Ansem, Seeker of Darkness: Difference between revisions
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The self-styled "Seeker of Darkness" and the legions of Heartless at his command continued Xehanort's pursuit of knowledge in the belief that it lay with darkness, and stole countless hearts from both humans and worlds in their search for their ultimate goal, a legendary repository of tremendous power and knowledge known as [[Kingdom Hearts]]. To reach this heart of all worlds, Ansem would need to open the Final Keyhole, and to do that, he would need the [[Princesses of Heart]] to complete it first. He also realized that he needed to locate and neutralize the wielder of the legendary Keyblade, to prevent them from saving the worlds from his Heartless. Believing that the Princesses and the Keyblade wielder are connected, he sent [[Kairi]], a Princess of Heart living at Radiant Garden, to a [[Destiny Islands|world]] where one of two [[Riku|future Keyblade wielders]] lived in order to validate it. | The self-styled "Seeker of Darkness" and the legions of Heartless at his command continued Xehanort's pursuit of knowledge in the belief that it lay with darkness, and stole countless hearts from both humans and worlds in their search for their ultimate goal, a legendary repository of tremendous power and knowledge known as [[Kingdom Hearts]]. To reach this heart of all worlds, Ansem would need to open the Final Keyhole, and to do that, he would need the [[Princesses of Heart]] to complete it first. He also realized that he needed to locate and neutralize the wielder of the legendary Keyblade, to prevent them from saving the worlds from his Heartless. Believing that the Princesses and the Keyblade wielder are connected, he sent [[Kairi]], a Princess of Heart living at Radiant Garden, to a [[Destiny Islands|world]] where one of two [[Riku|future Keyblade wielders]] lived in order to validate it. | ||
Soon after, Ansem travels through time to the distant past to find his original incarnation's younger self before he left the Destiny Islands to become a Keyblade wielder. Ansem spurs Xehanort onto his path towards darkness, and passes on his ability to time travel so that Xehanort can | Soon after, Ansem travels through time to the distant past to find his original incarnation's younger self before he left the Destiny Islands to become a Keyblade wielder. Ansem spurs Xehanort onto his path towards darkness, and passes on his ability to time travel so that Xehanort can both make arrangements to take advantage of future events and gather twelve other incarnations of Xehanort into an [[True Organization XIII|organization]].{{storylink|Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance}} Afterward, Ansem returns to his own time to enact the next phase of his plan by overseeing and guiding the activities of [[Maleficent]] in gathering the Princesses of Heart while waiting for the [[Sora|other future Keyblade wielder]]. | ||
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Revision as of 21:47, 10 September 2012
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- "So, you have come this far, and still you understand nothing. Every light must fade, every heart return to darkness!"
- —Ansem, Seeker of Darkness
Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, sometimes referred to as Xehanort's Heartless, is the main antagonist of Kingdom Hearts and the "Reverse/Rebirth" scenario in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, as well as a supporting antagonist in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. He is the Heartless of Terra-Xehanort, and as such his appearance and personality are primarily derived from Master Xehanort, and he retains his original form's "shadow".
Ansem was created when Terra-Xehanort, masquerading as Ansem the Wise, reawakened his sleeping memories and split his heart from his body, creating a Heartless; this Heartless, also named Ansem, appears to have characteristics of both Emblem and Pureblood Heartless, and it is unclear exactly which category he falls under. However, because Terra-Xehanort did this of his own will, he retained his memories in his new existence, and gained the ability to control the other Heartless. With their power, Ansem attacked the Realm of Light, intending to have the Heartless consume the hearts of every world and lead him to Kingdom Hearts.
Story
Before Kingdom Hearts
Terra-Xehanort, at the time using his king's name, "Ansem", willingly gave his heart to the darkness in the pursuit of knowledge, creating both his Heartless and his Nobody, Xemnas. His Heartless was able to retain its selfhood for uncertain reasons, though it was believed by the first Ansem that this was due to Terra-Xehanort's willing abandonment of his heart.[1] By casting off his body, wearing a brown robe to conceal his bodiless form, Ansem also gained the ability to travel through time.
