Latest Posts by sakurarozen - Page 12

Xion and Vanitas were in the organization together, albeit a short amount of time, but they… might have known each other? And who else to better understand how a broken piece of Ventus feels than a broken piece of Sora?

Was it just me or was no one happy about how he ended except him? 

I’m gunna miss him 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse - paintings by Patrick O'Keefe

Namiku/RikuNami is Finally Canon

There is a very missable scene in ‘The Final World’, If you encounter a certain star you will start a conversation with Naminé. During the talk at one point Naminé will assume that no one misses her, after Sora gave Naminé a list of individuals who missed her. Sora mentions specifically that a special someone  misses her and won’t let her down and by the end of the game it was revealed that special person was Riku.

Kingdom Hearts: The World Ends With Final Fantasy Versus XIII

I’m fairly certain I’ve decoded the secret ending & of course Nomura can completely change any premise he wants but the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts 3 is not as random or obscure as it seems to be. Let’s investigate….

Fans are gagging over Yozora’s resemblance to Noctis but there’s an obvious reason. It’s a massive hint to where the plot is going. Nomura wants to tell the original storyline of Final Fantasy Versus XIII which is NOT Final Fantasy XV in any way shape or form. The original plot of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, people gifted with the sight to see death’s light after being involved in near death experiences themselves. This Reddit user explains it better than me because for one, it’s been so long since I heard this storyline, it’s so ignored, I almost wondered if I made it up myself, & two, this user had a little more information than I had. (never heard about the Goddess)

This plot explains why Final Fantasy XV had so many night related anthems, (Noctis, Luna, & the moon) while having little to no moon/night related plot. This also explains why Yozora has a red eye. (The death sight)

Part of the reason why it took me this long to connect the dots is because I had no knowledge of another video game called, The World Ends With You

Another Nomura game that is based on death & reapers. It’s a game based in Shibuya that has players fighting for their lives, literally. You have a certain time frame to reclaim your life or the reaper gets you. (Paraphrasing, like I said, I never played it)

With Final Fantasy Versus XIII & The World Ends With You both having death as it’s main theme, & both games having a certain Kingdom Hearts 3 Director in common, it’s not rocket science to break down the secret ending now……

Sora & Riku both woke up in Shibuya (once again, the town The World Ends With You is based in) after Sora went on some LIFE SACRIFICING mission to bring Kairi back. Sora never returned (see KH3 ending) which of course has Riku going in after him……..

Notice the different colors? The different scenes? Both didn’t enter Shibuya at the same time (Riku arrived later) and with The World Ends With You & Kingdom Hearts for that matter having alternate words, it’s easy to assume they’re in different realities. Sora, is in TWEWY, which is not that far fetched considering he has already met the protagonist of that game, Neku.

While Riku is in another Shibuya, Final Fantasy Versus XIII (Verum Rex) as we saw when Yozora was staring at Riku. (He’s staring because he sees the death light on Riku)

Either both Sora & Riku are dead, or close to it. It’s not a coincidence at all these death omens are centered on that secret ending. Yozora’s appearance confirms it, it’s just a lot of people have no knowledge of FFVersusXIII’s original plot so it’s goofy, petty, or strange to see “fake Noctis” in KH3, but it’s not. It’s a red flag of what’s next. Oh & add the fact that we had no Final Fantasy (another game about DEATH) references in KH3, (looks like it’s because we’re getting a FF theme series) that it’s kind of obvious the next series is going to take on a serious tone. An older tone, as it should considering KH fans are old enough for this material 17 years later after KH1. I’m more excited for this plot than any KH storyline in the past. We’re finally getting the dark story Nomura always wanted to tell….

This scene is of course a Kingdom Hearts reference but it’s also a Versus XIII reference as well. The moon is the light that the death seers depend on. I see you, Nomura!

