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Is this hate for Kairi alone upset me?



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Nukara

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*TwilightNight*

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Some fans consider Kairi a lost cause after KHIII. Nomura failed her for the umpteenth time, and while it's really not the poor girl's fault that her relationships are either nonexistent (Riku/Kairi) or not as organically developed (Sora/Kairi) and then used as a prop for manpain, the reactions can't be helped.

Kairi is pretty well liked (for whatever reason) as she stands and people wanted more for and from her. I feel if she got the treatment she deserves as a main female character, she'd be incredibly popular. But alas.
 
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Nukara

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Muke

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The argument that Kairi is inexperienced does not hold up anymore. Kairi was inexperienced in KH2, but she trained for this war and Merlin and Yen Sid apparently were confident enough to let her fight so she cannot be inexperienced. Even if she were, that has absolutely nothing to do with the way Xemnas kidnapped her. He just teleported behind her and held her wrist (or was ist her arm). She had her Keyblade summoned already. She could have escaped easily. It was hilarious.
Can't really comment on any ship stuff as I don't care about ships at all

Some fans consider Kairi a lost cause after KHIII. Nomura failed her for the umpteenth time, and while it's really not the poor girl's fault that her relationships are either nonexistent (Riku/Kairi) or not as organically developed (Sora/Kairi) and then used as a prop for manpain, the reactions can't be helped.

Kairi is pretty well liked (for whatever reason) as she stands and people wanted more for and from her. I feel if she got the treatment she deserves as a main female character, she'd be incredibly popular. But alas.
Exactly.

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She is useless because the little things she does right in KH3 could have been done by ANY character. Believing in Sora? Riku could have been that person. Being his light in the dark? Again, Riku could have been his light just like he was in DDD cutscenes. She accomplished nothing.

To be very honest, I think they should have just killed her off for real. She serves no purpose whatsoever and my hopes regarding her character have been crushed anyway so I just don't really care about her anymore. They hyped her up and in the end it was just the same card they've always played.
 
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AdrianXXII

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Some fans consider Kairi a lost cause after KHIII. Nomura failed her for the umpteenth time, and while it's really not the poor girl's fault that her relationships are either nonexistent (Riku/Kairi) or not as organically developed (Sora/Kairi) and then used as a prop for manpain, the reactions can't be helped.

Kairi is pretty well liked (for whatever reason) as she stands and people wanted more for and from her. I feel if she got the treatment she deserves as a main female character, she'd be incredibly popular. But alas.

To be fair most of us long time KH fans have been here before. I don't think there are too many game anyone that likes her character has been able to walk away from, not feeling disappointed.

KH2: Is sidelined for most of the game, only getting minor moments to interact with others. Got kidnapped not once but twice, second time was even off screen. Her reunion with Sora is also rather awkward.
Days: Never shows up outside of Flashbacks from Sora's memories. Though she is mentioned.
BBS: Only ever is seen and interacts with Aqua, and that was all of her screen time.
Coded: Doesn't even get a Data version and isn't really mentioned.
DDD: Isn't in the game until the Secret ending, doesn't really get mentioned.
KH3: All her progress if off screen, her biggest moment saving Sora and by proxy the others, has the shortest fight and gets kidnapped again. Killed off to motivate Sora.

I like her character, but I can't say I'm really happy with how she's been handled. If I wanted to writer her off as a lost cause I would have done so along time ago.
 

drew0512

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The argument that Kairi is inexperienced does not hold up anymore. Kairi was inexperienced in KH2, but she trained for this war and Merlin and Yen Sid apparently were confident enough to let her fight so she cannot be inexperienced. Even if she were, that has absolutely nothing to do with the way Xemnas kidnapped her. He just teleported behind her and held her wrist (or was ist her arm). She had her Keyblade summoned already. She could have escaped easily. It was hilarious.
To be fair, the same thing happens with Sora and in a much more stupid way. At least Kairi is in a more painful situation.
Do we even know if you can summon your keyblade in your other hand?
 

