Ansem the wise's return???

[gibbs615]

I know there was a glimpse of Ansem the wise in a black hood when Aqua found him, however will he REALLY be able to return somehow & then Radiant Garden will have it's wise ruler again?!

 

[Zettaflare]

Yeah he should be able to return. Since Riku and Mickey are searching for Aqua, stands to reason once they find her they should find Ansem.

I'm curious how he will react once he sees his four apprentices again.

 

[Dreaded_Desire62]

Yeah he should be able to return. Since Riku and Mickey are searching for Aqua, stands to reason once they find her they should find Ansem.

I'm curious how he will react once he sees his four apprentices again.

He might be shocked but quickly forgives them, especially Ienzo since the youngest of the apprentices is like a son to him.

 

[raccoonscity]

He might be shocked but quickly forgives them, especially Ienzo since the youngest of the apprentices is like a son to him.

I highly doubt he will "quickly" forgive them, even if he has a new perspective on the Nobodies. What Xehanort and the apprentices did to him and to Radiant Garden (as well as thousands of people while in the Organization), they had done willingly. Just because they seem to be helping Sora now doesn't mean he (or anyone else) should forget the things they did.

 

[Audo]

I highly doubt he will "quickly" forgive them, even if he has a new perspective on the Nobodies. What Xehanort and the apprentices did to him and to Radiant Garden (as well as thousands of people while in the Organization), they had done willingly. Just because they seem to be helping Sora now doesn't mean he (or anyone else) should forget the things they did.

In real life, I'd agree. In this series, not so much.

Let us not forget how quickly Ienzo forgave Lea for literally murdering him.

I fully expect DiZ to forgive the apprentices in a single scene, honestly likely in one of the credit scenes we'll see him finally return to RG and the apprentices will bow and beg for forgiveness and he will forgive, likely with a focus on Ienzo in particular since they seemed to have a father-son thing there. I really doubt there will be much conflict between them in any real sense.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

I fully expect DiZ to forgive the apprentices in a single scene, honestly likely in one of the credit scenes we'll see him finally return to RG and the apprentices will bow and beg for forgiveness and he will forgive, likely with a focus on Ienzo in particular since they seemed to have a father-son thing there. I really doubt there will be much conflict between them in any real sense.

Which honestly, at least in my personal view, is a general flaw and case of bad storytelling which goes through the entire series at this point.

Nearly every transgression and bad action taken by characters, no matter how heinous and how many victims and traumas it produces, gets neither addressed properly nor has consequences for the perpetrator.
Even in the case of the series' "best" (because more outlined and detailed) redemption arc the only crimes of Riku that were actually addressed were those committed against Sora and Kairi personally and a short part about destroying his home world which was brought up by one of the antagonists but quickly dropped again.

There's full forgiveness granted with a finger snap for most things which is not only somewhat boring from a narrative perspective when everyone gets the same treatment regardless of the severity of their actions, but also sends a weird message about that no matter how shitty the things you do, in this universe you will neither face consequences for them (except maybe bested in battle) nor do you ever owe your victims more than a verbal "sorry" and "I've changed".

There are so many different tropes around the concepts of redemption and atonement, including those where the victim can fully rightfully refuse to forgive their tormentor and/or simply state that they never want to see them again, yet the KH series seems to default either to "Easily Forgiven" or a "redemption arc" which has only the first (feeling remorseful) and last (getting forgiven) step present skipping all the steps in-between which should actually be about the character earning a possible forgiveness at the end and is the main point of a full redemption arc.

At first I was somewhat irritated when browsing through the net that there are several parts of the fanabse who are unhappy or even angry with the fact that Kairi is more or less "forced" by the narrative to spent time with Lea, a person who certainly did shitty things to her but who is at least remorseful, but by now I begin to see where those people come from as it is just one example of what this series does more regularly.

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

Which honestly, at least in my personal view, is a general flaw and case of bad storytelling which goes through the entire series at this point.

