#Even more so in XIII-2 where she is literally fighting a war on her own and now has access to divine abilities making her more of a Paladin

[hubristicassholefight]

Swordswoman Showdown Round 2 Part 2

Lightning Farron (Final Fantasy XIII) vs Fa Mulan (Mulan)

Better here in a "preferred character" sense, not "who would win in a fight")

Propaganda below cut

Lightning

She uses a Gunblade. A sword thats also a gun. Said to be very rare because it takes so much skill to use. Does lots of slashing and backflips. Later becomes Champion of A God and sword fights a guy for eternity. Later becomes champion of a Different god and uses lots of different swords; She is dramatic and has lots of character growth and is awesome.

#She fights sephiroth#she has a fire sword for Drama#She gets armor too#how can you say no to that face#you want it she can do it

#there’s 10 hours left Lightning did not suffer to lose#ALL SHES BEEN THROUGH AND FOR WHAT#HER CHARACTER GROWTH IN THE GAME IS SO GOOD#SHES BEEN THRU SO MUCH#I JUST WANT WHATS BEST FIR HER#FOR HER#SHE DESERVES IT APL#ALL#RISE LIGHTNING STANS RISE#WHERES UR ANGER#WHERES UR RAGE

#back to rep my girl because I am NOT done talking about her#like she deserves everything okay#having to grow up quick and throw away her childhood to become her sisters new guardian after losing their mom#having to continuously grow stronger not for herself#but to keep Serah safe#and then eventually the need to want to protect others#her new found family#the fact that she would do so much for them by the time we get the third game#how kuch she had to fight all she had to do for the#the sake of humanity#the things she’s been through#it makes you want all the best for her

#i love them both but come on I gotta rep Lightning 😭😭😭#come on she uses her gunblade like a pro#but I love how she’s not afraid to throw hands either or how agile she is#so she doesn’t have to rely on her weapons at all times#she’s strong too like even before becoming a l’cie she can knock down men -snow- twice her size#she has the skills to back herself up#lets not forget she stabbed a god in the face with a survival knife#she’s just constantly getting stronger and she’s pretty#did I mention she’s pretty because#she’s very pretty

#she comes with 2x Big Sister baggage!#you know how much you love Grizzled Cynical Old Man Acquires Child?#get ready for Grizzled But On The Inside Woman Acquires Child Who Is Somehow Even More Cynical and Grizzled than Her#Idolizes Her and Becomes a Mirror Turned Back Upon Her So She Has To Examine Her Shit#also she’s just so cool#unpopular opinion but I love the feel of combat in XIII#I’m not a fan of super granular systems I love the vibes-based play#watching her flip and slash her way around the field kicks ass#like yes bitch u barely need me here#SHE HAS A GAY LITTLE CAPE HOW CAN YOU SAY NO TO A GAY LITTLE CAPR#they couldve made her a little grizzled tho. for Me.

#Did I mention she can grill up a good steak#but that's all she can cook#She stabs a god in the face with a pocketknife#she punches dudes in the face#she meets a hot australian chick and slaps her and then shows her her tits#She has a suit of armor and a horse cause she a knight#yes i'll propagandize for her in her every poll cause she's perf

#Ok but you forgot to mention how Lightning is literally one woman army#She freaking uses magic and summons her stead guardian and even users those giant ass double edge blades and they fight in unison#She is also very acrobatic and elegant with her moves#Even more so in XIII-2 where she is literally fighting a war on her own and now has access to divine abilities making her more of a Paladin

Fa Mulan

stole her father's sword to take his place in the imperial army. defeated the invading leader and stole HIS sword too.

Soldier who saved all of china; She’s one of the ogs, man, her movie is a banger

i know she's a problematic fave but i still love her :(

[nadziejastar]

(1) This is my messed up headcanon about how Lea and Isa became Nobodies. The apprentices are experimenting on Isa and they discover he has the potential to be a berserker, but he doesn't have the anger to properly harness it no matter how hard they push. Eventually they bring in Lea and threaten him but even then Isa can't manage what they want. So they make good on their threats and force Isa to watch as they turn Lea into a Heartless, the very first Red Nocturne. Isa goes into a great rage,

(2) but it's not enough to save him as he's still rather weak and the apprentices continue to use him as a lab rat. Meanwhile, Lea's body and soul are reborn as a Nobody. He's not the first the apprentices discover, but he is the first one to retain his human form so he also becomes a favored test subject. Using him the apprentices learn enough about Nobodies that they think it's safe to willingly give up their hearts. The boys do not meet again until they're officially inducted into O13.

