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Weird thought of the day: The Black Box is a "black box".



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AmaryllisMoth

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To further expand on the title:
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To make what could be a long-winded story short, for a class of mine I was reading an excerpt of an article written by Miura Atsushi about the general..."boxification" of society (best way I thought of to translate 箱化). Where we are gradually becoming less and less aware of where the products we buy come from or the process of making them because simply going to a large industrial shopping mall is simply more convenient. As a result people end up spending most of their time traveling from box to box without ever having to leave established infrastructure. (Get on the subway, shop in the underground shopping malls, take the elevator up to the upstairs mall, shop, then leave back the same way, never having to actually take a foot outside).

Our class ended up discussing how certain modern train stations were prime examples of this, and Shibuya came up multiple times. It was used as an example of an area that was full of contained boxes that people are content living in because its easy to get everything you need. Now, in his article, Miura specifically mentioned the concept of a "ブラックボックス”(Black Box), defined as a box that performs some kind of function, but its actual inner workings are unknown. The idea being, I suppose, that society is becoming more and more full of these boxes and it is almost suffocating our ability to understand the truth behind things. It works, and we don't care to look inside further.

Obviously this got me thinking a little bit and while not exactly the same as what Miura was speaking of in his article, it made me wonder about the function of the Black Box in KH. Now, to be fair, in Japanese it isn't called "ブラックボックス” but instead 黒い箱 so I'm not sure if it really is meant to represent the same concept, but a Black Box at least, in science and other experiments (and according to Wikipedia) is used as a stand in for something where the content inside is a mystery and that is, actually, irrelevant for the most part. The important thing is seeing what outputs it provides with given inputs. So...I actually have a very weird proposition about the contents and function about our Black Box.

...I think it's empty. Or, at least for a time, it was.

From what little we have seen of the Master, he is somewhat of a scientist so I wouldn't put it past him to set things up for experimentation. Now, we know that the box was meant to be taken to the KBGY to be used in conjunction with the Eye (BUT NEVER OPENED) and then it just...disappeared for a while.

My thoughts on this: The Master's Eye, and what it observed were the initial INPUTS to the box. Whatever is actually inside the box doesn't actually matter because it is, quite literally, a "Black Box" and what matters is its OUTPUT.

So the real question I'm now asking myself is, what did the Black Box DO?

This is an incredibly rough theory, but...

I think, somehow, the Black Box is responsible for forming the KH universe that we know. Or, to put it into terms similar to Miura's article, everyone in the Kingdom Hearts universe has been living in boxed in worlds, within a boxed in universe created by a box and have been completely ignorant of that fact because they can't see past all the boxes.

It was around during the Keyblade War which, according to the legends, caused the world to be "destroyed" until the light and hope of the children reformed parts of it. So..."light and hope" were what rebuilt the world from the brink of nothing. And what did Luxord say was in the box? Hope.

Maybe it's like a giant projector or digitizer or something, but I think it somehow "re-created" the world, using whatever input it had from the Eye. That's why it was so valuable to never, ever open it. Because if you open it and learn how it works, the simulation or whatever the Box is providing will abruptly crash and end. Thus, crashing the universe. This could maybe explain how it is even possible to have things like a data world and a dream world-- because this entire thing is just humming along at the mercy of our black box CPU which allows such insane reality-bending things to happen. Because it isn't reality.

The one thing this doesn't explain is why the box disappeared in the first place, or how it, as Maleficent put it, didn't exist until a certain point in time. As far as we know, that "point in time" seems to be tied to either the appearance of Kingdom Hearts, a Keyblade War, or the forming of a X-blade. That made me think that well, if it really is a box that can literally shape the universe it is in, maybe all of that is actually just a red herring it doesn't appear until it needs an input. Maybe it appeared because it might need new data to run off of.

The Master's Eye saw up to the current Keyblade War which is what spawned the Book of Prophesies, but as far as we know it wouldn't have seen past that point because Sora ended up averting that and splitting reality into a different timeline. I think all of what Sora did to save everyone and doom himself was taboo not because of "rules" but because it is literally hacking into the Black Box. So, Sora altered the Box's initial desired outcome (as it was attempting to create according to its previous input from the Eye) and thus caused it to reappear in order to get new input. Basically, Sora did soft reset on the system and now its sitting there blinking back, waiting for the next command prompt.

This made me consider, well...maybe the reason why Sora disappeared, then, is because he caused himself to become an input into the Black Box itself. He forced it to change the universe, maybe sacrificed his own being as an input command, and in the end, maybe that's actually where he ended up.

It's also interesting to note that in Psychology at least, a "Black Box" can refer to the human brain. It makes me wonder if maybe the Master somehow built the box with his...brain in a similar way to how he literally built his eye into a Keyblade? Maybe that's why he acts so strangely (I kid...)

This also wouldn't explain everything to do with Yozora, but...

Spoiler Spoiler Show


Maybe the Box thing is too completely off the wall, I dunno. I just think it would be just like Nomura to have that scene from Back Cover actually be the Master leaning in to Luxu's ear and whispering. "That Black Box? It's actually empty!" I mean heck, if I was Luxu and heard that I would be pretty dang confused by that as well. But what the Master didn't tell him was that the contents aren't what make the box special. So perhaps all the postulating we have been doing this entire time about what the box contains is just meaningless because that's not the part that matters.

...Thoughts?
 

Eonstar890

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Great theory! You clearly have put a lot of thought into this, and the box being empty is totally something I could see Normura doing.

Your idea of it being a type of world CPU actually aligns with the theory that I currently subscribe too, which is that the box contains the data worldline where the Dandelions are currently trapped in UX. This idea works for a lot of the same points you made, such as the box containing hope, and the dandelions being that hope for the future.

