#nomura critical

[kayura-sanada]

How Dark Road Destroyed the Last Vestige of Good KH Storytelling, or, alternatively, Why, As a Huge Fan of Birth By Sleep, the Kingdom Hearts Series Should Have Ended With Kingdom Hearts 2

So firstly, I will say that followers of my blog have seen me lose my mind to all of this before, and some of these followers have outright asked me to rant about this, so here I am. The summaries they've sent me (because I have no intention of losing hours of my life to this) were long, and since this is going to be long enough, I will only be referencing what they told me instead of posting it all, because... guys, it's a lot.

Obviously, there are going to be spoilers here. A lot of them.

I honestly don't know where to start, so I'll start where a couple of these summaries started: Xehanort's childhood.

First, I need to admit here that I don't care. Nobody needs to know the backstory of a character who has spent thirteen games torturing teenagers. But here we go.

So Xehanort was a kid being raised on Destiny Islands - information we already had - but he was born in Scala ad Caelum. And his guardian was actually our player character from UX! Guys. This alone is going to be a long rant.

Firstly, again, let dead people stay dead. I don't know about anyone else, but I never expected nor wanted my character to show up in the storyline after UX. There's no need for that.

But! Apparently there is! Because my character, who has already been demoted to 'parental figure' - a position about as useful to the player character as it was to Sora's mother - had memories. And because Xehanort is so sensitive, he dreams those memories.

Guys, this is so much, and it's all bullshit.

Suddenly the greatest contribution our player character can say to have given is helping make Xehanort evil. We are, after all, responsible for the source of information that leads Xehanort to the decisions he makes in the future. Our character exists just to accidentally screw over everyone in the future? Excuse me? May I just delete my damn character, then?

But also, let's dig into this 'sensitive heart' bullshit that Xehanort suddenly has. It's something he and "Baldr" (it's fucking Luxu, and of course Nomura thinks he's clever by naming him after the most well-known god of light in any pantheon, sigh, sorry but God of War is bringing out its second game, you are not going to use Norse mythology better than God of War, Nomura, shove off) apparently have, just like Sora. Only we've seen countless signs of Sora having a sensitive heart. There have been no signs whatsoever of Luxu or Xehanort having the same thing. Not once! Not once! But suddenly Xehanort is such a nice guy it left him vulnerable to falling to darkness.

So really, he didn't fall to darkness because he wanted more power, or because he wanted to find out what happened during the Keyblade War to the point where he was all right killing Ven and Aqua and taking over Terra's body against his consent, oh no! It's not because he willingly made himself a heartless or studied hearts until he created nobodies out of himself and a bunch of innocent people, including children and young teens, oh no! And it certainly wasn't because he manipulated a fifteen-year-old into sending his world to darkness or trying to use said teen's body to kill his friends, oh no! It was because he is just too kind and sensitive to others' hearts.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have spoken before on how obvious it is that Nomura likes Xehanort, but never in my life did I think I would see the day when he would take the characteristics that make up his main character and Gary Stu them into his fave. But here we are.

In fact, due to these changes, we ourselves, our own player characters, now exist as angst fodder for Xehanort. We exist for Xehanort's pain.

(And in fact they're talking about a game focusing on our player character, or something? So we really will exist for Xehanort, and our main story will be about how we affect him. Ugh.)

(Also, a prequel of a prequel? Please, someone stop Nomura.)

And it seems Ephemer also existed for Xehanort! Because now Xehanort has a lineage. And that always seems to happen when bad writers want to write stories that span generations, doesn't it? Everyone has to secretly be related to everyone else, because only a handful of people exist in the world, and only those descended from those people could ever be important or make history.

(And this makes me highly uncomfortable, thinking about how Ephemer randomly cameo'd in KH3. Is that now all about Xehanort, too?)

Not to be That Person, but the idea that someone is inherently meant to be an important hero, based on nothing more than their ancestor, only to fall to darkness because they have such a sensitive heart and were made vulnerable to the darkness... didn't Star Wars already do this better? With a character that hasn't been known as absolutely awful for over a decade, by the way.

Just saying.

But sure! Luxu and Xehanort are both just so kind, so sensitive, that they fell to darkness. Because they were such good people. Being that good made their hearts weak to darkness, and that's why they fell. Sure.

(Again, nevermind everything they've done that would explain how they fell, or the goals Xehanort explicitly stated he had over the course of the games that also would explain why he fell. Nope! He did all of that because he was a good guy.)

In fact, of all the things he did, one was to save Ven from Vanitas. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the thing we feared to be true really happened! Vanitas is an evil being of darkness, and Xehanort saved Ven by splitting them apart. In fact, the only reason he even went to Ven was because of those pesky, pesky dreams our main character accidentally gave him by being so close to his heart. (I just can't; this has never been a thing before despite Kairi's heart having been inside Sora's; Sora never remembered any of Roxas' or Ven's memories, Xion was somehow forgotten entirely despite being close to Axel and Roxas, but sure!!!! Sure!!!!)

So according to Birth By Sleep, Vanitas was a part of Ven's heart, and Xehanort even told him flat-out to use more darkness, then got rid of him because he didn't have enough, abandoning him to die on Destiny Islands, then siccing the very creature of darkness he'd created from Ven's heart back on Ven in order to create the X-Blade, but apparently! Apparently this was all for Ven's sake! He was saving Ven that day! He did it all to save Ven from Vanitas, even though he then sent Vanitas to attack Ven again! It's not a retcon at all! This! This is good storytelling!!!

And yes! This means that Vanitas is a two-dimensional creature of pure evil, because again! All darkness is bad! And all light is good! The best kind of storytelling!

