This episode contains the second-most annoying scene in Kingdom Hearts.

I spoke earlier about how Birth By Sleep has an almost pathological obsession with “explaining” away all the plot conveniences in the first game. The problem is that in doing so is that not only did we not need those explanations to begin with, but answering those questions raising other, harder to ignore questions.

This scene between Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi is one of the most glaring examples. Here, Aqua senses that “destiny” has brought her and Mickey to Kairi in order to protect her from danger. This explains the following:

  • Why Kairi can use a keyblade. (Although that requires additional information from later in the game, and that the player was paying attention in both scenes to subtle details.)
  • Why Kairi ended up at the Destiny Islands in time for the original Kingdom Hearts.
Unfortunately, in the process on answering those two questions in that scene, these other questions got raised:
  • How did Aqua sense that Kairi needed to be protected? Is it some by-product of her ability to sense darkness (as seen in the Cinderella world)?
  • Why did her protection take that exact form? Why not instead offer her some practical self-defense tool or some power to be used “only in emergencies”?
  • What mechanism decided that the world Kairi would end up in was Destiny Island? Furthermore, how is this any different/better than having her end up in Traverse Town?
  • Why does touching someone else’s keyblade give someone a keyblade of their own? Does this mean Jack Sparrow from Port Royal got a keyblade when Sora let him touch his? Why isn’t there some more formal ceremony for this, to prevent a bunch of random thugs from getting knowledge of other worlds and ready-access to the very tool to abuse that knowledge?
As a net result, we’ve now create extra question, since the ones raised far outweigh the number of questions answered. 
Worse than that, these initial plot conveniences did not need to be explained. Simply put, the story of Kingdom Hearts works without knowing how Kairi got to the island. It doesn’t matter because the story isn’t about that. The franchise’s overarching narrative is made worse with these answers.
Tune in next time for the actual worst scene in Kingdom Hearts.

Terra is an idiot. You will accept this is move on.

As I said in the episode, a lot of the problems I have with these Disney world stories aren’t really the fault of Nomura or of Kingdom Hearts. They are a by-product of some combination of the following:

  • The original Grimm Brothers’ source material
  • The time period in which these movies were written/animated
  • Walt Disney being a huge jerk in real life
I point them mostly to show how much different old Disney was to the more modern movies from the same company. Since Kingdom Hearts is, on a fundamental level, a love-letter to the many classic movies almost all of us grew up on, it’s unfair to criticize it for drawing on that same source material.
That said, it is also important to highlight some of the choices that were made outside of the influence of the source material. The big one is that Aqua is almost always the one closing up the story of any given Disney world. Not only does that mean she is always a major actor in the events leading to the story’s conclusion, but it means she’s often a big reason why the Prince of a given story is able to find their true love. Considering that the women in these original stories were often demure, and lacking in any real agency, it’s nice that they (deliberately or otherwise) have a female character make the choice to be a driving force in the plot. While it doesn’t make up for Kairi, it goes a long way.
As of this update, we’re done with the old-school Disney films. All the worlds from here on out will be drawing from the same pool of 90s-2000 era movies that the rest of the franchise uses. There’s a lot of content out there that compares old Disney with new Disney, but it’s still worth taking a look back to see how far we’ve come as a society every now and then.

Now what were those magic words to get this episode out? Hmmm….

Oh yes, “Sam, please post the video!”

If there’s one thing that Birth By Sleep does a lot better than other games is link the storylines of the individual Disney worlds back into the main plot thread.

Even if something as small as Ven, Terra, and Aqua relating what’s going on to their own relationships with each other, having a through-line of some kind gives each story a sense of momentum/pacing that Kingdom Hearts 2 didn’t have.

It also helps that the main 3 characters frequently interact with each other. Further, the writers actually do a good job of weaving the themes and subjects of the main story into the tales of the Disney worlds.

And then Aqua went to an old lady’s house to murder her and her two children…

It’s time Sam finally got the answers he’s long sought… some of them anyway.

Even today, I see fierce debates over exactly how much responsibility Terra has for tarnishing his own reputation with the rest of the cast. Among the Kingdom Hearts community, you’ll see many people on both the “Terra Is An Idiot” front (my side) and the “Terra Did Nothing Wrong” front (not my side).

In a way, part of his problem comes from sheer circumstance. Any given RPG hero usually just listens to the first few people he/she encounters when they arrive at a new location. Almost every single time, these people happen to be trustworthy enough to for/with. Terra doesn’t have that same luck. The “Terra Did Nothing Wrong” crowd would argue that he has no way of knowing that the people he first meets are all morally dubious, and thus can’t be held responsible for being duped by them.

While I’ll concede that Terra has very poor luck, I would argue against anyone who claims he is absolved of responsibility. It’s only natural that people ask questions before they accept jobs or when they meet others. Most of us don’t realize it, but whenever we meet someone for the first time, we often start by having them tell us about themselves and vice-versa. The fact that Terra doesn’t do this is strange, especially since he’s on a mission to learn about the goings-on in other worlds. Ventus has this problem too, but he’s lucky enough to meet decent people.

To his credit, once the Evil Queen in Snow White asks him to kill the titular Snow White, he does start to ask questions: But that’s only once he’s asked to murder another human being. And even though he never had the intention of taking the job, he still accepted it and put himself in a position where it looks like he went for the kill.

