In regards to "Settling the score", *looks at beginning of ReMind, with Sora in Ventus' Heart* ???: no, leave him be. Sora: who are you? ???: .... DARKNESS Sora: Vanitas? eh... time will tell on how much is really "settled". Seems like SOMETHING might still be lurking in Vens heart. I swear, Sora and Vens' hearts are like apartments to rent at this point. Anyone can just come in and stay for as long as whatever
seriously, Sora had both Kair AND Ven in there in KH1. It's to the point where people who go missing, the first place they check is Soras heart because SOMEHOW they'll find themselves there. You get there, you'll see a welcome mat@@TheHeartsDivergence
These dots clearly indicates some hesitation, we really need a wayfinder trio+lauriam and Elena spin off, i really want to see where their stories Will Go next
Im glad Vanitas is being highlighted. Much like Roxas, they are created by the rules of hearts, light and darkness. We validate Roxas more because of this fact. I think when you layed it down like this, the story of Vanitas can be an entry point to understanding the next saga. Keep it up! 🔑
Vanitas is in multiple ways a reverse nobody, ventus's sacrifice in KHUX where he becomes a vessel for darkness shows that darkness doesnt has a heart while vanitas does due to xehanort Meanwhile nobodies dont have their own identities and hearts while roxas adquires his own identity and grows a heart
Vanitas explaining why he looks like Sora in KH3 was the Nomurest move Nomura ever Nomura'd. Because at that point, what can you reply except "Ah yeah I guess."
I also played Ventus’s story first so I totally agree with all those points! It’s similar to why I played the KH2 prologue before COM when I was replaying through the whole story with my partner. I wanted her to experience the same level of confusion that most fans had back in the day 😅😂
the ventus vs vanitas final fight BBS will always hit for me was one of the hardest fights in any game for me as a kid i think it took me like a whole day to beat
RARRGGHH vanitas video!! so glad people are talking about him, theres actually so much more to his lore to him if people knew where to look, vanitas actually has an incredibly tragic story in the bbs novel, hes abused by xehanort, and has been manipulated by xehanort, its all real sad and fucked up lol.
You know… it’s kinda wild that the mock trial of the keyblade war had seven keyblade wielders and we had no idea. I wonder if that’s ever gonna get brought up again.
What I wanna know is, "Is Vanitas going to come back?" I knowww that we "defeated" him and he faded away and all-- but that one scene in Re:Mind has been Stuck in the back of my brain for SO long. The scene where Sora ventures into Ven's heart but gets confronted by an "unknown" Darkness whom Sora, justifiedly, assumes is Vanitas. After defeating Dark Inferno X, you never get a resolution of it. So I'm super curious!
Short answer:yes Long answer: in BBS's ending vanitas's heart Góes with ventus's into sora's heart, in KH3 sora ends up waking UP both,we dont know why vanitas doesnt do anything but we know he is still there(or atleast his darkness IS still there) because his darkness straight UP kicks sora out of ventus's heart in remind, also the vanitas in KH3 is one of the time teaveling norts that make UP off XIII só tecnically there are 2 vanitas in KH3
The KING! Your editing has always been great but this video was really really extra good on the editing side for some reason lmao good job I was laughing the whole way through
Let's go your back! Your theories are great, and your rivals of destiny video lead me to another conclusion and I used your theory as the basis for a theory I had about fate and its everchanging nature.
Something i want to point out. In kh3 when vanitas and ventus clash they have the pure dark and light reaction. Meaning, the voice we assumed was in ventus's heart isnt in ventus's heart. Its in sora's heart. The "True darkness." Simply moved over to sora after ventus went to sleeo at the end of bbs
I feel like Nomura is laughing at us somewhere as we try to make sense of the madness that is entire plot of KH. And when we think we've figured him out, he pulls a rug pull on us using a retcon.
09:40 Thank you for explaining this the way you did! I really struggled with this for ages (and now see it's obvious...), but Vanitas's words were always a puzzle to me.
From what I have figured out about Vanitas, he is a fragment of the True Darkness sealed within Ventus. That's why he is always trying to merge with Ventus again so that he can rejoin the True Darkness that is sealed within him (well, that's what I think anyway).