Nearly every transgression and bad action taken by characters, no matter how heinous and how many victims and traumas it produces, gets neither addressed properly nor has consequences for the perpetrator.
Even in the case of the series' "best" (because more outlined and detailed) redemption arc the only crimes of Riku that were actually addressed were those committed against Sora and Kairi personally and a short part about destroying his home world which was brought up by one of the antagonists but quickly dropped again.

There's full forgiveness granted with a finger snap for most things which is not only somewhat boring from a narrative perspective when everyone gets the same treatment regardless of the severity of their actions, but also sends a weird message about that no matter how shitty the things you do, in this universe you will neither face consequences for them (except maybe bested in battle) nor do you ever owe your victims more than a verbal "sorry" and "I've changed".

There are so many different tropes around the concepts of redemption and atonement, including those where the victim can fully rightfully refuse to forgive their tormentor and/or simply state that they never want to see them again, yet the KH series seems to default either to "Easily Forgiven" or a "redemption arc" which has only the first (feeling remorseful) and last (getting forgiven) step present skipping all the steps in-between which should actually be about the character earning a possible forgiveness at the end and is the main point of a full redemption arc.

At first I was somewhat irritated when browsing through the net that there are several parts of the fanabse who are unhappy or even angry with the fact that Kairi is more or less "forced" by the narrative to spent time with Lea, a person who certainly did shitty things to her but who is at least remorseful, but by now I begin to see where those people come from as it is just one example of what this series does more regularly.

I'm a bit concerned for these characters who think abuse, kidnapping, manipulation, murder, and straight up genocide aren't a big deal as long as you apologize for it.

 

[DarkosOverlord]

Hot take (I haven't given it much thought yet), this could be why I find Xehanort more interesting to talk about. Not excusing him, just more interesting. I could care more about the good guys... if their previous actions meant something and had lasting effects. But with this, mh, inadequacy of portraying redemption, they all kinda feel the same and this feeling only gets stronger with each passing title.
If more things were pointing at Lea being aware of the age and morality discrepancies with the rest of the guys (instead of the exact opposite, the game seemingly rushing to establish he's a-okay to be part of the crew) and him or the others doing something about it, I would definitely be more interested. But as of now? Nice guys being nice to each other. To me this impact the writing more than one could be led to think, since you can't really make meaningful dialogues between these characters unless you go to the big friendship speeches: if there's anything Jiren has proven is that a character needs another separate entity with a different personality in order to work a (potentially) successful verbal interaction. With a different and possibly opposite stance my opportunities to illustrate and expand upon my own ideas increase vastly.

It's like when people debate about Lea meeting Ventus and Roxas, or Roxas meeting Ventus, or Sora meeting Vanitas: I honestly doubt any of these will actually go beyond the one-liner and will be brought up later, for the series never showed it has any intention of doing it this way.
Obviously the still bonafide villains have similar problems (vesselization), but good characters aren't safe either.

I'm a bit concerned for these characters who think abuse, kidnapping, manipulation, murder, and straight up genocide aren't a big deal as long as you apologize for it.

Call me tragic, I think KH only worsen the situation. I'm starting to pick up that more people than I would think that grew up with the franchise have developed some questionable opinions on what's right and wrong (inb4 I get this myself from Sephy due to our Xehanort discussions): let alone not seeing why Riku and Lea's redemption arcs aren't perfect and they have holes, there are real Xehanort apologists out there who truly adopt some Nazi-propagandistic speeches to justify his every action: like, I will discuss his theorethical goals any day, but let it be known I do not condone his acts.
And this goes all the way to not being able to tell he was lying while calling Terra a Master.

Obviously there are many more factors and even for fiction this is far from novelty (Griffith did nothing wrong), but KH's overly simplistic way of dealing with deep character issues is making some fans failing to read between the lines.

EDIT: I am totally Off-Topic by now and I apologize. If there's more ground for this discussion I could open a new thread.

 

[raccoonscity]

I'm a bit concerned for these characters who think abuse, kidnapping, manipulation, murder, and straight up genocide aren't a big deal as long as you apologize for it.

