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News ► A Look Back: KINGDOM HEARTS Ultimania Gallery Comments Part 1



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Absent

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I’m still not over the crown charm comment. Don’t give me hope Nomura.
 

Xagzan

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Like everyone here, I'm REALLY praying that Nomura revisits this idea of playable Kairi, and developing her relationships with Riku and Sora more... I know I'm probably in the minority here (and I get it: KHIII burnt people bad when it came to her), but I DO think Nomura's planning something with her. I don't think they would have made certain decisions in III (making her and Sora literally bound to each other now), and be including her in stuff more than ever before, if he wasn't. Granted, you could say they were doing that even before KHIII, and look how that turned out... but realistically, they kind of had to have Kairi be a bit bad in KHIII (like what KHI Sora, before being endgame KHI there, would have been. And I don't even think end-of-the-game-KHI-Sora could have handled the Keyblade War... And maybe having Kairi in some of Sora's KHI poses was to hint at her being like him there), but she can only get better now. And KHIII let her down so badly, that really the only way she can go is up.

I'm certainly not gonna disparage anyone for having optimism, but that's what I thought before KH3. I thought, well no matter what they do it can't be worse than how Naruto handled Sakura throughout its long run. And then it was 😑

Sure seems (again) like she has nowhere to go but up, but you gotta figure Nomura doesn't have the same plans as he did...*checks notes* 17 years ago. She has so much latent character potential to explore, increasingly more so with every game, but for god's sake she's not even in the secret ending or the DLC trailer.
 

LightUpTheSky452

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So Sora's necklace was given to him by Riku, then?

I don't think so? I don't think it's implying that Riku would have given Sora his silver crown necklace that he wears even at the start of KH, but rather that Riku would've given Sora the black crown keychain... err necklace(?) at the bottom of Oblivion. So perhaps the black crown necklace from Oblivion originally belonged to Riku. It sounds like to me, that both boys once had one as a "best friends" sort of thing (that someone like their parents bought for them, or that maybe they bought themselves) and Riku probably stopped wearing his when his and Sora's rivalry grew. Perhaps there would have been a scene where Riku could have given it to Sora as a gesture of good will. Like, originally we were going to fight another version of Ansem possessing Riku's body in the endgame stuff, before he went full-on Ansem there. Maybe Riku would have fought back here, and in the moment he had brief control of himself thrown the keychain necklace(?) at Sora. But I'm just spitballing here.

@Xagzan didn't see your reply until I'd already responded to FudgementGuardian here. Sorry about that! I... get you. Believe me, I do. If I'm being honest, sometimes it's hard for me to have hope for her myself and I find myself falling into the pit of despair at times (what KHIII did to Kairi and what Game of Thrones did to Daenerys have not been good for my mental state this year). But at the same time, I DO think there are things to be hopeful about here. Call it stupid optimism... but being the opposite of Yuna here, I guess I'd rather have false hope than none. And I DO feel in a lot of ways that it can't get worse (at least Nomura can't kill Kairi for Sora's man pain anymore--hopefully--since he already did that at the climax of KHIII)... unless they just decide to leave her out completely. Which they could. But IDK. I feel like Nomura has now written himself into a corner with Kairi, since she and Sora's destinies are intertwined no matter what, where he HAS to do stuff with her. I'm not saying that stuff will be good, or that it'll even be frequent, but I don't think he's just literally going to completely keep her out of the next saga. For me, the Kairi situation is kind of how it's always been: there's a chance for some good and there's a chance for some bad, and more likely than not we'll get both. And as sad as it is to say, I'll take that... and continue to fight for her to be treated better while I'm at it (nicely to Square Enix, of course. Like doing fan art with her in it--actually doing things--so they know we want that). I'm also praying the extended version of the III secret ending (that we know we'll get in Re:Mind) will have at least some hint of Kairi in it, but we'll see.
 
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AR829038

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I'm certainly not gonna disparage anyone for having optimism, but that's what I thought before KH3. I thought, well no matter what they do it can't be worse than how Naruto handled Sakura throughout its long run. And then it was 😑

