Spoilers ► Ansem SOD's Decision in Report #11

[Solo]

Even though I've tagged this thread with the Spoiler tag, one can't be too careful. Let me just place a spoiler tag around it in consideration of those who haven't gotten to this point of the game, yet stumbled here either by choice or chance. :cue yo dawg:

Spoiler Show

Opening the door to a world's heart causes its walls to crumble.

These fragments are seen as shooting stars.

This explains why these "gummi blocks" can travel freely to other worlds.

I know the catalyst of this collapse - the appearance of the Heartless. However, it will take time to search out the worlds' doors, and to retrieve each heart.

Furthermore, the doors can be locked using a Keyblade, making the heart forever unattainable. I must take action before the wielder of this key appears in this world.

If the princesses and the Keyblade are connected, they should resonate.

I've chosen a girl. I don't know if she holds the princesses' powers, but I will find out. She may lead me to the key bearer.

I shall set her free and observe.

First of all, am I right to say that this girl that he speaks of is Kairi? Assuming she is, then let's move on. We know she is one of the Princesses of Heart, but from the way Ansem wrote the report, it doesn't seem that he himself was sure of it.

To me, his choice of this person seems more of a gamble and uneducated guess. Knowing next to nothing about this person (it's as though their meeting was a fortuitous encounter), he decided to proceed anyway and tackled the risk without calculating it.

What do you think about this? And what do you think would have happened if he had simply chosen a wrong person? Would he have found someone else to be "set free" (in my understanding, sent to another world), and rinsed and repeated until he had hit the mark? And by what means exactly do you think had he set this person free?

 

[axel95]

Spoiler Show

I am pretty sure he is referring to Kairi. Who else could he be talking about? "Setting her free" could mean he somehow helped unlock her powers, but it probably just means sending her to another world.

 

[Saken]

Here you go.
When YX says "Simple", and then it shows Kairi fly out, it implies she is the other bit that MX used in his calculations.

So it wasn't uneducated.

 

[Gram]

He was referring to kairi and I'd take it as an educated guess personally because it's uncertain if it was kairi's PoH status that lead her to DI or the spell Aqua placed on her in bbs.

 

[Jesus]

I always thought that Kairi was just one of the many "seeds" lain out in MX's master plan. Ansem SoD just happened to sense the extremity of her "light" and used that as the basis of his choice

 

[Korai]

KH1 AND BBS SPOILERS:



Im 99% sure he means kairi, and by "set free", i think he means "throw into space and watch." the charm aqua cast in bbs was to "guide her to someone to protect her when she needed it" or something along those lines. In this case, it must have led her to DI, either to be "protected" by sora or riku. They said that "the new girl at the mayors house" (almost certainly kairi) arrived on the night of the meteor shower, which that ansem report indicates was the breakdown of the DI barrier, which may also have led 5 year old riku to seeing the keyhole in that same scene. Also, I would guess that the DI barrier was broken down by aquas charm.

 

[Gram]

^Pretty much this! Though it was Xehanort opening the door to Radiant Garden that broke down the barrier. [shown in the fact that a meteor shower happend on DI and RG at the same time and kairi arriving there at that same time as well]

 

[Korai]

^Pretty much this! Though it was Xehanort opening the door to Radiant Garden that broke down the barrier. [shown in the fact that a meteor shower happend on DI and RG at the same time and kairi arriving there at that same time as well]

I was under the impression that world barriers broke down individually. Are they actually connected, as in, one breaks down, they all break down?

 

[Ruran]

Yeah, he means Kairi and to "set free" refers to sending her off the world. It should be noted that Ansem SoD was still under the guise of AtW when he wrote that report so he could very well be playing dumb. We know very little of the interaction between Ansem SoD and Kairi so it's hard to asses how things went. Perhaps he sensed great potential in her so snagged her up on a whim because he didn't want his chance to slip away or he (or even Apprentice Xehanort) observed her for some time. We just have too little information to go on now, all we know is: Ansem saw a little girl and thought she may have been special. He launched her into space to see what would happen.

Ansem SoD is a cold scientist. He doesn't have qualms about kidnapping people to perform experiments, sinking a world into darkness, or launching a little girl into space just to see what happens to her. If Kairi had turned out to be just a regular little girl and his experiment failed I don't think he'd have qualms about trying it again, multiple times if necessary. Since space is made up of darkness (and I assume it doesn't have air) then normal people would suffocate and/or be consumed by darkness. Since BbS retconned Kairi's reason for ending up on DI it's hard to say if Ansem's theory was correct or not or what would've happened to her in normal circumstances.

 

[Korai]

mickey was seen floating through space without any space equipment in BBS, as well as pete (im sorry, captain dark XD). So it seems breathing is not a probem, but eraqus said that "darkness looms closer than usual within these spaces" so im assuming that if a person spends enough time in space unprotected they are filled with darkness and eventually become a heartless. But this brings up Xehanorts report where he says he went through space unprotected. It could just mean that he didnt spend enough time in it to be turned into a heartless, or he could have some special resistance to it that we dont know about yet.

 

[Gram]

I was under the impression that world barriers broke down individually. Are they actually connected, as in, one breaks down, they all break down?

No, RG was the center of those barriers. When it feel they all went with it. It's what allowed travel with gummi ships between worlds for those ten years.