@@ceejaytwoyoshi8536 right?! Xehanort took time to get used to but i never felt off-put by it, it feels like the VA is trying to hard to sound evil and had strep throat that day of recording
I hafta agree in a way, but as I read, I had a thought... What if he was told to do it this way on purpose? That'd be fascinating! Like this is truly darkness we're speaking to and not just an Evil Sora
Honestly, same. I can kinda see what they were going for: a more sleazy, oily, sinister pitch and tone with a layer of scratch-iness on top - which at first sounds perfect for any villain, but on Vanitas specifically its rather strange. Vanitas is proud, ruthless, demeaning and full of himself, and his voice in BBS matched that idea perfectly. In KH3, he's still that, but the voice performance sounds like it belongs to another character.
@@petalpencil1397 and he has reason to be proud and sinister, he's (most likely) a willful darkness, surviving the MoM and now multiple keyblade wars and even besting keyblade masters like aqua hopefully they tone down the scratchiness cause its hard to take him seriously when he sounds like a teenager doing a supervillain impersonation
I......really don't have an answer for this and If I knew or at least knew about whoever this is suppose to be. But I left Square Enix before Nomura's development team could tell me anything else after realising I wanted to focus on retirement soon.
But now this begs the question: Where did the darkness that was previously Vanitas go? It can't be killed right? Otherwise, the Master of Masters wouldn't need all the Foretellers present to trap all the darknesses to finally destroy them. That means it must have gone somewhere. For that matter, where are the rest of the darknesses? And what does this have to do with the Chamber of Repose, the thing that Nomura set up in KHII and never brought up again?
Remember how the 13 Darknesses are described as formless and thus impervious to damage? That comes with the caveat that they basically degenerate into the pure heartless so they seek out weakhearted vessels which they can gain control over. I believe that when the Darkness left Ventus it took all the darkness Ven had in his heart, no matter how little, with it, making Ventus a pure Light capable of trapping a true Darkness. Ven's heart wasn't damaged when the true Darkness left him though. I believe that when Xehanort extracted the Darkness out of Ventus, he accidentally/subconsciously took a part of Ventus' Heart with it to build a base upon which the Darkness can exist as an entity with a form, thus making Vanitas a killable/destroyable entity. That's my impression of it atleast. There is a chance that Vanitas is still inside of Ventus as ReMind showed us that there is Darkness inside of Ventus that takes on the form of Dark Inferno X. This leads me to suspect that the Dark Inferno heartless are the peak of the pure Heartless as they are the true Darknesses that degenerated into those.
I also wanted to say I thought the same thing!!!! Vanitas hasn't shown his face until III, so maybe he simply GAINED the Sora Form throughout time and he never had one in the beginning because he is Darkness. He only started to take Sora's form later.
A bit of a thing to correct here; it was never stated anywhere that Vanitas didn't always look like Sora and honestly, the way it's explained as to why Vanitas looks like Sora in kH3 makes perfect sense if you're familiar with how hearts work in the series. As shown with Xion and Namine primarily (but possibly even some other characters could be used as examples), the heart dictates the form that you take in the KH world whether that's a form that you grow into over time like normal humans or whether you're just born like that like with Nobodies or Vanitas. I completely agree that Vanitas is the Darkness that Ventus absorbed but his form was gained simply because his heart and Sora's filled the same hole in Ventus' heart therefore (as stated earlier) they should have the same appearance. In summary: Vanitas looks like Sora because their hearts are the same; their hearts fill the same gap in Ventus' heart and hearts dictate the form you take in KH. (Note: this doesn't mean that Vanitas isn't Darkness, I completely agree with how you thought of this theory just not why Sora and Vanitas look the same, the explanation in KH3 works perfectly and leaves no room for interpretation if you know the rules of the series)
@@Fragmentsinfractals488 Yes but things happen in the manga that don't happen in the games so they can't be used for figuring out the game lore. See, for example, Demyx' dying at The World That Never Was in the manga whilst in the games he dies in Hollow Bastion (At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it happens, just tried to double check and all the pages detailing it online are incomplete).
@@lukasruston8618 The novel and Manga were written by different people. The one who wrote the Novels made Xion and is a writer on several of the Kingdom Hearts Games.
