That whole encounter with Ansem The Wise was cool, but if he digitised himself along with his research and put himself inside Sora, is he no longer in the RoD??
He basically is saying he made a digital version of himself in Sora (and he did this during KH2), so, no, the real Ansem is still in the RoD.
Also, what happens if Xehanort starts the keyblade war again? He gets the key and plunges the world into darkness?
Essentially, yeah. He plans on destroying the world and then remaking it again in his own image with a balance of light and dark.
Audo I'm too exhausted to keep this going but I'll leave two things that needs addressing for me to have some peace of mind with your reading.
Well I mean you
can just leave it there. You are free to think I'm totally off-base and incorrect and off my rocker and stupid. It's fine lol
(also, you don't have to keep putting things in a spoiler box. it just makes it difficult to read :/ this is a forum, you're allowed long posts)
take care of Ansem and there is nothing holding him there.
Sure, but theoretically, if it was just Ansem/Riku's dark abyss, why would that make Riku enter the Real World? Wouldn't it just return him back to Sora's Dream if this whole thing was just the darkness of Riku?
He never specificities it's the darkness of Sora's nightmare
Yeah he does.
Riku: No. This is a...
Ansem:
Dream of a dream. A twofold nightmare. This whole journey, you have been inside Sora's dreams. A
nd now darkness within darkness awaits you.
(Riku feels his foot fall and looks down to see a pool of darkness surrounding him)
Riku: What?
(He sinks in, unable to pull his legs up)
Riku: No. I can't get loose!
(He cries out, grasping at anything to help him, but he falls into darkness.)
He explicitly says that Sora's nightmare is persisting and that since Riku is in a dream of a dream he is dealing with a twofold nightmare or "darkness within darkness". As soon as he makes this connection, Riku is pulled into the darkness.
I'm specifically only talking about the abyss that Ansem pulls him into. Ansem is obviously still talking about how Riku should unleash his own darkness to try and save Sora. But to break free of the abyss, he consumes the nightmare.
"Ansem you're part of my heart now part of the light!""Ansem become a part of my heart now - part of the light!"
I definitely will admit this is one part that is difficult to reconcile. But I can also see it as being more metaphoric than literal. We don't even really see anything that suggests Ansem is consumed and turned to light when he's defeated after all. He just ends up fading away. I think if they were really going to drive this home as being a literal thing they'd show it as such more visually (such as Ansem turning to light, or Riku absorbing Ansem in such a way, etc). Instead he just disappears. But again, I admit it's rocky.
These are the two biggest holes in what you said and actually it's not the same outcome either. If it's time traveling Ansem Riku beat then that solves none of his problems and we never have the big moment Nomura said we have for Riku. You know the whole crux of Riku's story in DDD as Nomura said is "up until this point the story has been about Riku learning to lock the power away and in this tale it's about Riku learning to make that power his own". That never happens if it's time travel Ansem that's why I'm so adamantly against that reading.
I don't know why you think it changes anything. Riku still ultimately decides to use his own darkness for good in either reading. Riku is only able to hypothetically consume the nightmare of Sora and turn it to light through the use of his power. So on a Riku level it's the same outcome. He decides to use his own power instead of locking it away. Ansem is defeated. Riku is triumphant. The only salient difference is the identity of this Ansem and what that means for your reading. For people who see this as a time traveling Ansem, then the "Ansem" that had previous terrorized Riku in CoM/KH2 was destroyed by the heart machine. For the people who see it as that same Ansem, then he is at once defeated.
But again, it's okay to think I'm totally wrong. I'm just trying to feel out my own understanding anyway and I haven't fully committed to either reading.
Spoiler
