#in regards to kairi's current emotional state and what she's struggling with

[eveningrainstorm]

i don’t care if the game seemingly tells us that sora showing up in melody of memory was him helping kairi from unreality until i get undeniable proof that it was actually him i will remain skeptical because the fact that kairi turned into him is So Fucking Weird

like! why! why not just have sora show up as a separate entity to help her? i guess they could make up some bs about quadratum rules or w/e but i can’t think of anything previously established in the series that would cause it. it’s not like it’s because sora doesn’t have his own physical form because it was literally in a world of memories. and we’ve had characters help other characters against threats within their heart before (ex. ddd) and it was never portrayed as one character transforming into the other?

and the idea of being your own person is so important to this series that it just seems bizarre that they’d treat kairi turning into someone else as a positive thing? like they generally treat kairi badly but surely this would be obviously against the message of kh as a whole? and if they just wanted to take away kairi’s moment and not let her do anything ever why not just have sora show up and save her? why have her turn into him?

especially given how the scene up to that point is so focused on kairi -- her past, her trauma, her self-doubt. how could kairi having to become a different person entirely in order to fight the personification of her fears and past failures possibly be a good thing?

and kh has had instances of characters turning into/taking the appearance of another character multiple times before and it’s generally 1) important and 2) not a good thing so the idea that it would just be a good thing here with no deeper meaning behind it is really weird to me. like you expect me to see kairi transform into sora and just think “oh sora’s helping her :)” and not be even a little reminded of, y’know, the scene where xion turned into sora, which was a way of showing how she was losing her identity and control over her life? like obviously this is a different situation but the fact is that the connotations of kairi turning into sora are Not Positive

but if it wasn’t the actual sora and was instead a projection created from kairi’s memories then it actually can make sense and it makes the whole scene so much more interesting because that would give us so much insight into kairi’s mental state and how she views herself, because it shows how she doesn’t believe in her own abilities and thinks she needs to be someone else, like sora, in order to be strong, and it fits so well with other moments of characterization she’s gotten and the kind of character arc we’ve been shown getting set up for her.

and it’s not like it’s really been proven that that was the actual sora? kairi and the other characters seem to think so, but our only real source on that is memory-xehanort, who i wouldn’t consider all that reliable seeing as he’s made from kairi’s memories and therefore is unlikely to know anything she doesn’t know at least subconsciously. plus it’s pretty common in kingdom hearts for characters to assume or believe things and then later be proven wrong.

in any case i firmly believe that whether that scene was actually good or not rests entirely on how sora’s appearance was meant to be interpreted. because there’s a lot of good stuff in the rest of the scene (insight into kairi’s self-doubt! kairi getting to be angry! finally getting more about kairi’s backstory!) but honestly if all it amounted to in the end was just “sora possesses kairi to fight her inner demons for her :)” then that just negates all the positives of it for me