Kingdom Hearts

What do you mean? He's your friendly neighborhood businessman!

...By which I mean, he's already bought your neighborhood. He'll use bistros and movies as a modern bread and circuses, and you'll all congratulate him, because he's so smart and good at making deals!

...What? That's a monopoly? Don't be silly. That would be bad. And nothing bad happens here, see! Everyone is smiling.

They'll all be smiling. Forever.

Series answer, nah. Pretty sure he just started travelling to see the sights or some such. Find new business ventures.

Edit: This pagetopper is a golden 10/10 for shear ridiculousness. I don't think I could top this if I deliberately tried.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 19th 2019 at 2:43:28 PM

I'm not sure that is actually implied. Mostly because the Musketeers world doesn't really fit in continuity with anything else we've seen, and circumstances imply that it is a totally different world from Disney Castle.

Alright, this is gonna be a long post. Wall of text alert.

In the first report, Ansem reminisces on Terranort's potential and how he came to be here. Ansem's impressed by Terranort's intellectual curiosity, which we know to actually be Master Xehanort's' curiosity.

The second report indicates that the Secret Torture Lab was actually Ienzo's idea. By this point, the apprentices were already well on their way down the road to Darkness. Everything from the Ansem Reports up to 8 have already transpired prior to Ansem meeting Mickey for the first time, and the apprentices are already on Terranort's side.

Ienzo basically persuaded Ansem to give them the Secret Torture Lab and then Terranort and the apprentices just ran wild with it. Ansem knew next to nothing about what actually transpired down there. He was completely out of the loop.

The Emblem Heartless already exist by this point. They were created in OG Report 8.

In the third report, Ansem affirms that a Door to Darkness appeared in the castle's basement. Terranort and the apprentices passed through the door into the Realm of Darkness, and that's where their Hearts were corrupted. So they aren't Organization XIII yet - once Xehanort extracts his Heart, he becomes a formless shadow and needs Riku to provide a body - but their Hearts are now pumpin' Darkness.

They've been drinking the Dark-Aid since the Door showed up. This is after the Secret Torture Chamber was built, but before the Emblems were made. OG Report 5 featured Terranort's discovery of the Door. He took the Heartless down to the basement to observe their behavior and they searched out and found it.

Terranort ventured into the Realm of Darkness through the Door, then went back and took the others with him. Since this is after the Chamber's construction, though, that means that they weren't corrupted into siding with Terranort. They just liked the cut of his jib. They were already traitors before they went through the Door.

He waxes poetic on how they have "ceased to be human" but, like, that hasn't actually happened yet. It really just shows how the vengeful hatred is eating away at Ansem's mind.

Interestingly, Isa and Lea are not among those he despised. He is explicitly upset at the six traitors: Even, Aeleus, Dilan, Ienzo, Terranort, and Braig. It was only after Ansem was betrayed and sent to the "realm of nothingness", whatever that means, that they opened their doors and let the punk kids join the party.

The fourth report is just some wankery about what a Heartless is and how Ansem hates everyone so.

Fifth report, he deduces Terranort's intentions to become a Heartless himself, so that he may command the mass-produced Heartless army. Alright, this clarifies things a bit. It's not that Maleficent was already acting before Terranort removed his Heart. It's that his experiments were what revealed the Doors, and his mass-production of Heartless started the hunt to find them before she came along. That makes much more sense and I'm glad I stopped to read these.

Terranort's were better, though. These things are 90% "Arglebarglevengeance" wankery and 10% useful information.

Sixth report, Ansem's able to commune with the Darkness to create a Dark Corridor and escape the "realm of nothingness". Still not quite sure where the f*ck he was. The Final World, perhaps?

By the time he returns, Terranort and the apprentices have already done the thing. Terranort's become a Heartless (kind of), the apprentices are gone, the Organization exists, and Ansem has pretty much zero context on any of this.

Ansem took on the Blood Mummy identity as a way to deceive and manipulate his way in with Terranort and the apprentices, but the dude's super confused when he gets there and everyone's just sort of gone. Except Ratty Blanket Ansem, I guess? Who hasn't left for Destiny Islands and is presently using Hollow Bastion as a staging ground to send out the Heartless to devour worlds?

Actually, it's not clear if Fake Ansem is even here or if Real Ansem is just catching up on the Ansem Reports that were written while he was gone. He knows that Terranort went through with the whole "become a Heartless" thing, but he also abandons his idea of joining up with him and, in the next report, f*cks off to Twilight Town.

Report 7, Sora's in play and is fighting the Heartless while Ansem researches the Nobodies.

Report 8, summary of Chain of Memories.

In Report 9, Ansem explains Namine. Namine was created as a Nobody when Kairi's Heart left her body in Destiny Islands. But because Kairi is a Princess of Heart, her pure-light Heart couldn't become a Heartless, and this consequentially prevented her body from becoming a Nobody. And yet Namine came into existence anyway without her body, because f*ck you, that's why.