@@Fragmentsinfractals488 That doesn't change the fact that things happen differently in the games than in the novels, it's just blatantly obvious that you can't use the novels for theories involving the games because things just happen differently
The novels are secondary canon, they inform the way the characters are. In fact, the quote Luxord say at the beginning of Re Mind is from his character files in the Book. "the White goat, black goat"@@lukasruston8618
I cant stand to actually PLAY any but the (so far) 3 numbered games. I just recently played BBS (on my pc) and only made it about halfway through before just resorting to youtube to watch the cutscene movies. However KH1, 2, and 3 ive played about a dozen times each because theyre their own pieces of perfection. P.s. Ventus holding his keyblad backwards is beyond dumb because if you slow down pretty much any attack animation it switches to upright anyway. The whole point of a sword rather than a dagger/knife is REACH!!!
I'm very late to the party but I just have to ask: are we sure things with Vanitas are done? From what I assumed, and then more or less confirmed with Vanitas' Kingdom Hearts wiki page, the Vanitas from KH3 was actually his heart from the past, brought into the present by Young Xehanort and given a replica body. Then once he was defeated in KH3, his heart returned to the past , where he would eventually be defeated during BBS when Ventus mutually destroys them both by breaking the χ-blade... But the thing is: Ventus' heart was able to avoid "disappearing forever" by seeking shelter in Sora's heart, so is it possible that Vanitas could have also somehow survived? I don't know, it's just that Vanitas' story doesn't quite feel complete... Then again, maybe I'm missing something. Or perhaps Vanitas' role in the KH series is simply done and there's nothing more to it... EDIT: I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING!! That final scene with Vanitas in KH3, after Sora & Ventus defeat him and he's talking to them before his heart returns to the past! In response to Sora asking Vanitas why he doesn't stand by their side, despite claiming them to be his brothers, Vanitas literally says "... I do stand by your side. I'm the shadow that you cast. How much closer could I be?" and all the while, he's smiling/smirking at them! Up until recently, I sort of dismissed it as him being metaphorical/philosophical, but what if he was being more literal than we thought? What if he actually knew something that Sora and Ventus don't? Like perhaps his future-self lingering around Ventus or Sora? It could explain how he could seem satisfied with how their fight concluded, and why he wasn't upset to return to a time where he would forget that Ventus would destroy them both but then survive - because he (Vanitas) was secure in the knowledge that he will survive as well!
I personally disagree here. Vanitas as Ventus' darkness was more interesting. It provided a depth to his character that doesn't exist now. He was All of Ventus' loneliness, fear, self-loathing, left behind and unable to reconcile what he was. Left as a pawn of Xehanort while Ventus got friends, making the 'at least I have some' line tragic. It also provides depth to Ventus, the fact that someone as bitter and vindictive as Vanitas came from him, it says that Ventus is also missing something, something he's able to fill with his bonds, but a loss that he'll have to live with forever. Now Vanitas' just evil because he's darkness and darkness is evil. It flattens out the character of Vanitas (no longer a tragic figure fueled by desperation and resentment) and it flattens out the world (darkness is just evil rather than a force that exists for a reason that the characters have to accept and come to terms with.)
My man. Ventus-first team, sound off. I still assert Ven first is the way to play. I personally chose him because I like balanced characters, and the game specifically calls him "balanced", soooo...
I also played ventus first, and gotta say it's so much better to do ven-terra-aqua. Playing terra or aqua reveals a big reveal of vens story and reveals a little too much. Playing Ven first keeps his reveal intact and creates mysteries revealed in the other stories.
@TheHeartsDivergence Yup, and it has always baffled me that the fandom's popularly agreed upon play order is Terra-Ven-Aqua. Every single time I watch an LP of BBS, the streamer says the viewers ALL say to start with Terra. I ask people "What does Terra's story spoil about Ven's? What does Ven's story spoil about Terra's?" and usually I get an evasive answer like "But Terra goes to the worlds first, so he should be played first." .......While talking about...a prequel...lol
I wouldn't call this "building upon and towards a big reveal". Nomura just told us a story, kept the names and identities in secret, and then revealed where all that came from only way later. It may work a few times here and there to surprise fans, but in KH that's what the story is mainly about. Nomura writes the story for one game carelessly because he knows he will be able to retcon whatever the heck he put in the previous game in the next one. That's not skilled writing. That's incompetence in my book. For example (and again, I'm not explicitly against retcon and stuff), Days should have been released BEFORE KH2 so that Roxas's ending arc had made sense from the start. But Nomura threw a bunch of story concepts that really didn't make sense on screen out to the viewers and players. It's a bad writing choice, even though it works sorta.