So how is it that we all know how amazing and special Xehanort is? Perhaps it was something so obvious that people knew when Xehanort was born and perhaps there was a prophecy about it!!!

A prophecy. No. Specifically, another fucking prophecy. And it's from the very useful Book of Prophecies, which included a story about a traitor that was absolutely accurate and not a self-fulfilling prophecy (do you get the pun??? DO YOU?!?!?!) clearly created by a hack writer who hadn't thought far enough ahead to choose who was going to be the bad guy! So the answer is 'nobody! Except darkness!'

But yes! Another prophecy! This time about the prophesized child who's going to unite the villages worlds and bring peace! (It's nothing like Naruto don't bother trying to compare.) And it turns out that everyone thought the person who became a villain was actually the prophesized child, but it was actually the main character all along! (Stop comparing; they're nothing alike.)

But in reality! Not only was Xehanort considered the child of prophecy and thus taken from Scala ad Caelum to Destiny Islands to protect him (Sleeping Beauty? What?), but he also acted out in order to fulfill the prophecy and bring peace!!

That's right! I was right in my previous rants; Xehanort opened Kingdom Hearts, destroying countless worlds and torturing and killing countless innocent people, all in order to save everyone!!! He sacrificed himself to open Kingdom Hearts so he could end the existence of Darkness (you know, that thing that exists in everyone's hearts, but is now also a race of thirteen Super Evil Creatures that have no feelings and are evil, this is nothing like KH2 don't compare) and bring peace to the World! Also Eraqus knew all about this, and though he felt like Xehanort's methods were too extreme, he swore to always be there to bring him back just like Axel did with Roxas and Xion but in a less interesting way and thus wasn't murdered but willingly sacrificed himself! Yeah!! That's it! Xehanort didn't actually kill his friend at all, he's such a good guy actually!!!

So it was egregious enough that Eraqus chose to side with Xehanort at the end, thus ignoring everything Xehanort had done not just to him, but to his students he purportedly cares about, but now it turns out he was never really on his students' side at all! He was always on Xehanort's side, despite the huge fights and the blatant distrust and the animosity that seemed obvious in Birth By Sleep; no no!! Eraqus has always watched out for Xehanort (doing a bad job of that in the process, lol) and was apparently okay with being killed? Perhaps even went with it? Who knows, but yeah, solid friendship brotherhood whatever. (Or, as much of fandom sees it, romance. Have fun, guys; definitely not my cup of tea, but have at. Only fandom can fix this fustercluck.)

So really, with this all said and done, Xehanort has never been a bad guy! Ignore everything he did in previous games, because it was all due to his being super sensitive to others' hearts, just like Sora apparently but with absolutely zero foreshadowing, which led to him being vulnerable to outside forces, which is what darkness is, nothing to do with one's inner self or one's own emotions or goals or anything, no, darkness is an evil entity with its own mind, you can't help falling to it (unless you're Terra, fandom's still going to say Terra falling to darkness was all his own fault somehow). And everything he did was actually in sacrifice for the greater good! He's just so misunderstood, you guys. Really you should love and pity him.

I have more to say about this bullshit but I am Tired and this should be enough of a rant to keep you all satisfied for now. This is so bad it's somehow worse than Kishimoto's writing.

Suffice it to say, Xehanort should not be suddenly made to be a good guy who's just misunderstood and has been Trying His Best. Darkness should not be a physical entity that exists as some evil boogeyman to erase all fault or responsibility from people who fall to darkness. Scala ad Caelum shouldn't exist. The reveal of Kingdom Hearst shouldn't have been so underwhelming. It's nothing more than a lead-in to more UX nonsense, ffs. Union X should never have existed. Hell, Birth By Sleep, in bringing such wonderful characters and in-depth, complex ideas about light and darkness, should never exist in the same universe as this bullshit. The storyline was only marginally cohesive through KH2; afterward it became a tangled mess. (Hell, KH2 tangled it quite a bit with Roxas, but at least that storyline reached a conclusion, too, with Roxas' and Namine's existences shown to match between Sora and Kairi.)

If Kingdom Hearts ended with KH2, it would have been remembered as a weird, interesting story with engaging characters and a fun plotline. Nothing deep, but a great experience nonetheless. Instead we have this - a storyline you can't follow logically and characters so twisted and contorted, not just around each other but around their own selves, that you can't straighten them out anymore. It's so bad. I officially gave up on Kingdom Hearts after the third game, but I am truly, honestly telling people that it's better to just step away from it entirely.

I might write my own version of Kingdom Hearts one day, but if I do, it will look nothing like the original, because I demand cohesion in my narratives.

To anyone still following Kingdom Hearts, good luck. You're going to need it.

[ultraericthered]

Regarding that reblog I just did.

Yes, I do suspect that in Kingdom Hearts IV, Nomura has a serious intention to pass the baton of MC from Sora to Yozora. And I feel like ditching Sora at around this point is actually one of the few sensible decisions that Nomura could make, as otherwise Sora would run the risk of outdoing even Ash Ketchum in overstaying his welcome.

The problem, of course, is not that Sora would go, but who'd be taking over from him. Yozora, AKA the desperate and pathetic reincarnation of Versus XIII Notcis, as THE new lead hero of a series that originated as a crossover between Disney and Japanses anime style characters where you romp around in different Disney-based worlds and do shit with all kinds of cartoon characters (and even some live action ones!)...it should go without saying how wrong that would be, as it only cements KH as now being a literal Discount Final Fantasy where Nomura gets to tell wackadoo stories completely unchecked. It's just another primary reason why I've sworn off any future KH releases: Yozora and all that he stands for just sucks.

