Kingdom Hearts

I mean, technically, if they were going purely off the Japanese, but.

The weird thing that I'm still not sure I get is that I feel like they came up with the title "Kingdom Hearts" even before they decided to use the word "Kokoro" somehow, which doesn't quite make sense to me. It seems like it just came up in the talks with Disney and sorta stuck. Almost like they're translating to English, then have to translate back into Japanese.

"Kingdom Hearts" the. Entity? Conglomeration. Thingy. Is always said in English. Or, I mean. Engrish. "Kingdom Heartsu". Same with the Heartless. "Heartlessu".

It's only when they're talking about, like. Individual hearts. Or in, like, the Ansem Reports. Where they talk about "Kokoro" and stuff.

Like, when a Heartless is slain by the keyblade it releases a kokoro and that goes to Kingdom Hearts. Is roughly how a sentence would be structured.

But then things get weirder in Birth By Sleep where the Evil Queen asks Terra to get Snow White's "shinzou" (which is the Japanese word for the organ that pumps blood) and Terra has seemingly never heard of a shinzou before, and asks whether she wants Snow White's kokoro.

So I feel like this series might actually make even less sense in Japanese. Because shinzou and kokoro aren't really related concepts in Japanese, and so there's no reason for Terra to make that mistake, but he does anyway, because that linguistic confusion exists in English.

edited 24th Apr '17 1:21:04 PM by unnoun

It could be sorta like Space Dandy, where the script was originally written and made in English.

Also Diz's theory was that Sora and Ansem retained a sense of self as Heartless because they themselves chose to discard their hearts.

By Japanese writers, and a director who doesn't like how the song titles are in English because they're too confusing?

edited 24th Apr '17 1:22:27 PM by unnoun

Also, while 心 can mean "mind" or "soul" as well as "heart", the thing about a lot of words in Japanese is that their meanings rarely carry 1-to-1 with any English word and what word should be used is dependent entirely on context. In the context of Kingdom Hearts, "heart" is the correct translation here and "mind" would be inaccurate.

Understanding Japanese can be really hard because a lot of their language doesn't translate well into English due to context connotations. While translating from a dictionary certainly is possible, you'll end up missing a lot of potential meaning if you don't understand the context in which those words are commonly used.

edited 24th Apr '17 1:24:24 PM by Zelenal

well, yeah. Space Dandy was made by japanese writers, and it's possible to direct something in one language while disliking aspects of it

honestly the song titles being in english actually add credence to my theory of it being originally directed in english

hell most english speakers hate english

edited 24th Apr '17 1:23:51 PM by EpicBleye

I mean, the novels and Jiminy's Journal frequently talk about the Nobodies having "kokoro" in the context of their "minds" and them thinking and stuff, even though they also talk about not having "kokoro" in the sense of them having "hearts" and feelings.

So.

Again, I legitimately think a lot of the series cosmology actually makes even less sense in Japanese than it does English.

EDIT: I mean, even in KH 1, the heart that Dr. Finklestein makes looks like a "shinzou" and even beats like one.

And I think the frog is still used to give the heart "pulse" like the one in your wrist.

...In Japanese that scene is really weird come to think of it.

Like, they're definitely saying kokoro. But that thingy looks a lot more like a shinzou.

I mean, guess a metaphysical heart that you'd call "kokoro" wouldn't look like anything, but. It definitely isn't related to the physical heart at all.

Why that heart looks like it does literally only makes sense in English, because we use heart to describe the aspect of our physical nature that pumps blood and the aspect of our metaphysical, spiritual, emotional, mental nature that feels emotions and things.

EDIT: Also, Jack and Dr. Finklestein sound a little weird in Japanese.

EDIT: Like, that whole sequence is weird, because they take a "container with a lock" and then try giving it "pulse" from a frog, "terror" from a spider, "fear" from nails on a chalkboard, "hope and despair" from a pair of snakes eating each other, and then "memory" from a Xion (er, Shion, the flower, like forget-me-nots) and "surprise" from a jack-in-the-box.

