Poor Kairi deserves better... KH is a series that has meant so much to me but at the same time brings so much frustration with the writing that I want to scream.
AHHH its finall out!!! this is such a good essay, i especially like your Aqua and Kairi sections (cause of course it do), but you had such a well rounded, funny, and wholesome critique. 💚
This was well worth the wait. I really appreciate how much your love for the series comes through, here. You dive into what makes the series so special and defend moments that others would call cheesy or dumb, while also not shying away from talking about the stuff that genuinely could be better. And even then, most of the problems you criticize here are writing problems, and therefore, that criticism comes from love of the characters and a desire to see them explored better in the future. (Case in point: KH clearly mishandles its female characters' writing, but they themselves are in no way bad characters, otherwise, we wouldn't keep wishing to see them more.) And finally, I would just like to add that when you were talking about how to incorporate Barrett into KH and you mentioned how the Gullwings were brought in as fairies, the first thing that popped in my head was: "Omg, Fairy Barret!", and I'll treasure this idea forever, now. Anyway, I'm so glad you managed to get this out after all the struggle you had to go through to do so. This is great stuff, and I can't wait to see what's next for you. Cheers!
Thank you so much!! 💖 I know that those moments others would call "cheesy" may actually be "cheesy," but I think that's what appeals to me--it's all so genuine. Not to sound like an old lady but I wish more stories had KH's mindset nowadays, instead of using unnecessary jokes that take you out of the story.
@@toomanycrowns Oh, 100% agree. I need more unabashedly emotionally sincere storytelling. Yes, it may result in some cheese, but that good feeling it provides is unmatched and honestly, necessary, now more than ever.
There are things that i will say: 1. I genuinely want to believe that Kairi turning into Sora was just a beefed up D-Link 2. I want the Disney Tv shows in KH because KH is a closeted Disney TVA show 3. I wish Sora appeared in more Disney Crossovers
Really nice video! I have never played these games myself but I love hearing people talk about it from their own perspectives so this was all very intriguing. I can't wait to hear what people have to say about kh4 ^^
flawless video, the way you summarized all of kairi's mistreatment by the writers and fans was so cathartic, 10/10 would listen to you rant and ramble about it for hours because its what she deserves!!!
I never had an interest in KH aside from seeing the disney crossover scenes out of context, but what you said about KH taking itself seriously despite the obvious wackyness and camp the concept comes with really went straight to my heart. That's what I wish MY favorite stuff did too, but they're too worried about sounding cheesy and silly that they rip out the heart of the stories, when they don't outright disrespect the original stories (yes this is about marvel), wish more studios were as brave as the KH one to take itself seriously.
That's the biggest gripe I have with the MCU: It's so scared of being really sincere that I poke fun at it for that lmao. KH is really sweet for stepping beyond that and I hope that never changes.
Love this video! Fun fact, in the original PS2 version of the game, the scene where Xemnas goes to Aqua’s armor doesn’t appear. It was only added in the final mix which only appeared in Japan two years after the original was released. So it could be that at the time KHII was initially released, the wayfinder trio hadn’t even been fully conceptualized yet, which meant they had to keep things vague. I’m guessing that at the time final mix was released, they had a stronger concept of what they wanted so they could attempt to connect the stories to each other. Which could also be an out of universe explanation why Aqua wasn’t mentioned by Mickey before.
Oh that makes a lot more sense because it really does show that the whole story wasn't planned at the jump. But the way it's been recontextualized over time is clever!
@@toomanycrowns definitely! Tho it's only a theory. I think the wayfinder trio does appear in the secret ending of the original KHII, but only in their armour and they kept it vague enough to speculate what could be going on there. There were so many theories based on the crumbs that were given. It was a wild but fun time haha!
@Too Many Crowns definitely! Especially with KH too. Like it's reputation for being complex isn't entirely unwarranted, but dang, once you're hooked it's so fun to theorize on what's going on
@@Charuchii People in this fandom are so creative and things like theorizing and the March Caprice celebration prove that fr 🥰 People can make fun of these games all they want but we won!