I mean, there's people like this in real life, too. It's a real cultural problem that victims are sometimes shamed for not accepting the forgiveness of an abuser, and that forgiveness is seen as "being a bigger person" instead of letting the victim choose for themselves what is best for their mental health and safety.

In real life, I'd agree. In this series, not so much.

Let us not forget how quickly Ienzo forgave Lea for literally murdering him.

I fully expect DiZ to forgive the apprentices in a single scene, honestly likely in one of the credit scenes we'll see him finally return to RG and the apprentices will bow and beg for forgiveness and he will forgive, likely with a focus on Ienzo in particular since they seemed to have a father-son thing there. I really doubt there will be much conflict between them in any real sense.

Well, unfortunately, I think you might be right. With the Lea/Ienzo thing, they didn't even mention it so I wouldn't exactly call that "forgiving him", and they're brushing off what he did to Kairi really easily, too. I can easily see them using "We were just following Xehanort/Xemnas" or "We just wanted our hearts back" as an excuse for their actions, even though it doesn't rid them of blame and just points fingers at Xehanort. And I'd argue with that as an excuse because they clearly were invested in Xehanort's schemes and Ienzo knows too much to be an innocent follower. Ienzo had exploited Ansem's trust in him to help Xehanort build the labs under the castle, after all.

Considering all that DiZ had done (especially to Roxas and Namine) in order to get revenge on them, I would hope that they conclude his and the Apprentices story in a better way, although you and others are absolutely right to point out how lazy redemption arcs are in this series. It seems clear to me already that the Apprentices and Lea are pretty much "good guys", despite all they've done or let happen, as long as they aren't on Xehanort's side.

I'm not really expecting DiZ to be important to KH3 anyway, besides the data he left in Sora and his possible return/connection to Aqua, so I'm not expecting much in regards to their potential interactions at all.

 

[Alpha Baymax]

Nomura did say that Kingdom Hearts III is going to be dark. Most people assume that it's just limited to deaths, but I'm personally inclined to believe that we may be seeing cutscenes with Ansem's apprentices and their experiments of the heart. If you look at the diary entries about this matter, they're not very pleasing to read, to say the least. Meaning, their forgiveness may have to be earned by their lordship.

But that's just me being an optimist with the development of Ansem and his apprentices.

 

[Audo]

Nomura did say that Kingdom Hearts III is going to be dark.

You know, I think that might actually have been a mistranslation? Searching for it now, I see it mentioned in a quick summary of a then upcoming interview, but then it isn't said in the more detailed summary and in the actual fully translated interview it isn't mentioned at all.

Every character's story will be settled in Kingdom Hearts III; the world Young Xehanort and Eraqus are at is an original world; Kingdom Hearts Union χ[cross] 5th Union leader reveal in early August - Kingdom Hearts News - KH13.com - KH13.com, fo
-a summary where the line about it being dark is connected to the talk of how there are many characters whose stories need to be resolved

• There are so many characters, so the story is dark and he is not planning it to end it all at once.
• Each character story must be settled. This will involve members from the former Organization XIII.

https://www.khinsider.com/news/Fami...OM-HEARTS-3-Toy-Story-battle-system-more-9760
This was the summary. You'll notice that the line about it being darker isn't in the main article anymore, with the more detailed summary, but is referenced in the posts/comments when they were working off of the less detailed summary.

And then here is the actual interview
https://www.khinsider.com/news/Full-Famitsu-interview-with-Nomura-on-KINGDOM-HEARTS-3-9772?page=3

and its not said anywhere.

— With all that quality content being packed into each world, there’s no doubt that KH3 is becoming quite the rich game indeed.

Nomura: With the amount of characters involved this time, the story is also becoming quite rich. Because of the chain of events so far, the number of both friend and foe have multiplied. There’s too many to even have them all assemble together in one place (wry laugh). Additionally, I can’t just let each character speak one line and just be done with.


— Counting the number of Seekers of Darkness and Guardians of Light, just that number is a crazy amount...