The self-styled "Seeker of Darkness" and the legions of Heartless at his command continued Xehanort's pursuit of knowledge in the belief that it lay with darkness, and stole countless hearts from both humans and worlds in their search for their ultimate goal, a legendary repository of tremendous power and knowledge known as Kingdom Hearts. To reach this heart of all worlds, Ansem would need to open the Final Keyhole, and to do that, he would need the Princesses of Heart to complete it first. He also realized that he needed to locate and neutralize the wielder of the legendary Keyblade, to prevent them from saving the worlds from his Heartless. Believing that the Princesses and the Keyblade wielder are connected, he sent Kairi, a Princess of Heart living at Radiant Garden, to a world where one of two future Keyblade wielders lived in order to validate it.
Soon after, Ansem travels through time to the distant past to find his original incarnation's younger self before he left the Destiny Islands to become a Keyblade wielder. Ansem spurs Xehanort onto his path towards darkness, and passes on his ability to time travel so that Xehanort can both make arrangements to take advantage of future events and gather twelve other incarnations of Xehanort into an organization. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance Afterward, Ansem returns to his own time to enact the next phase of his plan by overseeing and guiding the activities of Maleficent in gathering the Princesses of Heart while waiting for the other future Keyblade wielder.
Kingdom Hearts
Before the Destiny Islands' fall into darkness, Ansem waits for Sora to arrive where the world's keyhole is located. There, cryptically hinting the world's upcoming demise while insulting Sora's ignorance of what is to come, and completely ignoring Sora's questions. As the world collapses, Ansem appeared before Riku and used a Corridor of Darkness to send the youth to Hollow Bastion. Kingdom Hearts: Coded. Ansem later presents himself to Riku again after losing the Keyblade to him. Taking advantage of his need to make his heart stronger, Ansem tricked Riku into opening in order to possess Riku's body.
Firmly in control of Riku's body, Ansem creates the artificial Keyblade of People's Hearts from hearts of the Princesses that Maleficent captured, using it on her as she outlived her usefulness. Soon after, Ansem awaits for Sora in the chamber of the Final Keyhole. There, formally introducing himself after Sora realizes the reason for Riku's strange behavior, Ansem reveals Kairi as the final Princess of Heart and needs to remove her heart from Sora to complete the Final Keyhole. Though driven off by Sora, the boy played into Ansem's hands by sacrificing his heart to restore Kairi's to her body. Having converted Riku's body into a form similar to his previous body Ansem returns and attempts to eliminate Kairi when Riku's heart holds him as bay so Donald and Goofy can get her to safely. Purging Riku's heart from his body to assume full control, Ansem enters the Final Keyhole and makes his way towards the End of the World and Kingdom Hearts.
After Sora's Heartless is restored to his complete form by Kairi's light, sealing the Final Keyhole, Sora arrives at the remnants of the Destiny Islands within End of the World. There, assuming Riku's Dark Form, Ansem explains Riku's fall to darkness before stating his idealogy which Sora refuses to accept as they battle. During the battle Ansem summons both his familiar, Xehanort's Guardian, and a Darkside Heartless to assist him. As the battle rages on, Ansem leads the trio to the endless abyss where the Door to Darkness resides. This time, Ansem merges himself to the World of Chaos, a monstrous Heartless ship, and captures Donald and Goofy, though Sora rescues them. After several more rounds of combat, Ansem, weakened, opens the Door to Darkness to be infused with powers of darkness to turn the tide in his favor. However, Ansem is horrified to see light pour out of the door as it envelops and destroys him, allowing Riku to take back his body.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
However, because Riku served as his host, Ansem survived his destruction by the light of Kingdom Hearts and festers within the youth's body for an chance to take control once again. This bothers Riku greatly, who ends up in Castle Oblivion thanks to his heart resonating with Sora's, who is also in the castle.
Guided by a mysterious voice, Riku climbs through the basements of Castle Oblivion, trying to rid himself of his darkness. However, Ansem appears early on, intending to overcome Riku, but fails. Still, Ansem remains, and even stirs the darkness in Riku's heart so that he may use it in battle, if he so chooses. The dark being remains confident that Riku will eventually give into the darkness.
