moments. But during the heat of battle – at such a late stage, and with so many heroes and villains in play (more than twenty) – it’s hard to develop your characters in a way that feels natural. Kingdom Hearts III’s solution is bizarre soliloquies that are completely disconnected from the events around them. Is Sora in the middle of a boss fight with three villains? Well, the other two will disappear while you spend several minutes casually chatting with the third. And while this is partly due to the challenge of giving such a large cast an appropriate send-off, it’s also a direct consequence of the lack of time given to exploring characters and their relationships in the previous 20-25 hours of playtime.

So true. So many characters who had so much development over the series. That’s why they needed another game before KH3. It was probably too much to ask for KH3 to be the epic conclusion as well as dive into everyone’s backstory.

On that note, having some sort of hub – a place, like Traverse Town or Hollow Bastion in the first two Kingdom Hearts games, that the player regularly returns to – can be an effective way to centre your story. It provides a home base, and a recurring cast of characters that can be revisited at any time. This kind of location helps players to feel a deeper and more personal attachment to your world.

Yeah, the game would have been so much better if you could visit RG and interact with the plot-important NPCs.

Put in Kingdom Hearts terms, we might say that the body and soul are here; it’s just missing its heart.

I’ve had the exact same thought.

This essay began with the assertion that Kingdom Hearts III is a conclusion in search of a story; a game without a tale of its own to tell. So far, we’ve examined the material impact; the effect this has on the game’s pacing, its sense of player progression, engagement, and character development. So in this topic, I want to consider the conceptual side of things; the motivations that drive our heroes and villains, the purpose of the events that take place, and finally the meaning intended to be conveyed by the story. Put simply, does the narrative of Kingdom Hearts III have something to say?

Sadly, no. I can tell it was supposed to, though. KH3′s story was supposed to be about the power of love. It was really that simple.

By the time of Kingdom Hearts III, Riku has overcome all of these challenges and been granted the title of Keyblade Master, so it was important to present him as a more mature, capable character, having regained his confidence and developed a clear identity. But ultimately, he just feels bland and stoic in this game. He has no new narrative arc, relatively few interactions with Sora, predominantly serves as a mouthpiece for exposition, and is more devoid of a distinct personality than ever. And for a game which serves as a conclusion to the story so far, it’s essential that our core group of characters, such as Riku and Kairi, reach a satisfying crescendo. The narrative should organically involve them in significant ways, and the challenges they face should provide natural opportunities for growth and exploration.

Sad, since Riku seemed like he did originally have a narrative arc. He got a new Keyblade! But the way he got it was laughably random and meaningless and contributed nothing to his overall growth or development.

As much as I’ve tried to understand it, I cannot summarise Master Xehanort’s motivation in that same, concise way. His initial speech in Kingdom Hearts III implies idle curiosity; he speculates that “If ruin brings about creation, what, then, would another Keyblade War bring?” followed by statements that he wants to re-enact the conflict and simply see what happens. He also wonders if they will “…be found worthy of the precious light the legend speaks of”, implying that his goal is to test humanity; or at least the current generation of Keyblade wielders. But that’s a pretty flimsy motivation, and it’s lacking any context or logic.

Yep. Xehanort was supposed to have another game to explore his motivations. When you get rid of that, his character just doesn’t work anymore.

And it’s not just the heroes that have this problem. During their death scenes, several of the Organisation’s members (Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene, Xigbar, Xion, Saix, and Ansem) either encourage Sora or imply that they didn’t care about the outcome; or didn’t even want to battle in the first place. Some have their reasons, but if even one of them had chosen not to fight, Xehanort’s re-enactment could have failed. Much like I described earlier, it doesn’t feel satisfying to overcome a foe who didn’t want to fight, and a war with the potential to destroy the universe should be motivated by much more powerful convictions.

I don’t disagree. But I honestly think this is because none of these characters actually wanted to fight in the Keyblade War. They were supposed to be possessed puppets. Mind-controlled vessels with no will of their own. 

Let’s use Saix as an example. What makes a more engaging battle? In canon, Saix had flimsy motivations to be fighting, anyways. He wanted to atone so he was acting as a double agent in order to procure some Replicas. And he wanted look for Subject X. That’s why he joined Xehanort. That’s all the reason he had to fight. 

Compare that to a potential backstory with him as a vessel, lacking free will. Isa was a human test subject who was possessed as a teen. His best friend Lea has to fight him unwillingly. Saix is berserk and nearly kills Lea without even being aware of it. But all Lea wants is to save his best friend. I know which one I find more engaging. 

Ever since that first game, I’ve been trying to identify what it is that unified these two styles of storytelling – the Disney fairytale with the SquareSoft RPG. And in writing this essay, I finally realised; the secret ingredient, the unifying thread that both franchises had in common, was love. Romance is at the core of almost every classic Disney film, and every Final Fantasy from IV to X was in some way a love story. Seemingly the developers of the original Kingdom Hearts realised this too.

I’m pretty neutral about the Sora/Kairi romance. I mainly wanted Kairi to not feel like a damsel-in-distress yet again. And KH3 definitely screwed that up.

In a way, my problem was the same as that of Kingdom Hearts III’s story. We both spent so much time looking to the horizon, imagining what the future may hold, that we missed out on what was already right in front of us. I will always love and support this series, and its creativity and charm will no doubt continue to inspire my own stories for the rest of my life. But despite not being the conclusion I hoped for, Kingdom Hearts III has freed me from my own obsession with the series’ future. I no longer feel like I’m waiting for something that may never come. Of course, I hope the series gets its story back on track, and rises to new heights greater than ever before! But it turns out that I already got my ending in 2006; and now that I’ve finally realised that, I can finally, honestly say that, as a Kingdom Hearts fan, I am satisfied.

It’s sad that KH2’s ending felt more satisfying. Because KH3 should have been even better than KH2′s ending. KH2 had a happy ending. But in KH3, everyone was there on the beach. Terra, Aqua, and Ven were saved. In KH2, Axel was dead. He had a sad ending. But in KH3, he was human again and even had his childhood best friend back, too. Even Hayner, Pence, and Olette were there. Sora should have been there, too. By all accounts, I should have liked KH3′s ending the best out of any game. But they ruined it with the horrible character development and the cheap cliffhanger.

[swapauanon]

Re:Mind Predictions

Having watched both trailers, here’s what I think is going to happen in KH3!Re:Mind.

The scene where Sora and Kairi are holding hands is actually at the START of the DLC, before Sora goes back in time, with Sora freaking out when he realizes that he can’t take Kairi back with him, Chirithy gives the explanation (he already used up all his strength undoing the first defeat of the Guardians), then adds that the only way to stop Kairi from disappearing would be to sacrifice Naminé, something Kairi isn’t willing to do (with Sora feeling guilty for even being tempted to accept that trade). Naminé (who hasn’t accepted the Replica because she’s looking for Repliku), comes up with the idea for Sora to go back in time, reasoning that since he’s already dying, that using the Power of Waking to alter the past can’t possibly cause him any more harm. At this point, gameplay starts.

The Final World serves as the hub for the bossfights, Sora can only talk to Chirithy, but can’t customize his moveset, equipment, or abilities. Much like Reverse/Rebirth, you’re at the mercy of whatever the game decides to give you.

Sora leaves his body behind to pass through the only available portal, but accidentally goes too far back. Here we have the “character switching” tutorial, where he jumps from his past self’s body to Aqua, at which point we get the “Darqua Tide” cutscene right before Aqua gets swept up. Character swapping works just like Keyblade swapping in the base game. Sora returns to the Final World, and decides that, as soon as his past self rewrites reality, he’ll try and pass on his memories with the power of waking.

From this point forward, the two Sora’s are essentially two different characters, so I’ll call our Sora “Future!Sora” and past Sora “New!Sora”.

Future!Sora’s attempt to inform New!Sora leads to him accidentally linking up with the Lingering Will. The player gets to control the Lingering Will briefly, but the battle is interrupted by the rest of the Organization, who destroy the Lingering Will in hopes of crushing Terra once and for all. While Sora’s about to depart, he notices Terranort’s Guardian absorb the Lingering Will, explaining how Terra was able to fight back later.

At this point, Sora can go back to any of the previous battles (he just won’t see any cutscenes this time through), but two more portals appear. Examining them reveals which hearts Sora is traveling to.

In the Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene battle, Future!Sora’s interference causes New!Sora to get caught instead of Mickey, so the player is forced to use Mickey Mouse until Luxord is defeated. Luxord straight up tells Mickey to pass the “Wild Card” on to Sora, while implying that he’s aware of Future!Sora’s presence. Otherwise, no real story changes outside of Future!Sora learning about Strelitzia and Lauriam when he hops over to Marluxia, and the Dandelions when he hops over to Larxene. Mickey is attacked by Vexen after New!Sora leaves, but is destroyed, with his last words implying that his reasons for rejoining the heroes are far more selfish than he let on in canon.

In the Dark Riku and Xigbar battle, Future!Sora simply talks Repliku into taking shelter inside either his or Riku’s heart. When Sora hops over to Xigbar, he witnesses his earlier conversation with Luxord, and learns about Luxu. After New!Sora leaves, Riku is attacked by Demyx, who wants to use the Replica for unknown purposes, reasoning that Ansem’s apprentices can always make more, leading to Repliku realizing that his attempted sacrifice would have been pointless because Sora and Riku both left the Replica unguarded in the original timeline, meaning Naminé would’ve never gotten it. After this battle, Repliku becomes an NPC Sora can talk to in the Final World, though he’s unable to directly assist Sora in battle.

In both of these battles, Future!Sora nudges New!Sora’s heart, with visions of Kairi’s death. After they’re both cleared Sora worries about how little he was able to change, but two more portals open.