– Donato Giancola

Archer of the Rose

it might take him a while to realize it, but isa will always have a place to belong

Find the hearts joined to yours…

You’re home!

kh3 theory not theory by ya boy ven

Edit: I added some things at the end that should clear up my last thought!!!

so this started when i jumped the gun thinking that xigbar/luxu knew of what was in the book of prophecies, but then i read he didn’t so i wanted to rip out my fucking hair…then i came to a realization after watching kairi die like five times trying to find evidence for my original theory which doesn’t exist so now here we are

anyway here’s my nonsensical rambling that probably doesn’t make any sense because my head is literally crying in pain OOF

Seguir leyendo

Text on the back of the VERUM REX game case in Toy Box

I haven’t really seen anyone talk about this, but there are some Verum Rex games on display and you can actually read what’s on the back of them.

The summary goes;

That’s the story of the King of Truth.

RECLAIM YOUR HEART

After a long fight, weapons have brought great benefits for humanity. But the “KARMA” that sleeps in humans will accelerate further. In the light of the warhead in the night sky, they chose to fight while feeling the pain of their hearts…

Then there are two chunks of texts printed over some images below the summary.

A JOURNEY

WITHOUT A

PLACE TO RETURN

THE WORLD IS

TO ALL HUMANS

TO TURN A PANG(?)

The last word — pang — was difficult to make out. There’s definitely an “A” and an “N” in the middle of the word, and “pang” is the only one that really makes sense (but it’s still a weird word to use in that context).

Here’s my two cents, take it with salt;

The King of Truth is Yozora. (“Verum” means “true,” and “Rex” means “king/the reigning king.”)

Reclaim your heart, huh? Sounds like Yozora is in the same boat as Sora. Perhaps the reason we see him in the secret ending is because, he too, is in the Reaper’s Game. Yozora as a party member… sounds pretty neat to me.

The summary is literally an alternate version of the story of Kingdom Hearts…

“After a long fight, keyblades have brought great benefits for humanity. But the darkness that sleeps in humans will accelerate further. In the light of Kingdom Hearts in the night sky, they chose to fight while feeling the pain of their hearts…”

“A journey without a place to return,” Riku and Sora’s next journey together will keep them from returning home. They will be stuck in another world/worldline/universe, without any hopes of getting back.

“The world is to all humans to turn a pang,” the world that Riku and Sora end up in is a place where all humans wish to change their pain OR the world that Riku and Sora end up is made for humans to change their pain. Pang means “sudden sharp pain,” usually emotionally.

this scene played out a little differently in my head

instagram 

Artist Turns Scrap Metal Into Animals.

Keyblade Master Sakura (jk I don’t even go here)

There are nightmares we don’t talk about

The light will prevail!!

Youtube link: appreciate the artists

Kingdom Hearts 

         “Sora”

“You must see to the tasks before you first.”

“The tasks before me? There’s so many.”

“All the more reason for you to make an effort.”

An artist’s perspective on the Xigbar reveal (Spoilers)

Now, I know the fandom likes to joke that Nomura writes by the seat of his pants but given that Birth by Sleep was in the works when Kingdom Hearts II came out, I’m convinced that the Xigbar is Luxu reveal was planned all along. There is one simple reason why I believe that whatever else was improvised or not, Xigbar’s immortality was planned: the design of his Keyblade.  I’m studying animation in college, and character design is a prerequisite course to graduate. One of the things I was taught is that every prop designed for a specific character needs to have a connection to their role in the story.

Looking at back at Birth by Sleep, there’s a common theme in all the character designs: for every Keyblade Wielder we see in the game, the color palette of their Keyblade matches the color palette of their outfit. Aqua. Ventus. Terra. Eraqus. Even Vanitas’ Keyblade both in-story and in his Remnant bonus boss form matches the color scheme of his outfit. Out of seven Keyblade Wielders in BBS, the only two that don’t fit this pattern are Master Xehanort and Mickey Mouse.

Mickey is easy to explain. Even if all the details in the story didn’t straight-up imply it, the design of the Star Seeker is blatantly evocative of the iconic pointed cap worn by Yen Sid in the games and that pop culture associates with Mickey’s Fantasia outfit. So even if it doesn’t directly match the color palette of any of his outfits, it never clashes with them because its design creates the impression that he’s wielding his most iconic headgear in Keyblade form.  