Nomura: Yeah, and I have to solve all the problems that each of those characters have been carrying on their backs this whole time (wry laugh). There’s also every member of the old Organization XIII...

tl;dr - the story being darker was likely a mistranslation, and what he actually said was that it was rich.

just to clarify for people who may go into kh3 expecting it to be darker than it might actually end up being.

 

[Alpha Baymax]

Thanks for the in-depth investigation Audo. You can dismiss my previous comment people.

 

[Zettaflare]

Honest question: you guys think there is a slim chance Ansem is Kairi's father?

 

[DarkosOverlord]

Honest question: you guys think there is a slim chance Ansem is Kairi's father?

Nah.
Both Reports in KH1 and KH II treat Kairi as nothing more than a girl living in his town, so I don't think it's going to be nothing more (nor I'd want that, since then it would make the lack of interaction between them just in bad taste)

 

[Alpha Baymax]

Honest question: you guys think there is a slim chance Ansem is Kairi's father?

I'm more inclined to believe that Luxord is Ansem's son.

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

Honest question: you guys think there is a slim chance Ansem is Kairi's father?

I'll never 100% dismiss the possibility of something, but the chance of it happening is so slim that Sora has a better shot at being her father.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

I'm a bit concerned for these characters who think abuse, kidnapping, manipulation, murder, and straight up genocide aren't a big deal as long as you apologize for it.

Tbh even in-universe there are only a few characters which I would actually say could be capable of dismissing horrible crimes as "no big deal" if the perpetrator just performs a remorseful enough play (Terra completely buying Xehanort's false remorse about what he did to Ventus coming into mind), as there are small instances or hints of the opposite when Sora claims to be "mad" about all the shit Ansem SoD did (not realizing he's actually talking to Riku) yet my main critique of the series is how the writing and narrative handles the consequences and possible ramifications of those bad things done.

There's always the general gist of "massive hurt" and how largely innocent characters are "suffering", but when it actually comes to addressing the whole package it is always cut short by either the perpetrator claiming to feel remorse and being sorry and there being almost instant forgiveness without doing all the leg work that should come before even considering the forgiveness or by blasting the perpetrator to smithereens in a battle with that being treated as the fitting (and only) comeuppance/consequence he/she has to face.

Hot take (I haven't given it much thought yet), this could be why I find Xehanort more interesting to talk about. Not excusing him, just more interesting. I could care more about the good guys... if their previous actions meant something and had lasting effects. But with this, mh, inadequacy of portraying redemption, they all kinda feel the same and this feeling only gets stronger with each passing title.
If more things were pointing at Lea being aware of the age and morality discrepancies with the rest of the guys (instead of the exact opposite, the game seemingly rushing to establish he's a-okay to be part of the crew) and him or the others doing something about it, I would definitely be more interested. But as of now? Nice guys being nice to each other. To me this impact the writing more than one could be led to think, since you can't really make meaningful dialogues between these characters unless you go to the big friendship speeches: if there's anything Jiren has proven is that a character needs another separate entity with a different personality in order to work a (potentially) successful verbal interaction. With a different and possibly opposite stance my opportunities to illustrate and expand upon my own ideas increase vastly.

It's like when people debate about Lea meeting Ventus and Roxas, or Roxas meeting Ventus, or Sora meeting Vanitas: I honestly doubt any of these will actually go beyond the one-liner and will be brought up later, for the series never showed it has any intention of doing it this way.
Obviously the still bonafide villains have similar problems (vesselization), but good characters aren't safe either.

It depends on what people find "interesting" to talk about in the first place. Talking about Xehanort in conjunction with Redemption is always going to be a very iffy issue because he is arguably the goal post in this series for "worst evil actions ever perpetrated". In terms of sheer scale and severity so far no one surpasses Xehanort as a repeating offender.
Braig/Xigbar, Saix, Marluxia, Maleficent or Vanitas are all pretty nasty individuals with their individual levels of "evilness" and some of their individual actions may get the "most vile" award by personal feelings of some fans, but they still pale in scope to everything Xehanort has on his "record", including the fact that it was he who created some of the "monsters" above.

Some of the truly "good guys" previous actions not having lasting effects is mostly the main narrative bending forth and backwards to dilute the effects of their actions in order to give yet another comeback for the main villain.