I kinda hate vanitas’s sora redesign honestly, I don’t know if I’m in the minority but him looking like ventus with the darkness eyes makes more sense than darkness AU sora
I been watching your Kingdom Hearts Theory videos and tbh this one was mid, didn't even explained why exactly Vanitas looks like Sora (you probably did but Kingdom Hearts lore wise its still stupid, it doesn't even make sense in the timeline because Ven meets Sora after Birth by Sleep...unless you believe in the whole ".M.O.M. is Sora theory")
VEN had a whole dive to heart in the beginning of the game
Vanitas is a character that I've seen very few analyze like this, good work
Well At least you have an interesting answer better than what I could provide.
In regards to "Settling the score", *looks at beginning of ReMind, with Sora in Ventus' Heart*
???: no, leave him be.
Sora: who are you?
???: .... DARKNESS
Sora: Vanitas?
eh... time will tell on how much is really "settled". Seems like SOMETHING might still be lurking in Vens heart. I swear, Sora and Vens' hearts are like apartments to rent at this point. Anyone can just come in and stay for as long as whatever
Yeahhhh every time one hearts lease is up another swoops in
seriously, Sora had both Kair AND Ven in there in KH1. It's to the point where people who go missing, the first place they check is Soras heart because SOMEHOW they'll find themselves there. You get there, you'll see a welcome mat@@TheHeartsDivergence
These dots clearly indicates some hesitation, we really need a wayfinder trio+lauriam and Elena spin off, i really want to see where their stories Will Go next
Im glad Vanitas is being highlighted. Much like Roxas, they are created by the rules of hearts, light and darkness. We validate Roxas more because of this fact. I think when you layed it down like this, the story of Vanitas can be an entry point to understanding the next saga. Keep it up! 🔑
Vanitas is in multiple ways a reverse nobody, ventus's sacrifice in KHUX where he becomes a vessel for darkness shows that darkness doesnt has a heart while vanitas does due to xehanort
Meanwhile nobodies dont have their own identities and hearts while roxas adquires his own identity and grows a heart
Vanitas explaining why he looks like Sora in KH3 was the Nomurest move Nomura ever Nomura'd.
Because at that point, what can you reply except "Ah yeah I guess."
Really a "we didn't need to know what the force was" moment of all time.
I also played Ventus’s story first so I totally agree with all those points! It’s similar to why I played the KH2 prologue before COM when I was replaying through the whole story with my partner. I wanted her to experience the same level of confusion that most fans had back in the day 😅😂
That intro alone deserves a like
the ventus vs vanitas final fight BBS will always hit for me was one of the hardest fights in any game for me as a kid i think it took me like a whole day to beat
Wake up gang, the king is back!
King? yo k
It's always about ur friends.
A quote from darkness himself
RARRGGHH vanitas video!! so glad people are talking about him, theres actually so much more to his lore to him if people knew where to look, vanitas actually has an incredibly tragic story in the bbs novel, hes abused by xehanort, and has been manipulated by xehanort, its all real sad and fucked up lol.
Keep the hype alive dude!
You know… it’s kinda wild that the mock trial of the keyblade war had seven keyblade wielders and we had no idea. I wonder if that’s ever gonna get brought up again.
What I wanna know is, "Is Vanitas going to come back?"
I knowww that we "defeated" him and he faded away and all-- but that one scene in Re:Mind has been Stuck in the back of my brain for SO long. The scene where Sora ventures into Ven's heart but gets confronted by an "unknown" Darkness whom Sora, justifiedly, assumes is Vanitas. After defeating Dark Inferno X, you never get a resolution of it. So I'm super curious!
Short answer:yes
Long answer: in BBS's ending vanitas's heart Góes with ventus's into sora's heart, in KH3 sora ends up waking UP both,we dont know why vanitas doesnt do anything but we know he is still there(or atleast his darkness IS still there) because his darkness straight UP kicks sora out of ventus's heart in remind, also the vanitas in KH3 is one of the time teaveling norts that make UP off XIII só tecnically there are 2 vanitas in KH3
@@mobgabriel1767 Hmmm... I wonder if Vanitas is regaining his old "True Darkness" memories, and whether that would make Ven remember...?