Sure seems (again) like she has nowhere to go but up, but you gotta figure Nomura doesn't have the same plans as he did...*checks notes* 17 years ago. She has so much latent character potential to explore, increasingly more so with every game, but for god's sake she's not even in the secret ending or the DLC trailer.
I have a theory about why Nomura shafted Kairi the way he did.
I think that Nomura noticed the fans were crying out for her to be more involved in the story, and he tried to go in that direction to please us, but at the end of the day, Nomura struggles to separate Kairi from this version he has of her in his head where she's just a damsel for Sora. I think perhaps Nomura originally did try to set Kairi up so she would have a deeper agency in KHIII, but as much as he wrote her in that mindset, when time came to actually have her do something, he buckled and retreated back to his fantasy of her being just a weak girl that needed to be saved. I can't get inside his head (who ever could?), so I can't be sure that was the mentality behind it, but honestly, I really can't fathom there being any other reason why they did what they did to her. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just show her doing something of actual consequence besides passively using her princess powers to save Sora's heart. They could still even fix it in Re:MIND with just a few simple edits to a couple of endgame scenes to show her actually fighting back or even sacrificing herself to save Sora. He could have still had her die so that we could reach the same point at the ending. There was just so little in the way of having her do something that I can only imagine Nomura himself is resisting doing anything with her to protect his pristine image of her in his head.
 

Elysium

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I wonder if maybe Yuffie might’ve been intended to appear in one of the Disney worlds similar to Cloud originally. I could picture her in either Agrabah (as a thief) or perhaps Neverland. Neverland in KH1 always did feel abbreviated.
 

Goldpanner

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I wonder if maybe Yuffie might’ve been intended to appear in one of the Disney worlds similar to Cloud originally. I could picture her in either Agrabah (as a thief) or perhaps Neverland. Neverland in KH1 always did feel abbreviated.

Honestly, I think she was supposed to have been on Destiny Island. The comment about her body may mean they made her a little childlike so she could have fit in there too.
 

Perkilator

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Aya was supposed to fill Aerith’s role? Interesting.

However, I’m suddenly more intrigued by the fact Irvine from 8 was supposed to be in KH1, but didn’t fit the “island” theme. …And now I’m picturing him in a Lone Ranger world.
 
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Interesting... Before knowing this, my favorite keyblades in KH1 were the Nomura-designed ones, the ones I thought were pretty good were Tsukamoto's, and the ones I couldn't stand looking at were Ohdachi's (except for Lady Luck, but that one is just okay). Now I know why.
 

LightUpTheSky452

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I have a theory about why Nomura shafted Kairi the way he did.
I think that Nomura noticed the fans were crying out for her to be more involved in the story, and he tried to go in that direction to please us, but at the end of the day, Nomura struggles to separate Kairi from this version he has of her in his head where she's just a damsel for Sora. I think perhaps Nomura originally did try to set Kairi up so she would have a deeper agency in KHIII, but as much as he wrote her in that mindset, when time came to actually have her do something, he buckled and retreated back to his fantasy of her being just a weak girl that needed to be saved. I can't get inside his head (who ever could?), so I can't be sure that was the mentality behind it, but honestly, I really can't fathom there being any other reason why they did what they did to her. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just show her doing something of actual consequence besides passively using her princess powers to save Sora's heart. They could still even fix it in Re:MIND with just a few simple edits to a couple of endgame scenes to show her actually fighting back or even sacrificing herself to save Sora. He could have still had her die so that we could reach the same point at the ending. There was just so little in the way of having her do something that I can only imagine Nomura himself is resisting doing anything with her to protect his pristine image of her in his head.

I could be wrong on this--because again, who knows?--but I get the sense that Kairi was originally supposed to do more, as you're saying (and that's what all the buildup was for, why her in front of the mansion in the BbSFM secret ending exists, and maybe partly why assets for Radiant Garden existed in this game), but Nomura says in his foreword for Kingdom Hearts III that he rewrote the ending numerous times. And I think somewhere in there, Kairi's role changed and then it was too late to do damage control after they'd already built her up.

Why it changed, is anyone's guess. I suppose it could be because he sees her as a damsel, like you say... Or it could have been that he needed in his mind casualties in this War, a tragic romance, to be "shocking", or to try and be realistic (maybe he was even worrying Kairi would seem like a Mary-Sue if she was too good--if he has any concept of that kind of thing at all--but then dialed it back way too much the other way), or is now saving her character arc for the next saga: where a lot of people think she'll go through a guilty phase like Riku did after KHI, and it'll push her to finally develop (here's praying for that one). But it was something.