AdrianXXII

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To be fair, the same thing happens with Sora and in a much more stupid way. At least Kairi is in a more painful situation.
Do we even know if you can summon your keyblade in your other hand?

Considering Riku could de-summon and re-summon the keyblade facing a different direction in DDD, I don't see why not.
 

kirabook

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While there is some actual hatred for Kairi's character, most of the backlash against Kairi is actually criticism of Nomura. I don't know how he took fans demanding more action for Kairi and produced what we have today. I'm not the first one to say it almost seems like Nomura doesn't like her character. None of what happened needed to happen. Every opportunity to include Kairi more in this series was passed over even though sometimes it seems like the logical thing to do.

I'll always point out in Coded that it made no sense for the journal to take the form of Riku to because "darkness is dangerous" when Riku at that age was troubled with darkness. It'd make more sense to take the form of someone who literally can't be infected with darkness. Aka, Kairi.

And DDD was even worse. Yen Sid deaged Riku and Sora to the beginning of their journey to train and relearn their skills... and yet they didn't include Kairi who could've really used that training for their upcoming battle. :/

Nomura has failed Kairi through and through. I don't have any hope that her writing will get better because I don't think Nomura sees anything wrong with it and too many Kairi fans keep making excuses for her when they should be demanding more.
 
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people aren't binary so different things appeal to them in different ways. It's similar to how people can like a wide variety of songs/movies/books etc and have different interests or hobbies.
 
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Sephiroth0812

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I don't know how he took fans demanding more action for Kairi and produced what we have today.

I'd guess that Nomura doesn't make the error to take fan demands into account too much since if you create a product and/or story by catering to fan demands it is a recipe for disaster because if you try to incorporate all (often contradicting) fan demands your end product will be a total mess and if you include only a few those whose demands aren't met will throw a tantrum.

It can already be seen live across the net the whole month with things like no dual-wielding, coliseum tournaments, no FF-characters, favorite ships not getting enough attention/not made canon, fans of some characters being upset their favorite character didn't end the game how they headcanoned it and so forth.
 

Ven_Roxas

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I don’t think the purpose of her getting kidnapped was to motivate Sora. Xehanort stated that he would use the new 7 pure lights if there weren’t enough guardians. Since she was one of them, it literally had to be her. Xehanort said he needed one more key. Let’s say he decided to fight all 12 to forge it, he would have risked losing and not seeing his plan to fruition. Point is, he needed her to complete his plans, not to motivate Sora. There was literally no other way to complete his plans at that point. The heroes had brought one of the new 7 hearts to him.

I’m not defending Kairi’s treatment, I’m saying from a story standpoint, there was more to it than “Sora needs motivation so let’s make Kairi that”. That was probably part of it, but not the entire reasoning.
 

kirabook

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I'd guess that Nomura doesn't make the error to take fan demands into account too much since if you create a product and/or story by catering to fan demands it is a recipe for disaster because if you try to incorporate all (often contradicting) fan demands your end product will be a total mess and if you include only a few those whose demands aren't met will throw a tantrum.

It can already be seen live across the net the whole month with things like no dual-wielding, coliseum tournaments, no FF-characters, favorite ships not getting enough attention/not made canon, fans of some characters being upset their favorite character didn't end the game how they headcanoned it and so forth.

I totally get that fan demands can ruin a series entirely. I was part of a fandom where that happened and it was the worst.

But fans asking for more screentime for Kairi and for her to be in the action... I don't think that's something that could ruin the whole series by itself. How do you take the request "Hey, can Kairi be cool and help with the fight and stuff?" and turn it into.... that?

Nomura seems to have no problem listening to fans when it comes to Axel fanservice among other things. I mean Axel got put down a bit, but the narrative still had him come out as a better character in end. I can't say that Kairi came out looking better after everything that happened. There were times during the finale that I completely forgot she existed.
 

Ven_Roxas

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Master Xehanort literally says it was.

I haven’t gotten to the end of the game again yet. So I’ve only seen it once. (When I migrated my save files and whatnot from my old PS4 it deleted all my KH3 data from my new one where I had beaten the game).