Now the "grey" characters like Riku at first, DiZ/Ansem the Wise or Lea blending in too easily or quick with the good guys is where I agree the problem lies.
Age discrepancies shouldn't be in the way of a healthy team and/or friendship circle, but terms of morality and actually addressing former bad actions taken certainly shouldn't be.
Lea "saving" Queen Minnie and being all friendly all of a sudden should not be an incentive for all guard to be dropped (Donald seems to be the only one in DDD with enough common sense to oppose immediately making Lea a full team member) as he was known to be a two-faced double/triple agent beforehand.

Just because the main hero or character X and Y on "Team Good" forgive him/her for his transgressions doesn't mean everyone else and their Chirithy has to.
Even if there is eventual forgiveness on all accounts, it doesn't mean that everyone has to accept the newcomer with open arms and become all buddy-buddy with no boundaries.
In terms of Ansem the Wise and his former apprentices (minus Xehanort and possibly Braig) could spin an interesting subplot about Ansem possibly being more inclined to forgive (due to his own misdeeds done as DiZ against the wrong people) but for example having to deal with other citizens of Radiant Garden (possible former "subjects" of the experiments) who are not to keen on letting bygones be bygones, including Leon and his FF comrades.

Of course, it is also possible that we'll just get to see a Radiant Garden in KH III that is jointly run by the FF-Committee and the former apprentices with them all around accepted everywhere despite all the shitty stuff they did.

Therefore the "feeling the same"-issue can certainly stem from the fact that the reactions to a character claiming to be remorseful and willing to change seem to be universally the same for each member of "Team Good", often including even their direct victims and if there is a small incentive for something else to happen (like Kairi freaking out about being expected to train with her former kidnapper) it is shot down pretty quickly (with both Riku and Mickey soundly proclaiming how he's on their side now) instead of being addressed properly within the actual rights of the victimized character.

There's nothing wrong about big passionate friendship speeches and several characters being closely knit with each other, but when it comes to former adversaries turned allies such things should not be used inflationary.

All those characters meeting has a bonafide lot of potential and that's what people like to dream and theorize about, also when keeping in mind that so far the three "main" trios of KH hadn't any interactions with each other yet beyond "one-liners".
The narrative wasting this potential and not building more upon it is certainly a valid concern considering the track record so far when it comes to the individual trios themselves.

Call me tragic, I think KH only worsen the situation. I'm starting to pick up that more people than I would think that grew up with the franchise have developed some questionable opinions on what's right and wrong (inb4 I get this myself from Sephy due to our Xehanort discussions): let alone not seeing why Riku and Lea's redemption arcs aren't perfect and they have holes, there are real Xehanort apologists out there who truly adopt some Nazi-propagandistic speeches to justify his every action: like, I will discuss his theorethical goals any day, but let it be known I do not condone his acts.
And this goes all the way to not being able to tell he was lying while calling Terra a Master.

Obviously there are many more factors and even for fiction this is far from novelty (Griffith did nothing wrong), but KH's overly simplistic way of dealing with deep character issues is making some fans failing to read between the lines.

EDIT: I am totally Off-Topic by now and I apologize. If there's more ground for this discussion I could open a new thread.

KH not properly showing how impacting and damaging the bad actions done by "problematic" characters can be and almost never addressing it beyond a general "suffering" or "hurt" can certainly lead to people getting the wrong impressions and a warping of the sense of right and wrong when it comes to in-universe morality.
However, it becomes only an actual problem when said people have that warped sense of right and wrong also in a meta-sense when it comes to messages and intentions the work delivers to the audience.

Yea, I think "Rooting for the Empire" and "Draco in Leather Pants" are the appropriate tropes to look into when you have some fans trivializing the villain's bad deeds and portraying them as more sympathetic than they actually are, that isn't a KH exclusive thing but the way it's storytelling works makes it easier for such views to "stick".