It's the same thing that happens to Ven, actually. When his pure-light Heart leaves his body and finds refuge with Sora, his body goes into a comatose stasis instead of fading into the Darkness and/or producing a Nobody. But somehow, Kairi produced a Nobody while keeping her body to herself.

I think that's why Namine looks so different from Kairi. Unlike Roxas, who had Ven's Heart to unconsciously define an appearance for him when Sora kept his Heart for himself, Namine had jack shit. With no continuity of existence from Kairi, no physical body from Kairi, and no consolation prize Heart to give her a self-image, Namine basically invented herself from scratch.

Namine is kind of a Nobody but also kind of not, being as Ansem puts it, "the most fleeting of shadows". She's Princess of Heart byproduct. A wonky side effect of trying to apply Heartless/Nobody metaphysics to a Princess of Heart.

Report 10, Ansem confirms that he convinced Namine to move Sora to Twilight Town to get him away from the Organization-controlled Castle Oblivion.

He clarifies his thoughts on Namine. Namine was created when Sora released Kairi's Heart from his body in Hollow Bastion. Not, as one might assume, when her Heart first left her body in Destiny Islands. This is why Ven doesn't have a weird shadowy waif Nobody-lite.

So what happened was that when Sora accidentally killed himself like an idiot, his Heart became a Heartless and his body became Roxas. Presumably Ven's Heart went with Roxas and that's why he is not involved in this. But when Sora accidentally killed himself like an idiot and his Heart became a Heartless, he also released Kairi's Heart from his body.

So when Sora turned himself into a Heartless, Kairi did not also become a Heartless because of her pure light. Sora's body became Roxas, and then Sora's body also tried to become a Nobody counterpart to the Heartless that Kairi did not become. So Namine was born from Sora's body, but without Sora's body, and also without Kairi's continuity of existence that she should have had.

Basically, Roxas f*cking gave birth to Namine in the Darkness while he was spawning into existence. Namine was then born with the ability to manipulate Sora's memories as well as the memories of people whose Hearts are connected to him such as Riku. She has power over Sora's Heart Social Network due to being an anomalous offspring of the Kairi Heartception.

Which also implies that she has no power over anyone who is not part of Sora's social network. Which would be why she couldn't, say, mind-wipe Marluxia to defend herself. Roxas excepted, the Organization members in Chain of Memories were completely immune to her powers, subject only to the general mind-wankery that is Castle Oblivion with its card-battling and memory-worlds and shit.

He also surmises that the reason both Sora and Terranort retained their consciousness in their Heartless was because they deliberately extracted their Hearts rather than having them taken by force.

11th report, Ansem confirms that Traverse Town is a basically a raft-world made up of broken chunks from worlds that were consumed by the Heartless. People from fallen worlds are pulled through Dark Corridors into Traverse Town. It's like a magnet for people adrift in the Realm Between.

Which, I believe, would be why it doesn't exist anymore after the fallen worlds were restored. Traverse Town existed to serve a function that ceased to be applicable once Fake Ansem was defeated.

12th report, Ansem explains all the stuff we already knew about Roxas from Days but didn't exactly know when II was originally released.

13th report is mostly a summation of all the players on the field.

So, yeah. That was interesting and I think I made the right choice to take a moment and read through them.

Walls of text scare me!

Anyway,does anyone else remember a blog for Kingdom hearts Called the Ansem Report?It was something I used to follow fairly regularly

So, tl:dr the verse's mechanics weren't built for multiple hearts co-habituating on one body, and Sora trying to free Kairi through the Keyblade of People's Heart's essentially broke the universe and resulted in a bunch of weird stuff happening to try and compensate?

Its good to get summaries of all this stuff, some of it kinda all mushed together in my brain and I've begun to lose track. Thank you.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 19th 2019 at 4:02:38 AM

You're welcome.

As an aside, I used to wonder why Roxas/Namine wasn't a very popular ship compared to Roxas/Xion and Roxas/Axel, given that they're counterparts to Sora and Kairi - keeping in mind, I knew nothing about Xion at the time.

Yeah, I, uh...I don't wonder that anymore. Namine is basically Roxas's sister.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 19th 2019 at 2:07:20 AM

Wasn't popular? You clearly aren't looking in the right places.

Though considering Roxas and Xion are both Sora, that makes it selfcest, so is that really any better?

That said, I do remember when Roxas and Namine were hella popular back before 358 came out. But then came Xion, and also there was a large subset of fans who thought that Ven was Roxas until Nomura hard confirmed that Ven was a completely separate character, so they shipped Roxas with Aqua based on the Birth By Sleep video.

Judging by the end of KHIII, it seems Roxas/Xion and Riku/Namine are wheat's being pushed.

How does the ending hint at Riku and Naminé?

An extremely brief scene people love to exaggerate.

Some people think their scene in the finale calls to mind a "prince rescues princess in his chariot" kind of fairy tale scene.

Also I'm not sure you can consider Namine and Roxas siblings either, at least no more then you can consider Roxas and Xion the same.

Xion's more of a clone.