The KING! Your editing has always been great but this video was really really extra good on the editing side for some reason lmao good job I was laughing the whole way through
Thank you! 😁
Well! Quite Popular Aren't You keyshaunjones. You know what Like T.H.D here, I let you be on the board.
The video isn't that great.
I genuinely got chills when I saw Sora lose his shit in KH3
Let's go your back!
Your theories are great, and your rivals of destiny video lead me to another conclusion and I used your theory as the basis for a theory I had about fate and its everchanging nature.
"The King has returned." Welcome back, dude! Love your theories!
Well there's a reason why he's on MY board.
Crazy how Lauriam was working alongside the very darkness that murdered his sister.
Something i want to point out. In kh3 when vanitas and ventus clash they have the pure dark and light reaction. Meaning, the voice we assumed was in ventus's heart isnt in ventus's heart. Its in sora's heart. The "True darkness." Simply moved over to sora after ventus went to sleeo at the end of bbs
I feel like Nomura is laughing at us somewhere as we try to make sense of the madness that is entire plot of KH. And when we think we've figured him out, he pulls a rug pull on us using a retcon.
Glad to see you back King!
The first time I played birth by sleep I picked ventus because he reminded me of Roxas and I thought I was going to be able to use two keyblades 😂😂😂
09:40 Thank you for explaining this the way you did! I really struggled with this for ages (and now see it's obvious...), but Vanitas's words were always a puzzle to me.
From what I have figured out about Vanitas, he is a fragment of the True Darkness sealed within Ventus. That's why he is always trying to merge with Ventus again so that he can rejoin the True Darkness that is sealed within him (well, that's what I think anyway).
Assuming there is any left inside Ventus.
Dude you know this is the order the master wanted the story to be read = played 👏🏽👏🏽✨👑💜🗝🔑
i man…yeah we've known this for like 3 years lol
i missed this guy a lot. I needed this
Vel what must me do for more frequent posts, please we need more 🙏
You're back!! 🎉
Woo lets go another upload from this mad lad!
Am i the only one who really doesnt like vanitas' new voice its so scratchy and off-putting and not in the good way
yeah ngl it kinda looks like someone doing a haley joel osment doing some sort of impression fusion of like joker and sora
@@ceejaytwoyoshi8536 right?! Xehanort took time to get used to but i never felt off-put by it, it feels like the VA is trying to hard to sound evil and had strep throat that day of recording
I hafta agree in a way, but as I read, I had a thought... What if he was told to do it this way on purpose? That'd be fascinating! Like this is truly darkness we're speaking to and not just an Evil Sora
Honestly, same. I can kinda see what they were going for: a more sleazy, oily, sinister pitch and tone with a layer of scratch-iness on top - which at first sounds perfect for any villain, but on Vanitas specifically its rather strange. Vanitas is proud, ruthless, demeaning and full of himself, and his voice in BBS matched that idea perfectly. In KH3, he's still that, but the voice performance sounds like it belongs to another character.
@@petalpencil1397 and he has reason to be proud and sinister, he's (most likely) a willful darkness, surviving the MoM and now multiple keyblade wars and even besting keyblade masters like aqua
hopefully they tone down the scratchiness cause its hard to take him seriously when he sounds like a teenager doing a supervillain impersonation
I......really don't have an answer for this and If I knew or at least knew about whoever this is suppose to be. But I left Square Enix before Nomura's development team could tell me anything else after realising I wanted to focus on retirement soon.
13 hours ago? 😅
Because VEN used the power of waking wayyyyyy before
You could call this a case study of venitas
Ventus sound sooooo whiny when he cries out Aqua!!!
Welcome back 👋
Alright Cartman, chill with the tears😂
When do monster like to party the most?
April Ghoul's Day.
Since Sora connected his heart with Ventus and thereby Vanitas I wonder if Sora is now considered a Primordial Darkness?
Oh hey you're cool. Glad youtube recommended you. I'll sub
I doubt Vanitas is done for.
But now this begs the question: Where did the darkness that was previously Vanitas go? It can't be killed right? Otherwise, the Master of Masters wouldn't need all the Foretellers present to trap all the darknesses to finally destroy them. That means it must have gone somewhere. For that matter, where are the rest of the darknesses? And what does this have to do with the Chamber of Repose, the thing that Nomura set up in KHII and never brought up again?