But I still stand on the fact that it wasn’t the full reason. It was a crappy way to handle her character, but it had to be her because of her PoH status. I’m thinking it was a combination of the two reasons.
 

WaveK89

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Eh, my minor complaint was that she didn't even struggle. Merlin was overlooking the training, so they could have had her used thunder to breakaway. Throw a few hits or swings. If she still ends up losing and getting taken by Xemnas, that's fine, but at least she did something to fight against it. Other than, maybe like one scene with Lea and Kairi sparring would have been nice to see.
 

Zettaflare

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Eh, my minor complaint was that she didn't even struggle. Merlin was overlooking the training, so they could have had her used thunder to breakaway. Throw a few hits or swings. If she still ends up losing and getting taken by Xemnas, that's fine, but at least she did something to fight against it. Other than, maybe like one scene with Lea and Kairi sparring would have been nice to see.

I keep waiting and hoping to see at least one scene with Kairi and Lea training together. Heck they could have shown both of them smacking around Merlin's furniture like Sora did in KH1.
 

Elysium

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I'd guess that Nomura doesn't make the error to take fan demands into account too much since if you create a product and/or story by catering to fan demands it is a recipe for disaster because if you try to incorporate all (often contradicting) fan demands your end product will be a total mess and if you include only a few those whose demands aren't met will throw a tantrum.

It can already be seen live across the net the whole month with things like no dual-wielding, coliseum tournaments, no FF-characters, favorite ships not getting enough attention/not made canon, fans of some characters being upset their favorite character didn't end the game how they headcanoned it and so forth.
I don't consider these things "fan demands." More like things that have been common to the series that were inexplicably omitted and deserve criticism. If you think the complaints over those are tantrums, you have no idea what a real fuss looks like.
 

Sephiroth0812

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I totally get that fan demands can ruin a series entirely. I was part of a fandom where that happened and it was the worst.

But fans asking for more screentime for Kairi and for her to be in the action... I don't think that's something that could ruin the whole series by itself. How do you take the request "Hey, can Kairi be cool and help with the fight and stuff?" and turn it into.... that?

Nomura seems to have no problem listening to fans when it comes to Axel fanservice among other things. I mean Axel got put down a bit, but the narrative still had him come out as a better character in end. I can't say that Kairi came out looking better after everything that happened. There were times during the finale that I completely forgot she existed.

Of course, yet it's exactly this "asking for screentime" thing that Nomura can't obviously cater to since there are many fans who want more screentime for characters other than Kairi.
Like, correct me if I'm on a wrong chain of thought here, but when I look at Naminé, Xion, Roxas or Terra their screentime is even worse than Kairi's, with Naminé standing out as the worst.

The Axel fanservice I'm putting more into the bucket of several staff members also being vivid Axel fans. That he even survived the KH 2 Prologue was largely due to Nomura's staff rather than fan intervention.
Indeed, I agree that Kairi doesn't look any better than before and it is certainly a waste, but exactly because it is done like this is why I think that Nomura either does not care about or is not too privy about details what the fans, especially in the western world, want. I mean, you just need to look across several social media or fan sites and you'll notice how different the demands and expectations are so even if Nomura knew, which of these should he give attention to?

Perhaps that was the intention? The other characters are largely just bystanders, but there are several scenes during the finale where all characters supposed to be the "central cast" are standing together with the exception of Kairi and Naminé, yet the scenes are shot as if they're intended that way.


I don't consider these things "fan demands." More like things that have been common to the series that were inexplicably omitted and deserve criticism. If you think the complaints over those are tantrums, you have no idea what a real fuss looks like.

It doesn't really matter how you name all of these, it's literally the same thing as old school-Final Fantasy fans getting up in arms everytime a FF title doesn't have a controllable airship, explorable world map or turn-based battle system and those to resemble tantrums in several cases, especially when you get people devaluing the entire thing because a few of their expectations are not met.

I've already voiced my dissatisfaction with several parts of KH III that aren't done well including the FF cameos as well, yet I do not expect that just because something is considered to be a staple by the fanbase that it has to be incorporated everytime.
 
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