Wonderful video!!! It felt better to watch than other critiques because the feedback was more balanced. It hit the mark on what made the series special and what the series needs to work on (nomura better give kairi some shit to do or i swear)
One thing I hope is addressed eventually is Kairi's "Princess of Heart" status, since the others no longer are that for ✨reasons✨ Giving Kairi her own full-on game could explore that angle better and even have Kairi be tempted by Darkness, or see right through malicious plans due to her pure Light. Roxas getting his own game after KH2 was unexpected and REALLY worked, so I'm a bit disgruntled that Square just doesn't do the same for Kairi because it could work just as well and help build up another character that really needs it at this point I never understood people blaming her for being sidelined, cuz it's not like SHE wrote the story, right? I always chalk it down to favouritism, cuz who needs an interesting character when blue haired "I didn't do anything significant in KH3" Lady is right there onscreen? ✋🙄
@@toomanycrowns Oh I wasn't blaming Aqua directly, moreso people THAT obsessed with her specifically (at least some) that they demean Kairi as inherently worse, which sucks If Nomura had more assistance writing, these hick-ups probably wouldn't exist, or be much smaller at least 🤣
@@PixelHeroViish As a big Aqua fan, I hate seeing people compare her to Kairi and pit them against each other. I saw a video doing that exact thing about a month ago and I was so mad that I could edit my video faster at the time 😭It's so malicious to do.
@@toomanycrowns Absolutely, it really just creates unnecessary conflict that shouldn't be there, especially if the more loved character THEN gets shafted the same way in KH3 for no reason. It's pretty wild
This series is the epitome of "in retrospect..." It holds itself back because it keeps trying to build on their original story while balancing increasingly unrelated Disney content. The Dark Seeker Saga should've ended with KH2; remove the foretellers storyline and introduce Aqua, Terra, Ventus, and Vanitas as new characters (giving the latter two different designs if you wanna remove the Sora/Roxas/Ventus/Vanitas connections) and flesh out the human nobodies. Plus give Kairi as much relevance as Riku and Sora.
Great video! I'm glad you could finally put it out, sounds like it was a real odyssey to put together for so long. I don't really have much to add to what you've said, I think my personal problem with the disney stuff isn't the silly cartoon stuff (I love it) so much as... Well... It's Disney... KH is a guilty pleasure to me simply because of that, which is a shame because it has so much good going on shadowed by Disney The Company (and Squeenix is not much better either). Have you played the original FF7? I havent touched the remake besides the demo (expensive) so I don't know what it's really like, but I played the original relatively recently than everyone else and found it a game that is both better and worse than it's pop culture status suggests. It's so good and so bad and in general so Interesting and there's not a lot of people that actually talk about it's characters and themes as actually presented. If you ever feel interested in it, the original game's translation is rushed and flawed, but there is a fan retranslation out there. Sorry for getting on an FF7 rant all of a sudden, but this video really reminded me how misused the FF7 characters are in it, if they're even there at all. I'm not much of a FF fan (FF9 is my favorite and that's kind of it) but in general I wish KH used that asked a little more, because for the most part it does feel like there's a bias to the Disney side of things especially in KH3. Really loved the TWEWY stuff in DDD though, as a huge fan of that game it was cool to see the characters in here and hope they show up again.
Thank you! I haven't played the og FF7. the lack of an official translation is what honestly makes me steer clear of it 😭 I also wish the FF characters really were given more narrative weight like the Disney characters are too. I think it'd be really fun to see their roles develop and interact with the other characters more. But I get why the og FF7 is popular from looking at its story, characters, etc., and the blocky art style is really cute lol
@@toomanycrowns Yeah, I think the story of FF7, while very flawed, is still relevant today and is way more interesting than what the audience (and SE itself lol) gives it credit for. Everyone keeps talking about pointless shipping wars or superfluous compilation elements (don't look into FF7 as a franchise, now That is an unsalvageable mess) when the game has so much more to say. It does shoot itself in the foot with some stuff, but I'm glad I played it... It won't be for a while since it's still fresh in my mind, but I fully intend to play that fantranslation sometime. Until then though I should go and play the KH games I'm missing, because I uh somehow played most of them except KH1 (and a couple of others)😓
@@meltdownremix1996 Yeah I see specific character names on Twitter because of shipping and I always roll my eyes into the back of my head. Nothing wrong with shipping but reducing a work to just that is usually very unwarranted and kinda embarrassing lmao
Quick note about your fridging explanation: It does not affect only female characters in male-dominated plots! It affects to fathers/uncles. Basically, the stock plot of "village is burned down and everyone whom the hero loves is killed" is basically a plot that is kickstarted with fridging. EDIT: For example, Luke Skywalker's uncle and aunt were both fridged.