So in my KH Divergence, I give the new MC role to this kid who may or may not be connected to Yozora in Nomura's story IDGAF

If Ephemer was never in the X subseries of games and you just saw that design, doesn't he just look Sora sucessor-worthy? All smiles, positive attitude, appropriately KH fashion sense, voiced by a fresh, young, talented VA (Mike Johnston), and he's even got silvery hair to contrast with Sora being a brunette. He's just an ideal choice to me!

And obviously his run would be even more limited than Sora's, as his name is "Ephemer", meaning "ephemeral", for that reason.

Expect to learn more about my Ephemer and the characters that tag along with him for his adventures in later KH Divergence posts.

[childofaura]

All right, it seems like I’ve got a lot of understanding and rational people who responded to my earlier inquiry about making a Claire criticism post. So I’m gonna go ahead and do it, since this is something that’s sat in my mind every time a new installment of the ToA series came out.

SO BIG DISCLAIMER BECAUSE I WANT EVERYONE TO READ THIS BEFORE ANYONE GETS MAD AT ME:

THIS IS ALL MY SUBJECTIVE OPINION. I MIGHT BE PHRASING THIS POST LIKE IT’S AN ABSOLUTE, BUT IT’S NOT, IT’S ALL ISSUES I PERSONALLY FEEL WITH CLAIRE’S CHARACTER. SO IF YOU LIKE CLAIRE, THIS IS NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK OR ME TELLING YOU YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING/CAN’T LIKE CLAIRE.

Now that I think I’ve got that out of the way, I wanna jump into the actual post of why I’ve never really liked Claire’s character.

If we’re being really really REALLY honest... I think the issue is mostly based off of “The writers didn’t know how to write Claire”. I’ve felt like every character in Trollhunters (specifically Trollhunters, we don’t talk about 3Below and while Wizards was pretty positive overall, that was also a lot of hit or miss, and that series plays even more into why I don’t like Claire) was executed pretty well to fulfill their roles as characters or to be compelling and pretty easy to grasp their personalities.

Except Claire.

Personality issues:

Her character’s inconsistent and flip-flops. To start off, her intro in the series is just “pretty girl that Jim likes”. We get the promising sense that she has some non-conforming interests at first, as she’s advertising try-outs for the play, but that’s just lifted from the Trollhunters book and we never see any interest in theater arts from Claire ever again after that. Her hair (and I’m sorry but I hate her hair with all the stupid hairclips in the front, it’s so distracting and it looks dumb) with the streak in it and the skull shirt she wears makes you assume she’s somewhat rebellious, maybe kind of punk, but she’s a straight-A trouble-free student who’s apparently popular with everyone, and helps her mom out with campaigning for her political career. There’s really nothing to her personality that shows itself consistently, besides the Papa Skull interest.

And then there’s how badly her character and personality was executed at first; When Steve’s about to beat up Jim, she tries to step in but gets shoved back. Great! She has a sense of right and wrong and she’ll stand up for others. But then later on, she scolds Jim for the crime of... standing up for himself? Which sends a really bad message that she’d have rather had Jim publicly humiliate himself and/or possibly get beat up. Then later she’s willing to go to a Papa Skull concert with the same guy who shoved her. That’s incredibly weak character right there.

She starts to show some more positive character when after getting mad at Jim for trashing the house, she puts two and two together and realizes something’s off, but then she just... sneaks into his house like a weirdo, even though nothing about her character suggests that she’d do something like that and she has no real reason besides “Jim wasn’t straightforward about the party”; it’s not something a normal person would do or what SHE would do given her current character development. And then this one’s a smaller gripe, but I hated her scoff in Wizards when the tournament was going on and the guards didn’t let her in, she goes “Ugh, boys’ club!”. UH HELLO, YOU IDIOT. THERE WERE FEMALE GUARDS CLEARLY EMPLOYED IN ARTHUR’S SERVICE. HELL, THE GUARD THAT BULLAR ATE WAS A FEMALE GUARD. GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND STOP PRETENDING LIKE YOU’RE BEING SLIGHTED BECAUSE YOU’RE A GIRL. YOU WERE CONSIDERED A CIVILIAN TRYING TO ENTER A TOURNAMENT FOR TRAINED KNIGHTS.

Now past all the character inconsistencies in those first thirteen-ish episodes, the second issue I have with Claire’s character is that she teeters pretty dangerously into Mary Sue territory. Everyone (I was almost gonna say “who isn’t a major villain” but EVEN MORGANA ends up liking her. So MOSTLY everyone) who isn’t a main antagonist ends up liking Claire in some way. Steve the bully? Tries to date her. Mary, whom she said she wasn’t really close friends with? Is friends with her and even has her number. Freaking VENDEL, the grumpiest character in the show, only has to hear her talk in Troll and he immediately likes her without her having to earn his trust (which also she just... never uses Troll again. Sure is convenient that she learned to speak fluent Troll just for one scene and one character to like her). Morgana takes a liking to her. Compare that to how hard Jim had to work to gain the trust of others: His bond with Draal, learning to prove himself to Vendel, engaging with Nomura in prison and befriending her. She too easily assimilates with other characters; I’d have less issues if she had to work like Jim did, but the only time she does is with NotEnrique.