But it just kills me, because even if he didn't want Kairi to be the greatest thing in the world it didn't have to be this bad. I'm actually mostly okay with her fight scenes, because while people ignore some of her wins in this game (fighting alongside Lea against all those Heartless, destroying one Heartless in a cutscene, blocking Xion's attack and sending her flying, doing pretty good as a party member, etc.) she did have some. And it was probably a good balance of winnings and losses for a beginner. But if Nomura'd wanted to increase the wins a wee bit more, he could have even done that without going too crazy with it and it would have been fine. What really bothers me is the kidnapping and fridging. I'm never going to understand why Nomura just didn't have Kairi die in bringing Sora back: like, it cost her her life to do so or something. That would've gone over so much better, and would have made her end be a a heroic sacrifice (and more in line with Aerith and Luna, like he was probably trying to emulate) and made Sora doing the same for her all the more meaningful in the end. We didn't freaking need Sora to have man pain here. We really didn't. But here's hoping Re:Mind fixes some of these things. -sigh-

Edit: Back to the point about how I think things with Kairi might have gone differently, in one of the first endings Nomura wrote... Even though "Don't Think Twice" does have a melancholy tune to it, and Nomura is a troll... IDK. I still feels like that song is still way too happy for what we got with SoKai at the end? And it's made many theorize that originally we were supposed to get a happier ending with them.
 
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AR829038

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I could be wrong on this--because again, who knows?--but I get the sense that Kairi was originally supposed to do more, as you're saying (and that's what all the buildup was for, why her in front of the mansion in the BbSFM secret ending exists, and maybe partly why assets for Radiant Garden existed in this game), but Nomura says in his foreword for Kingdom Hearts III that he rewrote the ending numerous times. And I think somewhere in there, Kairi's role changed and then it was too late to do damage control after they'd already built her up.

Why it changed, is anyone's guess. I suppose it could be because he sees her as a damsel, like you say... Or it could have been that he needed in his mind casualties in this War, a tragic romance, to be "shocking", or to try and be realistic (maybe he was even worrying Kairi would seem like a Mary-Sue if she was too good--if he has any concept of that kind of thing at all--but then dialed it back way too much the other way), or is now saving her character arc for the next saga: where a lot of people think she'll go through a guilty phase like Riku did after KHI, and it'll push her to finally develop (here's praying for that one). But it was something.

But it just kills me, because even if he didn't want Kairi to be the greatest thing in the world it didn't have to be this bad. I'm actually mostly okay with her fight scenes, because while people ignore some of her wins in this game (fighting alongside Lea against all those Heartless, destroying one Heartless in a cutscene, blocking Xion's attack and sending her flying, doing pretty good as a party member, etc.) she did have some. And it was probably a good balance of winnings and losses for a beginner. But if Nomura'd wanted to increase the wins a wee bit more, he could have even done that without going too crazy with it and it would have been fine. What really bothers me is the kidnapping and fridging. I'm never going to understand why Nomura just didn't have Kairi die in bringing Sora back: like, it cost her her life to do so or something. That would've gone over so much better, and would have made her end be a a heroic sacrifice (and more in line with Aerith and Luna, like he was probably trying to emulate) and made Sora doing the same for her all the more meaningful in the end. We didn't freaking need Sora to have man pain here. We really didn't. But here's hoping Re:Mind fixes some of these things. -sigh-

Edit: Back to the point about how I think things with Kairi might have gone differently, in one of the first endings Nomura wrote... Even though "Don't Think Twice" does have a melancholy tune to it, and Nomura is a troll... IDK. I still feels like that song is still way too happy for what we got with SoKai at the end? And it's made many theorize that originally we were supposed to get a happier ending with them.

The thing is, Nomura could EASILY fix this in ReMIND. You would only need two really simple edits in a couple cutscenes of the last level, and all would be good.
1) Nomura could change the scene with Kairi getting kidnapped to her running after Xemnas.
2) Include a short cutscene after the Xemnas/Ansem/Young Xehanort battle where, instead of Master Xehanort lifting up an unconscious Kairi and slaying her right then and there, change the cutscene so that Master Xehanort instead tries to go directly for Sora, maybe just with a simple little key-beam or what have you. Kairi wakes up, and just in the nick of time she jumps in front of the key-beam to save Sora's life, in turn sacrificing her own.
That's it. Nomura wouldn't have to change a single other thing about the entire game, or even about the ending, if he just did those two minor tweaks, and not only would it give Kairi agency, but it would fulfill her promise of keeping Sora safe. That's all he has to do. I don't know if he will, because this should have been an incredibly simple thing to get right in the beginning, and who knows if he really actually cares about Kairi anymore beyond just being a trophy for Sora. Here's hoping he has the sense to fix this, because even though I loved KH3 on the whole, this was the one part of the game that I really couldn't bring myself to swallow, it was so bad.
 

redcrown

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I know it's not encouraged to post in old threads but I was wondering what Ultimanias are these translated from?
 
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