One of these portals leads to the Saix and Xion battle. Kairi and Lea have to defeat Xion in order to stop her from healing Saix, at which point New!Sora arrives and stops Xemnas from capturing Kairi, with Xion regaining control of herself from Xehanort and Roxas hoping in to help New!Sora and Kairi escape. Additionally, Future!Sora witnesses HOW Xion was recruited. Saix is defeated, with no real changes except for maybe a glance at Subject X.

Terranort and Vanitas play more or less identically to canon, except Eraqus intervenes due to New!Sora’s absence (and passes on to the afterlife after the fact), and Future!Sora witnesses some of Vanitas’ memories and realizes that he didn’t choose to help Xehanort so much as give up on resisting him, regretting that he was unable to save him from Xehanort and kicking himself for letting Xehanort get away in the future.

Upon returning to the Final World, Future!Sora has one last chance to save as one more portal appears. Instead of establishing who’s hearts Sora’s linking with, Sora simply comments on it being the final battle, and that he’ll know whether or not his mission was a success after this point.

Kairi replaces Mickey in the Ansem, Xemnas, and Young Xehanort battle. Their death scenes are replaced by flashes of memory. Future!Sora gets his first glimpse of the MoM after Young Xehanort’s defeat, and learns that the MoM had let Xehanort read a copy of the Book of Prophecies after his Mark of Mastery Exam.

What follows is Sora, Riku, and Kairi teaming up with Mickey to battle Master Xehanort. Master Xehanort just uses his battle quotes from the final clash with him in the base game. Master Xehanort is killed, but his heart remains and calls the Replicas. What follows is New!Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the Guardians of Light versus the twelve Replica Xehanorts. After that battle, the Replicas fuse into a single Replica wielding all 13 of the Keys, making one last attempt on Kairi’s life only for Sora to intervene. What follows is Kairi and New!Sora fighting against Master Xehanort together.

Now, Xehanort either dies here, with Sora using the X-blade to seal Kingdom Hearts or possesses New!Sora in order to forge the X-blade out of his 13 Keys. I’m hoping for the latter because then we get Soranort.

Kairi and Soranort clash, but as soon as Soranort gets down to 1 HP, Sora’s portrait appears next to Kairi’s, indicating that the player can control Sora again. Doing this ends the boss fight as Future!Sora rips Xehanort’s heart out of New!Sora ala Repliku tearing out Dark Riku’s heart, and then shatters Xehanort’s heart in order to force him to pass on to the afterlife.

As everyone celebrates their casualty free victory, Future!Sora, the boy we’ve followed for all these years, ceases to exist with a smile on his face. Why? He can’t exist anymore because New!Sora never went back in time.

After the credits role, we get Riku talking to the Radiant Garden restoration committee about New!Sora’s disappearance. New!Sora, meanwhile, meets Yozora in a dark part of the Final World, with Repliku’s specter appearing next to him, revealing that the Riku from the Secret Ending was actually Repliku this whole time. In the Keyblade Graveyard, Luxord’s original self traps Luxu in a card on the MoM’s orders, and the Master of Masters slices the card in two with his Keyblade to punish Luxu for defying his orders. The extended Secret Ending shows Luxu fighting Sora as Repliku clashes with an unknown opponent. The only clear detail is that they’re wielding the Kingdom Key D.

[phoenix-downer]

Hello! I was curious about why you ship Rokunami. I don't think it's a bad ship or anything! It's actually kind of cute, but I feel like the game didn't give them enough time to develop any kind of relationship besides trust in a time of need and confusion. Is there a reason why you see them work very well and/or even better than perhaps Roxas and Xion? I always love to read your analysis on everything and I would like to know a bit more about this! Hope you have a great day (and stay aweosme)!

Good question!

I ship Rokunami because of the potential I see and the chemistry they have in their scenes together.

Do I think they’ve had a romance for the ages and are deeply and madly in love? No, but I do think the potential for a good romance is there! Their relationship is at its very beginning stages and I enjoy it for what it is and what it could be, and here’s why:

1) They are kindred spirits in a very difficult situation. They’re both Nobodies who are fated to return to their Others, and they can understand each other like no one else can. It’s a bad situation all around, but Naminé makes it clear to Roxas that he is not alone in his ordeal. She disobeys Diz to reach out to him and tell him the truth, which leads us into…

2) Naminé was willing to tell him the truth. Remember how in Days Roxas says the person who tells him the truth would be who he trusts? Well, Naminé is that person. His other friends either couldn’t tell him the truth or wouldn’t tell him, and finally along comes someone who will, and she earns his trust because of it.

3) They make a promise to meet again. Despite their fates to return to their Others, Naminé believes they will meet again and tells Roxas that this isn’t the end. At the end of KH2 their promise is fulfilled and they see each other again. Most Nobodies are destined to fade away, but they live on in their Others and until they are (hopefully) rescued in KH3, they can be together as long as Sora and Kairi are (which… yeah, we know how well that’s gone lately, but the point still stands).

4) They can see themselves as how they remember each other. Being able to see someone’s true self is a repeated motif throughout the series (Kairi with Sora’s Heartless form, Kairi and Sora with Riku’s Ansem form, Roxas and Axel with X*on’s real self, etc.) and a sign that two people share a strong bond, strong enough to see beyond deceptive outward appearances and into the heart. Roxas and Naminé are able to see each other’s true selves even after they return to Sora and Kairi, a sign that the bond they share is truly special. Roxas words it like this: 

I see myself the way you remember me. And you see yourself the way I remember you.

Not only do they remember each other’s true selves; instead of Roxas seeing himself based on his own memories, Roxas sees himself the way Naminé remembers him, and Naminé sees herself the way Roxas remembers her. This hints at the beautiful mutuality of their relationship - they sustain not themselves but each other. It’s normally impossible for a Nobody to continue on existing independently once they rejoin with their Other (as we’ve seen with Axel/Lea, they simply merge into one person), but Roxas and Naminé’s continued existence may very well be because they can remember each other other as they truly are. 

In other words, they see each other’s hearts; they see each other as unique people with unique identities instead of accepting the narrative that they’re destined to become Sora and Kairi. And indeed, Naminé marvels at this and realizes that her earlier assessment was wrong - to her surprise, they didn’t fade away into darkness. Roxas affirms this and points out they got to meet their true selves, and Naminé is happy that they can be together again.

5) They’re each other’s second loves. This is more in the realm of personal interpretation, but I really like the idea that they find love again in each other. They’re both hurting from the loss of their first loves - X*on for Roxas, though I’m aware not everyone interprets their relationship that way, and Sora for Naminé, though this was one-sided on Naminé’s end and it was only by changing Sora’s memories that she was able to temporarily redirect Sora’s feelings for Kairi towards herself - and find solace and a second chance at love in each other. 

Sora and Kairi already have the childhood friends/first loves thing going on so it’s nice to see a different kind of couple also potentially represented in the series. Because let’s be real, how many people end up with their first loves? Sora and Kairi are the fairytale storybook romance, the once-in-a-lifetime, death-can’t-keep-us-apart, bound-by-true-love soulmates, and while I love that to pieces, I also love Roxas and Naminé’s quieter, more subdued affection for each other. They’re like the couple you meet in real life who have been through some hardships along the way but have found love again in each other and they don’t have to proclaim it from the streets, it just sort of radiates off them and speaks for itself.

6) The chemistry. Also subjective, but man if I didn’t pick up on it in their scenes together. Roxas really seems like he’s flirting with her in their scene together in the Old Mansion, and then again at the end of KH2 when they meet again, and then when he smiles at her at the very end through Sora… yep, lots of smiling. 

All this to say…

They don’t have an epic romance (yet). They may never have an epic romance, and that’s okay. They’re like those two people who just really click together because they have a lot in common. There’s chemistry and mutual attraction, and they want to get to know each other more. So they decide to go on a few dates and take things slow and see how things unfold from there. That’s the vibe I get from them. They’re strikingly real to me because of that, and while I love Sora and Kairi’s fairytale romance, I also love Roxas and Naminé’s very down-to-earth bond.

But what about Rok*shi? (starred out so it hopefully won’t show up in the tags)

I hesitate to even go there at all because I know shipping is a touchy subject and I don’t want this to turn into shipping discourse. I’ve also seen people tear down other ships and characters to prop up their favorite ships and characters, and I refuse to do that. My philosophy is that if a ship is good, it will stand on its own merits - no need to trash other ships.

The whole situation has also been made more complicated by how X*on was introduced after Naminé, but within the timeline of the story itself, knew Roxas before she did. The way canon has handled things has only exacerbated an already touchy situation with the fandom and I don’t really want to get into that right now.

Honestly, my preference for Rokunami just comes down to personal tastes, really, same with how people who prefer Rok*shi do for their own reasons. And those are perfectly good reasons! Roxas does spend a lot of time with X*on and I can see the potential there! But I can also see the potential with Rokunami, and I can’t deny that I like what I see :) Again, it really just boils down to personal preferences.

On a more general note, I always try to keep in mind that at the end of the day, shipping is supposed to be a fun thing that brings people joy. And if shipping Rok*shi is what brings you joy, awesome! If shipping Rokunami is what brings you joy, awesome! I will be the last person to tell you not to ship something. 

Hope that answers your question, thanks for the ask! :)

[queen-ofsunflowers]

Queen Plays KH3 Pt. 4

FINAL TIME: 32 hrs. 32 minutes. 33 sec.

FINAL LEVEL: 40

DEATH COUNTER: 69

WORLDS COMPLETED:

Olympus

Twilight Town

Toy Box

Kingdom of Corona

Monstropolis

100 Acre Wood

Arendelle

The Caribbean

San Fransokyo

The Final World

The Keyblade Graveyard

Scala Ad Caelum

The rest is under the cut to avoid spoilers. And oh my gosh... just... read at your own risk while I go and speculate what just happened.

AND NOW THE ENDS REALLY BEGINS.

should it really be a surprise that I go to help Riku first?

RIP XIGBAR. Literally this time. Like... damn. It was just.... sad to watch that.

AND REPLIKU (I had to look up who it was) IS DOWN FOR THE COUNT. And they confirmed it was the replica just now. Okay. I got very confused at the beginning.