Remember how the 13 Darknesses are described as formless and thus impervious to damage? That comes with the caveat that they basically degenerate into the pure heartless so they seek out weakhearted vessels which they can gain control over.
I believe that when the Darkness left Ventus it took all the darkness Ven had in his heart, no matter how little, with it, making Ventus a pure Light capable of trapping a true Darkness. Ven's heart wasn't damaged when the true Darkness left him though. I believe that when Xehanort extracted the Darkness out of Ventus, he accidentally/subconsciously took a part of Ventus' Heart with it to build a base upon which the Darkness can exist as an entity with a form, thus making Vanitas a killable/destroyable entity. That's my impression of it atleast.
There is a chance that Vanitas is still inside of Ventus as ReMind showed us that there is Darkness inside of Ventus that takes on the form of Dark Inferno X.
This leads me to suspect that the Dark Inferno heartless are the peak of the pure Heartless as they are the true Darknesses that degenerated into those.
This was very interesting
Yooo, I missed you!! 🥺
Finished watching and it's great having this refresher.I seriously can't wait to see what KHIV has in store
I also wanted to say I thought the same thing!!!! Vanitas hasn't shown his face until III, so maybe he simply GAINED the Sora Form throughout time and he never had one in the beginning because he is Darkness. He only started to take Sora's form later.
What a title
Why did they make vanitas sound like such a cringe edgelord in 3? He sounded fine in bbs, what the hell happened?
How did the intro
Why vanatis sound like 1st form cell
Changing SORAS fate & Riku’s
Think about the whole kingdom hearts being filped on its head and Riku was Sora and Sora was Riku
A bit of a thing to correct here; it was never stated anywhere that Vanitas didn't always look like Sora and honestly, the way it's explained as to why Vanitas looks like Sora in kH3 makes perfect sense if you're familiar with how hearts work in the series.
As shown with Xion and Namine primarily (but possibly even some other characters could be used as examples), the heart dictates the form that you take in the KH world whether that's a form that you grow into over time like normal humans or whether you're just born like that like with Nobodies or Vanitas. I completely agree that Vanitas is the Darkness that Ventus absorbed but his form was gained simply because his heart and Sora's filled the same hole in Ventus' heart therefore (as stated earlier) they should have the same appearance.
In summary: Vanitas looks like Sora because their hearts are the same; their hearts fill the same gap in Ventus' heart and hearts dictate the form you take in KH. (Note: this doesn't mean that Vanitas isn't Darkness, I completely agree with how you thought of this theory just not why Sora and Vanitas look the same, the explanation in KH3 works perfectly and leaves no room for interpretation if you know the rules of the series)
In the novels, Vanitas originally had no face with Red Eyes. But the Ancient Darkness is a shapeshifter. See Fake Ava.
@@Fragmentsinfractals488 Yes but things happen in the manga that don't happen in the games so they can't be used for figuring out the game lore. See, for example, Demyx' dying at The World That Never Was in the manga whilst in the games he dies in Hollow Bastion (At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it happens, just tried to double check and all the pages detailing it online are incomplete).
@@lukasruston8618 The novel and Manga were written by different people. The one who wrote the Novels made Xion and is a writer on several of the Kingdom Hearts Games.
@@Fragmentsinfractals488 That doesn't change the fact that things happen differently in the games than in the novels, it's just blatantly obvious that you can't use the novels for theories involving the games because things just happen differently
The novels are secondary canon, they inform the way the characters are. In fact, the quote Luxord say at the beginning of Re Mind is from his character files in the Book. "the White goat, black goat"@@lukasruston8618
Technically vanitas isn't darkness but was created from darkness by xehanort so darkness is still inside ventus
I cant stand to actually PLAY any but the (so far) 3 numbered games. I just recently played BBS (on my pc) and only made it about halfway through before just resorting to youtube to watch the cutscene movies. However KH1, 2, and 3 ive played about a dozen times each because theyre their own pieces of perfection.
P.s. Ventus holding his keyblad backwards is beyond dumb because if you slow down pretty much any attack animation it switches to upright anyway. The whole point of a sword rather than a dagger/knife is REACH!!!
I'm very late to the party but I just have to ask: are we sure things with Vanitas are done?