Xehanort on the other hand, has no such exceptions. While he certainly made the effort to dress all in black, the fact that he had white and red underneath his coat meant that in theory, his Keyblade should have had been designed with those two colors worked into the concept art somewhere. Instead of black with silver accents, there should have been more of a blanace between black and white with some red mixed into the design. But those colors were never worked into the design of the blade, because it wasn’t originally his to begin with. Even before the added cutscenes of the HD 2.5 Remix confirmed it, the character designs of Birth by Sleep were telegraphing that No Name wasn’t the Keyblade that Xehanort had started out with.

In a game where almost every other Keyblade matched the color palette of its owner’s wardrobe, and the only exception was a Disney character whose Keyblade complemented their outfit colors by calling back to their most iconic attire from Disney media, the clash between the designs of Xehanort’s outfit and his Keyblade sticks out.

But Xigbar is another story. Seeing him with the No Name in his hand at the epilogue of Kingdom Hearts III struck a chord in me as an artist. Something that fundamentally shouted into the void for anyone with the artistic or design sense to see that the creative team behind Kingdom Hearts has specifically made this weapon with Xigbar in mind. Popular fanfics and fan art of Xigbar/Braig with a Keyblade have depicted one matching the color palette of his guns, but when you compare the silver-gray highlights on the No Name with the similar streaks in Xigbar’s hair, and the way the black coat of the Organization meshes with the black of the No Name, it’s clear that this Keyblade was intentionally designed to be Xigbar’s Keyblade from the start.

Not For One More Second Scene: Japanese and English Comparison

This is the third in a series of translation posts I’ve done about Sora and Kairi’s scenes in KH3. The first post about the paopu fruit sharing scene can be found here, and the second post about the light in the darkness scene can be found here.

Here’s a general key for the kind of analysis I like to do:

JP: Official Japanese Dialogue

EN: Official English Dialogue

TR: My Translation (usually more literal and thus more stilted than the official English version. I’m not using natural-sounding English in order to stick as close to the Japanese versions of the lines as possible for the purpose of analysis)

Notes: things I found interesting, grammatical points, extra thoughts, etc.

One last note: media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every work of art must be viewed through the cultural lens of the people who made it. Kingdom Hearts, for all its ties to Disney, is still very much a Japanese game, so it should be analyzed in light of that.

With that in mind, let’s continue.

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Sea Salt Trio’s reunion // Wayfinder Trio’s reunion

farewell

BONUS:

#sora snapped

#Hello 911? I just witnessed a murder.

How To Wrap A Cat For Christmas.

Zack Fair’s ending in KH Birth By Sleep

(Pain and misery finally in HD!)

Countdown to Kingdom Hearts III: Day 10: Favorite Characters

This is it. It feels surreal to think about, but after years of waiting, Kingdom Hearts 3 is only ten days away. To celebrate, I decided to do a countdown where each day I talk about some of my favorite things about the series.

So to start, I’m going to get into my top 10 favorite characters in the whole series. Now, this doesn’t mean that if a character isn’t on this list that I hate them, it just means that these ten are my absolute favorites. While a lot of them I like for other reasons, for a few of these characters, my constant excuses to stare at promo are of them should have been my first clue that I wasn’t straight. 

1. Now Sora being one of my favorites may seem obvious because he’s the main protagonist, and as a teenager I spent a lot of time finding excuses to pull of screnshots and promos of his merman form and stare at him shirtless, but his adaptability and optimism are things that always put a smile on my face even when I’m stressed out and exhausted from life. I don’t think I would have been as invested in this series without a protagonist like Sora. 

2. Maybe it was because Kingdom Hearts II was my first experience with a proper RPG that wasn’t an adaptation or tie in for an existing TV series or movie, but I didn’t really hate the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II the way that a vocal portion of the fandom seemed to. Sure, looking back, it does drag on, but Roxas’ life in Twilight Town was my first introduction to the Kingdom Hearts universe, so I still have a soft spot for him even without all the tragedy of his story. 