Came across this ever so late in the game, but never too late to comment, I hope! And yeah, a lot in this video is stuff I co-sign even as someone who followed the WHOLE series, game by game, as it released. From KH1 to KH3, the ride has been long and... often _frustrating_, and I had actually not played Memory of Melody yet but I accept being spoiled like this because I feel like if I REALLY cared I would've played it already... Anyway! In my opinion the best chance Kairi had for a game of her own would have been Coded. While it is true that Coded's story of "even digital avatars can become real people" is something that was reused for more interesting things in KH3 and DDD, I think letting that game SOMEHOW connect to Kairi (perhaps they could use how Xion's memories returned to Sora and ended up in the journal form Some Kind of Bond between Kairi and the Journal since Xion is Sora's memories of Kairi) could have made for all the training she needs- she basically hooks herself up to the Matrix and goes through Sora's adventure in KH1, thereby getting a lot of training in and can emerge on the other side as an actual fighter! Considering Coded reveals that Sora is carrying the memories of Xion, Roxas and Ventus inside him though, revealing that to Kairi could also give her a much more prominent role in DDD and KH3 since she's suddenly MUCH more in the know than she used to be. Now I can imagine that DDD would have made fans frustrated since it is a BIG part of the plot that the quest is just about Riku and Sora. Maybe we could justify it with them being picked for Mastery Exam since they HAVE trained longer than Kairi, and maybe Kairi could have gone around doing things in the real world with Mickey, form a sort of "side-story" where they investigate stuff outside the slumbering worlds since both Mickey and Kairi would have figured out Sora's carrying a lot inside him. Kairi would probably be a lot more engaged with Sora as well knowing he has a lot of painful memories inside him, maybe she could even try to help ease that pain somehow and give him clues from beyond the waking world- basically try and prevent him from doing the self-sacrificial stuff she knows he'd go through if he knew he carried what he carries inside. And Axel can remain a fire-user rather a Keyblade wielder... even though it IS kind of fitting for him not in an in-universe way, but in an outside-universe way. Roxas was meant to kill him during the first battle they have in KH2 but the dev team liked him so much they gave him WAY more importance. And ever since Axel, the developers favorite, have gotten pretty much everything they can hand him... But, alas... that would require them to give Kairi equal heft in the game, and consider her worthy of exploration to at least the same degree of Riku. But no. It is the Sora Show. The Protagonist must drive everything, that is why the games keep featuring him in some way and why in KH3 we could only let the big boss battles progress when SORA fought them. At least in that way, I don't think the clunky ending was entirely due to development hell. The series continued emphasis of Sora is, in my mind, a very deliberate choice. What I DON'T think is deliberate is stuff like Frozen, which interviews have said they had different plans... but Disney in the 2020's is NOT the same entity it once was, that allowed SquareEnix far more creative leeway in KH1. It's not known HOW they interfered in the Frozen plot, but suspicions are that Elsas breakdown would have turned HER into a boss, or that the reason you go through a big ice castle which is somehow created by Larxene of all people, is because originally it was going to be ELSA that made a massive dark castle as darkness overtook her during a fragile moment. And Disney was NOT going to accept that. Basically it was Pixar who let us do cool stuff like Yeetus Vaneetus and Woody Doesn't Care, along with Big Hero 6 letting Sora play around in a "post-movie" storyline. The highly marketable and lucrative disney princess movies? They do NOT get to make changes, of any kind. And that makes the future a rather worrying prospect, because no matter what comes our way... they will be watched and far more restrained than ever before. It's a shame since the mixture of Disney, Final Fantasy and Original Content is what made the series so charming. But ever since Square Enix realized that people actually LIKE when Final Fantasy crosses over they can just make THEIR OWN cross-over games in Dissidia (yes, this is the officially stated reason for why Final Fantasy is more and more pushed aside in Kingdom Hearts, the devs basically thought they don't need FF in the games now that they have FF crossover at home), and they have far more creative freedom with their own OC content since than Disney will ever allow for their big movies. As a fan of Capcom's fighting game franchise Marvel vs Capcom, we suffered the game Marvel vs Capcom Infinite which was an abysmal letdown due to faults that were half due to Capcom being in economic troubles and saving a LOT of money on the graphics (often reusing models from the previous game Marvel vs Capcom 3, at the time 6 years old), half due to Disney saying that fan-favorites like the X-Men were absolutely forbidden since Fox owned them at the time. Suffice it to say that in this new era of restrictions... it's harder to get excited by new adventures than it used to be. But perhaps that is exactly why Nomura is pushing the "Verum Rex" stuff so much. It's a new mythology he can make use of, another story and set of characters that pushed Kingdom Hearts more towards OC stuff, but also more in the direction of stuff he and SquareEnix can creatively control. He still has leeway to come up with crazy stuff, stuff that will probably be engaging in some way or another. I'm just sad that a game that felt like such a big cross between the stories of my childhood and dreams, Final Fantasy and Disney, will never get the balance back that drew me in in the first place. The world and these companies have just changed too much for that to be possible. It is what it is.
