KHWiki:Magazine/Issue 6
You should also join the conversation over on the Keyhole! |
 |
 | |
 Page 3 - The Ansem Reports
Page 4 - Unlocking the Keyhole
Page 5 - The Door to Light
Page 6 - The Coliseum
Page 7 - The Keyblade Master
Page 8 - Dive to the Heart
Page 9 - The Round Room
Page 10 - Mark of Mastery Exam
Page 11 - Naminé's Sketchbook
Page 12 - The Grid
Page 13 - Flick Rush
| |
 by Byzantinefire and TheFifteenthMember | |
 2015's Tokyo Game Show convention was recently held and, in a surprising twist, Square Enix (the publishers of the Kingdom Hearts series) used the event to announce a brand new Kingdom Hearts collection during September 15th's Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia Press Conference! The upcoming release is named Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and its announcement trailer can be viewed below. Continuing after the Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX collections, Kingdom Hearts 2.8 is slated for a 2016 release on the Playstation 4. The release will include three titles:
| |
 This June the D23 Expo was held in California, and with it came the revelation that a world based on the highly popular film Big Hero 6 would be included in the upcoming game, Kingdom Hearts III. For those unfamiliar with the title, Big Hero 6 is an animated Disney film based on characters from a Marvel Universe comic. The story follows 14-year-old prodigy Hiro Hamada as he forms a team of superheroes to fight against a mysterious masked villain. The film was released in 2014 and won the Oscar for Best Animated Film.  The events of the Kingdom Hearts III world will take place after the events of the film. Sora and friends will go on a grand adventure with Hiro, his companion Baymax, and their friends who, following the conclusion of the film, have been recognized as an official superhero team. Released concept art shows Keyblade-wielding Sora riding Baymax to take on a second, darker Baymax. Maybe we're seeing a corrupted form of the body Baymax left in the portal at the end of the Big Hero 6? In other Kingdom Hearts III news, the name for the previously announced Tangled world has been teased as Kingdom of Corona in an official tweet. | |
 Set in the shady era before the Keyblade War, players can finally explore the monumental event that shall someday spark Xehanort's world-threatening transgressions. The story will be told in 200 main quests with the aim being to add 50 of these stages each month, until January 2016. Square Enix's commitment doesn't end there, as they also plan on updating the game with challenging side quests. While Unchained χ shares many features with it's predecessor Kingdom Hearts χ, a few differences are noticeable. New touch controls have been adapted for the game's smartphone platform and instead of using cards in battle, the player collects medals. These changes are an attempt to appeal to Western audiences, as Unchained χ is planned for release in NA and PAL regions. Although we are still waiting for the announcement of an English release date, the Japanese version has stirred the Kingdom Hearts community and made the wait to Kingdom Hearts III that much more bearable. Are you excited to create your very own Keyblade Wielder in Square Enix's latest entry to the Kingdom Hearts series? Tell us your thoughts on the comments page! | |
 Since December 2014, Disney Interactive staff have been publicly addressing the possibility of adding Kingdom Hearts content to the Disney Infinity game series. But Kingdom Hearts's addition had always been just that: a possibility. No matter how successful the series has been, or how highly demanded an inclusion was, the chance of a character from Kingdom Hearts appearing in Disney Infinity was never more likely than a character from any other property's appearance.   In an interview with ComicBook.com, Vice President of Production John Vignocchi revealed that this collaboration has been in the works for about 8 months, its creation involving a lot of back and forth with Kingdom Hearts parent company Square Enix. Because Kingdom Hearts is one of the most highly requested properties for Disney Infinity, he wanted to make sure Infinity was respectful to the brand. For example, all of the animations for Mickey in his Kingdom Hearts II outfit are taken directly from Kingdom Hearts! ~ John Vignocchi | |
It has been a nine year-long journey, but on the 22nd of August, the Kingdom Hearts II manga finally finished its run in Japan. Square Enix finally released the manga's highly-anticipated 10th volume, the final entry to the series!
