Kingdom Hearts

Light is stronger than DARKNESS so you need more DARKNESS to be equal

I see. Any reason for 7 and 13, specifically?

7 is lucky and 13 is unlucky.

also they add up to 20.

Oooohhhh. Xehenort and his Darknesses are kind of like Horcruxes from Harry Potter. Ok. That makes sense. A sentence I deleted from my thing was literally 'Its not like its exactly hurting Xehenort in anyway to create more like it did for, say, Voldemort'.

In that case though, couldn't Sora and Co just destroy maybe one or two darknesses and just call it a day? If they specifically need 13, all they need to technically do it make sure 13 is never possible.

I think that'd only work on current Xehanort because of all the time travel

...well, yeah, that's kind of the problem with the way this series handles the idea of death. All of these instances do lose their stakes and things do fall apart because of it. I mean, people might not just come back from the dead automatically, but would you really argue that within this series' logic, Tarzan would not be able to bring his parents or Kala's child back to life if he knew the right magic? That Mulan could not just bring back all the people who died in that village?

Like, death may "exist", but it's pretty easily reversible going by the series' apparent logic. Which makes it pretty fundamentally different from real-world death, which leans toward being permanent.

The Seekers Xehanort recruited had to meet his criteria, so they all have to have high enough strength and endurance to challenge Sora and his friends without the risk of being defeated so easily. (And since the Nobodies of the Seekers now have a piece of Xehanort's heart in each of them, they are no longer really Nobodies with frail non-existences, so they won't fade as easily as they did in CoM and KH2.) I also give Xehanort enough credit to make sure all 13 Seekers are available for the final clash.

But death is still tragic if, in your example, Mulan and Tarzan couldn't find the 'right magic' to bring back the dead, so...

It's the same logic as healthcare. The existence of an effective treatment is meaningless to a patient if they can't afford it.

edited 18th Jun '18 4:47:30 AM by sleeping-in-bloom

That comparison doesn't strike me as extremely on point. In one case, if you can't be treated before the illness kills you, you don't get a second chance at it, it's gone forever. you're dead, and that much is final.

In the second, what if you can't afford bringing back the dead right now ? you may very well be able to in five years, or just by asking sora to do what he always does anyway. There, here's your beloved ones you lost. Try not losing them again !

the thing with death in real life is it's one of those things that once it happens, it's final. The difference between something that is final no matter who you are, and something that is only final because you can't afford it for now but will be able to undo in the future, is much more important than you make it seem to be.

edited 18th Jun '18 4:56:04 AM by Yumil

Also, Frollo dies like he did in his movie, twice.

And would you bet a penny that he wouldn't just be resurrected by the power of darkness if we ever return to Hunchback world?

I don't see how this is any different than any other universe with a soul that persists after death. It's not like resurrecting people is something no other media does. Most just get around the issue by making it something hard to achieve.

Disney is usually pretty resolute about dead=dead, though.

In Kingdom Hearts it doesn't seem particularly hard to achieve. Though admittedly, some characters who came back were retconned into never having died in the first place, making the number of characters who have literally died and come back somewhat deceptively low. Still higher than it has any right to be if you want the idea of death to be taken seriously, though.

Like Ansem the Wise. He died at the end of 2. No questions asked. Except not really, he's just in the Realm of Darkness again.

You know, I wonder, since they say time has no meaning in the ROD, what would that have looked like if Aqua and ATW had been talking, and then he got "resed"? Would he pop out, and then instantly pop back in and be like "Whoa! Aqua, five years have passed!"?

Oh no,

Ansem the Wise is the 13th vessel

Ansem the Wise's retconned survival pisses me off because now he's outlived his magnificent voice actor. The character should have stayed dead after Christopher Lee died. Now we have Corey Burton doing a Christopher Lee impersonation that sounds exactly like his Yen Sid voice, which just feels cheap. Come to think of it, it also sounds almost exactly like his Tony Jay impersonation, which makes it even cheaper.

Well, that's what you get for getting involved with cartoons. Now you're working with Comic-Book Time!

edited 18th Jun '18 8:03:16 AM by Redmess

Could be worse. It could be the guy who voiced Ironhide in the old Transformers cartoon, who brought exactly the same voice to Darkseid in Super Friends, and they even used the same voice modulator, so now Darkseid sounds like a transformer.

I don't like the VA change but I don't mind the character coming back. This is at least concievably a situation we didn't know the full extent of anyway and not the worst version of this in the series coughUrsulacough .

I can honestly barely tell the difference between Lee and Burton's Ansem the Wise.

Lee actually said the same thing in regards to Burton's Count Dooku.

Burton's voice sounds... smoother. Lee was audibly aging and his voice sounded a bit more withered.

Honestly, I might not mind except for the fact that Burton uses the exact same voice for other characters in the same series. And because not having Ansem the Wise stay dead seems one hundred percent pointless.

edited 18th Jun '18 5:14:39 PM by DrDougsh

Square Enix has released some recap videos like they promised. They're currently only in Japanese, though.

Riku

Roxas and Xion, aka the plot of Days

There's probably more, but I can't read Japanese and don't feel like trawling through Square's Japanese YouTube page.

I just checked out all those videos.

What's interesting is that hardly even touch on KH 2 or 0.2. It's very focused on COM, 358/2 Days, BBS, 3D and KH 1.

All together, they're only 20 minutes long.

edited 18th Jun '18 8:36:41 PM by MadSkillz