Re: Ephemera Skuld Ancestors (Family Ties in KH)
I honestly can't believe you guys feel like a friendship focused story isn't just as "cliche" or "overdone" as anything with family trials or romance. Are you kidding me? You don't get more cliche than KH and I'd say they've all been done plenty before on an equal level making that such a super sorry argument. It literally is the basic theme of most shonen anime/manga which I'm sure is a popular medium on a KH forum. Don't pretend like you haven't seen plenty of anime or played other JRPGs where friendship is the main premise or strong focus. Kingdom Hearts hasn't broken any new grounds in its story about friendship that it should always be the main focus of the game. KH is on a MLP level of friendship is magic right now. Yeah KH gets that "cringey" with it's friendships sometimes. Example being that speech the player character gives towards the end of X about Ephemera.
You are misconstruing their point. There are most definitely series that place a strong emphasis on friendship, but let's take Naruto for example. Despite being a series that focuses on bonds, it was loaded up with family relations. They even managed to make Naruto and Sasuke the reincarnation of two brothers who founded the ninja families. They also managed to push a lot of romantic pairings together at the end for the sake of creating children.
This follows for plenty of other shounen series which, despite focusing on friendship, most certainly do place some importance on family and romance and can often be the driving force for many of these stories. Even your typical JRPG will follow a formula with a main male hero, a female love interest, the male rival, and some family tragedy that forces the male hero into action.
Kingdom Hearts has managed to subvert the family aspect for 14 years. Why would they decide to change it now of all times?
Nomura isn't even really big on family. In the games he has worked on and has had some story input, you will often see how family relations are downplayed or subverted.
In FFVIII, we see a cast of orphans and Rinoa. Rinoa had her father, but he fades in importance pretty fast and then there is her late mother whose importance only serves to create a thin link between Rinoa and Squall by association. As for Squall, he had his adopted sister Ellone and then everybody and their dad knows that Laguna and Raine were Squall's parents. Despite that, the game never once says it and no character acknowledges the relation. It's intentionally left vague to show that the game was not trying to push family relations as an important aspect to how these characters were meant to connect to each other.
It was meant to show that their experiences were what truly directed the story.
You mean to tell me you're going to risk your life for a guy you barely know or spent any time with claiming he's a worthy lifelong friend? Get real. Friendships like that aren't forged in a couple of minutes spent together.
People die for strangers everyday. Are we to invalidate their sacrifices?
As a fictional series, we are meant to suspend our disbelief in that these friendships are forever despite being brief. We see plenty of films and shows where people fall in love in a day and marry or die for a stranger they only just met. Why is this suddenly a hard pill to swallow?
In times of impending doom and uncertainty, friendships are forged rather quickly. One need only look at people who become friends during wartimes to see how this is very possible. Even in our own average day-to-day lives we can make friends in a day, but it is not a common affair. I know I made good friends with my long-time best friend in about a week of knowing her. It was like we were meant to be best friends.
I became fast friends with one of my other best friend after she jumped into my lap during a thunder storm. Friendships are how you define them. Placing limitations like "needing to know them a long time" to be considered friends for life is merely setting yourself up for disappointment. Friendships that have existed for a long time can just as easily deteriorate.
Sure friends are the family you choose to have, but that doesn't mean you don't have a need for ACTUAL family.
Think of all of the people out there with no family and only friends. Are we to also invalidate them?
The story doesn't even need to introduce a conflict in family of any kind but it can't just go and ignore the subject of blood family all together either.
But the series hasn't. We know they have family since they have been brought up in passing in KH1, CoM, and BBS, but the lack of importance placed on them for 14 years shows just how little this series think about family.
Let me ask you guys this. What do we usually compare friendships to? If you didn't say family you're probably lying to yourself. You got your best bud that has stuck with you thick and thin? Man, he's like a BROTHER to me. It's you and your gal pal walking down the halls struttin your stuff, workin it? We're like SISTERS. Sure these relationships can be that good that it seems like "Well who needs real family?" Let me answer that. You do. Just as much as you need real friends. Why? Because family are also friends just like friends can be family. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Introducing family ties can easily help strengthen the message of friendship and what it actually means to be "family" if that's what good friendships strive to be.
Again, you are misconstruing their point. They are saying Kingdom Hearts is about friendship, the family you make without being related to others. They said that in their posts. Nobody is denying that friends are often considered family but I think you are missing the point that while your friends can become like your family, they are not and that is the appeal.
We spend our daily lives surrounded by our families for better or worse, and then there are people who are not so lucky to have families. What about those people who only have friends to rely on? Why do we need to always show family in media?
Just imagine if Sora's mom was somewhat active in the plot of KH1. It would have been a nice little touch.
Not really. Sora needed to learn how to be an independent person and learn the value of friendship. Prior to that he lived in the shadow of his friend and blinded to what struggles life could bring.
A little boy can't handle the stress of darkness without some help from his mommy. It's unrealistic to even think that he could.
What? Sora was 14, not a child. Parents die or are out of their kids lives constantly and people live on just fine. "Mommy" can't be in somebody's life all of the time.
She could have been there in Traverse Town after the fall of Destiny Island giving Sora motherly advice whenever things got too heavy.
She was for all purposes dead. Destiny Islands was destroyed. Only Sora, Riku, and Kairi made it out of DI and everybody else was in a state of suspension. If the worlds had not been saved, they likely would have stayed that way or have died.
Moms love giving advice and usually give the best.
Not always.
Sure having your new Disney friends support is nice, but nothing beats that familiar face of a loving mother.
Sure but if somebody's parent isn't around, friends are all you've got in the world. And sometimes a mom may not be loving.
Heck. Maybe at some point she gets captured by Riku in an attempt by him to break Sora's will and she ends up giving HIM advice.
Are we writing fic now?
Good moms are like that. They love your best friends too.
Okay now I'm not sure where this has gone...