barret wallace and even jessie biggs and wedge are in kh2 as twilight town npcs buuuut they all (esp in barret’s case) got heavily redesigned for the worse
@@toomanycrowns I’ll be on the lookout. Though I did like the original versions and to be honest I quote them quite a bit when discussing lore Olympus. Still, I’ll be on the lookout for that longer video
*Closed captions are up!*
Edit: WHY DID I FORGET TO MENTION SORA BEING IN SMASH
Poor Kairi deserves better... KH is a series that has meant so much to me but at the same time brings so much frustration with the writing that I want to scream.
You get it 😔👏
Plus the fact that Namine being a memory witch is essentially forgotten after CoM (despite her powers affecting Sora all the way to KH3).
KH is my life, and you made so many good points in this video! It was a joy to watch 💖😊 May your heart be your guiding key ✨️
AHHH its finall out!!! this is such a good essay, i especially like your Aqua and Kairi sections (cause of course it do), but you had such a well rounded, funny, and wholesome critique. 💚
Thank you so much!! 😭
I agree about the key blades.
I honestly thought it was weird how everyone had a key blade yet they made it seem like only a select few had one
Damn, the nostalgia that washed over me from reading the description... Wonderful video!
This was well worth the wait.
I really appreciate how much your love for the series comes through, here. You dive into what makes the series so special and defend moments that others would call cheesy or dumb, while also not shying away from talking about the stuff that genuinely could be better.
And even then, most of the problems you criticize here are writing problems, and therefore, that criticism comes from love of the characters and a desire to see them explored better in the future. (Case in point: KH clearly mishandles its female characters' writing, but they themselves are in no way bad characters, otherwise, we wouldn't keep wishing to see them more.)
And finally, I would just like to add that when you were talking about how to incorporate Barrett into KH and you mentioned how the Gullwings were brought in as fairies, the first thing that popped in my head was: "Omg, Fairy Barret!", and I'll treasure this idea forever, now.
Anyway, I'm so glad you managed to get this out after all the struggle you had to go through to do so. This is great stuff, and I can't wait to see what's next for you. Cheers!
Thank you so much!! 💖 I know that those moments others would call "cheesy" may actually be "cheesy," but I think that's what appeals to me--it's all so genuine. Not to sound like an old lady but I wish more stories had KH's mindset nowadays, instead of using unnecessary jokes that take you out of the story.
@@toomanycrowns Oh, 100% agree. I need more unabashedly emotionally sincere storytelling. Yes, it may result in some cheese, but that good feeling it provides is unmatched and honestly, necessary, now more than ever.
@@daybreakartsYT !!!!! Especially now!!!
why the frick not , like ''yeah I got wings what of it?😄!
Although what kind of wings that work on him though ?
There are things that i will say:
1. I genuinely want to believe that Kairi turning into Sora was just a beefed up D-Link
2. I want the Disney Tv shows in KH because KH is a closeted Disney TVA show
3. I wish Sora appeared in more Disney Crossovers
I haven't even played a single KH game but this was a really nice and thorough video about the games I enjoyed watching. Wish it got more attention!
Really nice video! I have never played these games myself but I love hearing people talk about it from their own perspectives so this was all very intriguing. I can't wait to hear what people have to say about kh4 ^^
flawless video, the way you summarized all of kairi's mistreatment by the writers and fans was so cathartic, 10/10 would listen to you rant and ramble about it for hours because its what she deserves!!!
I never had an interest in KH aside from seeing the disney crossover scenes out of context, but what you said about KH taking itself seriously despite the obvious wackyness and camp the concept comes with really went straight to my heart. That's what I wish MY favorite stuff did too, but they're too worried about sounding cheesy and silly that they rip out the heart of the stories, when they don't outright disrespect the original stories (yes this is about marvel), wish more studios were as brave as the KH one to take itself seriously.