At times, Riku almost becomes overwhelmed by the darkness, but King Mickey's light continually comes to the rescue, frustrating Ansem. Eventually, Riku overcomes his fear of the darkness, intending to use it as well as the light. He also additionally receives some guidance from the enigmatic DiZ, the true owner of the mysterious voice, who in turn leads Riku to Naminé. Naminé offers to seal away Riku's darkness and Ansem, but he instead chooses to face the Heartless on his own. DiZ then gives Riku a card that will give Ansem form, so that Riku can finish him off once and for all.
Ansem again tries to turn Riku to the darkness completely, and tries to defeat the young boy so that he can take over again. However, though he is defeated, Riku realizes that Ansem still lingers in his heart, and sets off with King Mickey in order to rid himself of the Seeker of Darkness forever.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Within Riku's heart, Ansem's darkness starts to eat away at him, forcing the boy to wear a blindfold to put a stop to Ansem's false visions. This comes to a head when DiZ sends Riku to capture Sora's Nobody, Roxas, so that the two can join and Sora can awaken from his slumber. Riku catches up to Roxas at The World That Never Was, but Roxas proves to be too powerful and Riku is left with only one way to overwhelm the Nobody: unleashing his inner darkness. This allows Riku to manifest Xehanort's powerful guardian, who seizes Roxas and knocks him unconscious, but also forces Riku to take on Ansem's appearance. Feeling that he has sacrificed his identity, Riku takes on Ansem's name.
Kingdom Hearts II
- See also: Riku-Ansem
During the Battle of the 1000 Heartless at Hollow Bastion, King Mickey reveals the truth about "Ansem" to Sora, Donald, and Goofy—the Heartless wasn't the real king of Radiant Garden, but the Heartless of an impostor. While the trio are shocked and dismayed to learn this, Mickey pacifies them by telling them that Ansem still needed to be stopped.
Following the destruction of the Kingdom Hearts Encoder Ansem the Wise was using, the resulting explosion of light restores Riku to his normal form, implying that "Ansem" has finally been destroyed and his hold on Riku broken once and for all.
Kingdom Hearts coded
Ansem appears in a memory from Jiminy's Journal in Destiny Islands, opening a Corridor of Darkness for Riku to Hollow Bastion.
Yen Sid later explains to Mickey that the destruction of both Ansem and Xemnas has revived Xehanort and will lead to the restoration of Master Xehanort. Ansem appears along with Xemnas as one of Mickey's mental images.
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Due to Ansem's travel in the past, Young Xehanort utilized the same ability to not rig Sora and Riku's Mark of Mastery, but also gather members for a new Organization that he himself is a member of. Accompanied by Young Xehanort, Ansem appears before Riku in La Cité des Cloches, stunning the young Keybearer while offers him to open his heart to darkness again. But Riku protests, reminding Ansem that he now walks the road to dawn. Undaunted, Ansem merely takes his leave. After Riku's fight with the Anti Black Coat, Ansem appears before the youth and reveals that Riku has been traveling through Sora's dream as a Dream Eater. Though he again offers Riku to open his heart again, he is shocked upon Riku's resolve and proceeds to fight him. As they battle, Riku counters by asking Ansem to become part of his light, but Ansem ignores him and is eventually forced to retreat.
Once Riku finds Sora in the throne room with Mickey's help, Ansem appears before them along with Master Xehanort, Young Xehanort, Xemnas, Xigbar, Saïx and the rest of the new Organization. Master Xehanort proceeds to reveal that Ansem's possession of Riku's body, along with overseeing Maleficent's gathering of the Princesses, was all part of his master plan with Riku meant to become the vessel to complete the Organization. However, Riku's resistance to the darkness made him of no use to them with Sora made into his replacement. Ansem physically restrains Riku from trying to save Sora from becoming Master Xehanort's final vessel, but Lea's unexpected intervention distracts Ansem long enough for Riku to break free. Ansem summons his Guardian and has it grab Riku and Mickey, but the Guardian is defeated by Donald and Goofy. As the heroes advance, Ansem retreats with the rest of the Organization, returning to his rightful point in time.
Other appearances
A fragmentary passage
| This information is based on alternate scenes or materials and is not considered canon within the overall plot of the series. |
|---|
Ansem is shown as the first transformation and the second incarnation after a young Master Xehanort but before Xemnas. Template:Canonend
Appearance
Before possessing Riku, Ansem was little more than a wandering heart and could only appear as a figure in a brown hooded robe. This robe has two dark brown straps crossing over his shoulders and chest with five metal studs lining either strap. Due to his lack of a body, he appears much shorter and crippled in this form and wears the robe's hood up to hide his lack of a face.