My headcanon is very similar, actually. I think Lea wanted to join the organization (or whatever they were called as humans) because he knew that they were never going to let Isa go and he wanted to free him. 

Xehanort didn’t simply let Lea join, though. He needed his intended vessel properly under his control, so he attacked Lea in front of Isa. Xehanort wanted Isa to feel anger and rage. Apparently hearts full of rage were important.

Protecting Lea was Isa’s only reason for fighting. He tried his hardest to protect him, but he just wasn’t powerful enough. Everything was hopeless and he lost the will to fight.

Then Isa witnessed Lea lose his heart and become a Heartless. Isa was devastated. He finally became enraged enough to fight.

Isa wanted Lea back and went berserk.

It took a lot to get him into such a frenzied state because Isa is a naturally serene, self-possessed, calm person.

I think Isa was a lover, not a fighter. He was like Sora. It wasn’t natural for him to be so full of rage. Fighting Saïx got him really emotionally worked up, though.

Isa already had a piece of Xehanort’s heart inside of him, so his heart was then captured. It went into the void, and his “unquenched thirst for battle” was then used by the entity possessing him.

Isa’s body became a puppet at that point. Once Terra’s heart was captured, his body became Ansem Seeker of Darkness. Isa’s body became Saïx Seeker of Darkness. Isa’s heart was able to be used as a weapon after it was captured. Terra’s heart was The Guardian. Isa’s heart was used as berserk Saïx, basically. Saïx could remember and feel exactly what Isa felt when he wanted to protect Lea, and it fueled his berserk state. His berserk form has yellow eyes like the Guardian, too.

According to Xemnas/No Heart, the power of the weak exists to feed the strong. Riku Replica was a Seeker of Darkness. He said that he “devoured” those he defeated and acquired their powers, like with Zexion. Xion was also a Replica and her final form looked a lot like Xemnas’s armored form. She was trying to absorb Roxas’s powers to use as her own, then she would become a complete Sora Replica and presumably a Seeker of Darkness (I guess?).

Isa had a strong heart but he was still weak and stood no chance in a fight against Xehanort and lost. I think his heart was devoured and he was possessed by a Replica Seeker of Darkness entity or whatever the heck those armored things possessing Xemnas and Xion were. Whatever the case, Replicas were a lot more than just free containers to pop hearts into, like they were in KH3. The were...disturbing.

Afterwards, Isa became a Nobody and probably was like Roxas. An empty amnesiac, in a daze. In that impressionable state, he was given a new purpose. Since Isa was weak, he was given the purpose to simply become stronger, so that he could be a more useful vessel when the Keyblade War started. Saïx had no memory of being Norted and probably had no memory of receiving this purpose. It affects him subconsciously and he felt like he awakened to it on his own. 

Since he absorbed Isa’s heart, he gradually gained all of Isa’s memories of his human life, but his personality and motivation were totally different. That’s because the entity residing in his body was no longer Isa, but a Nort/Replica/whatever who thought he was Isa due to having no other memories but Isa’s. And that’s why Axel said Saïx was like that from the very beginning. He chalked his twisted personality up to his traumatic memories from his human time, but that wasn’t really it. Isa was just possessed by something not human, like Xemnas and Xion.

Lea and Isa didn’t see each other again until they were found by Xemnas as Nobodies and joined Organization XIII approximately at the same time. Together they formulated their plan to overthrow Xemnas. Axel was always single-mindedly focused on taking over the organization with Saïx. He wasn’t really bothered by Saïx’s heartlessness because he was the same way. He didn’t start to feel sad about Saïx’s change of personality until he met Roxas, remembered what innocent friendship felt like, and began to awaken a heart.

When Axel was remembering the day Roxas got his new name, they ate ice cream and watched the sunset. Axel was also remembering the day he and Isa got their new names. That day, Lea and Isa ate ice cream, watched their last sunset, and they planned to die together and meet again in the next life. All they wanted was to be together forever. Later that day, they were back with Xehanort, lost their hearts, became Nobodies, and received their new names. Isa was never the same after that. This is why Axel got so emotional remembering the day he met Roxas. He even started crying.