Following the events of Kingdom Hearts II and illustrated beautifully by Shiro Amano, this series was a wonderful adaptation for Kingdom Hearts fans to enjoy. Are you an avid Kingdom Hearts manga reader? Are you sad to see the series end? Let us know on the Twilight Time's talk page!
|
 by FinalRest | ||
 | ||
| ||
 | ||
 |
Our most popular post of the past quarter is...    | |
 | ||
We've had a steady influx of users the last couple of months, so make sure you head over to the user creation log to check everyone out and give them a warm Keyhole welcome! All our new users are welcome to our wiki family, and here just a few of our newbies that we'd like to shine the spotlight on.
We offer a big hello to those users, as well as all the others we didn't have the time to mention! We hope you enjoy your stay in the Keyhole/KHWiki universe! | ||
 | ||
Each quarter the Keyhole hosts a tea party for all users to get together and discuss wiki related issues. Below are important policies we have decided upon in our latest tea party forums.
| ||
 by TheFifteenthMember | ||
 | ||
Here's the latest from the KHWiki:
| ||
 | ||
We are delighted to have seen many new users in the last three months and we'd like to take this moment to shine the spotlight on a few:
| ||
 | ||
Catch up on the latest changes made to formats, policies and the Manual of Style:
| ||
 | ||
| For this quarter, we're focusing on Reaction Commands, a mechanic that's fairly major to the series yet badly covered on our wiki. The plan is to list every Reaction Command of every game in a table that covers the command's name, description, and trigger context. For Kingdom Hearts II, much of the information is already on the page under hidden text, but they need to be merged into the table to work effectively. We know a lot less about Reaction Commands from other games, such as Birth by Sleep, Re:coded, and Dream Drop Distance, so we need to pool together information for these. Visit the article's talk page for more guidance and don't be shy in helping out! |
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Aixon |
|
 Chainoffire | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Head on over to the magazine talk page to let us know who you think should win! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |
 by TheSilentHero  Mickey first appeared in Kingdom Hearts, wielding the Kingdom Key D, which he had found in the Realm of Darkness. As of then, he used it in all his appearances and people called it "Mickey's Keyblade". But with the release of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, this was about to change. In Birth by Sleep, Mickey can be seen before he travels to the Realm of Darkness to obtain the Kingdom Key D, wielding the Star Seeker. This could have been Mickey's original Keyblade, were it not for the fact that Sora obtains the Star Seeker Keychain in Kingdom Hearts II. At that point, people began to wonder what Mickey's "base Keyblade" is. Let's go back to the first game. During Sora's travels, Mickey is going through the Realm of Darkness to get a Keyblade to mirror Sora's. Now, let me ask you, how big is the chance that two people who never met before, have mirroring weapons when they first meet at the Door to Light? If you have only played the first game, you would say that the chance of achieving this is quite large. Sora obtains the Keyblade of the Realm of Light and Mickey the Keyblade of the Realm of Darkness. But with more games being added to the series, so were more Keyblades, even "base Keyblades", like Terra's Earthshaker or Aqua's Rainfell. If Sora had shown up wielding the Wayward Wind, would they still have been able to close the door?  Knowing this, it seems rather unlikely that two people who have never met before, have mirroring weapons when they first meet. Now then, how can you make sure the person you will meet has a mirroring weapon from yours? Quite simple, really. You send him your weapon and get a weapon that mirrors that yourself. That's right, I think that Mickey's base Keyblade is... the Kingdom Key! Isn't it a big coincidence that Sora obtains the Keyblade at the same time as Donald and Goofy begin their adventure? What I think happened is that Mickey left Disney Castle to travel to the Realm of Darkness, but before he left, he wrote a letter to Donald, and sent his Keyblade to the next Keyblade wielder (don't ask me how, though...) He sent Donald and Goofy to Traverse Town, because he knew the Heartless would go after the Keyblade ("And they'll keep on coming at you, as long as you continue to wield the Keyblade"), and destroy Sora's world eventually, causing him to end up in Traverse Town. And the most important reason: the Keychain is Mickey's head! What do you think of this theory? What do you think Mickey's Keyblade is? Let me know on the talk page. | |