Skills and abilities don’t feel earned or consistent:

And then the whole thing with her powers and her physical abilities. It was never explained in the show how she actually obtained innate magic powers not connected to the Shadow Staff itself (And no, if you have to explain it on Twitter as a writer, that’s not good writing, that’s forcing your audience to play detective). She’s just all of a sudden doing awfully-convenient high-level magic in the first two episodes (or maybe three, whenever she created that shadow-cover for Jim and the others to escape.) without explaining HOW she had got those powers, and then she performs it perfectly whenever the plot needs it (She’s literally shown to be more powerful than Merlin, how stupid is that?). Remember in the movie where everyone was like “Oh no Claire, don’t use your powers because it could hurt you!” and she does anyways and she faints for like three seconds and then has no other physical repercussions? Or how she’s somehow MORE capable than Jim when it comes to fighting, like how in the Chinese Trollmarket she manages to swipe one of the other troll’s weapons, which has an entirely different weight and size to her shadow staff and probably required extensive training, and she just uses it flawlessly to fight? The only times Claire really fails are when the plot calls for it.

Plot can’t happen without her:

And finally, she hijacks the plot constantly, more than her character should, and has more importance placed on her role in the story than anyone else. Even Blinky. She even took over the plot for Wizards, which was supposed to be Douxie’s story and Douxie’s character-focus. The poor guy took a backseat to his own story because the plot relied on Claire to move forward, literally nothing could be done without her. And I mentioned it before but even though Douxie’s character still managed to get enough development, it was hardly enough because Claire hogged up so much screen-time focusing on HER and HER magic development and HER relationship with Morgana over Douxie and HIS magic development and HIS relationship with Merlin.

And also the fact that it’s Claire who ends up either saving the day or taking priority over the others. Who was the one who defeated Morgana in Trollhunters? Claire. Who brought Jim back to life as a human, despite the fact that even Merlin stated it was impossible for him to make Jim a human again? Claire. Who was it that Jim made sure to establish his relationship with, but not anyone else? CLAIRE. That ending in the movie where he doesn’t seem to care about his relationship with Blinky, Draal, Strickler, etc, but oh we’ve GOTTA have his girlfriend!

Overall, even typing this, I don’t think it’s her fault even though I hate her character; it’s the writers’ fault for doing such a sloppy and inconsistent job because she’s boiled down to just a “girl empowerment”. Because in the book, Claire Fontaine is AWESOME. She’s a Scot descended from a warrior lineage which actually explains why she has weapon capabilities, she’s explained that she’s not really a “popular girl” but she’s super confident in herself and doesn’t really care what others think, and that’s what Jim finds charming about her, and she rips Steve a new one after hearing that he’s just trying to charm her to piss off Jim.

But Claire Nunez is a mess of a poorly executed character. And again, I blame the writers because I think Claire could have been great if they knew what they were doing with her and made her balanced.

[babyloniastreasure]

okay but folks who genuinely believe that Genshin ruined base expectations for character design? yall have got to be kidding. have you ever seen even a single final fantasy design? dark souls? granblue? fate? even newer games like arknights or nu carnival? complicated looks aren’t new to this industry. Genshin is hardly responsible. you guys just like to mock it because its an easy target

[milaisreading]

Meet the boyfriend

Pairing: Leonardo Luna x Itoshi sister!Yn

Warnings: Reader uses she/her. Yn is here like 24 or 25 years old. Requests are open

⚽️Blue Lock belongs to Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura ⚽️

"Leonardo Luna!!" The blonde flinched from his spot on the couch. (Y/n) wasn't one to yell at him, or anyone as far as he could remember, but when she did it was the scariest experience in his life.

"Yes?" He smiled nervously as (Y/n) walked into the living room, looking pissed at the Spaniard.

"What time is it?" She asked as Luna looked at his phone.

"Like, 10 in the morning."

"And you didn't bother waking me up? You said you would. We are supposed to meet Sae and Rin in an hour."

"In my defense I tried to wake you up, but you sleep like a rock. I tried waking you up for 20 minutes and then gave up." Luna said, raising his arms defensively as (Y/n) stared at him for a moment and growing flustered by his words. She did believe him that one, her parents and brothers did tell her the same thing in the past.

"I am sorry for yelling at you like that. I am just stressed." (Y/n) sighed in defeat as Luna pulled her down to the couch, hugging her right after.

"What's wrong, mi vida? You are never like this?" Came his worried response right after. (Y/n) kept quiet for a moment, unsure how to formulate her thoughts the best. This meeting was very important to her, after all, her brothers are very protective of her, even if they were younger.

"It's just that this whole you meeting my brothers thing is stressing me out. You guys aren't on the best terms, and I fear how Rin might react. Sae might take it better  but I don't think he will try to calm Rin down-"

Before she could continue her ramble, Luna moved closer and kissed her. This surprised her, but she quickly recovered and kissed him back. The two parted after a minute and Luna gave her a warm smile, pulling her into a hug.

"It will be alright. I love you,and you love me. Whatever the two say won't bother me much."

"It won't?" (Y/n) hummed as Luna chuckled a little.

"I play football for a living. I hear insults on the field and critics all the time. Don't worry. But, I doubt they will say much, at least not in front of you." The older Itoshi moved away from the Spaniard, confused by his statement. But, just before she could answer the question, Luna decided to answer it for her.

"They love you, a lot. So I doubt they will say anything that might upset you, in front of you. I think the lunch will go well." Luna said simply, but it didn't help her at all.

"But they will still insult you when I am not there-"

"As I said, I heard worse on the field."

"How are you so relaxed?" She mumbled, pinching Luna's cheek as the blonde laughed.

By the time the two arrived at the restaurant, they were late by a good 20 minutes. Although Luna reassured her that everything will go well, her nerves were still all over the place. Sensing her uneasiness, Luna gave her hand a gentle squeeze, causing the girl to smile at him before looking for her brothers.

'It will go well.' She took a deep breath as she finally found the 2 sitting in a corner.

"Leo, I found them."