Although I think Isa was angry at Xehanort/Xemnas for turning Lea into a Heartless, his main desire the whole time was protecting Lea. He wasn’t really driven by hatred, he was driven by love. It’s like the Beast in Days. He seemed like he was enraged when he fought the Heartless, but he was really just trying to protect Belle and his servants. In the final battle, Saïx didn’t even look angry or anything. He just looked like a mindless, emotionless puppet with no sense of self, acting on raw instinct. 

When Xemnas was attacking Lea, I think he was reliving the moment where he was protecting Lea from Xehanort before they lost their hearts. His heart woke up while he was watching Lea get tortured. Isa should have been the one to save Lea from Xemnas, not Xion or Roxas, who literally came outta nowhere. Isa was weak, but Saïx was strong. He was strong because Xemnas forced him to be. Then he could use that strength to protect Lea from Xemnas and his character arc would come full-circle. 

[yuugimutouandatemu]

KH3 DLC AND KH4 THEORY

So I have a KH3 DLC and KH4 theory, SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ANYBODY WHO HASN'T FINISHED KH3!!!

We good? Okay.

I think Kairi might be in the datascape!

Ok, so remember back to KH1 when we saw Kairi's memories while we were in Hollow Bastion, talking to her Granny about the kids of light and such. So she would've been there in Radiant Garden when Ansem the Wise was doing all of his weird research. I think there's a possibility that since Kairi was a princess of heart, he did experiments of the heart using Kairi for research.

Now think of the Mystery Star in the Final World, she said her identity was stolen, but not her heart because her heart pined for another. I'm going to assume she's Skuld, and the missing girl that suddenly the Xehanort's are all so interested in.

Now think of Namine, who for some reason can manipulate Sora's memories but also implant stuff into Repliku's mind too? What if her base power is based on Kairi's unknown abilities to see memories in people's hearts? What if that's Kairi's princess power? And what if Ansem the Wise used that ability to look into Skuld's memories and learned about the Dandelions and the other Keyblade Wielders who fell in the keyblade war who now reside in the datascape? What if he learned about the datascape through Skuld? And what if since Kairi was so young that things go scrambled? So like what if Kairi knows about Skuld and all of this info, so her own memories got messed up before she got sent to Destiny Islands for her own safety?

And Ansem the Wise was seen as a very kind man, right? What if he tried to rescue the Dandelions from the Datascape? But could only revive Ventus, Lauriam, and Arlene? And he said he ruined countless lives already, right? What if he was unsuccessful in reviving some of the dandelions and it resulted in letting out a bunch of Darklings (the fallen hearts of keyblade wielders) and maybe creating a bunch of heartless?

Right, so back to Kairi in KH3, WHAT IF they figured out that Kairi might have a connection to Skuld, so instead of actually killing her, they made a REPLICA of Kairi to destroy in front of Sora so he would assume she was lost and would therefore not look for her when they kidnapped her, cuz he would assume her heart's lost? Right, so they knew he would go hopping through darkness and worlds and whatever with the power of waking because he did that before. He would get himself lost, and meanwhile they would use the real Kairi to find Skuld. The whole dead Kairi being a replica they destroyed matches up with the fact that she didn't have a heart when she exploded AND she looked like glass, which is what Xion resembled when her body was being destroyed in 358/2 Days.

So if they were trying to mess with Kairi's mind to figure out what she knows, they might hide her in A DATASCAPE! When the Xehanorts kidnap Ansem the Wise in KH3, why would they go to the mansion? To use the Datascape! So it's kind of established that they've been messing around there already. But I bet they don't know that Ienzo has set up a network with that computer. And Nomura said that DLC might have something to do with Kairi and Xion WHICH LEADS ME TO THIS!

What if Xion, being briefly part of the new Organization XIII, knew about them wanting to mess with the Datascape? She said near the end of KH3 that she had a feeling that Kairi was alright, which was weird because her heart isn't bound to Kairi's in the way Sora's is, even if she was sleeping inside Sora for a bit, it didn't make sense for her to sense Kairi in that way, unless she already had a feeling that the Xehanort posse had something up their sleeves. And the Xehanorts wouldn't kill Kairi if they knew she might have info concerning Skuld, would they? Nope, they'd probably try to throw them off the trail with a fake Kairi. So I think Xion knowing Organization XIII's general plans might be the one to put two and two together and tell everybody that hey, Kairi might be in a datascape!