We don't normally associate "memory" with the spiritual heart in English, and they don't normally associate pulse with it in Japanese, so we have a sequence that doesn't make sense in any language.

edited 24th Apr '17 2:10:01 PM by unnoun

The series' central concept must be very weird in Japan if the language has no tradition of metaphorically putting emotion and conscience in that particular organ.

What about instances where the characters identify the heart as specifically being in the chest area (i.e. when Sora points to Winnie the Pooh's chest telling him that he'll always be with him in there). Do those instances still make sense in Japanese?

edited 24th Apr '17 2:22:16 PM by DrDougsh

The first game's Halloween Town is one of my favorites in the series, and the most confusing to me.

Especially because, like. I can't tell whether we're meant to infer that the heart they made "worked" or not.

The moment Dr. Finklestein made it, the Heartless go wild and start attacking people, despite the guidance system Halloween Town evidently already had. Is that because it wasn't a real heart, or because it was, and they could smell it like chum in the water and it drove them into a feeding frenzy?

In the Ansem Reports, he says that the Heartless responded only to "the living" and. Do Halloween Town's residents not qualify?

Oogie isn't able to get it to work to control the Heartless, but then, Jack and Dr. Finklestein planned on hooking it up to their guidance system and not, y'know, eating it. So I'm not sure to what extent that counts or proves or disproves anything. Like, if you throw a diesel engine in a sewer and it doesn't make your car run, that doesn't actually say anything about whether it would make your car run if you, y'know, put it in your car and hooked it to the drive train.

But it's also not entirely clear that a "heart" is what their guidance system needed to make the Heartless dance. Like, whether or not it's a real "heart" it might just be that a heart isn't actually the solution to the problem they were trying to solve. And for Oogie's part, maybe having a heart isn't actually helpful to controlling the Heartless, but more of an impediment. Maybe???

Also, their experiment involves a Search Ghost strapped into a table, and it stays there the entire game. Is it dead? Why doesn't it use the teleporting abilities the Search Ghosts have to get away.

I mean, when "Heart" is in capital letters, it usually said in English. "Kingdom Hearts" or "Heartless".

I'm. Not an expert about Japanese culture and history and metaphor and stuff. But I think the reason it works in English is that we use one word "heart" for both the physical and metaphorical concepts. Whereas Japanese has them as two completely separate words.

...I don't know this???

edited 24th Apr '17 2:47:04 PM by unnoun

The valentines heart is a pretty universal symbol at least as far as Japan goes as is the comcept behind it. I don't think the symbolism is lost there.

But that Heart looks more like a woman's ass than the thing beating in the chest.

I mean you can go to any Magical Girl anything and see the concept is not lost at all.

I mean, really all that means that they get the concept of the heart being in the chest, (which, I mean, the other part of the metaphysical heart is the idea that it's the 'core' of someone's being, and the thoracic region is roughly central on the body) but not necessarily it being the thing that pumps blood and is situated between the lungs.

Without speaking to a native Japanese speaker I doubt we'll ever clear this up.

Anyway, I'm still lost on "Ansem". He was, by far, the most "human" of the Heartless. He is not simply driven by instinct like most of his kind, which are much like animals. The Mushrooms are weird, but they seem to exist to remind us Dark Is Not Evil. Maybe. A Heartless is born from Darkness...

Does that mean when a Heartless is born, it also spawns a "soul"? Can the Heartless have souls? They have no Hearts, despite coming from Hearts. Spawning from them. But...

Why is this game for babies so confusing?

The only way I can imagine "Ansem" working is if he had a soul but no body of his own. Maybe.

Give Nomura enough time and I'm sure he'll decide that Heartless can eventually grow their own souls if they want it bad enough.

The game pretty clearly states that heartless born by someone with a strong will create strong heartless. Combined with Xehanort/Ansem's work on artificial heartless, it's no surprise that his heartless was so strong and sentient.

