#VEN'S SINGING DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN

[corishadowfang]

I FINALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO WATCH THE KHUX FANDUB AND. AHHHH.

[signalsandsoundwaves]

Now that I combed through KH3′s plot points again and don’t have to reasonably worry about spoiling anyone, here it is: My gripes w/ Kingdom Hearts 3 (Of Which There Are A Lot):

They showed way too damn much w/ the trailers, they should have at least hid the Final World and Aqua turning into a Darkling. Like, we already knew the whole shit parade with the new organization was going to happen in some capacity along with the fight w/ OG Xehanort, but they forgot the necessity of surprise in a narrative.

The whole deal with the new Princesses of Heart was 

A: mentioned like twice, maybe, and then never expounded upon or brought up again

B: Had no bearing on the overarching narrative. What was the point of bringing it up at all? 

Reintroducing Riku Replica the way they did? Hm. Okay. I can work with that. BUT!

They never showed how he helped Riku out of the Demon Tide. Just poof and he’s out and it’s all fine. Oh and the heartless gave him a nice haircut too for some reason. 

They never showed how Riku Replica was able to fix Way to the Dawn?? AND THEY NEVER SHOWED HOW RIKU PULLED ANOTHER KEYBLADE OUT OF HIS ASS AGAIN.

oh also I fucking hated that the kh1 Ansem!Riku was, in fact, not Ansem!Riku, but a replica of a replica. I’m gonna pretend that’s not the case and instead imagine that’s just an attempt at a joke by Nomura that the series is needlessly complicated and makes no sense anymore (which it is)

Dark Aqua: The fact that it even happened completely invalidates any sort of character significance Blank Points had. That, and her reawakened hope from 2.8′s ending. 

Well, okay, I guess it doesn’t invalidate those events with the way it happened (edit: whoops forgot to put in words), but it still seems super contrived that Aqua’s had all that time and resultant experience in the realm of darkness just so Ansem SoD could come up and kamehameha the crap outta her with some weird ball of darkness. Even if she didn’t have a keyblade. Didn’t she still have her magic?

Why did it have to be Sora that saved her? So he could look cool? Again? Lame. 

it makes much more sense for Riku to save her--not only to give him a significant achievement for this game, but to also make things come full circle nice and neat: She saved him when he had to close the door, he saves her from falling to the darkness she fought for over a decade. 

Nomura...do you know how dumb it is for you to make Aqua say “You’ve seen me too weak for too long” before winning a boss battle against Vanitas, who then in the next cutscene wrecks her shit? The same character who got thrown so hard he was perfectly horizontal to the ground into a child’s bedroom by The Notorious James P. Sullivan?

A PIXAR CHARACTER?? COME ON

I WOULDN’T HAVE MINDED IF YOU AT LEAST KEPT IT CONSISTENT, LIKE MAKE VANITAS A PUNK-ASS PIDDLING BRAT THE WHOLE GAME, BUT YOU GOTTA KEEP SHIT CONSISTENT IF YOU’RE GONNA HAVE CHARACTERS BE POWERFUL OR NOT! THIS ISN’T DRAGON BALL Z!

Actually, now that I think about it more, Aqua in general got fucked over in this game. Ven gets his shit wrecked by Terranort and all Aqua does is stand there, watch, and gasp? No! She Would Not Do That!

What was the point of putting Namine on the cover if she wasn’t going to even show up until the very end of the game

And. Um. I know I’m biased as hell as a Soriku shipper, but it’s more than a little weird to imply any sort of feelings between Riku and Namine (Repliku? Sure, I can roll w/ that. But not OG Riku) when they haven’t even spoken since three games ago and neither has mentioned the other once.

If you’re want your audience to be excited about the end-game ships, actually give them material throughout the series to help build chemistry! Don’t shoehorn it in! And this goes especially for SoKai!