And now we have a body. That makes two. One for Roxas, and one for Naminé apparently?

FUCK LUXORD. Hate his card game. Glad I got him. And he gave me a card? Okay? Is this gonna be useful later on? Love how Sora's nice to him though as he's dying.

AND THERE GOES LARXENE. AND STOP MAKING ME FEEL SAD FOR YOU. DAMMIT. Stop making me feel sad! SHE LOOKS OVER AT MARLUXIA WHEN ASKED WHY SHE HELPED THE ORGANIZATION. Lord... I need to play some Union X.

AND THERE GOES MARLUXIA. DON'T MAKE ME CRY. HE REMEMBERS. HE REMEMBERS WHO HE USED TO BE BEFORE BECOMING A NOBODY. I CAN'T--

Gonna go save redhead squad.

HE'S JUST... ISA. AXEL DONT DIE.

OH YMG GOD OH MY GOD. IS THAT. IS THAT?! OH MY GOD XION!!!! MY SWEET GIRL!!!

Who... wha...

OH MY GOD. ROXAS!!!!!!!

LET HER GO. NO.

Isa's death scene was too emotional for my liking. And I loved it. THE SEA SALT TRIO IS BACK TOGETHER. NOW FOR THE WAYFINDERS.

And there goes Vanitas. I feel kinda bad for him.

Just... "ow" as I finish off Terranort. Nothing special just... “ow”.

TERRA. SAVE HIM.

NO. DID THE GUSRDIAN JUST?! YES. IS THAT TERRA? IS THAT-- IS THAT TERRA!? ITS TERRA BBY. THE EMOTION I CAN'T

NOW FOR THE XEHANORTS.

YOUNG XEHANORT IS DOWN. ... is Sora gonna die? Please don't let him die.

DIE SOB.

Then there went Xemnas. ALL THESE DEATHS ARE MAKING ME SO SAD.

NOW ONE REMAINS.

NO KAIRI. AHHHH. MY GOD... NO!!!

DONALD! GOOFY! We gonna kick ass and take names. LET'S GO KICK THAT OLD MAN'S ASS.

MY FRIENDS. Love how Ven noticed the resemblance between him and Roxas like that while no one else did.

Roxas clapping his blades together.

TAKE HIM DOWN. FUCK YOU XEHANORT. YOU HAD THIS COMING. YOU ONLY HAD YOURSELF TO BLAME.

Now NOW we take him down. Or at least... start to.

Holy crap this world is BEAUTIFUL. But what is going on???

Oh, this can't be good.

A long battle with many deaths. Seems like this is right.

World name drop. “Scala Ad Caelum” Wonder what it means. (A quick Google Translate later, and I discovered it means “Ladder to Heaven”. Kind of pretty, isn’t it? And a bit cryptic? Or foreshadowy?)

WHATBIS GOING ON!??

Xehanort is a dirty cheater.

GET WRECKED.

NOW I'M GONNA GET WRECKED.

Jokes on him. I've perfected the Rage Form.

YES. FUCK YOU OLD wait what's happening

OH MY GOD. GO SORA GO. MY BOY. HE'S DOING IT. HES DOING IT!!! AND SQUAD COMES FOR THE FINALE. YAS.

I forgot Eraqus's heart was in Terra.

"Checkmate". Just that one scene with the chessboard... you know what's going to happen to them and it hurts. So much.

I love how Xehanort knows that he's beaten, and doesn't try to fight it. He goes down with decorum. Nicely done. He put up a fair fight, and killed me about 30 or 40 times, but it was a fair fight. Its interesting. I didn't expect it to turn about this way.

THEY'RE ALL HUGGING ERAQUS. AHHH MY GOD. It hurts!!!!

WHY ARE THESE DEATH SCENES SO EMOTIONAL?!

And with that, Kingdom Hearts is sealed. Hopefully for good this time... it's kinda beautiful.

Huh? ...such a brave boy...!!!

AND SIMPLE AND CLEAN IS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND IM CRYING.

EVERYONE IS SAFE AND SOUND. EVERYONE IS BACK TOGETHER. THEY’RE ALL HAPPY. THIS IS EVERYTHING THAT I’VE WANTED OUT OF THIS GAME. JUST... YOU GOTTA SEE IT FOR YOURSELF MAN. I CAN’T DESCRIBE IT... not right now, at least. I mean... I have a fanfic that I’ve been working on for about two years now that I need to finish up. I’ll post it here at a later date.

Um... what was that? WHY DID SORA JUST... WHERE DID SORA GO?!

After credit movie time, and I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

Huh? That voice... WAIT. DOES THAT MEAN. HOLY CRAP. ooooOOOH MY GOSH?

Is that... the white piece... is it... Sora... my heart hopes it is.

Okay, I know there's a secret ending. I didn't get it, but I'm gonna look it up because I wanna watch it.

...Sora? SORA?! WHERE IS HE?! RIKU?!! WHERE ARE THEY?!?!?!

...??? Who are these guys???

Even though the game might be over, the story isn't. Not by a long shot. And I can't wait to see what happens next. There were a lot of question left unanswered, such as with the card that Sora got from Luxord... what happened with that one cutscene between Even and Demyx... WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO SORA. And how Kairi got back. And the secret ending only brings up more questions about what’s going on. But either way...

I can only hope that our boy returns home.

[nagichi-boop]

KH3 Review / Opinions

So some people wanted me to post my thoughts on KH3 and I'm super bored rn so I'm gonna try to do it.

Please keep in mind that this will have spoilers in it, so if you don't want that, don't keep reading this. Without further ado, here are my thoughts:

Pros:

The game included a lot of fun new mechanics, which made attack choices more varied. Some of these were awesome in my opinion - such as Anti Form, the different Keyblade forms and having more new team members in different worlds - and others were...not so great, but I'll get into that.

For the most part, the worlds were very fun to explore. Olympus, while not my favourite world, certainly did have one of the biggest areas to explore. This sometimes meant that I got lost, but it was nice to be able to roam freely without having to wait for sections of the map to load whenever I went into another area. The Kingdom of Corona was such a pretty place to explore and being alongside Rapunzel and Eugene was so fun.

The background music in this game was amazing. I don't tend to pay attention to background music and such, but I noticed that the music fit each area very well. For example, Toy Box had an instrumental version of "You've Got a Friend in Me", which was very fitting and Arendelle had a very upbeat and enchanting song, though hearing it over and over on things like the Kingdom Hearts trailers and adverts did kind of exhaust it for me.

The cutscenes. Oh boy, were there a lot of cutscenes. My dad even came in at one point and asked me why there was more cutscenes than gameplay, and I suppose some people may have found it annoying to beat one round of enemies and then have a 5 minute cutscene, but for someone like me who isn't necessarily the best at games and is more interested in the story, I quite enjoyed it. Plus, unlike other games, I didn't think any of the cutscenes were lazily animated. Each character had unique movements in each scene and it was very charming to see the characters interact with one another.

Being able to play as different characters was nice, even though it was only Aqua and Riku. I heard that they did have other characters sorted with move sets and stuff, so I'm low-key hoping that as a DLC, you'll be able to go back to the worlds and play as different characters. Like imagine Ventus visiting Corona and maybe having a small cutscene of him and Rapunzel being all soft and stuff, hhh.

Some of the characters were treated to some nice development this game. Sora still had his cheerful tone and determination to help his friends, but he was also given a few other traits that I liked. I loved how sarcastic he was at points such as in Arendelle when he falls down the mountain after X amount of falls, which perfectly reflected how I felt at that point in the world. He also showed that his reliance on friends cut into his own self worth a little, and so being alone trying to save everyone must have been confusing to him and certainly very difficult to find the resolve to keep fighting. Another character I thought was treated well was Roxas. I don't know what it was but he really stood out to me. He came at just the right moment to save his friends and had an assertiveness towards Xemnas that was much appreciated. He also ran towards Xion when she started crying, which was very cute. Ienzo was also really cute, my goodness. I didn't care about him when he was an Organisation member but he was such a sweetie in KH3.

The animation in major cutscenes was also gorgeous. The ending cutscene has such pretty animation and lighting, I loved it.

Although it's only a minor detail, I thought having NPCs talk their lines instead of having to read them yourself was a nice subtle touch that was much appreciated.

That Donald upgrade tho. He had a much more proactive role in this game which was awesome. I also felt like his and Sora's interactions and having them insulting each other were a very nice addition.

I don't know if I got lucky or if I'm secretly okay at video games, but I didn't find any bosses to be so difficult that I was stuck on them for hours. I think the most I died was the final fight, where I died 2 or 3 times? But even then, it didn't take me very long to defeat Xehanort and generally throughout the game, even bosses I thought I'd die to didn't kill me, or if they did, it wasn't more than once. Unlike in KH1 where I spent an hour the Wonderland candle thing and in KH2 where I spent two hours on the Demyx boss.

XION'S, LEA'S AND ISA'S OUTFITS AT THE END, OH MY DAYS!!

Don't hurt me but I ship Sora and Kairi and so having them be shown more as lovers than friends was just the fangirl fuel I needed.

Favourite world in Kingdom Hearts 3: probably the Kingdom of Corona for me. I love Tangled and being able to play through that world was amazing. The small interactions between Sora and Rapunzel were also super sweet and pure. I also liked San Fransokyo because it had an original story and I love that movie, too.

Cons:

As much as I loved most of the worlds, there were a few issues with some of them, one of which being some of the stories. Worlds like Arendelle really annoyed me as it didn't really feel like you were part of the story. You just went up and down the mountain observing Elsa. You also didn't get an ally until right at the end of the world's story which was a bit annoying. Arendelle wasn't the only one though. The Kingdom of Corona also felt like you were just a spectator to the story, though to me it didn't feel as intense because only certain cutscenes felt this way (such as the boat scene and the scene where Eugene "dies"). I wish each world had a unique story instead of focusing on the events of their respective movies.