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AmaryllisMoth

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which is that the box contains the data worldline where the Dandelions are currently trapped in UX.

I could very easily see this as well. Also kind of funny to consider if Nomura is trying to make some sort of joke reference to the psychology term "Black Box" aka "Brain" and have a character named Brain literally inside of it...

I suppose that is why Luxu was referring to him/them as a virus.
 

mouflon

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This is really, really interesting. I’d love to read the article if I could ever get my hands on an English version (more like I really need to pick up my Japanese learning again…).

I’ve often thought the Black Box might just be empty but only because that seems like the silly kind of plot twist (or more like plot wrench) that Nomura would throw into the story.

Whenever I hear black box though, I just think of the type used on planes (and on other vehicles, I believe). They’re essentially indestructible and record data. Thus in the event of an accident (say a plane crash… or a Keyblade War) the black box can be recovered so engineers, forensics or whoever else can determine what went wrong and why. And probably a bunch of other stuff a simpleton like me doesn’t know about.

I think that’s what made your description of Miura’s black box concept especially interesting to me since it actually feels to me like a conceptual opposite of the plane’s black box. One exists due to the convenience of modern life and inadvertently conceals truth, whereas the other has the sole purpose of revealing the truth during an emergency or catastrophe.

I was also unaware of the term as used in other areas, like in experiments and in psychology. Funny how the contents of the Black Box are considered so heavily when even the term Black Box itself can have so many different meanings and interpretations.

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Tobi

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I have no idea how Yozora is able to reach the place Sora is (get inside the box?) in his dreams nor am I convinced of the idea that the realm NoTctis is from is "reality". If anything, it is just another universe that the Black Box is creating that has been running parallel to Sora and Co's universe this whole time.
You just wrote something about this in the previous comment, but adding to that, Luxord gave Sora a card. So if Sora went into the black box and you're right with the Black box being literally a Black Box (of something like a computer) then he could have used Sora in order to send a virus (the card) with him into it. Or rather a trojana which Luxord can now use to gain access to the inside of the Black Box and sending viruses in it (Yozora).
What if "Yozora" and "Commander" are actually two separate people? The "Commander" might be the heart that is occupying the body of "Yozora" (the name of the person the body belongs to), because maybe the commander is someone invaluable to fighting the...robot things. The idea being that if his body/host dies then the "Commander" can then be put inside of a fresh new body to keep fighting while keeping all of his previous battle knowledge intact. And maybe each time this happens, whoevers body it is changes to look like the "Commander". It would explain why Yozora says he doesn't look like himself. It would also explain the heterochromia (the blue one is Yozora).
I got lost at this point. You mean Yozora has a split personality and the two of them are fighting over the body? Or is it a possession, which is willed by both sides? Are they on the same side?
Jumping from body to body (but people) and commandeering them to fight. It also kind of fits in with the text on the back of the box for Verum Rex:
You mean just like Sora did with the others in ReMind or more like Luxu/Xehanort? If the latter do you mean he controls the body or is he just giving orders as in what the person who owns the body should do?
 

AmaryllisMoth

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This is a good theory and really well written too. I was having similar thoughts about the Black Box containing a data world, a bit like @Eonstar890 said, but I think maybe that the Union leaders don't escape the data world at the end of UX, and we are still inside the Box for most of the series and that's the reason why nobody can find it anywhere in the world. The world is in the box.

I know that in UX Darkness has apparently led Maleficent to the real world but I am not convinced yet. Apart from it being odd that Lauriam can just walk into the real world, it seems to clash with what we've been told elsewhere. When the MoM spoke to Luxu about the Cornerstones of the World's Rebirth he said that the real world would be erased, and the Dandelions in the other worldline would gather the light so the world would be reborn.
Everything from this world will be erased, and the Keyblade wielders who are able to escape to another worldline will recover the scattered light. (He disperses the light throughout the room.) And thus the world will be reborn.

So how is there a laboratory in the real world if everything was erased? It doesn't seem like the Dandelions have remade the world yet, at least. And Luxu's secret reports don't make it sound like UX ends with the Dandelions gathering the light to remake the world, instead a 'darkness 'leads the world to a second demise and the Five are sent to another worldline. Also, the world being reborn sounds a lot like what Xehanort says at the end of KH3 about the light of Kingdom Hearts giving us a 'new start'.

So, my rough theory is that the MoM knew the world was going to end. He knew it could be remade using Kingdom Hearts but it wasn't possible to make Kingdom Hearts appear in the time left before darkness consumed the world. However, if he put some hearts into a datascape in a sort of supercomputer he could effectively make time move at a much greater rate than in the real world, allowing Kingdom Hearts to be summoned, which could then be used to remake the real world.

And I think the datascape would be formed in the box using the Book of Prophecies as its 'script', like Jiminy's Journal in Coded (so Maleficent would actually be correct about the box's contents but misunderstand it). In Coded, the characters are sucked into the datascape without realizing it and similarly the Dandelions could enter the Box without realizing it.

I think the problem would be that, even in a datascape, darkness would eventually destroy the world, before the goal was achieved. So I think the simulation can loop and 'overwrite' the fall to darkness each time, creating a new worldline in the Box, until eventually the fall to darkness would be prevented and light would prevail. This happens in KH3 and this allows the Box to be opened from the inside. The Box's 13 locks could be opened by the 13 keys forged in the KG. And then the Keyblade War finally reaches its conclusion and the light of Kingdom Hearts remakes the real world and people can leave the Box, so it appears 'back' in the KG with Xigbar at the end, though really it's Xigbar who is back with it.
 
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