This is what I've been talking about.
I lowkey hate that this belief that "KH is a bad fanfic" has seeped in so much.
What bad fanfic? KH1 was a straight up by-the-book jrpg about light and darkness with just the audacity of putting Disney elements in it. Literally everything else in it was a classic but time-effective archetype of the genre.
And the Disney elements fit especially because they "respected" the main story without being too invasive. It's time for seriousness. It's time for laughter. You need to fear the Heartless? The Heartless are not funny. You need to enjoy Donald and Goofy? Donald and Goofy are being themselves.
It's not that KH1 was "simple", it simply wasn't what you are trying to make this series always being about. Didn't even have a big budget.
The entire reason KH exists was because they were trying to reproduce the success of Mario 64 and Disney was picked out of the belief that it was the only feasible rival to Mario's popularity. It was not because a bunch of people got together on Myspace (or what was "in" in the early 2000s, I wasn't connected back then) and did basically the equivalent of a late night Discord group call about "the wackiest fanfic we could conceive!"
Man, this is exactly what happened to Sonic the Hedgehog. A franchise with some iconic designs and great games devolving into one of the biggest memes on the Internet because it started catering only to a specific audience and that same audience went on clamoring loudly that Sonic was, and has always been, only that specific thing which is what they loved.
I dunno, I think more than a decade of KH memes and shitposting about this or that character have altered y'all perception of the original franchise.
Or rather: the original franchise IS becoming this also because of enabling, and that's why I'm just pulling myself out. Kingdom Hearts is totally becoming what you guys are implying (becoming. That is was always this, I'll never believe) and if you like it than that's what works best, clearly. It's definitely not what has captivated me about the franchise at the beginning.
It's okay to think that I'm an elitist snob because maybe that's what I am.
That's enough vitriol out of me about the matter, we've gone tremendously off-topic and I was having an unprecedented good streak in the forum, so I'd like to return to that.
You want to add anything else on the matter, visitor message or PM me.
It’s kind of hard not to laugh at someone that wants to take this series so seriously!
They’re just funny bad fanfics that somehow got turned into crazy fun games with a big budget. I can’t understand getting frustrated with this series’ writing because it’s consistently been like this since the beginning. KH1 gets points for being blissfully simple though.
What you think is ultimately clear to me and as I've illustrated above I simply disagree with it.
I'm asking for you to respect others' opinion. Admitedly I myself am stepping a little over the line with this last reply, but man if it isn't frustrating to be treated like I'm some kind of tryhard fanboy who just fails to see the greatness into seeing games drowning in incoherency and lol random humor.
I think that way too many people forget that Xehanort, Vanitas, Luxord (and any character that doesn't come from FF or TWEWY) are Disney characters.
Chernabog is a Disney character but there's no funny Chernabog, because it wouldn't fit nor make any sense.
A silly Chernabog CAN exist in some scenario, but was never presented in KH1 or DDD because people knew better.
And I doubt people never complained about that because they forgot he was Disney.
There's no dichotomy in a KH game, you're not supposed to put OG characters to a side and silly, filthy Disney characters to the other side. They are all part of the same universe and not only they can, but they should interact, with both "silly" and serious interactions.
Upon reflection it was a mistake on my part to say "Disney part" when talking about the levity to send my message across.
I should've said something like "funny part", to symbolize that -yet again- I'm not trying to prevent comedy for happening, it just needs to have purpose and apt time and place.
There is a giant difference between Vanitas slipping on a banana peel or Luxu going around in a gorilla suit and the actual scene in Monstropolis and I don't think there should even be the need to explain why.
That is clearly an opinion you're having, easily disproven by this entire discourse that's been going on.
The scene in Monstropolis doesn't ridicule Vanitas or doesn't put him on a lower level
The throwing animation WAS made with the intention of it being ridiculous though. It's not an accident, it cannot not be something that ridiculizes a villain when that's the way they went at it.