Another thing I have to support this is again the ending, it's Sunset, very similar to how Twilight Town is always sunset in the Datascape. I think that Kairi's datascape prison has her and her buddies all at the beach, but she knows it's not real so she stays separate from all of it, she's not buying into the illusion, which is why she cries when she sees Sora there. And if you remember Recoded, Data Sora coming into contact with some of the data makes it disappear when he's done interacting with it. So Kairi dissolving the illusion of a Sora in her datascape would literally make it disappear, hence why she'd be sad.

So I think that in KH4, Kairi breaks free from her datascape prison, but she's still stuck. My theory is that the datascape is like our internet, it's HUGE. And in KHUX, in the upcoming update, the dandelions make their way through wreck-it ralph's universe when bugs start happening with the datascape. Which makes me think there could be countless worlds in the Datascape, just like we have countless websites. Now here's where Sora and Riku pop in. Now what if Xion's like HOLD THE PHONE, GUYS, so Riku contacts Sora, and they hop in the datascape to find Kairi. Another thing to support this idea is the very presence of Yozora who is supposed to be a video game character, so if he exists, he would exist in an internet space or DATASCAPE! What if the Datascape is so vast that Sora and Riku split up to find Kairi, who just escaped the beach datascape and is fighting her own way out. So the three have to find each other again and get Kairi out!

And of course we saw the Master of Masters in there too, right? Master of Masters supposedly disappeared, but what if it's because he disappeared INTO THE DATASCAPE? :D

Whoo, that's a lot to type out, but I want to hear your insights!

Also more things to support the Datascape thing, I don’t think this magical forest where Kairi and Lea can train is really a thing, I think it’s another datascape, because again, SUNSET. Always sunsets in the datascape. Like maybe the twilight is another symbolic thing to represent datascape, not dead but not alive, not day but not night. The old keyblade wielders in the datascape fell in battle but their hearts are data. Not dead but not alive. So if Lea and Kairi were training in a datascape, they could train at the speed of light, and that’s how Lea could carry ice cream in his pockets, and that’s why Merlin had to get them stuff, cuz Merlin is a user. And again, that’s why there would be two different time settings in the ending of KH3, like sure maybe the gang DID play on the beach at the end at DAYTIME, but kairi’s having a very similar occurrence in her datascape at SUNSET, which to me symbolizes datascape.

Also I just learned that the DLC is going to be called RE:MIND. HMMM! SEEMS VERY SIMILAR TO RE:CODED WHICH WAS IN THE DATASCAPE!

[dnmeinster]

Sorting Through Kingdom Hearts III Part 4 - See You In Shibuya

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

Link to Part 3

Kingdom Hearts III almost gives us a happy ending.  Almost.

For a split second, all of our heroes are hanging out on the beaches of the Destiny Islands, including both Sora and Kairi, who are sitting together on that well-known tree branch.  As they lean in close to each other, suddenly Sora disappears.  Um...WHAT?

Why did he disappear?  Where did he go?  Was he ever really there to begin with?  And what about Kairi?  Was she really there?

What follows is mostly speculation, but then again, most of the others posts have been just that, though with better evidence.

Let's start with Kairi.  Was she really on Destiny Islands along with everyone else?  We see her murdered in the Keyblade Graveyard, because unfortunately the series has turned her into the perpetual victim.  But, as we already know, the dead don't necessarily stay dead in Kingdom Hearts.  Literally all the Guardians of Light are returned to life in this game.  Including her.

So Kairi already died once and came back.  Did she do it again?

Yes, of course, but with Sora's help.  After Master Xehanort is defeated, Sora goes off to rescue Kairi.  We'll get to the details of that in a moment, but Kairi's appearance can only mean that Sora was successful.

What else indicates that Kairi was sufficiently rescued?  Namine.  Her revival in Hollow Bastion is shown, and she is with every else on Destiny Islands.  As we know, her heart resided within Kairi since the end of KH2.  It only briefly left when Kairi died the first time.  Where did it go?  The Final World.