From what I assumed, and then more or less confirmed with Vanitas' Kingdom Hearts wiki page, the Vanitas from KH3 was actually his heart from the past, brought into the present by Young Xehanort and given a replica body. Then once he was defeated in KH3, his heart returned to the past , where he would eventually be defeated during BBS when Ventus mutually destroys them both by breaking the χ-blade... But the thing is: Ventus' heart was able to avoid "disappearing forever" by seeking shelter in Sora's heart, so is it possible that Vanitas could have also somehow survived?
I don't know, it's just that Vanitas' story doesn't quite feel complete... Then again, maybe I'm missing something. Or perhaps Vanitas' role in the KH series is simply done and there's nothing more to it...
EDIT: I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING!! That final scene with Vanitas in KH3, after Sora & Ventus defeat him and he's talking to them before his heart returns to the past! In response to Sora asking Vanitas why he doesn't stand by their side, despite claiming them to be his brothers, Vanitas literally says "... I do stand by your side. I'm the shadow that you cast. How much closer could I be?" and all the while, he's smiling/smirking at them!
Up until recently, I sort of dismissed it as him being metaphorical/philosophical, but what if he was being more literal than we thought? What if he actually knew something that Sora and Ventus don't? Like perhaps his future-self lingering around Ventus or Sora? It could explain how he could seem satisfied with how their fight concluded, and why he wasn't upset to return to a time where he would forget that Ventus would destroy them both but then survive - because he (Vanitas) was secure in the knowledge that he will survive as well!
I personally disagree here. Vanitas as Ventus' darkness was more interesting. It provided a depth to his character that doesn't exist now. He was All of Ventus' loneliness, fear, self-loathing, left behind and unable to reconcile what he was. Left as a pawn of Xehanort while Ventus got friends, making the 'at least I have some' line tragic. It also provides depth to Ventus, the fact that someone as bitter and vindictive as Vanitas came from him, it says that Ventus is also missing something, something he's able to fill with his bonds, but a loss that he'll have to live with forever.
Now Vanitas' just evil because he's darkness and darkness is evil. It flattens out the character of Vanitas (no longer a tragic figure fueled by desperation and resentment) and it flattens out the world (darkness is just evil rather than a force that exists for a reason that the characters have to accept and come to terms with.)
My man. Ventus-first team, sound off. I still assert Ven first is the way to play. I personally chose him because I like balanced characters, and the game specifically calls him "balanced", soooo...
Same! Again I feel like all the mystery behind Terra wouldn’t exist either if you don’t start with Ven
I also played ventus first, and gotta say it's so much better to do ven-terra-aqua. Playing terra or aqua reveals a big reveal of vens story and reveals a little too much. Playing Ven first keeps his reveal intact and creates mysteries revealed in the other stories.
@TheHeartsDivergence Yup, and it has always baffled me that the fandom's popularly agreed upon play order is Terra-Ven-Aqua. Every single time I watch an LP of BBS, the streamer says the viewers ALL say to start with Terra.
I ask people "What does Terra's story spoil about Ven's? What does Ven's story spoil about Terra's?" and usually I get an evasive answer like "But Terra goes to the worlds first, so he should be played first." .......While talking about...a prequel...lol
I wouldn't call this "building upon and towards a big reveal". Nomura just told us a story, kept the names and identities in secret, and then revealed where all that came from only way later. It may work a few times here and there to surprise fans, but in KH that's what the story is mainly about. Nomura writes the story for one game carelessly because he knows he will be able to retcon whatever the heck he put in the previous game in the next one. That's not skilled writing. That's incompetence in my book. For example (and again, I'm not explicitly against retcon and stuff), Days should have been released BEFORE KH2 so that Roxas's ending arc had made sense from the start. But Nomura threw a bunch of story concepts that really didn't make sense on screen out to the viewers and players. It's a bad writing choice, even though it works sorta.
I’m not too sure I understood the point
I kinda hate vanitas’s sora redesign honestly, I don’t know if I’m in the minority but him looking like ventus with the darkness eyes makes more sense than darkness AU sora
The reason he looks like Sora, is because Sora filled the Darkness part of Ventus's heart. Vanitas represents the connection between both.
I been watching your Kingdom Hearts Theory videos and tbh this one was mid, didn't even explained why exactly Vanitas looks like Sora (you probably did but Kingdom Hearts lore wise its still stupid, it doesn't even make sense in the timeline because Ven meets Sora after Birth by Sleep...unless you believe in the whole ".M.O.M. is Sora theory")