Another issue with the worlds was the exploration. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy exploring, but some weren't as fun as others. I hated the boat mechanic of the Carribbean world and when looking for lucky emblems, I found myself trying to escape fights because I didn't want to go through with them. I didn't hate Monstropolis like a lot of people, but I do see why people would hate it as a lot of the rooms do kind of look the same. And as much as I enjoyed San Fransokyo, I do wish you could explore a bit more. The city was also quite hard to navigate as everything looked the same. Even just opening up the bridge would have given us a bit more to explore.

I literally forgot that the 100 Acre Wood existed until I looked up worlds just now for wiring this post, oof. I did go there but you literally did different versions of the same mini game for about 30 minutes and that's it. I did like the cutscene when he leaves the book though because it foreshadows later events. (He says something about not wanting to lose his friends, I don't remember the exact quote tho.)

While I appreciated having so many different ways to fight, I did find a few things quite annoying. Like I did have a few moments outside of battle where I just wanted to open a chest but I'd accidentally trigger an attraction or form change. Apparently, there was also a button to switch situation commands but I literally found out about that after someone read this review so that’s fun. I remember being so annoyed because I couldn’t use the command I wanted to use but apparently that was just me being stupid. Attractions also weren't always appropriate to the situation, which sometimes meant using an attraction and not really dealing a lot of damage or having difficulty trying to aim and attack enemies. Or maybe I just suck at video games, idk.

Because there were so many different mechanics, I never felt the need to be creative with my battle strategy. I never really went to cook with Remy because I didn't feel the need to and I also never really touched magic unless it was needed, either. I guess I just enjoyed being able to hit A and Y to get through the battles. Yes, I played the Xbox One version, don't kill me (A is X and Y is triangle to you PS4 people).

While a few of the characters were treated well, a lot of them were done pretty dirty in my opinion, probably because of having to bring together ALL of the characters. One of these is the infamous Kairi, who severely suffered from a lack of development, which caused a lot of people to hate her and also meant a lot of people hating the portrayal of Sora and Kairi's relationship (I still love her tho because of how people in the fandom characterise her). Another character is Naminé, and while she's not really my favourite, I can see why people were upset. If you missed a certain cutscene in the Final World, you would only get to see her in the end cutscene. The fact that you could miss a whole cutscene with her is kind of strange. I missed it when I played it. Also, I thought Lea sort of suffered a bit, too. He did have some scenes that showed him off nicely, but people forget that he was also quite weak like Kairi for some reason (but now isn't the time to go into that debate). He had his Keyblade destroyed very easily and struggled to protect Xion. I don't know if he just lost his other weapon but I would have thought he could have at least yeeted them at Xemnas, at the very least to distract him.

I thought the labyrinth section of the Keyblade Graveyard was very...strange. I did appreciate that the fights weren't particularly hard (because I'm not a particularly great gamer imo) but what I did find weird is how everyone except Vanitas was redeemed and how quickly everything happened. Like Luxord and Marluxia suddenly became super chill like "I know we tried to ruin your life, Sora, but you're actually pretty chill". Like...what?? (I know Marluxia is in Union X but I haven't gotten to that yet and in the main games, he wasn't a particularly interesting character to me, so I didn't really care that he became "good".) And while I do appreciate Xehanort getting some sort of redemption, it felt a bit off. He tries to destroy the universe and also murders a bunch of people, but then his bff comes along and says "yo, stop that" and suddenly he's good? Like he doesn't even apologise to everyone or help bring Kairi back or whatever, he just poofs away.

Speaking of things being rushed, I felt like I was getting whiplash nearer the end of the game. One second Aqua is bad, the next she is in the realm of light. Ventus is asleep, Sora suddenly gets the power to wake him up. Terra tries killing his friends and then he comes back. I love my children and I'm glad they're happy but it felt like a lot of it happened so quickly that I couldn't process what was happening.

I feel like the game would have benefitted from a bit more character interaction. I know that's asking a lot from a game with so many characters, but even small things would have helped. Like @chachacharlieco suggested in a recent post, even having the characters coming into Yen Sid's tower for a small interaction could have helped, like Kairi and Riku quickly talking about what had happened, then having Sora come in and complimenting them both on their clothes or whatever. Also, maybe having her give Sora her letters would have made their relationship a bit easier to swallow for people who don't ship them because it did feel somewhat underdeveloped at times.

Why was Kairi sitting alone in the end cutscene? Like I get that she was having a sentimental moment of reflection for what Sora had done and wanting him back, but I feel like even having Riku stand near her and share some understanding eye contact or him putting his hand on her shoulder would have been reassuring. It just felt weird for everyone to be having fun while she seemed to be the only one to remember Sora.

I thought the game would be a nice closing point but it wasn't. I would understand just having the cliffhanger of Sora being gone because not all stories have a happy ending and it still would have closed that chapter and we would assume maybe the next arc would be saving Sora. But also having the whole Luxu reveal and having there be uncertainty about that? If this is setting up the next arc, so be it, but it did feel a bit weird to have the end of a story line but still have so many loose ends and questions.

This isn't to do with the game in particular, but I feel like some things in the trailer should have been left out. Like showing Saïx meeting up with Lea, showing Scala Ad Caelum or showing Sora screaming and being mad in the Keyblade Graveyard. Could you imagine playing the game without knowing about Scala As Caelum and just seeing it for the first time? And could you imagine hearing Sora scream for the first time in game and feeling that raw emotion blind? Plus, I felt like the trailers built up that scene in particular a lot and I remember feeling underwhelmed in that scene because everyone just...died.

Least favourite world in Kingdom Hearts 3: The Carribbean. I wanted out. The pirate life ain't for me.

So I know I sound like I'm one of those people who hated the game, but I really didn't. I enjoyed the game quite a lot actually. I think I mostly enjoyed the cutscenes, which there was a lot of. Being able to see the characters interact with one another and having them be animated and not just standing still made the game feel a lot like a movie for me, which made the cutscenes more fun to watch and pay attention to. I do feel like the game could have done with just a couple extra cutscenes to address some character problems outside of a couple shots of chess and some paopu fruit but I understand that there was a lot to cram in and I'm sure this isn't the last game that we will see all these characters in. I didn't think that everyone would survive Kingdom Hearts and they didn't, but I thought we would lose more characters tbh. Plus this isn't the end - I'm sure Sora will come back.

I can't wait for the next Kingdom Hearts game and the start of a new chapter in the story!! Coming to store in 2158.

[arovalentines]

incredibly funny that literally every single possible m/f ship in kh feels so bland and works much better as friends even the one that’s probably gonna become canon

[nadziejastar]

In a lot of your posts, they have a lot of the texts from the novels and manga. If you were to go off of ONLY the games, would Subject X still be hinted? I think yes, but I'm a casual fan.

Well, I developed my opinion on Subject X based ONLY on the games. I played all the games as soon as they came out. So, that would be many years ago at this point. I didn’t read the novels or the manga until after I beat KH3, which was relatively recently. My opinions on the story/characters were quite solidified by then. I actually read them because I thought KH3′s story was so inconsistent with the previous games.The novels/manga simply reinforced the opinions I already had formed after playing the games. I felt validated by them, but they had nothing to do with my opinion on Subject X. 

Now, are you are asking me if I think Subject X—the way it was written in canon—was hinted at in the games? A mysterious time-travelling girl that Lea and Isa were looking for the whole time they were in Organization XIII? LOL. Hell no. Absolutely not. She was never hinted at even once, not even vaguely. And the way Axel and Saïx were written was never consistent with that motivation at all. If you mean Subject X as a concept? Xehanort’s lab rat? Yes, definitely. That was pretty much EXACTLY what I always expected Isa’s backstory to be, based ONLY on the games. I thought Lea and Isa were set up perfectly to be test subjects. When I play the older games, I’m still unable to see them as anything but test subjects. That’s how much support there was for that idea and how little there was for anything else. 

I was VERY confused when KH3 did feature a character who was Xehanort’s lab rat. But instead of being Isa, it was a random girl he never mentioned before (but apparently was obsessed with). Them being apprentices was something so farfetched, it never even once crossed my mind. I didn’t understand how anyone could give that girl the backstory that seemed 1,000 times more suitable for Lea and Isa. How could the person writing the story not see that? How do they expect the fans to not see it, either? How dumb and/or incompetent do you have to be to write the story that way? How did that even get approved by a whole team of people? Those were my thoughts when I played KH3, based ONLY on the previous games.

That is NOT how someone will feel if a story is well-written. Some people act like Nomura made the story up as it went along, with each individual game. But that wasn’t the case for the games building up to KH3. Re:CoM and KH2FM+ were released together. And BBS, Days, and Coded were being developed simultaneously. These were all part of one big master plan. The way Saïx was written in Days was connected to how Isa was written in BBS, etc. Isa was planned to be a good guy MANY years in advance. IMO, him being the real Subject X was hinted at MANY years in advance. If you think anyone else was foreshadowed to be Subject X, let’s look at the games one by one. 

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+

In all the games building up to KH3, the only person from Axel’s past that had any relevance was Isa/Saïx. They could have hinted at Subject X any time they wanted to in ALL these games, but they never did. In KH2FM+, all the new scenes with Saïx involved his relationship with Axel. Saïx seemed to be conflicted about Axel’s elimination. Xemnas made a comment to Saïx about Axel chasing the illusion of friendship. This scene hinted that Axel wasn’t really obsessed with Roxas like people thought. He was really just trying to recover his lost friendship with Isa. I had always suspected that Axel’s “obsession” with Roxas was due to his troubled past, so it didn’t surprise me at all. And Nomura loves twists like that.

They were setting up Isa’s relationship with Lea to have significance, not his relationship with anyone else. It’s absurd for me to think that they were trying to track down a girl they didn’t even know existed. They had real problems to worry about. KH2FM+ also introduced the Chamber of Repose and the Cavern of Remembrance. This all suggested that the experiments on the darkness of the heart would be very important and explored in much more depth. Xigbar seemed to have heavy involvement in these experiments, since he didn’t want to go down into the castle basement. And he’s the one who taunted Saïx about not being able to see Xion and not having a heart.