"Let's go then." He said casually as he finally spotted the younger two, pulling (Y/n) towards them. 

"Sae, Rin, sorry for being late." (Y/n) finally spoke up as they approached their table.

"It's ok, big sis. We just came here as well-" Sae stopped talking as his eyes landed on Luna's form, then they fell onto their hands. Rin, who needed a good minute to connect the dots cleared his throat and spoke up.

"So, this is the guy you are seeing?" He asked coldly, causing (Y/n) to flinch and Luna to chuckle a little.

"S-surprise." She stuttered out as Luna kissed her cheek.

"Leo." (Y/n) looked at him in shock as her brothers yelled at him.

"Hands off!"

"Don't kiss her so casually."

'Most awkward lunch...' (Y/n) thought as she looked at their glaring figures.

[marcirose]

If anyone wants to know why the kingdom hearts fandom has a lot of bad takes and everything in that regard just know it's all kh2's fault

Kh2 is the reason why everyone thinks the disney worlds are filler, why people think Sora "fell off" after kh2, why people think the series is just cool anime stuff but with disney characters, and why people think Kairi still has relevance all cause she has a keyblade (/hj about the Kairi point but also not really)

The games that came after kh2 aren't held in as high of a regard cause everyone expected the future games to be like kh2 when they're very clearly not. Most of the kh3 criticism I saw basically boiled down to "this should have happened like it did in kh2"

Every game after kh2 is doomed to be compared to kh2 like how every final fantasy game after ff7 is doomed to be compared to ff7 cause of how it popped off the way it did

Imo kh2 more or less essentially ruined everyone's perception of what kh is and is also one of the biggest examples of showing the dissonance between what the fans want to see vs the story Nomura wants to tell and that dissonance gets stronger with each game

Kh2 was the turning point in the series that basically told everyone that the story wasn't going the way they think it would go and it completely went over everyone's heads and I think that needs to be talked about

Anyway moral of the story is stop skipping kh cutscenes. That's why y'all confused and why y'all don't know things. If I see any kh4 criticism that sounds like "it should be like kh2" I'll bitchslap you to the moon I've had enough of the comparisons

[enniyart]

Trollhunter!Nomura AU (part 1)

This AU was made by me and @elegantjellyfishwerewolf (check her account to find more information about it).

Now I want to tell you the beginning of this story.

At this AU Strickler begin to date Barbara two months before the main events. Their relationship got started because of Jim's lack of sleep and lateness at school. As a result, Strickler and Barbara become very close to each other and Jim Jim begins to subconsciously perceive Strickler as his father.

//two months later//

After Kanjigar’s death Strickler gives an order to Nomura to check the canal and take the amulet before it will choose another trollhunter. As Nomura came to the canal the amulet calls out her name and she realizes that it’s not good to her. Because of fear that Bular and Janus Order will kill her as soon as she would open the bridge, she doesn’t go to Strickler.

Instead of it Nomura goes to hide in her apartments where Blinky and Aargh visit her and say that she is new trollhunter now. They quickly understand that she is changeling, Nomura runs from them at the panic and trolls go chasing her. At the same time Toby goes out from dentist and notices three running creatures at twilight. He feels a bit scared but at the same time curious and decides to follow them on a bike. After a “jogging” trolls and changeling come to a temporary truce because Blinky and Aargh realize that Nomura isn’t interested at opening the bridge and Nomura doesn’t see aggression towards herself in their behavior. Toby hears their entire conversation, but reveals his presence with some noise. Nomura notices him and is going to kill him as witness, but Blinky stops her from that and they let Domzalski go on the condition that he does not tell anyone what he saw.

At the same time at the Lake house Strickler proposed to Barbara to get married at dinner and she accepts it. Some later at the same evening he gets an information from goblins that the new trollhuner is Nomura now and it makes him nervous because she knows EVERYTHING about their plans. He sends an urgent order to send NotEnrique on the surface to replace by him Nomura’s place and go by himself to get Angor Rot from his prison because he isn’t sure in Bular’s powers. He wants to destroy the new trollhunter as soon as possible.Strickler brings Angor to Arcadia the very next day. As in canon, Angor doesn’t trust to changeling words that his soul will be free again and preparing a trap to him. At some critical moment Strickler barks at his slave saying something like “Do anything!” and at the next moment Angor cuts off part of left hand on which he was wearing Inferno Copula. Angor takes back his soul but let Strickler go.

Walter gets to the hospital and Barbara is very shocked at the way he looks like. After an attempt was made on Strickler's life while he was in the ward, the fact is that the Order of Janus, specifically Otto, found out about Walt's offer about marriage and decided that their leader had softened. There is an explosion in the hospital as a result of which Strickler survives, but Barbara....does not. At this time Angor decides to redeem himself and therefore comes to the Trollmarket to take on the duties of an absent trollhunter. At first, trolls don’t trust him and a bit afraid of killer, but Vendel because of rumors that the new trollhunter might be a human or changeling decides to accept Angor’s proposal. Draal initially perceives this decision of the elder negatively and challenges Angor to a duel during which he loses (the fight was not public, so Draal did not lose his honor), but Angor decides not to kill him and so they both begin to respond to the calls that were intended for the hunter.

While Nomura moves from her apartments to motel, Strickler replaces the missing part of his arm with a prosthesis (a metal prosthesis with hidden golden claws) and finds out who organized the attempt on him (it was Otto). He comes to the Order of Janus and demonstratively kills Otto (who has already managed to proclaim himself the new head) in front of other changelings, as if saying that he should not be discounted. The changelings recognize Strickler's power and he becomes the leader of the order again.