Roxas and Namine were both born of Sora's body, but of different Hearts (Sora and maybe Ven versus Kairi, respectively). Xion was not born of Sora's body, but absorbed some of his memories to form her personality. Specifically, his memories of Kairi.

Roxas and Namine are kinda like Sora had kids with Ventus and Kairi respectively, while Xion's more like a robot Sora accidentally programmed to act like Kairi.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 19th 2019 at 2:42:39 AM

Ienzo turned out to have never betrayed him in III so I'm sure Ansem is just pretending he wasn't all for the mad science himself by saying the little kid who completely believed in him wanted it. It's the kind of thing an asshole like Ansem the Wise would do.

And he totally is for murdering Axel and Saix as well, he sent Riku to do it in Final Mix along with Namine after Axel outlived his usefullness.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 19th 2019 at 1:57:40 AM

Xion is a clone of Sora/Roxas that happens to look like Kairi though. I mean its all very wacky but trying to make one or the other seem less gross with critical thinking doesn't really work.

Lesson is all of Roxas's possible love lifes are disgusting and he's either dating his sister, clone or an adult who should know better.

Ansem didn't experiment on anyone but Xehanort who volunteered, refusing to go further and condemning Xehanort when he found out what he and the others did is what got him thrown in the realm of nothignness.

Edited by lycropath on Mar 19th 2019 at 2:01:50 AM

> while Xion's more like a robot Sora accidentally programmed to act like Kairi.

Shes an imaginary friend who never made it to Foaster's home

So she's Pizza?

Which begs the question of who is Terrance, which is probably Roxas, since Terrance eated Pizza and Roxas essentially "ate" Xion to absorb her memories (or have Sora absorb her memories, but that would make Sora Terrance) and at this point, the metaphor is falling apart.

Oh, he's out for murdering everyone. Even Roxas and Namine, who just got here like yesterday.

I'm just saying, when he's floating in the void like, "These are the people I despise," he names the four apprentices, Braig, and Xehanort. At the time of his "death", those were the only members of Team Terranort.

Lea and Isa evidently did not join the team until after Ansem had already been betrayed and murdered. I think that's potentially an interesting detail.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 19th 2019 at 3:03:48 AM

@lycropath:Except for, the ones who he did, which even Ansem SOD points out in 3. Not even just Roxas or Namine. He did these things too of his own volition, even if he never went as far as Ansem SOD did.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 19th 2019 at 2:04:38 AM

The intent at the time was clearly that the six apprentices turned evil and banished Ansem the Wise, and that detail kind of got scribbled out when Nomura realized the Org. were popular.

Olette's still an option.

And Diz was a bad person himself.

Actually, now that I think about it, he still didn't know Lea and Isa existed when he returned from "nothingness" and found the place empty. But the apprentices were still kicking it in Hollow Bastion when those two signed up.

So, in terms of the timeline, I believe the point when Lea and Isa signed up to join Ansem's research team was after the apprentices murdered Ansem and Terranort stole his identity, but before the heart-extraction procedure that created Fake Ansem and the Organization.

Axel and Saix would then have technically been here since the Organization formed, but only in the capacity of being those new kids. Resulting in their kind of middle-ground status we see them have in II and Days, where they're kinda sorta part of Xemnas's inner circle yet still need to prove themselves.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 19th 2019 at 3:10:41 AM

We have Sora.

We have Kairi.

Kairi in 1 does a mild form of possession, but she's not alone. Ventus also possessed him, but to a greater extent. We're at two.

Sora stabs himself with the Ko PC, releasing Kairi's heart. This generates the "nobody" that would be Namine. However, since Kairi doesn't lose her body (she gets it back), Namine just kinda...creates one.

Sora becomes heartless, generating a Nobody. However, as Ventus is now a part of his heart, Ventus also becomes the same heartless with him. The resulting nobody is Sora's, but Ventus' possession gives Roxas his appearance.

Sora returns to "life" through the power of love, but as he doesn't have his nobody he is "incomplete". Roxas, too, does not inherit Sora's memories immediately unlike most, making him kinda incomplete as well. Sora at this point is kinda a good-aligned humanoid heartless, heart and soul without "body".

After Chain of Memories, Sora's memories are detached to be untangled. However, they then flow to his nobody as they were supposed to, but completely disorganized. Roxas gets jumbled flashbacks. Indeed, the replica that the Organization set up to copy Roxas' abilities starts to pick them up too, giving Xion her similarities to Kairi.

However, only to her, Axel, and Roxas consistently. As she was an empty vessel getting her identity through scattered memories, others see her differently. Saix sees just an empty vessel, to Xigbar she sometimes seems to be Ventus. And of course, in the end she occasionally looks like Sora.

They both returned to Sora when Roxas died, "recompleting" him at the end of the game.

In short, you can consider Roxas and Namine to be related insofar as Sora and Kairi are, and Xion was a blank slate that kinda became Sora's second nobody.

Before, of course, they all grew hearts.

Hope this helps!

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 19th 2019 at 5:14:53 AM