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Castle Oblivion is all about recovering forgotten memories. The other most important recurring theme in Re:CoM was reuniting with people you miss. Pretty much every Disney world incorporated this theme. This was the perfect opportunity to hint at Subject X, but they didn’t do that. Instead, they chose to keep the focus on Axel’s relationship with Saïx.

Days made a big point of showing that Axel changed a LOT after coming back from Castle Oblivion. Saïx said this to him on Day 193, called “Memories”. He also asked Axel if the past meant nothing to him. Axel said he missed what was gone between him and Saïx. He didn’t mention missing anyone else. There was also a new scene where Axel acted extremely cold to Naminé because she was making two childhood friends fight. Isa was the only childhood friend we ever saw, and he later became an enemy. In every game building up to KH3, Isa was set up to be the most important character to Lea. Subject X? Crickets.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Axel said in his report that he forgot what friendship felt like after becoming a Nobody. That was the whole point of him befriending Roxas and Xion. He was not focused on friendship until he met Roxas. And Saïx was always cold and indifferent towards everyone, even Axel, who was his best friend that he was inseparable from. They’ve been together for 10 years in the organization. I’m expected to believe that Saïx was able to care about some imaginary girl, but not his best friend? To be honest, I thought that the writers had to be drunk if they thought that was believable or realistic. Or that it made Saïx more sympathetic.

Even in Days, I could tell that Axel had a lot of baggage from his past. He always treated his memories of the past like they were sacred. Day 150 is about having something you can’t bear to lose. He said that for Nobodies, it was their past, because that’s all you have to remember the pain of losing something. Perfect time to mention Subject X. After all, her disappearance was Axel’s motivation, right? But the story made it perfectly clear: Axel was heartbroken over the loss of his best friend. Nothing else was ever mentioned. Axel was good friends with Roxas, but I got the sense that he was much, MUCH closer with Isa. 

Personally, I thought Axel was a former test subject ever since the original KH2. It fit him perfectly. He was a sad, lonely, dysfunctional person. When Days hinted that Axel had a tragic past and dark secrets that he didn’t like to talk about, I was not at all surprised. He suffered from something way more traumatic than someone he barely knew disappearing. And it never seemed like he chose to be in the organization. That’s why he was always yearning for his childhood with things like ice cream and summer vacation. My personal belief is that Axel was always written with the backstory of a former test subject in mind. They came up with Saïx‘s backstory later, though I suspected he might have been a test subject too, due to his scar and his berserk state, which made him seem kinda freakish. We always knew that Xigbar and Saïx were unique due to them having gold eyes and pointy ears.

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep

When I played BBS, I knew that something horrible must have happened to Isa to turn him into someone like Saïx. The difference between Saïx and Isa was like night and day. None of the other Nobodies were THAT different from their human counterparts. BBS also confirmed my opinion on Axel/Roxas/Xion. Lea was WAY closer to Isa than he was with them. Isa seemed like a shy kid. But he was very comfortable with Lea. And Lea acted much more naturally with Isa compared to Roxas and Xion.

After BBS, it was obvious that Isa was not a villain, and that he was going to be on the good side at the end of KH3. This was the game that was supposed to show you who the organization members were as humans. They showed that Braig was always evil. Lea and Isa were only in one single scene, other than the epilogue. So, why would they choose to show him as an innocent kid who was Lea’s best friend? Obviously, all of this was to show that he was the polar opposite of Braig. How is that consistent with his canon characterization? He sold his soul to Xehanort, did icky jobs for Xemnas at a pace Axel couldn’t keep up with, and tried to murder Axel. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to write Lea’s best friend that way, if he was not possessed? Especially if they wanted him to appear in future titles?

In the epilogue, they showed Lea and Isa eating ice cream together. Sea-salt ice cream was VERY important to Axel’s character. Axel defined friendship as people who eat ice cream together. I knew that Isa was very special to Axel if he was the origin of his addiction to ice cream. They also showed Lea and Isa trying to sneak into the castle. This was BEFORE the experiments took place. So, Subject X had nothing to do with why Lea and Isa were originally trying to sneak in. They wanted to sneak in because it sounded like fun. Not because they thought people were being tortured in there. There’s no evidence the mystery girl even existed back when BBS was written. The apprentices were not recruiting kids to be apprentices, they were kidnapping kids. What reason would Ansem have to let them be apprentices anyways? It makes no sense.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

In KH3D, Lea was recompleted. Xehanort was gone. He could have used that opportunity to look for information on Subject X. But he didn’t even mention her. He immediately set off to look for Isa. That was his main priority upon being recompleted, not finding Subject X or Roxas, who had gone back to Sora. Lea wasn’t even concerned that Saïx was trying to hunt him down in KH2. He was happy to look for him, even when he was putting himself at risk using the dark corridors. He used the same lines he did for Xion, which had huge narrative significance. It was clear that he was dead set on bringing Isa home. If Subject X was important, Lea didn’t act like it. KH3D sent the message to me that Lea was VERY devoted to Isa. Why even write him this way if he wasn’t supposed to rescue him eventually? Why make it seem like Isa was kidnapped if he was supposed to be looking for Subject X?

Lea and Isa were also the only two who were wearing the black coats when they were recompleted, which gave me the impression that they were test subjects. The apprentices never wore the black cloaks. And of course, the big revelation in KH3D was that Isa was a vessel. Unlike Xigbar, he seemed like he was being controlled, like a puppet. Lea awakened his Keyblade, the Flame Liberator, immediately afterwards. Xemnas also mentioned mind control experiments in this game. Why bring this up if Subject X was only experimented on for her memories. NONE of the games gave me the impression that Lea and Isa were apprentices, that Isa willingly joined the bad side, or that there was some mystery girl that he was looking for. They gave me the impression that Isa was one of the many characters who needed their hurting mended. That was supposed to be the main theme of KH3, after all.

Birth By Sleep Final Mix+

Xemnas may have called Aqua’s armor “friend”, but that was only because he had access to Terra’s memories. He tried to manipulate Aqua by impersonating Terra in KH0.2. And I got the impression that a similar idea was behind the relationship between Axel and Saïx. In the secret ending of BBSFM+, the camera zoomed in on Master Xehanort’s eyes when he said he had many other roads open besides Terra. Then they zoomed in on the amnesiac Terranort’s eyes, showing that they were brown. They zoomed in on Ansem the Wise’s eyes afterwards, showing that the were orange. And finally they zoomed in on his eyes again when he was in the Realm of Darkness. The implication was that Master Xehanort had so many options because of these experiments. His goal was to create vessels, not learn about the age of fairy tales.

Ansem put his research results in Sora to atone for all the lives he ruined. It can be reasonably discerned that Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Xemnas had orange eyes because of Ansem the Wise probing the depths of Xehanort’s heart, to restore his memory. He gained all of Terra’s memories in the process. And in the games building up to KH3, they specifically changed Saïx’s eyes from gold to orange. This implies that the same thing was done to him as well. We know Subject X was also an amnesiac and that Ansem the Wise hid them away when he released the other subjects. It makes sense that Isa was the same as Terra.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2

When Riku told Kairi that she was going to be training with Lea, she was shocked. She later admitted in KH3 that she was afraid of him, because he kidnapped her. But she said that she found it hard not to like him because all he ever wanted was to help his friend. That’s exactly what I expected to happen. My impression after playing KH0.2 was that Axel’s relationship with Roxas and Xion was meant to provide him with character development. This would allow Lea to fulfill his TRUE purpose in the story: becoming a Guardian of Light and rescuing his real best friend from Xehanort. Axel’s friendship with Roxas was supposed to carry over to Ventus because they both had a friend who was a vessel.

Axel’s friendship with Xion was meant to carry over to Kairi specifically because they were going to be training together in KH3. Kairi awakened her Keyblade because she wanted to bring Riku and Sora home. Lea and Kairi were planned as friends because he also wanted to bring his friend home. Axel’s friendship with Roxas and Xion played an important role in Lea’s development. But my impression was that getting Isa back was the ultimate goal of Lea’s character arc, not Roxas or Xion. And especially not Subject X, who is irrelevant to the Xehanort Saga.

Saïx could not see Xion for some reason that was never explained. He has a large Recusant’s Sigil scar on his face which was never explained. Axel said Saïx’s personality changed drastically, while he stayed more or less the same. This was never explained. Saïx had orange eyes like Xemnas, but this was never explained. Subject X does not explain ANY of these things. But Isa being experimented on as the REAL Subject X just happens to explain ALL of them.   

Kingdom Hearts 3

When Lea said he’d always be there to bring his friends back, Xehanort got a really nasty smirk on his face and sent Isa to attack him. It was just to punish him for ruining their plans. Xehanort knew exactly why Lea was there, and how to hurt him. Then during the final battle, it was a repeat of what happened in KH3D. Lea was ruining their plans yet again and Xemnas wanted to punish him. He was so confident that he had Isa under his full control, he thought he could murder Lea right in front of him and he wouldn’t do anything. He turned his back on Isa, literally and figuratively. Isa was positioned to be directly behind Xemnas’s right hand. He was his right-hand man, after all. Everything was all set up perfectly for Isa to finally betray Xemnas. That’s what being a recusant means in the first place.

Lea’s reunion with Roxas and Xion didn’t even feel like an organic or natural development in the story. It felt like shameless pandering. Subject X felt even more unnatural than Roxas and Xion did, which says a lot. Then there was Saïx’s transition into a “good guy”. If they wanted a character like Saïx to be redeemed, they would need to give him an actual redemption arc. Axel was always sympathetic and likable, and even he needed a redemption arc spanning multiple games. Saïx was WAY nastier than Axel. It would take a LONG time to redeem him. But…he was never humanized. The games went out of their way to depict Saïx as inhumanly cold as possible.