 

[Rydgea]

assuming everything is safe to talk about openly because the thread was spoiler tagged

It's really hard to evaluate what would have happened under normal circumstances, though the theory that the Princesses of Heart and keyblades should "resonate" (which is almost too ambiguous to read in to) could be a flawed one. If her princess powers would have led her to Sora or Riku or any other keyblade wielder in the universe, then Aqua's spell seems like it was merely insurance - unless a PoH naturally gravitates towards any keyblade wielder regardless if they are suited to protect her (i.e. someone evil like Master Xehanort).

I only say his theory may be flawed though because none of the other Princesses of Heart we've encountered have been drawn to our heroes. Keyblade wielders (and even villains) generally sense their light, their radiance, but never really the other way around. The princesses never really approached the keyblade wielders for help. Alice and Jasmine didn't particularly seek out Sora in KH1, and Aurora, Cinderella, and Snow White didn't with TAV, Eraqus, or Mickey during the events of BBS (or afterwards, presumably they couldn't help themselves when Maleficent captured them and put them to sleep, but that's another example too).

Apprentice Xehanort/Ansem SoD must have found out about the connection, the lore, somehow and made his educated guess with Kairi. Her charm does actually emit a glow at the end of BBS, which was probably triggered by Ansem SoD opening the heart of Radiant Garden or Maleficent and her Heartless invading the world. Heartless, by the way, lay waste to walls between worlds. He may have seen this glowing charm at some point and thought it was a dead giveaway to experiment with this girl.

 

[Solo]

Whoa, I didn't expect this many replies. Thanks, guys, for your opinions! I think now I find it easier to agree that it was in fact not an uneducated making of decision despite the uncertain tone he wrote his report in, which could be him playing dumb.

One thing that I'd like to confirm, though, is this:

Since BbS retconned Kairi's reason for ending up on DI it's hard to say if Ansem's theory was correct or not or what would've happened to her in normal circumstances.

Is Aqua's spell the retcon you're speaking of here?

If so, I'm not very sure whether to call it a retcon. It seems to me that if anything, that was the very reason why Kairi ends up on DI. For reasons Rydgea had mentioned earlier, Ansem SoD's Princess-Keyblade resonance theory seems to be flawed; going from there, Kairi would've been lost in space if it hadn't been for the spell... which I think would've been pretty bad.

In addition, we've also never heard how Kairi came to DI first-hand from herself since she couldn't remember. I think it's still entire possible that Ansem SoD (or Apprenticenort, more likely) did send her off, unless there's something that I've missed.

But dang, that means MX had somehow anticipated that Aqua would cast her spell on Kairi and ensure that she would go to the Keyblade. That's one heck of a foresight for a back-up plan (the main plan being pitting Ventus against Vanitas, if memory serves me right), if you ask me. No wonder he seems to have got plan B's upon plan B's.

By the way, Gram, I really like your signature. If it weren't because of the crown, I would've thought it was Roxas at first glance.

 

[Ruran]

Whoa, I didn't expect this many replies. Thanks, guys, for your opinions! I think now I find it easier to agree that it was in fact not an uneducated making of decision despite the uncertain tone he wrote his report in, which could be him playing dumb.

One thing that I'd like to confirm, though, is this:



Is Aqua's spell the retcon you're speaking of here?

If so, I'm not very sure whether to call it a retcon. It seems to me that if anything, that was the very reason why Kairi ends up on DI. For reasons Rydgea had mentioned earlier, Ansem SoD's Princess-Keyblade resonance theory seems to be flawed; going from there, Kairi would've been lost in space if it hadn't been for the spell... which I think would've been pretty bad.

In addition, we've also never heard how Kairi came to DI first-hand from herself since she couldn't remember. I think it's still entire possible that Ansem SoD (or Apprenticenort, more likely) did send her off, unless there's something that I've missed.

But dang, that means MX had somehow anticipated that Aqua would cast her spell on Kairi and ensure that she would go to the Keyblade. That's one heck of a foresight for a back-up plan (the main plan being pitting Ventus against Vanitas, if memory serves me right), if you ask me. No wonder he seems to have got plan B's upon plan B's.

By the way, Gram, I really like your signature. If it weren't because of the crown, I would've thought it was Roxas at first glance.

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to~ I regard it as a retcon because while the details weren't explicit there was enough to conclude that Ansem SoD sent had Kairi off of RG to find other Keyblade wielders under the assumption that the PoH and the Keyblade had a special connection and she would lead to it. Aqua, and by extension, the spell she placed on Kairi to help her get to DI weren't conceived until much later, regardless if Ansem's theory had holes in it.

3D made it pretty clear that it was Ansem who booted her off RG.
It kind of gets rubbed in Sora's face (literally).

Since it hasn't been made clear if MX knew that Kairi was a PoH pre Ansem SoD/Apprentice Xehanort (time travel be damned) it's hard to say if it was another contingency plan on his part. All the 'Norts have minds of their own and I recall Xemnas making fun of Ansem SoD for being stupid so the whole plan to "set free" Kairi may have been more of a "pet project". An accidentally fruitful one but it may have not been part of the main plan per say. He may just have been a lucky bastard.

 

[Gram]

By the way, Gram, I really like your signature. If it weren't because of the crown, I would've thought it was Roxas at first glance.

lol Thanks. Also as Ruran says it was Ansem who sent her away for whatever reason.