And I guess it all boils down to the fact that as I said I don't think Vanitas was always a He-Man villain so this scene fits him, especially when he's been part of some pretty hard-hitting moments in the series.
(ew, the anime bad guy interacts with a silly Disney character).
Again, if you took this as the intended message you didn't read what me or Void said carefully enough.
I'm seeing a few of "Look at these people thinking their characters are too cool for Disney", when we have never expressed anything close to it. I love Disney and I love humor, I love ridiculizing characters.
Guess what, just because I do doesn't mean I'm always okay with it and I want that to happen at every twist and turn.
It actually puts Sulley on the same level as Vanitas, as it should be. He's a powerful monster that is perfectly capable of facing Vanitas
And surprisingly enough, I think it's not us but you who's having a bit of a power fantasy here. If we really wanna talk about feats, which I only had a modicum interest in getting into, Vanitas could've sliced, burn to a crisp, obliterated Sulley in many different ways and with relative ease.
He was emitting an aura that made Donald and Goofy flying away, and as stated him being grabbed doesn't actually means much when he can teleport away of everything. A veteran warrior who, let us not forget that even if KH III kinda did, can summon endless hordes of monsters that respawn as soon as they're defeated.
Thing is, I could've bought this had Sulley done literally anything differently, anything at all. Going full Beast and trying to actually fight him? Holding him in place for something else to be done or even just Sora (Vanitas' only objective) to escape?
Anything.
But the scene devolved into funny nonsense for meme purposes and a global yeeting establishment, and trying to make it pass as a moment for Sulley to look like a glorious hero capable of handling threats is stretching it a lot.
and Disney movies are filled with similar moments in which villains gets "ridiculed" in a way without becoming less intimidating and menacing and that's because no one categorizes these characters into different groups ("silly" and "serious").
Indeed. Then there are also serious moments in which something narratively heavy is happening and nothing disrtubs the scene's composition.
There's a video I won't cite directly due to the author turning out to be controversial and kind of a shitty person, but it highlighted perfectly why Disney had some of the most iconic villains to date: it's because in an era where good characters were the same unimaginative tropes the writers and authors focused on the villains, making them memorable and even menacing for animation's standards.
Maleficent, Jafar, even Clayton: they all had some powerful scenes that underlines how bad they were and made witnessing their defeats matter and be satisfying.
It's not that they didn't have silly moments at all. Hades is another successful villain, but he's a constant jokester with different shades of humor throughout the movie, and had very little scenes that were completely serious, but he had them nonetheless and was more fleshed out.
That's the point Void was making earlier: what makes the Sulley scene even worse is that that's also basically Vanitas' pivotal moment in the game, and it's a complete joke. In Land of Departure, he's basically just an obstacle to get Ven, the real focus of the scene. At the Graveyard, he's just one of the vessels. And his send-off was almost universally considered by far the worst and least fleshed out one.
No one would remember Hades as a villain if he only had the scene at the beginning where everybody is annoyed by him and baby Hercules crushes his hand, and then he came back for the last act to make the deal for Meg's soul.
Build up a good main presence FIRST, then jape as much as you want. And I'll still kinda complain because I didn't like the scene, but I'll me much more subdued to it.
And again: another thing Disney doesn't always do in his best works is building up the hero in response by making a fool of the villain. You can elevate a character without downsizing the other one.
That's why I personally like the Woody vs Xehanort: Woody is shown to be a strong character not afraid of the adversities, without necessarily having Young uncharacteristically making, say, Donald's scared face when he sees Ursula in KH1. Young receives Woody's taunt and responds accordingly, both characters strong in their resolve.
So yeah, another misunderstanding is that I'm trying to seclude characters into sections. Nope. I'm secluding MOMENTS into sections.
That's not seeing what's not there, that's expecting better and more clever writing.
And as I said that's all I'll add here, I feel like at this point I'd just repeat what I've said already.