It was a deliberate CHOICE not to humanize him in ALL of these games. Yet there he was in the ending, chilling and eating ice cream, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Now, this would make perfect sense if his backstory was a nice kid who was kidnapped, experimented on, then got possessed. He wouldn’t have needed a redemption arc in that case. So it makes perfect sense why one was never planned for him. In every game, the emphasis was NEVER on Saïx being redeemed, but on Lea saving Isa. The power of waking was the main goal of the story. Isa was introduced in the game called “Birth by Sleep,” which IS the power of waking. 

Lea and Isa being test subjects would have made the story far more interesting for 99.9% of players, I guarantee it. But it’s not even just that. Every game since KH2FM+ was written to give the impression that they were test subjects. There’s no way the writers weren’t aware of that. They knew exactly what message they were sending to people. And it makes waaay more sense than them being apprentices. I could not understand why anyone in their right mind would waste all of that foreshadowing and change their backstory to something FAR less interesting and also not very believable. If something doesn’t make sense it’s usually not true. I’m no detective or anything, but the only thing that makes sense is that Isa was planned to be Subject X for well over a decade. Then at the very last minute it was changed to this new girl. 

There’s three reasons I could think for someone to believe that Subject X made sense the way it was written in canon. They are either:

A. Not looking at the story very closely. Probably a casual fan.

B. A blind Kingdom Hearts fanboy/fangirl who will defend anything in the story.

C. Not very intelligent or perceptive. 

[nadziejastar]

Pence: Do you guys think we’ll always be together like this?

Olette: I sure hope so.

Hayner: Huh? Where did that come from?

Pence: Oh, well, you know. Just thinking out loud.

Hayner: Well, I doubt we can be together forever. But isn’t that what growing up’s all about? What’s important isn’t how often we see each other, but how often we think about each other. Right?

Pence: Get that off a fortune cookie?

That’s easy. The reason I think KH3 did more damage to Axel/Lea than KH2 is that Axel’s attachment to Roxas was glorified in KH3. It was presented like we were supposed to find it endearing and perfectly healthy. But even in KH2, Axel was presented as dysfunctional and more than a little pitiable. He kidnapped Kairi and wanted to turn Sora into a Heartless again, just to see Roxas. None of this was ever meant to be seen as a healthy display of friendship. It was meant to show that Axel was a broken person, with a few screws loose. Roxas cried (through Sora) while saying goodbye to Hayner’s group. But Axel didn’t get a real goodbye scene until the Final Mix version. And even in that scene, Roxas was calm and at peace. Axel was the one who was broken up. Nomura and the writers knew that Axel’s relationship with Roxas was questionable and unhealthy. They wanted to give him interesting development regarding that.

It’s why I personally didn’t start truly loving his character until the arc that was building up to KH3 (Re:CoM, KH2FM, Days, BBS, Coded, 3D) was created. And I developed a new level of appreciation for him after reading the novels. That’s when he became fully humanized to me. And the reason is simple: his tragic backstory. The fact that a grown man was calling two kids his best friends was supposed to be seen as SAD, not something to celebrate. It was a symptom of his arrested development. After reading the novels, it was even more clear to me that Axel was intended to be seen as a maladjusted person. He lost his childhood and is stuck at 15-year-old in a lot of ways. You know how some people have daddy issues? Well, Axel had “best friend issues”.

Wendy: Listen, Peter. I’ve got something to tell you… I want to go home to London.

Peter Pan: What are you talking about? Why would you want to do that? You’d have to turn into a grown-up. Besides, goin’ on adventures is a lot more fun! If you go back to London, you’ll have to leave the nursery. You’ll grow up and we’ll never see each other again!

Wendy: I know, Peter. But… I still want to go home.

Peter Pan: I came to rescue you! And you don’t care if you ever see me again!

Wendy: No, you don’t understand!

Peter Pan: Suit yourself! And while you’re at it, rescue yourself! I’m leaving.

He was extremely damaged because of what happened to his best friend. It caused him to feel hatred and despair. He was stuck in the past, unable to move on from his childhood. Lea and Isa were just two innocent kids. Then one day they are kidnapped, experimented on, forced to join a death cult, and obey every command of the “Superior” under threat of death. Lea’s best friend was subsequently brainwashed, possessed, and branded with a giant scar of death on his face. His personality became unrecognizable. He changed from an innocent kid into a sociopathic robot incapable of feeling friendship or love. Or at least that was heavily implied to be the case before KH3 turned them into “apprentices” (what a crock).

Axel was a sorrowful person. He cared about Roxas and Xion…but he didn’t actually want to be best friends with them the way he wanted to be with Isa. Lea became best friends with Isa when he was a normal, well-adjusted, happy teenager. Axel became best friends with Roxas and Xion because he was a lonely and emotionally broken adult who couldn’t process the trauma he experienced as a kid. Even as a teen, Lea saw Ventus as a stray puppy. Isa and Lea were inseparable. They hung out all summer and did homework together. They ate ice cream and played frisbee. Normal stuff. They were happy. Axel was always fixated on the past. He doesn’t come on many missions with you in Days. But they made DAMN sure that he came with you to Neverland.

“Are you worried about her, too, Axel?”

The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Axel eyed him in mild surprise. “Of course I am.”

But his voice was still oddly low. Running into Saïx had brought out a different side of him—and that side was a little scary.

He wasn’t interested in Roxas romantically. He wasn’t even really obsessed with him. He was a lonely, miserable person, with a best friend-shaped void in his heart. And he was desperate to fill it. He really couldn’t relate to either Roxas or Xion on an adult level. He never expressed his deeper feelings to them. Axel’s relationship with Roxas was a lot more nuanced and realistic than it is made out to be. It had many shades of gray. This is the event that led to Axel calling Roxas and Xion his best friends. Saïx brought out a side of Axel that Roxas found scary.

“You wanna know?” Roxas quietly waited for the answer.

“It’s because you two are my best friends.”

Axel had said before that he didn’t have a best friend, Roxas remembered. But now it’s us…?

“Got it memorized?” A smile played at the corners of Axel’s mouth. “The three of us, we’re inseparable. You’re my best friends.”

Then he’s all smiles. Even Roxas was confused about why he was calling them his “best friends” at that moment. Roxas really didn’t understand Axel and couldn’t tell what he was thinking most of the time. He never shared anything about his past with them. I always found it fascinating that Axel murdered a bunch of people in Castle Oblivion, then came home and hung out with Roxas and Xion. They never saw that dark side of him. Ever. They never knew that Axel was best friends with Saïx as kids. Axel’s talk of being super-duper bestest friends with them was his attempt to cope with the pain of Isa getting Norted. I don’t think the fandom really appreciated this, though. Most people seem to have taken it for granted that he really became genuine best friends with Roxas and Xion, that he wanted nothing more in life than to be with them, and didn’t care about Saïx. But that wasn’t the case at all.

Roxas: I hope we always have each other.

Xion: Yeah…

Axel: What’s gotten into you?

Roxas: I just…want these days to last forever. Hanging out, the ice cream, the sunsets…

Axel: Nothing lasts forever, man. Least of all for a bunch of Nobodies. But you know, we’ll still have each other…even if things change and we can’t do this anymore.

Roxas: Yeah?

Axel: As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?

Roxas: Ha ha, wow, Axel. That sounded ridiculous.

Axel: What? I thought it was pretty deep.

His words to Roxas and Xion were so similar to Hayner’s because their time together was supposed to be impermanent. Things inevitably change. They don’t need to hang out with each other every day for their time to be meaningful. It’s more important that they’d always remember each other.

Axel suddenly broke his silence. “Well, even if things change, we’ll never be apart—”

“—As long as we remember one another,” Xion finished. “Right?”

Axel’s encouragement from ages ago echoed in Roxas’s head.

“Don’t worry, Axel. We’ve got it memorized.” Xion grinned at him.

“Just checking.” Looking at the sunset rather than her, Axel munched his ice cream.

When given the choice to leave with Roxas and Xion or stay, he would have stayed. That’s why he said this to them yet again. What Axel really needed was to heal from his past and be with someone who it was more appropriate for him to spend every day with. He needed to “grow up”, but Roxas and Xion first needed to help him heal and remember how to believe in order for him to do that. He also needed to get his best friend back. That was non-negotiable.

Peter Pan: Are you sure you won’t change your mind?

Wendy: Peter, I’m sorry. But I really want to go home.

Peter Pan: I was afraid of that… Everyone grows up—and grown-ups always forget. First you’ll forget what it feels like to be young, and then you’ll forget about me.

Wendy: How can you say such a thing, Peter? I’ll never, ever forget you.

Peter Pan: Sure, that’s what you think now. But when you try to remember me, the memories will be gone. You’ll forget—little by little, one memory at a time. Once you’re grown up, there won’t be a single memory left.

Sora: Don’t say that. Memories—even important ones—don’t come back to us whenever we want them to. But that doesn’t mean the memories are gone. It’s more like…like they’re sleeping. So when the right thing comes along and wakes the memory up, we can remember it. The memories engraved in our hearts never go away. I’m sure of it.

Lea had a dream of Roxas before he woke up. He was sitting on the clock tower eating ice cream, acting perfectly happy. Just like he always did in Days. “Best friends forever”. But…he’d been lying not only to Roxas, but also to himself. He wasn’t happy during those days spent on the clock tower. He doesn’t even like the taste of sea-salt ice cream anymore. His smile always belied his true feelings. It was to mask the pain that he was running away from.

Silence fell over the room. He paused in his munching to stare hard at Riku, then finally asked, “What is Sora to you?”

The question caught Riku off guard. He groped for words. On the sofa opposite him, Naminé spoke up instead. 

“Sora and Riku are best friends.”

Axel’s eyes crinkled as he remembered his own best friend—the only friend he’d ever had, in fact.

“If your best friend goes away, you’re sad, and if you get to be with them, you’re happy,” Naminé added. “Isn’t that how it is, Axel?”