 by TheFifteenthMember It started with an episode of The Flash. Cicso Ramon was wearing a particularly funky T-shirt (pictured right) that episode and being the inquisitive spirit I am, I decided to see what it actually was. From there, I discovered "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" (if you're an inquisitive spirit, check it out)! I figured that if someone managed to come up with a functional, five-way "Rock, Paper, Scissors", would I be able to re-create the simple three-way version, but using Kingdom Hearts terminology? So I did some thinking, sketching, crossing-out and more thinking until I got to this.  The idea of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" is:
But "Heart, Heartless, Keyblade" works like this:
In terms of hand gestures, a heart is represented by a fist, which matches nicely since your fist is approximately the same size and shape of your heart. A Heartless is depicted by forming an open ring with your hand (as opposed to a fist), symbolising the lack of a heart. Finally, the Keyblade is played using the same gesture as "scissors" from the classic game because holding out two fingers bears some resemblance to a skeleton key. My game isn't exactly full proof (the gestures are clumsy and a heart doesn't really "beat" the Keyblade) but it is what it is. If you have any better "Rock, Paper, Scissors" formations, do share in the comments section! | |
 by Troisnyxetienne In any work, there is always an antagonist or a character who errs on the side of wrongdoing, due to some event in his life that has impacted him profoundly that he shows calculation, coldness or violence. Kingdom Hearts has many antagonists, each with different motivations for behaving as they do, but none of them display the sheer amount of planning and calculation of Xehanort.
I find it simply inadequate to place Xehanort into any one of the three categories of evil (i.e. lawful evil, neutral evil and chaotic evil) – because quite frankly, I see him as neither. A freak of nature would often be seen as chaotic at worst, committing evil out of impulse, but Xehanort is a personification of something far worse. I invite you to read along with me, as we go through his role in the games bit by bit, just to see what conclusion we could possibly draw from it all.  Before it all began
Some like to theorise that Xehanort started off as a good person and turned evil due to his association with the darkness. I cannot help but think, however, that Xehanort always had a disobedient, rebellious streak from the get-go. We do not know if people in the islands begged him not to go. We do know that he disobeyed his master, and he wounded Eraqus in order to tell him not to be involved in his unhealthy obsession with Kingdom Hearts and the X-blade. Make of all this what you will. Birth by Sleep: Prologue  He picks the most barren, most depressing place to train Ventus, i.e. the Keyblade Graveyard, where countless Keyblade wielders died. His lust for the X-blade drives him to order Ventus to give in to the darkness in order to become the blade. No one knows where the Neoshadows that surrounded Ventus came from; Xehanort could presumably summon them due to his strong connection to the darkness. Ventus does not give in to the darkness, and would rather die than do so. Bear in mind that Ventus is only ten years old at this point. Children have often been seen in fiction as having an innate ability to determine right from wrong, and Ventus seems to have this ability as well. Despite not having sufficient words to say anything in response to Xehanort, Ventus' actions give away his intentions quite easily. This does raise a point, though: what other forms of abuse was Ventus subjected to under Xehanort's tutelage?  