Enrique is substituted, but NotEnrique verysoon reveals his essence to Claire and she threatens the changeling and asks him to take her to her brother, but Neenrique decides to bring her to the entrance to the Trollmarket in the hope that by penetrating there she will be eaten and he will get rid of the witness. Claire enters the Trollmarket and getting found by Angor. Nunez, impressed by the magic of Angor Rot, asks him to start training her to prepare before going to the Darklands and saving her brother. Angor initially refuses, but Claire is too persistent and determined in her desire to save her brother, so Angor reluctantly agrees, hoping that she will leave after a couple of grueling training sessions or die in the course of training.Nomura understands that the influence of Janus order is growing and it would be better for her to go to Trollmarket, but she also understands that the trolls most likely will not accept her until she proves that she can be trusted. Therefore, she, along with Blinky, Aaarrgh and Toby, who has followed them, come up with a plan to kill Bular. Everything is going according to plan and Nomura, along with Bular's head, goes to the troll market to finally take her place as a trollhunter.

Part 2 here

[getvalentined]

I posted about this on the twits, but I'm gonna do it here too because it's not like this is limited to that platform.

Since I've been seeing my least favorite shitty FF7 rumor around again, friendly reminder that there are no "legal issues" between Gackt and SE delaying anything. Sources claiming otherwise say "trust me bro" when Nomura has literally said it was just the workload.

People who claim that delays in production of anything in the Compilation are because of Gackt are parroting a rumor that's been around for over a decade, which was started by people who used it as an excuse to be racist and homophobic under the thin veneer of frustrated criticism. The majority of hatred toward the character of Genesis Rhapsodos in early fandom, and hatred toward Genesis in modern day fandom from OG Purists, stems from this same place.

Why do you think these people always assert that Genesis' very existence "ruins Sephiroth's character," but never complain about Angeal? Why do you think they have no problems with Aerith having a Jenova-infused Angeal Copy in her church for years—something that should totally change her understanding of the Crisis, but doesn't seem to in any way whatsoever—and yet anything and everything Genesis does is treated as an unforgivable retcon?

It's an excuse to say heinous, horrible things about an all-but-explicitly queer character who is modeled off a real Japanese man, and that's all it ever was, but it gets a pass because they dress it up as criticism of the franchise. Then, when they inevitably start throwing out slurs, nobody cares because "it's just Gackt—I mean Genesis, everyone knows he sucks."

Yeah, you "know" because you let a bunch of bigots tell you he should be judged more harshly than any other character in the entire series because he's not white or straight enough. Because he's based directly on a real flesh-and-blood Japanese man, and to these people that makes him deserving of hate, because people like that shouldn't exist. Because the character is all but explicitly queer (and it is even more explicit in the original language and when accounting for some key culturally-specific literary references portrayed throughout the narrative), and people like that shouldn't exist.

You "know" because you never questioned why this character specifically is the only one it's "objectively and morally correct" to hate and belittle, even though everything he's supposedly hated for applies to multiple other characters throughout the series.

The character is loathed, and the actor is blamed for everything, because some old guard fans said that's how it's supposed to be in this fandom, and if you don't engage with things that way then you don't deserve to be here.

Very cool and normal behavior!

There are very valid reasons to dislike this character, mind you, and plenty of reasons to be critical of the actor. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm saying the pervasive and frankly disgusting fandom-wide hatred stems from the same place as the continued, repeatedly disproven assertion that Gackt is to blame for everything "wrong" with the Compilation and its development: bigotry. I know this because I saw these assertions come into being in real time when Crisis Core first came out. I watched the people saying these things post the most homophobic rants on their personal accounts, I watched people I considered friends get banned from LJ communities for referring to Genesis as Gackt and referring to Gackt with racial slurs.

And I watched them come back later, promising they were better people now, armed with new claims and new arguments that allowed them to continue to be hateful trashfires without getting in trouble. As long as they weren't overt, it was okay. If they slipped up and used a slur in the comments that was mostly okay, since it wasn't in the main post. Mods might lock a thread here and there, but those people got to stay. Their "criticism" was "valid," and thus their bigotry was validated.

Those same claims and complaints are still regurgitated today, only now it's by people who aren't racist and aren't homophobic, but don't realize that their criticism is horribly unbalanced because it was all born from people who were just masking hatred.

Even worse is when these behaviors are mimicked by people claiming to like the character, because the fandom taught them that this was how you're supposed to engage with him, because it's just Gackt—Genesis (I said Genesis!) so he's a piece of shit no matter how you slice it and he deserves to be treated that way. Nobody else does, and nobody questions it, because this is just how it's done.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell people this, but if you slap a bunch of gay stereotypes onto Genesis and then have the characters around him treat him like shit because of them, while implying or outright insisting that IT'S OKAY BECAUSE IT'S GENESIS AND HE SUCKS SO IT'S FUNNY, you are following in the footsteps of bigots. If you constantly refer to the character as "Gackt" like the name itself is a pejorative, you are following in the footsteps of bigots.

No, there is no nuance here. I don't care if you allegedly came to all these conclusions on your own—you didn't and you know it—except for the fact that actually that's worse, because it means that you did some kind of deep dive in the source material and came out the other side agreeing with a bunch of racist homophobes who are still spitting bullshit after over 15 years.

Do fucking better.

[altocat]

You know, Nomura or GACKT or whoever probably had a super poetic idea for Genesis inspired by pure fanfiction OC magic and they thought he was going to be the smartest, most dangerous, most critically important character in the entire Compilation. A supreme foil for Sephiroth. A scholar and a genius and someone ALL the cool kids aspired to emulate.