That's the biggest gripe I have with the MCU: It's so scared of being really sincere that I poke fun at it for that lmao. KH is really sweet for stepping beyond that and I hope that never changes.
Great video. Thank you for uploading this. It is nice to hear fans talk about the series.
Love this video! Fun fact, in the original PS2 version of the game, the scene where Xemnas goes to Aqua’s armor doesn’t appear. It was only added in the final mix which only appeared in Japan two years after the original was released. So it could be that at the time KHII was initially released, the wayfinder trio hadn’t even been fully conceptualized yet, which meant they had to keep things vague. I’m guessing that at the time final mix was released, they had a stronger concept of what they wanted so they could attempt to connect the stories to each other. Which could also be an out of universe explanation why Aqua wasn’t mentioned by Mickey before.
Oh that makes a lot more sense because it really does show that the whole story wasn't planned at the jump. But the way it's been recontextualized over time is clever!
@@toomanycrowns definitely! Tho it's only a theory. I think the wayfinder trio does appear in the secret ending of the original KHII, but only in their armour and they kept it vague enough to speculate what could be going on there. There were so many theories based on the crumbs that were given. It was a wild but fun time haha!
@@Charuchii I was too young to see those theories and I didn't get into KH yet but man I do love a good theory here and there!
@Too Many Crowns definitely! Especially with KH too. Like it's reputation for being complex isn't entirely unwarranted, but dang, once you're hooked it's so fun to theorize on what's going on
@@Charuchii People in this fandom are so creative and things like theorizing and the March Caprice celebration prove that fr 🥰 People can make fun of these games all they want but we won!
Wonderful video!!! It felt better to watch than other critiques because the feedback was more balanced. It hit the mark on what made the series special and what the series needs to work on (nomura better give kairi some shit to do or i swear)
Thank you!! I hate those overly negative KH critiques too because they just feel like endless bashing with little nuance ahshsjks
One thing I hope is addressed eventually is Kairi's "Princess of Heart" status, since the others no longer are that for ✨reasons✨
Giving Kairi her own full-on game could explore that angle better and even have Kairi be tempted by Darkness, or see right through malicious plans due to her pure Light. Roxas getting his own game after KH2 was unexpected and REALLY worked, so I'm a bit disgruntled that Square just doesn't do the same for Kairi because it could work just as well and help build up another character that really needs it at this point
I never understood people blaming her for being sidelined, cuz it's not like SHE wrote the story, right? I always chalk it down to favouritism, cuz who needs an interesting character when blue haired "I didn't do anything significant in KH3" Lady is right there onscreen? ✋🙄
You're right but it's not the blue haired queen's fault either, her crown just slipped a lil 😤
@@toomanycrowns Oh I wasn't blaming Aqua directly, moreso people THAT obsessed with her specifically (at least some) that they demean Kairi as inherently worse, which sucks
If Nomura had more assistance writing, these hick-ups probably wouldn't exist, or be much smaller at least 🤣
@@PixelHeroViish As a big Aqua fan, I hate seeing people compare her to Kairi and pit them against each other. I saw a video doing that exact thing about a month ago and I was so mad that I could edit my video faster at the time 😭It's so malicious to do.
@@toomanycrowns Absolutely, it really just creates unnecessary conflict that shouldn't be there, especially if the more loved character THEN gets shafted the same way in KH3 for no reason. It's pretty wild
Finally got around to watching this and it does not disappoint. This is a really well made video!
Yessss so excited this is out! I'm gonna have to wait until later to watch it but im already 👁️👄👁️
34:15 *The BOX*
Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see what else you'll cover
Congratulations you made it 🎉🎉
This series is the epitome of "in retrospect..." It holds itself back because it keeps trying to build on their original story while balancing increasingly unrelated Disney content.
The Dark Seeker Saga should've ended with KH2; remove the foretellers storyline and introduce Aqua, Terra, Ventus, and Vanitas as new characters (giving the latter two different designs if you wanna remove the Sora/Roxas/Ventus/Vanitas connections) and flesh out the human nobodies.
Plus give Kairi as much relevance as Riku and Sora.
Great video! I'm glad you could finally put it out, sounds like it was a real odyssey to put together for so long. I don't really have much to add to what you've said, I think my personal problem with the disney stuff isn't the silly cartoon stuff (I love it) so much as... Well... It's Disney... KH is a guilty pleasure to me simply because of that, which is a shame because it has so much good going on shadowed by Disney The Company (and Squeenix is not much better either).