“…That’s about the size of it.” Axel nodded and sat down on the remaining empty sofa, staring at the sea-salt ice cream he held.

“So you are capable of sincerity,” said Riku.

Axel only shrugged at the jab and finished his ice cream pop.

His sleeping memories of Isa awakened after he went to Castle Oblivion. He knew deep down that he was using his relationship with Roxas as a crutch to stay in Neverland and to not grow up. In KH3D, he knew that unless he dealt with Isa, he’d never move on. So, that’s why I think KH3 had a much more damaging effect on Lea’s character than KH2. By making him just as fixated on Roxas as he was in KH2, and making him totally unconcerned with Isa, you keep Lea in Neverland. He doesn’t grow up or mature. He stays an emotionally stunted man, unable to move beyond the age of 15. His arc was rendered totally pointless. It sent such a juvenile message and ruined his character for me. He was totally dumbed down as a character. I can see why you feel the way you do, especially when Axel/Roxas is the most popular Lea/Axel ship. I feel the way you do about him in KH3. I just don’t think he was supposed to turn out this way.

[nadziejastar]

Do not get offended, but I think you're pretty obsessed with the relationship between Axe/Lea and Saïx/Isa. I do not deny that their friendship has been fundamental and essential in many aspects regarding the development of their characters, decisions and stories. But sometimes I think that you always try to go further, gilding the lily, only looking for details to justify a relationship beyond friendship, giving your theories as real, when it's clear that this is not the case.

Eh. I feel no reason to be offended because I know that what you’re saying about me is simply not true. I mean, I am obsessed. But…I have an obsessive personality. For better or worse, it’s how I have always been with anything that interests me. But I’m not obsessed in the way you are characterizing. It sounds like you’re saying I have shipping goggles on and I am deluding myself into seeing “signs” that don’t exist just because I’m so obsessed with this fictional pairing.

But that’s not the case. I’m so “obsessed” because I think there was a really great idea behind this ship, and it would have made a great story if it was allowed to run its course. But it was so underrated compared to Roxas/Xion/Axel that it got treated extremely badly in canon.

Axel: Well, I think you can be inseparable even if you’re apart.

Roxas: Really?

Axel: Sure, if you feel really close to each other. If you’re best friends.

Roxas: What’s it like having a best friend, Axel?

Axel: Couldn’t tell ya. I don’t have one.

Let’s not forget that this isn’t the first time Square-Enix has used a combination of sunset and waning crescent moon imagery for their characters. Final Fantasy X did this, too. Nomura is quite fond of that game. He knows damn well what those symbols mean.

Yuna: I want my journey to be full of laughter.

Tidus: Okay.

Yuna: If we should get separated, just whistle. I’ll come running. I promise.

The Okinawan word tida means “sun”. Yuna means “moon”. Most people probably know their story. They are Twin Flame lovers. Complementary opposites. Light and Dark. Yin and Yang. Inseparable.

Yuna: Pretty…

Tidus: Sure is.

Yuna: I wish I could live in a place like this. Peaceful… Living with a smile on my face every day.

Tidus: You can, once you beat Sin, right?

Yuna: But then a new Sin will be born anyway.

Tidus: Well then, you can just beat it again.

Yuna: I wish I could.

There are two particularly important scenes. One is the sunset on the Highroad where Yuna was recording a sphere saying her goodbyes to everyone.

Yuna: “So… So this is what it feels like. It’s a much more wonderful feeling than anything I had ever imagined. Wonderful…but it hurts, sometimes. I wonder. I…I just want to say, thank you for everything. Maybe…maybe that’s why it hurts. When I… When I think about us never being together again at all…”

She accepts that they cannot be together, even though she loves him.

Tidus: “Let’s go to the sea, before the sunrise. The city lights go out one by one. The stars fade…Then the horizon glows, almost like it’s on fire. It’s kinda rose-colored, right? First in the sea, then it spreads to the sky, then to the whole city. It gets brighter and brighter, till everything glows. It’s really…pretty. I know you’d like it.”

Yuna: “I’d like to see it, someday.” Tidus: “Well you can, Yuna. We can both go! Yu..?”

Yuna: “I can’t. I just can’t! I can’t go!”

And the other is the lake where they share their kiss under the moonlight. Tidus tells her that the sunset in Zanarkand is so beautiful and he wants her to go.

Yuna: “Stay with me until the end. Please.” Tidus: “Not until the end…Always.”

Yuna: “Always, then.”

She can’t, but they promise to always be together.

Yuna: “Everyone…everyone has lost something precious. Everyone here has lost homes, dreams, and friends. Everybody… Now, Sin is finally dead. Now, Spira is ours again. Working together… Now we can make new homes for ourselves, and new dreams. Although I know the journey will be hard, we have lots of time. Together, we will rebuild Spira. The road is ahead of us, so let’s start out today. Just, one more thing…The people and the friends that we have lost, or the dreams that have faded…Never forget them.”

Yuna was planning on sacrificing herself to bring peace to Spira. She kept it a secret from Tidus so he would not be sad. His cheerfulness made her journey happy. She lives, but Tidus fades away in the end. He kept the fact that he was a dream a secret so Yuna would not hesitate defeating Sin. She never wanted to forget him.

Axel: “As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

She was always very guarded about sharing those memories with anyone else. Axel always gave off the exact same sense of secretive sentimentality that Yuna did when it came to his memories. He had the sense of a person who was heartbroken over a lost love. The day Axel said his memories of the past were what he valued most, it’s titled “Too Precious to Lose” in Roxas’ Diary. Yuna would whistle into the air sometimes. Tidus taught her how. It was like Axel eating ice cream all the time. It just helped him feel connected to his memories.

Lea: “I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people’s memories, I can live forever.”

Isa: “I know I won’t forget you. Believe me, I try all the time.”

Lea: “See, I’m immortal!”

Sunset and waning crescent moon are used as symbols of death, tragedy and parting in both games. The final stage of a cycle. The ending. I would argue lost love as well. Isa basically died and Axel is left with nothing but the memories of him as he looks into the sunset. The Moon Rabbit is a symbol of self-sacrifice, just like Yuna. Moon characters in general tend to be very empathetic and willing to sacrifice themself. Tidus couldn’t accept Yuna sacrificing herself. Same as Axel. Sun characters are bright and cheerful and inspire hope and optimism.

The letter χ can be pronounced both “key” and “kye” (leading to some confusion) and symbolizes the perfect crossing of light and darkness. The χ-blade can be forged via a high-dimensional clash between those two poles. It is believed that the Recusant’s Sigil also derives from χ. —KH3D Glossary

Gilding the lily is basically trying to improve what is already perfect. Basically you think I’m imagining signs of a romance when it’s a perfectly good friendship, right? I’m just seeing what I want to see. I guess that’s one big disagreement I have with you right there. I don’t think their relationship, even platonically, was handled well. At all. Isa and Lea’s platonic friendship turned out to be pretty pointless in canon, if you ask me. Didn’t amount to much of any substance or value. That’s not what I wanted to see.

Xehanort: Behold… These lifeless keys used to be full of power–united with the hearts of their masters. On this barren soil, Keyblades of light and darkness were locked in combat…as a great Keyblade War raged. Countless Keyblade wielders gave up their lives, all in search of one, ultimate key. And it will soon belong to me…

TAV’s main theme was their unbreakable connection. No matter what, they always found their way back to each other. That’s the power of the heart. What was Lea/Isa’s main theme in canon? Anything involving the Recusant’s Sigil? Nope. Anything involving the power of the heart? Y’know, what Kingdom Hearts is all about? Nope. Just sequel-baiting. I guess Isa was also a plot device for fan pandering, too. I don’t view anything in the story with a shipping bias. I think Lea/Isa was written like total shit in canon. Doesn’t matter how much I like the ship. I’m not going to lie to myself and say it was well-written. I know how to separate my wishes from my observations.

Terra: Yep, hard to believe there are so many worlds out there besides our own. The light is their hearts, and it’s shining down on us like a million lanterns.

And I am just observing what is there. I think that everything you said sounds more true of all the Axel/Roxas arguments I’ve seen than Lea/Isa ones. People seeing things beyond a platonic friendship when there is absolutely no textual basis in the story to support that interpretation. It all comes down to artistic intent. You analyze the story the same way you would during English class. Critical reading. Why are events being presented in such a manner? What message is the author conveying?

Xemnas: There hangs the heart of all hearts–Kingdom Hearts–shining down on us at last. See the countless hearts that have gathered? Hearts full of rage…hate…sadness…and bliss. There, in the sky, hangs the promise of a new world.

There is a TON of evidence supporting the existence of artistic intent for a very specific idea. Xehanort is trying to forge the X-blade by initiating a clash of opposite polarities. An idea inspired by Freemasonry, hence the black and white checkerboard theme associated with him. Scala ad Caelum is Latin for “Stairway to Heaven”, a big idea in Masonry. And Masonry uses the two luminaries, the Sun and Moon, to represent Light and Darkness. The letter “X” is all about opposite polarities, as well as death and endings. Saïx sports a big fat “X” on his face as his defining characteristic (which is never explained). Lea and Isa are described as complementary opposites in the novel.

Naminé: We don’t disappear… We’re only reborn.

Axel: I’m not like you and Roxas. It’s because I don’t have a heart. I don’t want to disappear, but I’m not upset or sad about it.

There are seven Guardians of Light. There are seven colors of the rainbow. Light is made up of seven different colors. Lea’s Keyblade is based on the Phoenix, a solar bird. It represents the red Rubedo stage of alchemy. It’s called the “Flame Liberator”. In alchemy, the Phoenix symbolizes “the freeing of the spirit from the bounds of the physical”. It’s about spiritual enlightenment and eternal life. They made a point in Days of showing that cutscene about the red sunset right from the get go. It was important.

Axel: Hey, Roxas. Bet you don’t know why the sun sets red. You see, light is made up of lots of colors. And out of all those colors, red is the one that travels the farthest.