And here I am. And yep he sure is Sephiroth's awful trash boyfriend. And yep he sure is gremlin theater kid twink material. And yep he sure is the Literal Worst.

And here I am.

And here I am.

[theballmighty]

It is actually appreciated that nowadays anytime an influencer or whatever online knocks a game for having “Kingdom Hearts bullshit” in the plot or blames Tetsuya Nomura for literally anything, it’s usually shut down pretty hard for being a worthless nonsense criticism.

[kayura-sanada]

When was the last time you think Kairi could have been salvaged in the narrative?

KH2.

KH1 had an entire narrative dedicated to making her the damsel in distress. It's obnoxious, and annoying, but it could have been a great segue into her choosing to become stronger and coming into her own power. Instead she sends a bottle into the sea and gets kidnapped over and over again. When she's suddenly handed a keyblade, she still doesn't fight and still needs to be rescued, proving that simply having a keyblade doesn't mean squat.

If she'd spent that year of separation trying to learn more about her powers as a Princess of Heart, and had chosen to go on her own journey fighting the Organization, either when Axel comes for her but preferably before (because again, even if she forgot Sora, she still remembered Riku, who was lost!), then we could have gotten an incredible story of her near-misses with Riku and Sora while perhaps meeting and rescuing Namine herself, or even just her going to Radiant Garden (PLEASE OMGGGG) and perhaps using her Princess of Heart abilities to protect worlds!!! Or her being the one to cleanse Mickey's Castle and defend Minnie! Anything!!!

We could have had so many chances for growth and power that has nothing to do with the keyblades and everything to do with being able to hold back the heartless - imagine Kairi holding the horde of heartless around Hollow Bastion's castle while the Final Fantasy chars and Sora went to clean them up, keeping them from reaching the city!!! Literally no fighting, no keyblade, and yet she's showing off her power and skill by defending everyone. /weeps/ It would have been glorious, man...

[ultraericthered]

Terranort Speculation

It is known by know that when Birth By Sleep entered its earliest stages of conception and development (in 2006), Terra's story was thought out first (because Revenge of the Sith), followed by Ven's second and Aqua's last, explaining the recommended playing order. It's also shown in how in KHII FM, released in 2007, every single hook for BBS concerned Terra and his story - those horrendously misplaced scenes with Xemnas, Aqua's armor, Vexen, Zexion and Xigbar, the secret boss fight against Terra's Lingering Will, and the secret ending video where the climax is a close-up of Terra's face as his eyes morph into the "dark" golden eyes, or "Nort eyes." Then in 2008, early on at Jump Festa and later in at the Tokyo Game Show, the beta trailer footage for the former was only of Terra and Ventus while the latter added Aqua to the mix. And this was also the same time we got the 358/2 Days trailer and wow, between these teases and Coded starting up late into the year, 2008 truly was a year spent preparing the KH series for the plunge it was going to end up taking!

But I want to touch on all that early footage because it makes me speculate and believe that there was a slightly different plan set for Terra's story being developed at first, and that Terra himself was conecieved as a far darker character than what we ended up getting. Prior to contributions from Daisuke Watanabe and Masaru Oka, Nomura had every inclination to push as hard as possible with the "Anakin Skywalker" route for Terra, essentially taking what he had at first likely envisioned as being Xehanort's forgotten origin story and rewriting it with Terra in place of a younger Xehanort, making enough modifications to service the end point of Terra losing his heart and body to Master Xehanort, who'd lose his memory soon afterwards.

The thing about the beta trailers is that scenes that ended up occurring in the final product are played out in backdrops that were not intended to be the locations those scenes would actually play in (like, why's Xehanort confronting Ven at Olympus Coliseum? Why's Terra protecting Ven from Eraqus at the Great Maw? Why's Ven asking to be killed on Destiny Islands?) So while Terra's meeting with Maleficent was never meant to take place with thorns all around, what's really notable about how it's depicted here is...well, this:

Maleficent clearly has a proposition for Terra, and Terra gives an evil Xemnas-y face in response. To me this suggests that in the initial plan, Terra at the start of the game was going to be like Riku was in the midsection of KH1: very easily allured by the power of Darkness and willing to dirty his hands while working with unsavory characters towards some goal he believed to be righteous and worth it for him.

Just as interesting, the second trailer has this next scene with Terra and Maleficent, as the latter exposits about the Princesses of Heart.

Literally nothing is different from the final scene except Terra's body language. In the final version, his head is titled towards Maleficent. But in this initial version, his head is tilted towards Aurora. Later in that same trailer, the last scene played sets up Aqua and Maleficent's later interaction different. Rather than ask "what did Master Xehanort tell you?", Aqua (with no Prince Philip there yet) asks "was what you said to Ven a lie?" And then Maleficent answers her straight up:

And yes, Terra's embrace of darkness during his confusion and rage over Eraqus' strict, abusive teachings of the supremacy of light over darkness does happen in the game, but it's framed as him getting tricked into it and extracting Aurora's heart by mistake, which is then later backtracked with Xehanort indicating he'd set up Aurora's heart to be extracted, making him the true culprit. I think in the original pitch, Terra was going to deliberately embrace the darkness and turn his Keyblade on Aurora's heart. He'd immediately regret what he did when he sees Maleficent claim the heart, but it would have been a far more willful mistake, which is why he'd be racked with such guilt over having done it. For a moment, he'd have crossed the line and done something evil, which someone who values heroism and protection of others like him would find completely antithetical to himself.

So then rather than further self-damnation like Riku in KH1, we'd see Terra walking back from the abyss in the next worlds he visits, giving us hope that he may yet avoid succumbing to the darkness within himself. .... And then the events at the Radiant Garden would occur, to set him down a different, even more insidious road to darkness.