Like his Nobody counterpart, Ansem's skin color varies by being depicted as tan in the game to quite dark in official artwork. He shares Xehanort's amber-orange eyes and long white hair, as well as the three spikes on the top and sides of his head, but he lacks Xehanort's bangs.
He wears silver-white gloves on his hands, each with a grey band on the wrist, while the rest of the glove, which has three black buttons lining one side, bells outwards. There is a black pauldron on both of his shoulders, each attached to his coat by two straps. He also wears black pants and black, silver-lined, knee-high boots identical to the ones worn by Organization XIII members. On the Heartless's chest is the Heartless emblem, but it seems that it is not part of him, as when Ansem creates the World of Chaos, he loses both of his jackets and his gloves, and the emblem transfers to the World of Chaos. He also grows to a tremendous size and his eyes become completely orange in this form.
Ansem's black leather coat is red on the inside and lined with yellow, and also has a large grey section that covers the lower half and shoulders of the coat. Upon closer inspection, this grey section seems to be attached by several small pins or buttons around the hip and neck sections of the coat, as well as by a belt that wraps around the Heartless's back and attaches to the rim of the coat. This coat is high-collared and completely unzipped, showing the second, shorter jacket the Heartless wears underneath. Ansem's second jacket is white and high-collared much like the outer coat. It is mostly unbuttoned and exposes Ansem's chest before being closed up by three buttons and two belts near the Heartless's waist, only to flare outward again, leaving three buttons undone. When seen cloaked, Ansem appears to be shorter and more crippled.
As Ansem is essentially the Heartless of Master Xehanort, his overall appearance is nearly identical to a younger version of Master Xehanort, wearing the elderly Xehanort's attire.
Personality
Ansem is, thus far, one of only three Heartless with human-level intelligence, the others being Sora's Heartless and Scar. His knowledge of the worlds and hearts shows that Xehanort's keen intellect has survived the transition into a Heartless. However, what little shreds of humanity remained in the researcher have been obliterated. Ansem is cold, calculating, and utterly ruthless. He treats people and their hearts as either tools to be manipulated and disposed of, or as simply cattle for his ravenous Heartless legions. He reveres power and knowledge above all things, and despises ignorance.
The only times when his voice rises above a cold, monotonous drone is when he is berating Sora for his foolishness, or reveling in his latest triumph. However, the scientific genius of Ansem was blinded by obsession with the darkness. His arrogance ultimately led to his destruction when the door to Kingdom Hearts opened, and his greatest thesis was, in the end, proved wrong.
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep reveals that Ansem is essentially the Heartless of Master Xehanort. This is why he appears to share most of his personality traits with the elderly Keyblade Master, demonstrated by his choice of words when facing Sora, Donald and Goofy, and his desire to find, open and become one with Kingdom Hearts itself.
Abilities
As a Heartless, Ansem has control over darkness, which he can use to attack others, steal hearts, and create Corridors of Darkness. He can also possess other beings, and has command over the Guardian.
Weapons
Ansem uses no single exclusive weapon.
When possessing Riku, taking on his first seen physical form, he uses the Keyblade of People's Hearts created from the six captured hearts of the Princesses of Heart. Later, in his World of Chaos form, he wields a weapon as massive as he is, created from two Soul Eaters combined at the handle, facing opposite directions.
When fought on his own, he simply uses the power of darkness and his Guardian, using no physical weapon. When Riku takes on his form, he uses his Soul Eater and Way to the Dawn, just as he does normally.
- Dual Soul Eater.png
The dual-sided Soul Eater, wielded by Ansem in his World of Chaos form.
Gallery
Riku while possessed by Ansem
- Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (with Guardian) KH.png
Ansem with his Guardian
Ansem as he appears while attached to the World of Chaos
Ansem as he appears during Xehanort's revival
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See also
Notes and references
- ^ Secret Ansem Report 10: "But what if one willingly releases one's heart from one's body? Sora and Xehanort retained their self-hood even after becoming Heartless."
