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What's your opinion about Sora x Kairi?
- Thread starter Grono
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I can agree to this, but i think as a HK original character, introduce from the beginning, people have wanted a bigger role.
My problem with her is more around Kh2. her personality has transformed. she seemed like a regular girl to this mysterious quiet girl. ANd always having cutscenes, she got to be relevant not by choice but because Axel chose to take her. And was still captured. It would've been nice in kh2 (if she truly is a PoH) to use her PoH abilities somehow. but no.....
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Maybe without Sora and Riku, her personality changed because she doesn't act the same without her closest friends around?
The same thing that hurts a lot of Kingdom Hearts, lol.
Oh, Launchpad has a good point, a big chunk of Riku's character and development is his relationship to Sora, just like Kairi's is.
I'd still like Kairi to be directly appearing moreso than mentions of her relationship with Sora, though. Like in coded. Her drawing was on the wall, but there was no data Kairi. Anywhere. There is no reason why she doesn't exist there, Jiminy has written about her before. I guess you could say Riku didn't really appear there either, but he made it into the game well enough. Ignore me, I'm just forever confused over her exclusion.
I'd still like Kairi to be directly appearing moreso than mentions of her relationship with Sora, though. Like in coded. Her drawing was on the wall, but there was no data Kairi. Anywhere. There is no reason why she doesn't exist there, Jiminy has written about her before. I guess you could say Riku didn't really appear there either, but he made it into the game well enough. Ignore me, I'm just forever confused over her exclusion.
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as much as Riku got development (overcoming his own demons with the darkness of Ansem SOD) most of his relationship with Sora is telling more than showing. TAV i can excuse as we would need a lot more just to understand. although they did show, just probably not enough.
The difference is that Riku is given screen time and development. He has agency in the plot.
I don't think Kairi being connected to Sora is inherently bad. But the way the series treats her and Riku in relation to this is incredibly different.
I don't think Kairi being connected to Sora is inherently bad. But the way the series treats her and Riku in relation to this is incredibly different.
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Which i dont tihnk Kairi back then needed to do that in order to be a good character.
Well, buddy, you can bet your powdered bottom that you've just lost out on your Launchpad privileges, for good, too! If you had looked deeper into my unabashedly hilarious style of presenting a point, you'd have seen that I'd made a valid argument against both characters you presented, opinions, that, believe it or not, I actually hold! But that's it, you blew it, buddy! You were mean to me and now I don't want to play with you anymore!
Yes, she did. What makes a good character is them being dynamic, and multi-faceted, having flaws, etc. Kairi never gets fleshed out beyond a very thin depiction. There are some moments that hint at more, but they are small and fleeting. She has potential though.
y'know, that's cool with me.
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Thats not what you were saying in the previous post. you said she needed "agency".
Kairi had as much flaws as Sora (not much), but it was clear she was human. Kairi was dynamic in the sense that she had a distinguishable personality (at least in kh1).
Personally, Kairi's personality never struck me as the backseat...but at least in kh1, her personality was interesting enough to not care what role exactly she owuld paly out.
in kh2, her personality diminished. sure we have wahts considered "development" but the transition from mopey, quiet, mysterious to the loud, funny and interesting girl that she was in kh1, i believe is the reason why demand ot have a more important role surface.
I love Kairi, I think she's a great character, and not all characters want or need to be on the front lines. But character agency is about more than being on the frontlines or support.
Character agency is a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.
I don't know if we can call KH a character-driven plot or not for the most part, so that last point isn't really relevant.
Kairi has motivations and she's tried to push, but like I said, despite her efforts and her stated desire to be with Riku and Sora and fight with them because "she's tired of being left behind" and "they shouldn't be the only ones getting hurt", the plot pulls her around in the end. She has little option to act, just react. She's acted before, don't get me wrong.
Edit: Man you guys are fast. Or I'm slow. Or both.
That's not what dynamic means when referring to characters in a literary sense.
She needed a lot of things, agency being one of them.
I think different interpretations are what causing the divides. Let's put it this way: Why is Kairi not an active part of her trio? Why is the mess known as TAV more effective as a trio? Why is RAX more believable to a majority of fans? Why didn't Kairi join your party in 2 despite saying she won't back down and leave you alone?
Kairi's character establishment in KH1 was subtle and not as clear as Riku's and Sora's, but she has personality and flaws. But they've really skimped out on giving her a chance to be properly fleshed out in person like Sora and Riku were.
I'll agree that there are more references and mentions mentions to Kairi as connection or memory than there are chances for her to be on screen, though.
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I never believed that Kairi needed to fall into a mold of a trio. Thats what i liked about SRK dynamic, that they weren't all fitting into this universal role. each one was their own individual.
TAV is an effective trio because they were already designed to be a trio. Kairi didn't make a charm for all three of them, she only made one for one person. Also keep in mind we played as all three characters as the story unravels.
RAX is believable, simply because it is. i do not like them, and i wish XIon was either some human out there but not some clone. I mean, how dark would the series get if Roxas grew fond of a character and because of Organization 13's goal, she became a heartless for Roxas to defeat. That would be a real gritty story there.
"You'd kind of get in my way." And thus, Kairi was relegated to stay on DI while Sora went to get Riku. That was KHCoM, KHDays, and KH2. Any games taking place before KH2 weren't viable options for Kairi to do much, and none of them were really in Coded. In DDD, it might be because they were relying on the fact that you forgot Kairi for the big reveal at the end. It's certainly not for lack of trying, though.
More effective in what way? Ah, because they're all given a chance to connect and Kairi being forgotten leaves her out of SRK a lot, and there's been little effort to show a lot of Riku and Kairi's relationship.
Because of the way days is played? It's slower and day to day, and we get to see them grow from the first time they met to the last. It's a sort of slice of life feel.
Either because you only get one guest character per world or they just really didn't want to try to code a fighting style for Kairi. Or maybe she was "too weak"?
I totally agree, though, they could do so much better with Kairi.
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