Have you played the original FF7? I havent touched the remake besides the demo (expensive) so I don't know what it's really like, but I played the original relatively recently than everyone else and found it a game that is both better and worse than it's pop culture status suggests. It's so good and so bad and in general so Interesting and there's not a lot of people that actually talk about it's characters and themes as actually presented. If you ever feel interested in it, the original game's translation is rushed and flawed, but there is a fan retranslation out there.
Sorry for getting on an FF7 rant all of a sudden, but this video really reminded me how misused the FF7 characters are in it, if they're even there at all. I'm not much of a FF fan (FF9 is my favorite and that's kind of it) but in general I wish KH used that asked a little more, because for the most part it does feel like there's a bias to the Disney side of things especially in KH3. Really loved the TWEWY stuff in DDD though, as a huge fan of that game it was cool to see the characters in here and hope they show up again.
Thank you! I haven't played the og FF7. the lack of an official translation is what honestly makes me steer clear of it 😭 I also wish the FF characters really were given more narrative weight like the Disney characters are too. I think it'd be really fun to see their roles develop and interact with the other characters more. But I get why the og FF7 is popular from looking at its story, characters, etc., and the blocky art style is really cute lol
@@toomanycrowns Yeah, I think the story of FF7, while very flawed, is still relevant today and is way more interesting than what the audience (and SE itself lol) gives it credit for. Everyone keeps talking about pointless shipping wars or superfluous compilation elements (don't look into FF7 as a franchise, now That is an unsalvageable mess) when the game has so much more to say. It does shoot itself in the foot with some stuff, but I'm glad I played it... It won't be for a while since it's still fresh in my mind, but I fully intend to play that fantranslation sometime. Until then though I should go and play the KH games I'm missing, because I uh somehow played most of them except KH1 (and a couple of others)😓
@@meltdownremix1996 Yeah I see specific character names on Twitter because of shipping and I always roll my eyes into the back of my head. Nothing wrong with shipping but reducing a work to just that is usually very unwarranted and kinda embarrassing lmao
@@meltdownremix1996 that is true but i love the garbage that is ff7 compilation,its my treasure for sure 🤭
Quick note about your fridging explanation: It does not affect only female characters in male-dominated plots! It affects to fathers/uncles. Basically, the stock plot of "village is burned down and everyone whom the hero loves is killed" is basically a plot that is kickstarted with fridging.
EDIT: For example, Luke Skywalker's uncle and aunt were both fridged.
I understand, but I did say "usually" female characters!
big appreciation for bringing up the colorism issue. big reason why i hesitate getting into this series.
It's definitely a problem but I do still recommend playing the games! They have a lot to offer, but I understand that you're hesitant.
@@toomanycrownsi did enjoy when i was really young, maybe i'll probably give it another shot
Came across this ever so late in the game, but never too late to comment, I hope! And yeah, a lot in this video is stuff I co-sign even as someone who followed the WHOLE series, game by game, as it released. From KH1 to KH3, the ride has been long and... often _frustrating_, and I had actually not played Memory of Melody yet but I accept being spoiled like this because I feel like if I REALLY cared I would've played it already...
Anyway! In my opinion the best chance Kairi had for a game of her own would have been Coded. While it is true that Coded's story of "even digital avatars can become real people" is something that was reused for more interesting things in KH3 and DDD, I think letting that game SOMEHOW connect to Kairi (perhaps they could use how Xion's memories returned to Sora and ended up in the journal form Some Kind of Bond between Kairi and the Journal since Xion is Sora's memories of Kairi) could have made for all the training she needs- she basically hooks herself up to the Matrix and goes through Sora's adventure in KH1, thereby getting a lot of training in and can emerge on the other side as an actual fighter!