"I was in Kairi’s heart, but then we were struck by a powerful darkness...and I woke up here.”

When Kairi died the second time, Namine's heart once again returned to the Final World.  And what happened?  Exactly what Namine described the first time:

“Kairi is where I came from.  So when she’s safe again, Kairi is where I’ll return.”

So, once Sora rescued Kairi (again), Namine's heart returned to Kairi (again) and then her heart was placed into a replica.  Namine's existence confirms that Kairi survived.  But what did it cost Sora?

Young Master Xehanort warns Sora about diving into the abyss, presumably where he has to go to save Kairi:

"That heartless you’ve been fighting.  It’s not like other heartless.  It exists to usher hearts down to the depths of darkness.  If you chase it, you will condemn your heart to that same abyss...What do you think the power of waking is?  It’s for traversing hearts to reach worlds, not for traversing worlds to reach hearts.  There’s a high price to pay for wielding such power foolishly...There’s no saving you.  You’ve paid the price, and it lies at the bottom of the abyss.”

But Sora goes there anyway and apparently sacrifices himself to bring Kairi back to the World of Light.  And that image of him right before the credits roll is probably Kairi's imagination.  Sigh.

We don't have any clue to where Sora might have gone to until the secret movie after the credits.  Sora is looking pretty realistic (with fingernails!) and, as the world around him is revealed, we see that it's Shibuya from the World Ends With You.  The best hanging thread from Dream Drop Distance has finally been pulled.  Neku telling Sora “See you in Shibuya” was not just a pleasantry.

So, it's likely that Sora died, but instead of being sent to The Final World, this time he enters the Reaper's game.  (Could it be because of Luxord's card?)  We might not be getting a direct TWEWY sequel, but this is the next best thing.

Speaking of, the secret movie also includes Riku ending up in another world not dissimilar to our own.  It's the world of Ventus Rex, aka FF Versus XIII.  Nomura might be cramming both games Square won't let him make into KH3.5.  I'm excited for it!

Joining both of them in the secret movie is the Master of Masters, whose apprentices appear in the post-credit epilogue.  It seems that they're setting up a Sora vs. Apprentices future.  Why?  Well, guess you'll have to play Union Cross or watch one of those Youtube summaries if you want a clue.  I really don't like how they're tying the mobile game into the main series, given how unbearable I felt playing it was when it came out.  But maybe they'll at least give us another movie or release a PS4 version.

Where does the Kingdom Hearts series go from here?  Well, we know there's Final Mix DLC coming.  And the secret movie hints at where 3.5 or 4 will take us.  It seems certain that the Master of Masters will be the primary antagonist going forward, along with at least some of his apprentices.  And we're not done with many of the Organization's original members, especially Xigbar.  Plus, the Book of Prophecies will undoubtedly come into play, and maybe we'll have boss battles with Maleficent and Pete again when it does.

It could be a while until we get our next KH game, be it a Ventus Rex/TWEWY mash up or an Unchained Key/Union Cross HD upgrade.  But it's a safe bet that KH4 will be a PS5/next gen game.  Hopefully it won't take 13 years to release.  And maybe we'll get Star Wars or MCU worlds this time!  (Or even Avatar or something now that the Fox merger is complete.)

I've got one more post left, sorting through Nomura's recent interviews and what I got right and wrong in my previous essays.  See you then.

[davidmann95]

Some Kingdom Hearts future thoughts

Have to get ‘em out! Went into some thoughts with my psuedo-review of III, but I’ve got others and stuff worth expanding on. I’ll put them under the cut since it clearly goes into spoilers, except for my boldest, most controversial guess: along with being announced either this year or next (since Kingdom Hearts has never reached the end of a calendar year after a release with nothing on the horizon) I think Kingdom Hearts IV is going to be a 2022 release. I recognize that sounds like an intensely generous timeframe, but I have several reasons:

1. Above all else by far: once again, Square Enix and Disney are going to be on Nomura’s ass, nose to the grindstone, to get him to start delivering these on a consistent basis again. Do you think they’re looking at Kingdom Hearts III topping sales charts and thinking “well, it sure was worth the wait”, or do you think they’re going “gosh, these are some nice sales, sure would be nice if it came out years ago and we had a bunch more similarly-selling titles by now, let’s try and aim for something closer to that in the future”. Especially-especially since Nomura and the actors aren’t getting any younger and the series is at a point where the core fanbase for the franchise as-is is going to be the primary target rather than new audiences, which means it has to wrap up in a timeframe where that’s still a viable market. So rapid, priority development and few if any more spinoffs. I mean, not as if there’s really a handheld platform for them to be on anymore.