Sora keeps flip-flopping between being his usual dandy self and being a dumbass brat. That scene where he was whining about wanting cool new clothes too was a little awkward to sit through. That and when he was teasing/bothering Hiro at the end of the Big Hero 6 world about taking the extra Baymax along on his own journey

TBH I’d probably do the same thing, since that healing spray came in hella handy and baymax does better than donald

but it’s still a little awkward to do that

I’m not even gonna talk about how they butchered the plot to Frozen. The prerendered cutscenes for Let It Go and the last scene were good tho.

and it was cool for SDG to lean on the fourth wall and wonder where the music was coming from

But did we need Anna to awkwardly sing Do You Wanna Build A Snowman in front of SDG? Nah.

lol why did they make the bug blocks from Re:Coded replace the original movie’s nanobots if it wasn’t going to be brought up or plot relevant at all

Also Sora is back to being dumb as a brick: They find a Riku that is one year younger, with yellow Norted eyes, and wearing an organization 13 coat...and Sora still thinks it’s OG Riku? Goofy had to spell it out for him, that was lame

Look if I were going to talk about Kairi this list would then be 3,000 miles long with my grievances in regards to everything involving her in this game so I’m just gonna put it into the simplest bullet points here:

Nomura’s got some serious hang-ups in regards to women. Full stop. 

You can’t keep saying every fucking game that she’s gonna participate and then never have her meaningfully do so.

And the one time she does have any importance to the plot, it’s as a plot device where she fucking dies in a total Diabolus Ex Machina. Not cool, Nomura.

They clearly put a metric fuck-ton of work into the PotC world but we can’t even go inside the abandoned mansion in twilight town ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

seriously i wanted to swing on the chandeliers

And you Know the only reason why Cutler Beckett was in this game was so Nomura could throw in the scene where the ship goes down while beckett says ‘It’s just good business’

Which makes me think of another thing--Cutler effing Beckett was in this game, but Hans doesn’t even speak in Arendelle? Weird.

Terra and Riku didn’t even speak to each other and I’m so sad about that.

and I was legit pissy that Roxas and Ventus’ only acknowledgement of their nigh-identical appearances was a single weirded out shared glance

You’d think the majority of the cast would know by now not to underestimate Sora but idk whatever I guess

Yeah I’m just gonna pretend Ansem SoD and OG Xehanort didn’t have those heel-face turns and resultant pathetic attempts at sob stories when they died (I don’t give a shit what Xehanort Reports 8+9 say, I’m gonna keep my headcanon that those were attempts to trick Terra and Ven even more)

Not Xemnas, though. I’m actually okay w/ his since it makes sense and was actually built up throughout KH2 without the need for ancillary material (tell but don’t show is so godawful as a storytelling tactic and should only be used in dire measures)

Gee, I love how the only god damn time in this series Kairi is a capable fighter is when she’s turned into a sword-suit-of-armor-thing and fights Sora in a world named after a Led Zeppelin song

Also, Kairi straight up dies and Riku doesn’t really give a shit??

Seriously, what?

It makes no sense that any of The Norts™ would be able to set foot onto the Keyblade Graveyard long enough to fuck the crew’s shit up without Lingering Will to blast them into oblivion with his ultima cannon. He was supposed to be right there waiting for them. Why did we need to die and get Namine to tell him what happened? He’d have a front row seat before we even got there the first time.

So if Sora’s gone to The Final World before every time he’s gone to the Station of Awakening, why haven’t we ever seen it before kh3?

I love how the game doesn’t even acknowledge that Chirithy is technically responsible for Sora’s death at the end of KH3

This one isn’t actually a gripe, I just really wanted to point out that an adorable cat plushie was responsible for the death of the series’ protagonist

If it’s a possibility that a keyblade can be broken, why hasn’t it ever come up before?

And finally, my One True Gripe that isn’t a long-held point of contention with the series and is exclusive to KH3...

Nomura took a little too much inspiration from Dead Man’s Chest and it shows (And Naruto, and DBZ, but considering KH has basically been a shonen anime all along I guess I should have expected that)(But I especially hate that he directly mimicked Dead Man’s Chest)