Considering Coded reveals that Sora is carrying the memories of Xion, Roxas and Ventus inside him though, revealing that to Kairi could also give her a much more prominent role in DDD and KH3 since she's suddenly MUCH more in the know than she used to be. Now I can imagine that DDD would have made fans frustrated since it is a BIG part of the plot that the quest is just about Riku and Sora. Maybe we could justify it with them being picked for Mastery Exam since they HAVE trained longer than Kairi, and maybe Kairi could have gone around doing things in the real world with Mickey, form a sort of "side-story" where they investigate stuff outside the slumbering worlds since both Mickey and Kairi would have figured out Sora's carrying a lot inside him. Kairi would probably be a lot more engaged with Sora as well knowing he has a lot of painful memories inside him, maybe she could even try to help ease that pain somehow and give him clues from beyond the waking world- basically try and prevent him from doing the self-sacrificial stuff she knows he'd go through if he knew he carried what he carries inside. And Axel can remain a fire-user rather a Keyblade wielder... even though it IS kind of fitting for him not in an in-universe way, but in an outside-universe way. Roxas was meant to kill him during the first battle they have in KH2 but the dev team liked him so much they gave him WAY more importance. And ever since Axel, the developers favorite, have gotten pretty much everything they can hand him...
But, alas... that would require them to give Kairi equal heft in the game, and consider her worthy of exploration to at least the same degree of Riku. But no. It is the Sora Show. The Protagonist must drive everything, that is why the games keep featuring him in some way and why in KH3 we could only let the big boss battles progress when SORA fought them. At least in that way, I don't think the clunky ending was entirely due to development hell. The series continued emphasis of Sora is, in my mind, a very deliberate choice. What I DON'T think is deliberate is stuff like Frozen, which interviews have said they had different plans... but Disney in the 2020's is NOT the same entity it once was, that allowed SquareEnix far more creative leeway in KH1. It's not known HOW they interfered in the Frozen plot, but suspicions are that Elsas breakdown would have turned HER into a boss, or that the reason you go through a big ice castle which is somehow created by Larxene of all people, is because originally it was going to be ELSA that made a massive dark castle as darkness overtook her during a fragile moment. And Disney was NOT going to accept that. Basically it was Pixar who let us do cool stuff like Yeetus Vaneetus and Woody Doesn't Care, along with Big Hero 6 letting Sora play around in a "post-movie" storyline. The highly marketable and lucrative disney princess movies? They do NOT get to make changes, of any kind.
And that makes the future a rather worrying prospect, because no matter what comes our way... they will be watched and far more restrained than ever before. It's a shame since the mixture of Disney, Final Fantasy and Original Content is what made the series so charming. But ever since Square Enix realized that people actually LIKE when Final Fantasy crosses over they can just make THEIR OWN cross-over games in Dissidia (yes, this is the officially stated reason for why Final Fantasy is more and more pushed aside in Kingdom Hearts, the devs basically thought they don't need FF in the games now that they have FF crossover at home), and they have far more creative freedom with their own OC content since than Disney will ever allow for their big movies. As a fan of Capcom's fighting game franchise Marvel vs Capcom, we suffered the game Marvel vs Capcom Infinite which was an abysmal letdown due to faults that were half due to Capcom being in economic troubles and saving a LOT of money on the graphics (often reusing models from the previous game Marvel vs Capcom 3, at the time 6 years old), half due to Disney saying that fan-favorites like the X-Men were absolutely forbidden since Fox owned them at the time. Suffice it to say that in this new era of restrictions... it's harder to get excited by new adventures than it used to be.
But perhaps that is exactly why Nomura is pushing the "Verum Rex" stuff so much. It's a new mythology he can make use of, another story and set of characters that pushed Kingdom Hearts more towards OC stuff, but also more in the direction of stuff he and SquareEnix can creatively control. He still has leeway to come up with crazy stuff, stuff that will probably be engaging in some way or another. I'm just sad that a game that felt like such a big cross between the stories of my childhood and dreams, Final Fantasy and Disney, will never get the balance back that drew me in in the first place. The world and these companies have just changed too much for that to be possible. It is what it is.
barret wallace and even jessie biggs and wedge are in kh2 as twilight town npcs buuuut they all (esp in barret’s case) got heavily redesigned for the worse
Hey what happened to you lord Olympus videos? I can’t find them on your channel. Did they get deleted?
I unlisted them and I'm working on a remade version of both into one big video. I hope you like it when it's done!
@@toomanycrowns I’ll be on the lookout. Though I did like the original versions and to be honest I quote them quite a bit when discussing lore Olympus. Still, I’ll be on the lookout for that longer video
1:06:32 *stares at the Naruto fandom*
👍🏾❤️
Kairi deserves better
#JusticeForSpunkyKairi
JUSTICE FOR SPUNKY KAIRI LET'S GOOOO
【ｐｒｏｍｏｓｍ】 🤪
You're telling me the game where turning evil is represented by skin getting darker has a colorism problem???? 🤯