#You ever just. make a throwaway post at 2am and then suddenly people are in your notes with really inspired takes

[descendant-of-truth]

(^tags from @thetwilightroadtonightfall)

Honestly wasn't expecting to wake up to such kind, thought-provoking responses on this post, I gotta say

I made it at 2am after hours of writing a much bigger script for what I hope to be a YouTube video on Re:Coded as a whole, which also meant lots of rewatching cutscenes to get everything right. So I was writing it at a point where I was already tired and a bit spent on deciding what lines to put a pin in for later, and seeing that this line was changed meant backtracking again. Which was annoying but also kind of funny

I didn't want to let my observation go to waste, so I still made the post, but you guys make a lot of good points here! Just because it wasn't the original line doesn't mean I can't have fun extrapolating on it, or that the addition wasn't still intentional. And either way, an unintended meaning is still a meaning worth looking at.

Because I enjoy being thorough, I'll still double check the original scripts when analyzing stuff, but I'll include it more for the sake of clarity or further analysis rather than to debunk my points, unless the contradiction is like. A really big deal.

("I believe in you" vs "You don't believe that," anyone?)

So, in honor of your guys' supportive tags, I'll add onto this by saying: it's also notable that Data Sora only introduces himself this way after Data Riku explains to everyone that the two of them are just copies, and that they're all in the datascape. Whether he intuitively knew he was data or not, it's finally been said outright.

And in true Data Sora fashion, he doesn't mind. Even if he just looks like someone his friends know, he never once doubts that they are his friends. And they call him Sora! To a boy with a still half-formed heart, that's about all the identity he needs.

Arguably, transitioning from "I am this" to "my friends call me this" is a sign that he's becoming more human; the second one provides a personal reason for that to be his name, as opposed to just "that's how it was written." He's seemingly more aware of the dynamic between them now, even though he's still just as content with it. That non-committal aspect is still there, it sticks around for a long time, but there's a small shift in his mindset that's implied here, unintended as it may be.

Thanks so much for the insight! They're genuinely some very helpful perspectives on this, and it made me excited to return to both this post and my video project as a whole

I swear, every time I think I'm onto something about characterization in this series, I double check the Japanese script and my point is immediately invalidated

Just now, I was about to be like "the fact that Data Sora introduces himself here by saying his friends call him Sora, instead of saying it's his name outright, shows how non-committal he is about his own identity and his tendency to go along with whatever people tell him about himself"

...but in the original script, he literally just says "I'm Sora." The phrasing was more than likely changed because it needed to fit the lip syncing. Why must they do this to me