2. My understanding (and this is going somewhat into the technical side of things, so I’m going thirdhand here based on what I’ve heard from others) is that the lifecycle of the current console generation isn’t going to run out for quite a bit yet, so they can reuse a lot of the assets and whatnot from III.

3. A big deal was made about Dream Drop Distance coming out on the 10th anniversary of the franchise, and given 20 is a much wilder number for this series than most equivalents when it’s about a single cast of characters going through a single story, I can’t imagine they won’t want to push that as at least a similarly big deal.

4. Finally, when things don’t go as catastrophically off the rails as III did, these games seem to have a fairly consistent 3-4 year development span (even III, once they announced the beginning of development in 2013, would have come out 2017-early 2018 if not for switching from Luminous to Unreal Engine), and for the reasons I listed above I think this is going to be on the speedier end of that.

* Firstly: the main discussion I’m seeing at this point regarding IV is “it’s gonna be a Kingdom Hearts/The World Ends With You/pseudo-Final Fantasy Versus XIII crossover!”, and I really expect and hope that isn’t the case. Not that I’ll be pissed if it is, I’m sure it would still be rad, but it strikes me as both unlikely and the lesser outcome. I don’t know that I see the powers that be diverting resources in one of their biggest cash cows towards a sequel to one of their minor games - one that’s already been in Kingdom Hearts, meaning its inclusion here wouldn’t reasonably be a huge enough deal to base a lot of the full story on - and a way to reimagine another project. And for that matter it strikes me as conceptually small-scale given the setup. Nomura went with a name in Yozora that doesn’t just have the bent meaning of Sora’s name but actually literally sounds like him, went with a setting that aside from the one cameo sign mainly screams to viewers “Sora’s suddenly in the real world, holy cow”, and unless I entirely misread it Verum Rex was presented as a total self-roast in Toy Box. It doesn’t strike me as spot-the-reference (even though that’s 100% in there) nearly so much as establishing a tonal contrast to Kingdom Hearts.

I joked initially about this being a Flash of Two Worlds! (linking to a description for non-comics readers who are here because I tagged Kingdom Hearts)/’Kingdom Hearts goes to war with its own gritty fanfic’ setup, but...I actually suspect that’s pretty close to what’s going on here? This seems like a send up of Final Fantasy’s relative self-seriousness and over the top Super Cool characters, as a contrast to Sora’s goofy open-hearted sincerity and optimism. It’s the Secret Movie aesthetic that some want not just more prominent but as the actual main tone of the series morphed into an entire universe all its own, and Sora, out of place, has to find his way through and back home even as the real threat mounts, and probably has to save this world and get through to its heroes who aren’t likely prone to grinning through off-the-cuff monologues about the heart. That is not only entirely my kind of ridiculous meta jam, it feels like a logical next step for the series: if the first trilogy was in part about growing up, the next (and I suspect last, as the Master of Masters and his Foretellers have been set up as the primordial antagonists of the entire mythology and this is where they’re coming to the fore; my old theory of Eraqus being the big bad of an intermediary trilogy looks solidly shot to hell) could very well be about reaching adulthood, in which case it makes sense Sora would have to pass through a near literal fire of Adolescent/Adult Cynicism.

* Speaking of where Sora ends up: I kinda doubt he’s literally dead, or that if he is it’ll last past the opening of the game. They’ve already made a big theatrical production of Sora dying twice now, the second time in the most literal way possible and just a few hours prior to this, so while third time’s the charm I think there’ll be more to it than that. The again common thing I’ve been seeing is that he’ll have to play the Reaper game to win his life back (not something I’m much familiar with but I think I’ve got the basics), but again, while it’ll certainly be part of the game I don’t think TWEWY is going to be the big thing here (like they’d really make that a bigger deal than the Final Fantasy elements have been), and he just dealt with the afterlife and had to essentially play a game to win his soul back, and this wouldn’t even be a game he’s unfamiliar with. My impression is he’s incorporated back and whole - if likely powered down from the ordeal to justify him being back at level one - and the mystery is less whether or not he’s truly alive so much as how he ended up here and how to get back.