Some time well afterwards, after he's come to blows with his friends and is in conflict with his master's agenda concerning him, after he's once again channeled his darkness and taken out Braig's eye, after he's been talked up by Master Xehanort, stirring within him the craving to seek more power, achieve more heroic exploits using that power, and wanting to protect his friends while also prove his master wrong and assert himself as the decider of how the trio should conduct themselves as Keyblade Wielders, and after he's far more willingly indulged his darker nature by working with more villains he'd always be dead-set on backstabbing whenever it's convenient for him and his "noble" goals to do so, we'd be treated to this moment:

This plays much differently than anything we actually got from the stupid "Terra on Destiny Island" scene in the finalized game. To me, this is more like the also stupid first scene of the game with Young Xehanort, standing on the shore in contemplation as the bright sun sets over the horizon. Terra stands in solitude, away from the light, and when he sees the kids play-fighting on the beach, the sun is shining down and bathing them in light. Symbolism is clear; these are innocent hearts who belong to the light. Terra is no longer one such heart. He stands away from that brightness, away from light. This could've been the moment of realization from Terra that he needed to turn back from his darkness entirely, to head towards that light.

But alas. thanks to fucking Xehanort, this would follow instead:

This encapulates everything that Terra's character could've been. In the actual scene, the line is translated as "You may be my master... but I will not...let you hurt my friend!", to the response of "Has the darkness taken you too, Terra?" from Eraqus. But in the beta version, the wording suggests that the unseen Eraqus asks that question of Terra first, and Terra says "I don't care if you are my master! This power... I use it for my friends!" Conveying a full-on disowning of Eraqus as his master and a rejection of all that he'd taught him about light versus darkness, and an embrace of the power his darkness grants him to use for the sake of his friends. As in the final game, I think Xehanort would be the one to come in and kill Eraqus (gotta do the Mace Windu thing, after all), but in this version it would've been more clear that Terra was absolutely willing to kill his master here.

Beta Terra was meant to embody the absolute twisting of every positive value the KH Trinity showed us into a negative for him. "My friends are my power!" "My strength to become a True Hero comes from my friends!", "Our hearts are always connected", "No matter how deep the darkness, there's always a light at the end: keep your gaze towards that light even as you endure and exploit the powers of darkness from your own heart!" - Terra would showcase how you take those in the wrong direction, a callow young man ready and willing to try any measure, no matter how dark, in his pursuit of the "strength to protect what matters", his desire for self-actualization beyond what his master's expectations of him, and his committment to his more altruistic, heroic resolve (woah, major Alain flashbacks here!) We even see a carryover of this idea in Blank Points, where within Terra-Xehanort, Terra's heart tells Master Xehanort's heart that he's willing to get cast down into the deepest darkness and have his heart fully possessed by Xehanort so long as he feels certain that Xehanort will end up being the one to fade away into the darkness while Terra ends up returning to the light, and he does feel certain that this will be so for as long as he keeps sight of the cause he fights for: to return to his friends and make right what he'd helped set wrong, his heroic willpower embodied by that sentient armor spirit he'd left behind. But the follow-through on that is barely existent.

And the result is a man torn between himself: the man with the unbreakable will that desires to do good for the worlds and people he cares for (pure Terra, the Lingering Will), and the man who recklessly and selfishly embraces the heart's darkness for self-empowerment (Terranort, who'd later become a Heartless and create his own Nobody in doing so). By picking Terra to become his vessel, Master Xehanort would've basically ended up getting swept up in Terra's wild ride, as by becoming Terranort, he too became a fractured person, split into Ansem and Xemnas. Terranort was to be the ultimate villain because the "Terra" mattered as critically as the "Xehanort".

Tl:dr: I really like Terra, but at some point in his story's development he could've and should've been far more than a big dumb-dumb!

[toyota-supra]

I don't really go here so I don't see this often but I hate with such a force people (mostly like, streamers and youtubers and stuff) who go out of their ways to say "why do Kingdom Hearts fans get so mad when you criticize their games" when you go check and the criticism is always "this game is so weird the plot makes no sense" or blatantly insulting Nomura if not just saying something racist

[dramioneasks]

Nomura - haironmylip - E, WIP - When their eyes meet, there is a brief moment of oppressive silence, as if they are under pressure. Hermione isn't sure if he's looking directly into her eyes since her vision tragically fails her at the most critical moment. She lowers her gaze to his shoulder, to the ripped fabric of his shirt, splattered with blood and something else... Something inside Hermione starts to crumble, whether it's a corset made of ribs or a dried-up heart drained of blood, she's not sure. She pays little attention to the blood on his shoulder, casting a foggy glance at the elongated head of the tattooed dragon.

[guiltygearconfessions]

Tetsuya Nomura got (rightfully) criticized for telling his stories across different consoles but I think Daisuke Ishiwatari should be locked up and analyzed for making a fucking Pachinko game(Vastedge) canon to Guilty Gear’s overall story. 

I mean yeah, I’m ninety% sure the events of Vastedge don’t need to be experienced to make the events of Xrd better but it’s still wild as hell to me that a piece of canon material is so weirdly out of reach from the fans that even most hardcore lore geeks can’t tell ya much about it. 

-

[bexma]

Me: it's unfair to criticize kh3 for not matching my fantasies. Fiction can go in infinite directions and it's much more productive to try and uncover Nomura's point of view going into the future. And I think I've already come to terms with all the obvious story flaws in kh3 caused by production troubles and Nomura just being disappointing sometimes.

Rando: young xehanort should have been regular human size in toybox