What really strikes me in these scenes is that Xehanort has absolutely no remorse for potentially murdering an innocent boy to further his own ambitions. Fortunately, Ventus – by some miracle – joins with the heart of a newborn, and his damaged heart is repaired. Okay, so Xehanort's initial plan didn't work. Time for Plan B. He doesn't say anything, and his emotions don't suggest that it's time for Plan B, and these only serve to show depth of his scheming. He sends Ventus to his former friend Eraqus, as he predicts that Eraqus would be the man to nurture the light within Ventus' heart. On the brink of apocalypse  We see Xehanort quite early on; he has been invited by his old friend Eraqus to his pupils' Mark of Mastery examination (well, Terra's and Aqua's, really). I don't claim to know how Xehanort is able to see darkness in Terra's heart, darkness that probably wasn't there or had no reason to take effect, but the plot of Birth by Sleep has indeed revealed that Xehanort himself is responsible for bringing about the darkness in Terra's heart. Terra fails the exam, because of that same darkness, and he is deferential to authority to the point of asking Xehanort (who is a master, after all) what can be done about his darkness. Xehanort seizes his chance. “Darkness cannot be destroyed, it can only be channelled.” With that, he disappears and goes incommunicado. He may have accepted Eraqus' olive branch, but he is still shifty enough to not tell Eraqus what is going on, and now everyone knows that something is wrong. Eraqus sends Terra and Aqua off to search for Xehanort, and report back to Eraqus as soon as Xehanort is found.  Xehanort puts up this façade of being a just, but failed trainer. All throughout this story he tells half-truths, until he does not need to anymore. He does so several times:
He makes Ventus disobey Eraqus and go alone in search of Terra just so that he could drop his plans on the boy just when he is at his most vulnerable. He does so through Vanitas. As I said before, Vanitas acts on impulse. He is deferential to Xehanort – I have honestly no idea why, since surely a chaotic evil person would want to retaliate against his own creator? I can never understand this game sometimes. It is presumably Xehanort who orders Vanitas to get rid of Mickey, which would prompt Ventus to seek his whereabouts, because by some deus ex machina (honestly, see me repeat this phrase a number of times throughout this article), Xehanort can somehow read Mickey's mind and know that Ventus is friends with the mouse. Mickey being knocked out already makes Ventus troubled – a chink in his otherwise strong heart. Xehanort comes in for the kill; the very sight of him makes Ventus intensely traumatised. Knowing that Ventus would return home to question Eraqus, he has all his cards laid out. He would summon Terra and tell him that Ventus is in trouble, prompting Terra to go after Ventus. Terra would discover that Ventus is about to be killed by Eraqus. Terra would clash against Eraqus and weaken him, basically doing all the dirty work for Xehanort so that he could land the killing blow – because there's no way he would dare do it himself, not after Eraqus had previously extended an olive branch to him. He attacks from the back, too – a fitting form of murder coming from a treacherous bastard. What's even more unsettling is that Xehanort knows that all these things are going to happen. And by the time all this is over, he drops the charade and shows himself for what he truly is: a master manipulator, a traitor and a murderer. Then again, our encounters with young Xehanort as a superboss in Birth by Sleep suggest his affiliation with the element of Time. He has the Doom spell in some way, shape or form, and the Keyblade associated with him shows some sort of chronometer on it. It could be possible that Xehanort knows that everything is going to fall into place because he probably will have seen it before. He manages to form the X-blade and summon Kingdom Hearts, almost bringing the worlds to a cataclysmic end.  Such a possession would need an exorcism- a long and painful one. Would Xehanort truly be summoned out of Terra's body, ever? Terra says he's ready to do whatever it takes until Xehanort is expelled from his body. But if there's anything, anything at all, that I've learnt from real-life exorcisms, it's that expelling an evil spirit from one's body cannot be done by willpower alone, and Terra most certainly cannot do it alone. He would need the help of someone outside to set him free. | |
 | |
by FinalRest and Chainoffire Welcome to Intro to..., the Twilight Times' newest column! The purpose of Intro to... (yes, the ellipses are mandatory) is to educate! Each Intro to... will delve into a chosen Kingdom Hearts topic and dissect it in a possibly informative, possibly entertaining, and (in the case of this Intro to...) possibly nonsensical way. It's the beginner's guide to Kingdom Hearts!
For our first Intro to... We're going to talk (in a mostly spoiler free capacity) about Kingdom Hearts. The game. The series. The ever- |