* On the other end of things - and I realize it’s a risky prospect to suggest after her getting a shockingly small role compared to everyone else in III was the damning weak aspect of its otherwise basically perfect finale - I think this is where Kairi is actually going to start to come to the forefront. She and Riku would be at the head of a search that everyone would be a part of (they were there when it happened, they know death is negotiable in their world, and they’re good people who all owe him), her especially since he’s her boyfriend - they may not declare it outright but there’s clearly no ambiguity between the two of them as to their situation anymore - and the one he sacrificed himself for, and she’s out there fighting now even if she’s inexperienced. And Riku seems like he’s going to end up lost himself on the search, leaving her behind as the sole Destiny Trio representative. So even if she isn’t a playable co-lead I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one going on a more traditional Kingdom Hearts adventure searching with the rest while Sora and later Riku deal with the genre mindfuck. On the bright side if nothing else, she’s died twice now too and they’ve both been presented as dead in a “maybe this time for real” way for a finale, so while again third time’s the charm, I figure she and Sora are relatively bulletproof from here on out.

* Speaking of Riku, while this seems more like an old-school proof of concept trailer from I and II rather than the more recent actual scenes, meaning his appearance might well change just as Kairi was different in I’s Secret Movie than she really was in II, it’s very notable that he hasn’t aged at all. So likely instead of another tragic I to II scale timeskip of Sora being lost from his friends, it looks like IV will be picking up immediately and the search for him won’t take long to succeed. Also speaking of Riku, I seem to see people thinking he’s with Namine now? Not that that seems impossible, but while the scene as a whole is romanticized in that it’s basically a princess being carried away by chariot to her happily-ever-after, it reads to me less as an actual romance than Riku fulfilling his ‘brother’s promise. Though if Square/Nomura does want to really get into romance with the next trilogy, since Sora/Kairi is locked down maybe they’ll just say fuck it and do a whole Riku/Namine/Xion/Roxas Love Square situation.

* Actual prediction rather than analysis of evidence: I suspect this is the last major time the Destiny Trio is going to be split up, at least in the searching-for-each-other, not-knowing-if-everyone’s-alive sense. I was the search for Kairi, II for Riku, and now IV for Sora - that cycle looks to be completing. Wouldn’t be surprised if V and/or the finale was finally the three of them as the adventuring party as fans have wanted for so long, with III as the grand finale to Sora/Donald/Goofy.

* It seems early to predict the main villain, but at the same time everyone was accurate in assuming a Keyblade-wielding Xehanort would be the final boss of the trilogy circa 2006, so I’m gonna go ahead and say Xigbar/Luxu is gonna be the end-all with IV. The Master of Masters is still the end of the road, and perfect for it because he’s a real-world normal savvy guy who can manipulate this world of straightforward classical adventurers with ease, while Sora at the opposite end of the scale is silly and sweet even by that world’s standard. But Luxu addresses the same ideas in a way that’d be perfect for this game in particular as it seems to be set up, he’d be the villainous connective tissue as this game moves from one trilogy to another, and he has the dangling personal thread of the ‘reward’ he suggested was coming for Sora. Or hell, since now it looks like she’s at least somewhat privy to what’s going on, maybe Maleficent will finally step back up.

EDIT: Ooh, just remembered, speaking of what Xigbar says to Sora, his Olympus conversation also predicts Sora’s fate? The whole “if you leap in to save somebody, you might just end up in the clutch needing to be saved yourself” lecture, i.e. the premise for IV. Maybe his teach isn’t the only one privy to future events?

* Not both, they’ll wanna space it out, but I’m like 70% sure this is where Marvel or Star Wars are gonna happen.

* Finally, while I’ve heard speculation that the Mystery Star is one of the Foretellers or the person who died in that Union X game, I don’t think she’s one of them given it’s a new voice actor and she cites a name Sora knows. More likely she’s ‘Subject X’ (I went ahead and looked up the Secret Reports, haven’t gone back and done all the bonus challenges myself yet and won’t I imagine for some time), who does seem to be from that time but is I think someone new.