Ventus’ awakening: could it have been handled differently?

[Iscreamer1 100]

There are two things found in a story: the way the story is and the perfect way we wish it could be. There are three major issues (that I had) with how Ventus’ reawakening went in KH III: Vanitas’ lack of reasoning for being there, how Aqua was easily defeated and realistically, Ventus should not have fully replenished his strength that quickly, he should have trouble getting up from that throne.

How would you rewrite it?

[Double OKP 171]

Well, Vanitas did have a reason to be there; he's wanted to merge with him the whole time, as he explains in Monstropolis. Also, Aqua wasn't fully recovered, which makes sense that she was taken down. And this was an incredibly desperate situation, where Aqua was about to be killed, so lack of strength wouldn't hold back Ventus from saving his friend.

[Iscreamer1 100]

5 hours ago, Double OKP said:

Well, Vanitas did have a reason to be there; he's wanted to merge with him the whole time, as he explains in Monstropolis. Also, Aqua wasn't fully recovered, which makes sense that she was taken down. And this was an incredibly desperate situation, where Aqua was about to be killed, so lack of strength wouldn't hold back Ventus from saving his friend.

Yeah, but some fans hate seeing Aqua get so easily beaten despite that detail.

[FadedSparkle 18]

It's not just the situation of Ven's awakening that was handled poorly. Most of the crucial moments the game had coming were handled poorly. It makes Riku and Mickey look like chumps that both are keyblade masters in perfectly fine health but couldn't save Aqua on their own the second time they went in to look for her. The issues with the way Aqua's rescue was handled are exacerbated by the fact Sora doesn't remember her, but Riku does, plus out of the lot Mickey was the one with the most motivations to save her given he was forced to leave her behind then banned from going back in and leaving her there to rot by Yen Sid.

Things could have been leveled out a little if when Sora showed up the battle against Anti Aqua was not a solo one by him. They even gave Riku some badass lines before the fight between them that gets interrupted by the Press Triangle to Sora command (this wouldn't have been too bad had it turned into a scenario where Sora and a recovered Mickey became Riku's party members for the fight with Anti Aqua after the entrance by Sora) and it's doubly depressing they did not apply such logic to the version of this battle featured in the Re:Mind DLC after mucking it up in the base game.

Following all of this up with Aqua insisting on saving Ven immediately then being completely uninvolved in actually waking him up was awful. I get the whole Ven's heart is resting in Sora's body thing, but it just feels awful given how much finally being able to wake up Ven meant to Aqua, it undoubtedly was one of if not her biggest motivation for staying alive in the Realm of Darkness all those years. Someone else doing it was just cheap. I feel like Vanitas being there was appropriate given his own motivation was to rejoin with Ven, but making Aqua so prideful while not remotely recovered from everything she'd endured in the Realm of Darkness that she blocked Sora, Donald, and Goofy from helping her against Vanitas was beyond frustrating. About the only thing I think was handled correctly was Ven's desire to protect Aqua essentially giving him the will to push his body beyond any realistic limits that should've come with him being asleep in that chair for over a decade.

Later on in the Keyblade Graveyard the fact that Riku was not involved in saving Terra at all and that Terra practically saves himself after a very minor assist from Sora was a super bitter pill to swallow. This particular rescue should've been a situation of the student saving the master and I have no idea how they mucked that up so badly. I'm not even sure I buy into the idea that it was too hard to shift the playable character from Sora to Riku to Aqua at the appropriate times that Nomura fed us in one of the interviews after how they "fixed" that issues in Re:Mind by adding a character selection option to certain battles. Like, did none of them actually think it would be appropriate to have that feature by default? Really? I rolled by my eyes so hard. I even think that in this particular rescue Riku didn't have to get involved fight wise, that still could've been Aqua as her other motivation to stay alive in the Realm of Darkness was getting out and saving Terra, but they could've had Riku involved in some way during the cutscenes after the battle concluded. Sora would still have his moment of importance there given the "Vanitas has my face" situation.

It really just felt like they went the easiest and laziest route of MC Does All the Important Stuff Shounen or Shoujo Anime/Manga style.

Edited April 14, 2022 by FadedSparkle

[Double OKP 171]

19 hours ago, Iscreamer1 said:

Yeah, but some fans hate seeing Aqua get so easily beaten despite that detail.

Yes, but it's not like us fans can do anything to change those facts. We're not the ones who wrote and decided the paths of this story in the first place.

[Iscreamer1 100]

On 3/31/2021 at 4:09 PM, Double OKP said:

Yes, but it's not like us fans can do anything to change those facts. We're not the ones who wrote and decided the paths of this story in the first place.

And there’s another thing, the way Vanitas hesitated to kill Aqua. We didn’t need another repeat of that particular moment from Birth by Sleep.

[Double OKP 171]

1 hour ago, Iscreamer1 said:

And there’s another thing, the way Vanitas hesitated to kill Aqua. We didn’t need another repeat of that particular moment from Birth by Sleep.

Hmm........I was considering this for a bit and it actually does fit. In that scene, Vanitas and Aqua are blocked out by the glass dome, so Vanitas wouldn't have to worry about Sora, Donald, and Goofy interfering. Then he probably knew that Sora didn't have the power of waking yet, so he wouldn't worry about him releasing Ven. In short, he could take all the time he needed, which would be mocking Sora and others (and also leaving them in misery, which would benefit the Organization; this would cause lack of preparation) as they helplessly watch Aqua get killed. But when he saw that Ven was awakened, he didn't have the time to kill Aqua; firstly because from Ven's unexpected awakening, Vanitas got shocked frozen for a split second, delaying himself, and by the time he could plunge his Keyblade into Aqua (and before he could even pull his Keyblade out from her), Ven would already be through the glass wall and killing Vanitas in turn......and that certainly wasn't Vanitas's intention.