3. The main reason I liked Vexen so much in the beginning was because of his ice powers and awesome-looking shield. But thanks to the amazing fanfics Those Lacking Spines and Why The Sun Sets Red, he’s become one of my favorite members of the original Organization XIII and I am desperately hoping that he survives Kingdom Hearts III (Please, Nomura, if not in KH3 then at least let Xion interact with Even when you inevitably start the first post-Xehanort game in the series) #LetTheShittyScienceDadLive

4. Xion is a character who grew on me over consecutive playthroughs. During my first playthrough of Days, I wasn’t really focused on the characters. I was too busy geeking out over finally getting to buy a new Kingdom Hearts game as it’s coming out. But each time I went back into the story, I got more and more attached to Xion and her tragic fate. I can’t listen to her theme music anymore without tearing up at least a little, and I look forward to seeing what role she’ll play in Kingdom Hearts III. 

5. While he doesn’t really do much in the story, what makes Zexion/Ienzo so appealing to me as a character is the fact that there’s so much potential to what we do get of his backstory that I’m thrilled to see KH3 beginning to explore. Ansem being a father figure to him. What were his relationships with the other apprentices like since he was barely eight years old when they started their experiments? Was asking Ansem to build the underground laboratory really his idea, or did Xehanort talk him into it knowing that Ansem would never say no to his surrogate son? Given that Kairi lived near - if not in- the castle, did she and Ienzo know each other? Did they grow up together? Did Ienzo know anyone outside the castle or was he isolated from everyone even before his parents died? The possibilities are endless and the fact that he’s working with everyone and appears to be interacting with Ansem in one shot of one of the trailers makes my heart soar that I may finally get to see some of his backstory explored. 

6. Part of my initial love of Aqua out of all the other BBS protags was that blue is my favorite color and when I was younger I would always gravitate towards the blue member in any color-themed team. On subsequent playthroughs, I started to like playing her campaign more than Terra and Ven’s, both because of how versatile her magic was and the fact that her story continued past the end of the others’. For me personally, what pushed her into my top 10 was just the entirety of what she went through in 0.2, so I was crying when we got THAT image at E3 last summer. 

7. Isa/Saix is another character I gravitated to because he was the one with blue hair, but I also really loved his weapon design and the history he had with Lea. I can’t wait to see what role he plays in KH3, and knowing this series it’ll be appropriately tear-inducing. 

8. Back before 358/2 Days and DDD came out and revealed that all incarnations of Xehanort are manipulative bastards, I saw Xemnas as a tragic character. Nevertheless, I still consider him one of my favorites because of his design. Unlike Terranort (who we all thought was Xehanort until 2010), this isn’t a cast of my subconscious thinking he’s hot even if I didn’t have the words for it. I just really like his weapons, his hairstyle, and the awesome black and white coat he wears in the final boss battle of KH2. 

9. I know, I know, Terranort is litterally just Xehanort in Terra’s body, but before we got that reveal, I had this weird fascination with the guy that I couldn’t really explain ([sarcasm]thanks heteronormativity[/sarcasm]) I would come up with proto-fanfic ideas when I was in middle school that fleshed out his backstory and gave him a redemption arc where he allies with the heroes to atone for all the things he’s done. The reveal that Xehanort was really just an old guy doing to Terra what his Heartless would eventually did to Riku devastated me, not just because of how heartbreaking the entire ending of BBS was for all 3 main characters, but because it meant that the interpretation of the character I’d built in my head had never existed. One personal hope I have for Kingdom Hearts 3 and beyond is that when Terra is eventually freed from Xehanort’s control, he can keep the long white hair look his body sported in all flashbacks to the time period between BBS and KH1. I am not ready to say goodbye to that look forever. 

10. Vanitas was another character with a really cool design who I probably spent enough time staring at pictures of that I should have started questioning my sexuality sooner. Then when I heard about the novelizations’ take on his backstory the tiny kernel of possibility for him to get some kind of redemption arc sprouted itself, and I’ve been eagerly hunting for fanfics with that very premise ever since.