Also

I think strong will only accounts for how strong your Nobody becomes. The strength of your Heartless, if I'm not mistaken, depends on the amount of Darkness you have in your heart. Which makes sense, since Sora had the will to spawn a human Nobody, but still only spawned a lowly Shadow Heartless.

It's a joke from that guy streaming this game blind. The one who worked in QA.

He's doing it on Proud Mode, and makes jokes about the difficulty being "for babies" when he gets wrecked.

Which is often.

edited 24th Apr '17 2:59:06 PM by PolarPhantom

I mean, we know he doesn't have a body. It's what he needs Riku's for.

Without Riku, Ansem is just a brown robe.

We even see Riku's body covered in darkness and then it changes into Ansem's face and stuff, so. I get the distinct impression that the humanoid appearance we see and associate with Ansem is just Riku's body after magical/darkness-based shapeshifting.

I mean. Debatable.

Like, whenever we see him he's talking about hearts and darkness.

He first shows up to see the door to Destiny Islands' Heart, and the Islands disappear not long after, like when a Heartless gets to a world's heart.

In DDD it's said that his role in the Nort Plan was to get the seven princesses of heart, and keep them so they could be used to forge the X-Blade, but when the seven princesses are gathered he tries to kill Kairi, and lets her get away without going after her, and then just grins at Aurora and leaves through the keyhole when she wakes up.

And then there's his weird love/lust poetry.

"Consummate the great heart" is really weird, sexually charged language. Especially after the word "ravage". And before "progeny". Heartless reproduce by stealing hearts, which is also a feeding mechanism for them, so.

Like, he's basically telling his Heartless brethren to eat and fuck Kingdom Hearts with him. If you think about it from a Heartless's perspective.

I mean, ninja'd but will is more of a Nobody thing. The strength of a Heartless is more about how dark a heart was.

edited 24th Apr '17 3:18:38 PM by unnoun

When did that happen?

So, he's like Sephy? Driven by instinct, but with an intellect to match.

Offscreen, but she tells you about it when you meet her.

edited 24th Apr '17 3:07:27 PM by unnoun

Maybe he thought "Sort out the pad first, then get the gurls. I don't want them thinking I'm messy!"

I mean, instead of taking them to The World That Never Was, where Xemnas is gathering the Thirteen Dark Seekers, and has a castle, and a prison cell, or the Keyblade Graveyard where the Seven Lights and Thirteen Darknesses are supposed to clash, Ansem heads to The End of The World, made of destroyed worlds and connected to/part of the Realm of Darkness.

Also, when we see Ansem afterwards he's shapeshifted his new body to look like Riku's again to make fun of him while he stands on the beach.

And later on he tells Kingdom Hearts to fill him with the power of darkness, which doesn't help the really weird food/sexual vibes with it he has going on.

I mean, the worst part is that apparently the Kingdom Hearts at the end there was fake.

Xigbar says that they needed to get thirteen empty vessels and hook them up to a fake Kingdom Hearts. And fill them with Xehanort's heart and mind.

Ansem had a fake Kingdom Hearts.

If Ansem and Xemnas ever talked to each other and cared about Master Xehanort's plans, the Organization could have gone to The End of the World, got Norted, and then clashed with the Princesses.

...Also, if that's the End of the World after it's been cleaned up, I dunno what it'd look like messy. It's already made of jumbled up bits of worlds mashed together like different flavors of congealed soup, with gummi blocks everywhere you look.

According to Days and KHII, Sora did the Hades Cup, and according to Days he fought Kurt Zisa, and there was around two to three weeks between him completing the Final Keyhole, and Ansem being defeated. So there are three weeks of time where Sora was sidequesting, where Ansem and Xemnas had everything they needed for Master Xehanort's plan, and did fuck all with it.

I mean. Again, debatable, but I don't quite have any counterarguments except to note that 50% of his vocabulary seems to consist of the word "darkness". It's almost literally once a sentence. Very one-track mind.

Sometimes Ansem almost strikes me as more like a parrot that learned how to talk as a party trick.

edited 24th Apr '17 3:51:39 PM by unnoun