What Kairi deserves is to be able to have a character outside of Sora actually.
Yes like, forgive me but her character is so painfully boring with Sora, all her best scenes, aside from the dock scene in kh1 which shows a hint of jealousy which is INTERESTING, are scenes where she is with others and thinking about others. Her best scene in kh3 was when she talked about how her beliefs about Namine changed. That she used to think it was alright for Namine to just remain a part of her, but then she realized Namine deserves to be her own person because their experiences are unique. Give me more of THAT. I don’t care if she is good or bad at fighting or whether she fights or doesn’t fight, I care about what she FEELS about her situation. That’s what makes characters like Namine and Xion so much more interesting than the person they are partially born from (I know Xion isn’t technically but you know what I mean). Like damn let her have some human emotions for gods sake. She doesn’t even ask how Sora saved her or what happened or talk about how she literally just DIED how am I supposed to care about a character I’ve been shown so little of her own feelings aside from “Sora!” for 20 years. At least in khmom she expressed feeling internal guilt over not being strong enough oh wait they completely removed that from the English lmao can’t show her having any insecurities about herself she’s a perfect powerful princess!
A bit of a tangent here: I also find it interesting that in KH3, Kairi was writing letters to Sora that she chooses to never send. And those letters haven’t come back in any meaningful way. You can directly compare that to Kairi’s letter in a bottle in KH2, which obviously come come back and is how the boys get home. If they wanted Kairi’s death to mean more, I think someone finding and reading the letters she wrote after she died (maybe Axel, since he’s the only one who knew about them) would have been a great opportunity to learn about the inner feelings of Kairi beyond Sora, even if the letters were written to him.
It’s one of many reasons I can’t take Sora and Kairi’s relationship seriously, because there’s scenes that set up romantic implications, but the follow though, or in this case the lack thereof, really ends up saying something else about their relationship. Like, if this was KH2, Kairi would absolutely be sending those letters, but by the time KH3 rolls around it’s like she knows that the Sora’s she’s writing to isn’t really the same Sora she knew back in KH1. And that ties well into the Paopu scene. Kairi is really just trying to hang on to friendship with Sora when she’s felt so left behind. It’s a sad story, but like ya’ll said, now I’m doing the heavy lifting of making Kairi more interesting than what’s really presented in the games. :x
Yeah though, that’s a good point. Like Kairi’s loneliness and feeling left behind and trying to hold on to a past version of Sora COULD be an interesting thing to explore, it would make her relatable. But we barely ever get anything beyond hints of how she feels about all this. Like you said, the letters could have been a great way to reveal some of that, some of her more negative feelings. The crazy thing is that Riku and Kairi actually have a lot in common (well, kh1 Riku mainly)- namely their fear of being left behind and losing Sora. But they deal with it in different ways. That contrast also could have been interesting, but it’s just too late for that now.
While I was away @yumbles shared something…. very interesting to say the least (I was losing my mind honestly). So in “Shiro Amano: The Artwork of Kingdom Hearts” there are pages that separate each chapter, with a big iconic quote from Kingdom Hearts and a drawing in the corner. And the one that starts “Chapter 6: Memories”?
Sora’s crown necklace…laying on a wooden sword. Next to a chapter called “Memories”. With one of the most iconic quotes of the series “A scattered dream that’s like a far-off memory. A far off memory that’s like a scattered dream. I want to line the pieces up. Yours and mine.” Huh. Just…a little recap of some of what we know:
A childhood memory:
Repliku:
“There was a meteor shower…this one night when he she and I were
little. Sora Namine got scared and said ‘What if a shooting star hits the
islands?’ So I told him her: ‘If a shooting star comes this way, I will
protect you’“ Sora: “You made a promise! With a toy sword!”
A meteor shower when Sora and Riku were kids:
The manipulated memory, a charm necklace:
Then, at last, she smiled… and held out a star-shaped pendant for him. “Here… So you don’t forget our promise.” It was a charm made out of a paopu fruit. “They say that if you wear this kind of fruit, you’ll never ever be parted from the one you love,” she said. “That’s just…,” the boy started but took the pendant andlooped it around his neck. “So, no matter what happens, we’ll always be able to find each other again.”
A forgotten promise:
Riku kept on walking, and Mickey ran to catch up. What lay ahead of them was the daybreak path- the road to dawn. And a new journey would begin.
Walking the path without you, so that we might remake our forgotten promise. So that I can find you on the road ahead.
As far as I know, this is the first time Sora’s necklace alone has been given any kind of focus in artwork. Otherwise his necklace has never once been acknowledged as a significant object (the symbol has, yes, but not the necklace itself). Not only that, the fact that it is paired with KH2′s iconic opening quote….now that’s really interesting. Honestly I had always just assumed that quote was about Kairi. As a kid I’d never played or even heard of CoM, but I knew that in KH2 they were restoring Sora’s memories of Kairi. That paired with the tone of “I want to line the pieces up. Yours and mine.” gave the quote kind of a…romantic edge so I never questioned whether Sora could be talking about someone else. But taking another look at it now with what I know about CoM…yeah, this could definitely be talking about Riku if you pair it with the imagery that’s given along with it- a wooden sword (Riku makes a promise with a toy sword) and Sora’s necklace (A charm given as a reminder of the promise). A far-off memory….like a childhood memory….not a memory from something as recent as KH1. A far off memory that’s like a scattered dream- a memory that was taken apart and manipulated by Namine so that it now feels more like a scattered, broken dream than a real memory. “I want to line the pieces up. Yours and mine.” Sora trying to piece together his real memory with Riku. Taking out the puzzle pieces that don’t fit (the false chains of memory created my Namine) and trying to put the right pieces back together in the right place. If Namine really did manipulate that memory of Riku making a promise to Sora, then she would have had to flip Sora and Riku’s perspectives within the memory- making it that much more complicated for her to restore- because that would mean she also implanted some of Riku’s memories into Sora along with false memories of herself.
Jules didn’t stop yelling “Wobbuffet” for weeks much to Jessie’s dismay. Jessie and James were still very proud that her first word was such an advanced one
Uncle Meowth helped Jean learned how to speak. Their first word was “Rocket”, just like him!