A case can be made that he’s not 100% responsible, but he does take some share of the blame. As a character trait, that even has the capacity to lead to some tense/dramatic moments. Unfortunately, Birth By Sleep commits one of, in my opinion, the greatest sins a storyteller can make when trying to build up drama. Unfortunately, it’s too early to talk about it.

And so the Primer begins anew….

I have a deep seated problem with this game, and Sam hit the nail on the head very early on. This game answers questions that did not need to be answered, and raises new, even more confusing questions as a result.

As we progress through the game, Nomura insists on explaining details that aren’t important, rather than elaborating on the ones that are. This initial reveal of Sora saving Roxas before he was even born is just one of those details. Not only does this ruin Sora’s appeal as The Unchosen Hero, but it comes out of left field. There’s nothing in previous games to even suggest the possibility, and doesn’t really add to the story.

I’ll point out other such details as we go along. This is only the beginning.

Sam and Brandon are finally at the grand finale of 358 Days / 2. Roxas and Xion face existential crises while completing more missions.

Days provides some interesting insight into the mindset of Roxas and those most directly connected to him. That said, in terms of the overall plotline, not much of importance happens here. It’s mostly character work, and that’s why it works as well as it does. That said, don’t play it. The game attached to this story is pretty awful in ways that exist outside the scope of the primer.

Next time, a little more than one week from now, we’ll be moving on to the big breaking point for the story of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. I can’t wait for you guys to hear what we have to say on it.

Brandon and Sam get to finally talk about the plot important details. Roxas completes more missions.

While it is irritating how often the same lines are repeated over and over in these scenes almost verbatim, this is by far some of the most depth we get our of the characters in Kingdom Hearts. I absolutely love the conflict between Roxas and Axel in this scene.

In the end, the only thing Roxas ever really wanted was to understand who we was and use that knowledge to be his own person. His motivation, and how complicated his quest for truth and self-determination, give him the best scenes in the series.

For this reason, he’s my favorite character in the franchise. I only wish more people could look past Kingdom Hearts 2’s god awful into to see what I see in Roxas.

Sam and Brandon get close to the end of the 358 Days / 2 portion of the Kingdom Hearts Primer. Meanwhile, Roxas, Axel, and Xion completed more missions.

We’re getting there. Just one more episode left before we can move on the next game in the Primers.

Something I noticed as I re-watched these episodes for the posts is that Kingdom Hearts has a very severe problem. Almost all of the plot critical information comes from the very start and very end of any given Kingdom Hearts game. For this reason, most of the middle of each game can be easily forgotten.

On some level, this is understandable. This middle section is where all of the Disney worlds make their home, and they are part of the selling point of Kingdom Hearts. That said, at some point, this franchise’s original fiction began to dominate everything else. I’m not longer sure how much of a selling point the Disney worlds are anymore. They’re obviously something that cannot be ignored, since the central identity of Kingdom Hearts is a fusion between Square Enix and Disney. But are they still the main draw? I don’t know.

While Axel, Roxas, and Xion stood at the clock tower for the fifty-thousandth time, Sam and Brandon continued the Kingdom Hearts Primer.

While I will continue to complain about the nonsense that occurs in Days’s main plot, there is something to be said for how strong the character interactions are.

The voice acting has some problems, mainly in the delivery, but the script is pretty strong, especially when it involves the main trio of Axel, Roxas, and Xion. There are a ton of interesting and complex relationships just between them. Roxas and Xion bond over similar feelings of being ostracized from the rest of the organization. Despite there friendship, the nature of their existences puts them at odds with both each other and the world at large. And ultimately, neither one of them can survive.

Meanwhile, Axel values their friendship as one of the few genuine bonds he’s formed as a nobody, especially since his actual former best friend is nearly unrecognizable. For that reason, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to preserve that friendship, which is exactly what drives a wedge between them.

It’s pretty deep, and I wish they leaned into this kind of material more.

This clock tower is really starting to grate on our nerves.

I try genuinely hard to avoid spoiling things for Sam on this Kingdom Hearts adventure we’ve embarked on. But every now and then, a reveal is so tantalizing that I can’t help myself. This was one of those times. It doesn’t help that those kinds of retcons are alarming frequent, especially in the spin-off games. On top of that, they are necessary in order to properly contextualize the experience.

This game spends so much time dwelling on the fact that Nobodies don’t have hearts. This is problematic for two reasons. One, while they talk a lot about it, they never explore the ramifications of what it must be like to live without emotions and how having and losing emotions can change someone. Despite constantly saying that Organization members don’t have feelings, almost all of them have distinct personality traits, thoughts, and emotions (or at least character archetypes). Even if Kingdom Hearts 2, it stinks of a lack of opportunity.

But then coming out and saying that they *do* have hearts and feelings causes it’s own set of headaches. It makes all the pointless, meaningless dwelling on the subject feel like a collective waste of time. Why did we spend so much time going “Oh, we don’t have emotions”, when that couldn’t be further from the truth? And it jettisons all the potential there could have been to explore a very interesting premise.

I can’t figure out what it would be, but there had to have been a more satisfying way to resolve this problem than the route they took. As it stands, it feels like Nomura figured out we couldn’t write characters with “no hearts” and just did away with the premise with a half-assed retcon. I’m unsatisfied.
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