The Sun sets red because red light travels the farthest. In Luxord’s tarot deck, “The Sun” is Hazard Gear.The Sun card represents a feeling of optimism and fulfillment, and the dawn which follows the darkest of nights. Saïx’s weapon in this category is called “Light Year”, and is shaped like a Reiki angel. Reiki is a method of energy healing using one’s aura—their inner light. The weapon has a pale yellow aura. The color of renewed hope and emerging spiritual awareness. Axel’s weapon in this category is a red weapon called “Omega Trinity”, and it is shaped like a transmutation circle. The name is referring to the Tria Prima of alchemy. Sulfur (Sol), Mercury (Luna), and Salt (the Philosopher’s Stone).

“The Moon” is Dual Gear. Dual means involving two parts. The Moon represents your fears and illusions. Axel’s weapon in this gear is “Dive Bomb”, as in Dive into the Heart. And Saïx’s is “Luminary”. It’s also shaped like Reiki, and is gold. The ultimate aura color of enlightenment. Both “The Sun” and “The Moon” are shaped like the 4 of Pentacles. This card indicates that you are trying very hard to cling onto people or possessions out of fear of losing them. “The Sun” is pink, which is associated with love and forgiveness in Tarot.

Saïx: Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts. The rage of the Keyblade releases those hearts. They gather in darkness, masterless and free…until they weave together to make Kingdom Hearts. And when that time comes, we can truly, finally exist.

Isa is a Moon character, and pretty much all of his weapons are feminine terms. He has a weapon called “Queen of the Night”. In Japan it is known as “Gekka Bijin”, meaning “Beauty under the Moon”. This white flower only blooms one night a year, usually under a full moon. This weapon is listed under Glory Gear. In Luxord’s deck, this is “Strength”. This card is about inner strength and the human spirit’s ability to overcome any obstacle. It represents the ability to ‘tame’ your animal instincts, gut reactions, and raw emotions, and channel them accordingly. The symbol on the card it the Two of Cups. It represents a partnership that is built on the union of forces, a strong connection and a balanced and equal partnership. Each party’s emotions are intertwined with the other’s, and each participant’s feelings have profound effects on the other. It symbolizes the joy of two becoming one.

“See anything interesting out there, Poppet?” Xigbar patted her on the shoulder.

Meanwhile, Axel plopped down on the sofa and pretended he wasn’t listening in. Xion turned to look up at Xigbar. “Just Kingdom Hearts.”

“Is it all that interesting?”

“It’s kind of pretty.”

Xigbar let out a low chuckle. Axel didn’t see what Xigbar found so entertaining about that reply. But then he could never quite follow what he was thinking.

Xion looked rather confused herself. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing—you’re just making so much progress.” Xigbar kept laughing, as if there was an uproariously good joke in it somewhere.

He has another weapon with the same shape called “King of the Night”. In alchemy, the Sun is the Red King, the Moon is the White Queen. This is Raging Gear. In Luxord’s deck, this is “The Devil”. The Devil card represents your shadow side and the negative forces that constrain you and hold you back. The Devil card appears in a reading when you have been tricked into thinking you have no control over your shadow self or these negative forces, and that you can never break free from their hold. It is shaped like the 10 of Pentacles, which is an omen for success, no matter what your current lot in life is. Axel’s weapon is the yellow stage of the Phoenix wings. Citrinitas represents “the transmutation of silver into gold,” “the yellowing of the lunar consciousness”,  and “the dawning of the solar consciousness inherent in one’s being”.

In alchemy, the Red King and White Queen are associated with the Emperor and Empress arcanas. The Empress represents the feminine principle and is Valiant Gear. Axel’s weapon is purple and called Double Edge. It is shaped like the Third Eye chakra, which is on the forehead, and controls the ability to “see” things with the mind’s eye. It’s where Saïx’s “X” scar is located. Saïx’s weapon is “Moonset”, which is when the sun rises and the moon disappears in the sky. It’s pink and shaped like the symbol of Vesta, a goddess of chastity known as the “Keeper of the Sacred Flame”.

The Emperor represents the masculine principle and is Ultimate Gear. Axel’s weapon is called “Rapid Spinner” which refers to the chakras and is shaped like the Crown Chakra. The highest one that connects a person to higher consciousness. Saïx’s weapon is called Horoscope and is shaped like Venus/Sagittarius (a fire sign). It is pink, an aura associated with love, affection, compassion, healing, and a new or newly revived romantic relationship.

Star and Crescent—the symbol on Isa’s jacket in the epilogue—is a Sun and Moon symbol meaning a union of complementary opposites, and romantic love. Alchemy is all about a union of complementary opposites. The Sun and Moon’s marriage and sexual union is a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone, along with the Phoenix, gold, and the color red. It’s all there in the story. I certainly didn’t put it there. The writers did. Some people might just say that Sun and Moon imagery is not necessarily romantic. 99% of the time it is, though. But if ALL that wasn’t enough, there’s the way Axel was paralleled with the Beast.

Beast: The last rose petal is about to fall… When it does, I’ll lose– No! I can’t bear it–I don’t even want to think about it!

Axel: I guess the closest thing we Nobodies have got is our past. You know, memories of the stuff we couldn’t bear to lose, back when we couldn’t bear to lose it.

The Beast’s rose is like Axel’s memories. The rose represents the Beast’s last hope to return to his past. And it also represents his desire to love and be loved by another in return.

Beast: Belle… I couldn’t bear to see you…or the other’s hurt. A master protects his castle… I don’t want to lose you.

Roxas: That still doesn’t explain what love is… Is love fighting to protect what’s most important to you? Where does its power come from?

Love is fighting to protect what’s most important to you.

Roxas: I found out about love on today’s mission–that it’s something powerful.

Axel: That’s true. It is. But I’ll never get to experience it.

Axel’s memories are what he considers most important to him. “Because that’s all we have to remember the pain of losing something.” The Beast is tired of strength. He wants to experience love, but thinks he never will. Axel doesn’t care about Xemnas’ promise of power. He wants to complete Kingdom Hearts to experience love, but thinks he never will. Wink wink, nudge nudge. I’m sorry, but you don’t just write things this way by accident. It’s all intentional.

Axel: Love is what happens if there’s something really special between two people.

Roxas: More special than friends? Like…if they’re best friends? Inseparable?

Axel: Well, you can care about your friends, I guess, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m not imagining any of it.

Roxas wouldn’t let it go. “Do you think we would, if we had hearts?”

“Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, I bet you’ll be able to figure it out.”

The magic words again, Axel thought. It’ll all make sense when Kingdom Hearts is complete. But was that true? No one had ever seen it happen before. So who knew?

Still, all they could do was believe in it. Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts…

It all supports the idea of Lea and Isa originally being viewed as a romantic pairing by the writers. I don’t get what you mean by me giving my theories as real. I’m not claiming to be a Square-Enix insider or anything. I post my opinions and I assume that the people reading are smart enough to decide for themselves whether they find them persuasive or not. I don’t have to force anyone to think anything. If the evidence is strong enough people will be able to see it themself.

[phoenix-downer]

Writter ask -> 1,4,6,23&25 /9,10,14&26 for Those Who Dreamed ! Andonce again, I love your writing ! 💙

General Asks

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction?

I can’t even remember! I told myself stories out loud based on characters I knew and drew pictures for them when I was a kid. I had no idea what I was doing was creating fanfiction, basically, but there you have it! I didn’t start writing my ideas until I was older, but I’d still consider what I did back then creating fanfiction (I just had no name for it).

4) What is your favorite genre to write for?

It’s hard to pick just one… I really like adventure, romance, and angst, though not necessarily in that order. I like writing fluff, too. And earn-your-happy-ending is my favorite kind of ending, both to write and to read.

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

Thankfully, my truly cringeworthy writing never made it onto the internet, and I’m actually by and large happy with what I have posted so far (it helps that I just started posting about two years ago now, haha). There are certainly things I would go back and edit now, but in a way it’s nice to keep things as they are to remind myself how much progress I’ve made.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I often listen to music while I’m writing! It really helps me get into the right mood for whatever scene I’m working on.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Oh yes.

I cried when I wrote about Sora getting tortured and norted in Those Who Dreamed. I had to think about what exactly would break him and then inflict it on him. The part where he finds out about what happened to Kairi was what really broke me (and him too, for that matter).

I also cried when I wrote Orpheus and Eurydice and Sora and Kairi asked Kairi if she thinks he’ll remember his friends once he’s dead. Really that whole part where they both know he’s dying and are trying to spend the little time they have left together got me teary.

I’m sure there have been other instances, but those two stick out to me the most.

Those Who Dreamed

9) In Those Who Dreamed, what’s your favorite scene that you wrote?

Either when Sora rescues everyone from the χ-Blade, because he was so excited about saving all of them, or when he gives up his power to be with Kairi. 

10) In Those Who Dreamed, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind?

The ending with Sora giving up his power was the plan right from the start. I decided to add the paopu sharing part later on, but I knew I wanted the two of them to have their hard-earned happily ever after.

14) How did you come up with the title for Those Who Dreamed?

The story is all about restoration, and I wanted the title to reflect that. Before Sora’s friends could only dream of having a reversal of their tragic fates, but he restored their lives to them and restored their friends to them. He made their dreams a reality. 

26) Which part of Those Who Dreamed was the hardest to write?

Probably the stuff in between Sora’s rescue and before the final battle. My first take on it was too dull, and there wasn’t enough going on. Just a bunch of characters sitting around talking about their feelings, basically, and it made that part of the story really drag.

Then I tried to add too much and got overwhelmed by it all. A Treasure Planet world visit with Mickey, Roxas, Naminé, and Xion regrettably had to be cut. It was cool but it was also bogging down the story. RIP Xion bonding with Jim and Max Goof, maybe in another story.

Finally I struck a balance between the two, thanks to input from my beta, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. 

Thanks for the ask! :)