Failing to read between the lines is a common problem nowadays but in all fairness the KH series itself also doesn't really always put the content between the lines out there, keywords being "Famitsu interview" or "Ultimania". Some things are also addressed only in the semi-canon novels which some fans then headcanon so much that they include it into their projections of the actual canon.

The topic is about the possible Return of Ansem the Wise, which will in some way naturally involve him having to confront/meet his former apprentices who not only banished him but also performed countless horrible experiments on living people and destroyed his beloved world, so having a discussion about how that could play out and how likely the series itself is to sweep the bad stuff under the rug for extended anime-huggery after a teary verbal apology from already existing examples isn't really "Off-Topic" in my book.

I mean, there's people like this in real life, too. It's a real cultural problem that victims are sometimes shamed for not accepting the forgiveness of an abuser, and that forgiveness is seen as "being a bigger person" instead of letting the victim choose for themselves what is best for their mental health and safety.

Indeed, indeed, full agreement.
The notion that only forgiving your abuser makes you a good victimâ„¢ and a better person is ridiculous and frankly even an insult.
How to deal (or not to deal) with the abuser should be solely the victim's decision with no third party trying to influence anything and if the decision does not include forgiveness (or forgiveness but not accepting the perpetrator in their vicinity) that should be accepted without any negative connotation.
Even of the deeds done "aren't that severe" from the PoV of said third party, it is not their business or right to decide anything in this regard.

In fictional terms, the outcome that the victim has to always forgive their abuser even if the "remorse" is merely verbal is also widely accepted and expected because it makes it much easier for some (I personally find disgusting) shipping choices ala “I murdered a bunch of people and only feel bad about it because I want to bang the hero, I swear I’ve changed!”-storylines.

Well, unfortunately, I think you might be right. With the Lea/Ienzo thing, they didn't even mention it so I wouldn't exactly call that "forgiving him", and they're brushing off what he did to Kairi really easily, too. I can easily see them using "We were just following Xehanort/Xemnas" or "We just wanted our hearts back" as an excuse for their actions, even though it doesn't rid them of blame and just points fingers at Xehanort. And I'd argue with that as an excuse because they clearly were invested in Xehanort's schemes and Ienzo knows too much to be an innocent follower. Ienzo had exploited Ansem's trust in him to help Xehanort build the labs under the castle, after all.

Considering all that DiZ had done (especially to Roxas and Namine) in order to get revenge on them, I would hope that they conclude his and the Apprentices story in a better way, although you and others are absolutely right to point out how lazy redemption arcs are in this series. It seems clear to me already that the Apprentices and Lea are pretty much "good guys", despite all they've done or let happen, as long as they aren't on Xehanort's side.

I'm not really expecting DiZ to be important to KH3 anyway, besides the data he left in Sora and his possible return/connection to Aqua, so I'm not expecting much in regards to their potential interactions at all.

The whole history between Lea/Axel and Ienzo/Zexion not even being addressed at all was seriously one of several rather questionable diddly-ups of DDD's narrative, but is is hardly the only nor the first time that bad actions taken by a character against another character aren't addressed properly.
Was DiZ's shitty treatment of Roxas and Naminé ever addressed beyond a single worded "Sorry" in an one scene-wonder (where the victims themselves weren't even actively present)?
I could dig up more examples but that'll get too long.
It even goes through to the villains as except the full norts (MX, Ansem SoD and Xemnas, who also get only generalized call-outs) none gets their shitty actions properly addressed and having to face them in relation to their actual victims.

On a track record as this, I too can see why people like Audo aren't that confident in KH III handling better what essentially the whole series so far failed to properly portray.

Eh, if I am totally honest I'll rather see some more of DiZ/Ansem the Wise and actually have the narrative follow up on the possible setup for a redemption arc that has been teased in Blank Points and the DDD finale than having unneccessary extra cameos of superfluous characters like Demyx, Luxord or Larxene who have zero setup for anything.

tl;dr - the story being darker was likely a mistranslation, and what he actually said was that it was rich.

just to clarify for people who may go into kh3 expecting it to be darker than it might actually end up being.

Heh, good to know and honestly it goes along with what I was expecting more or less.
The story being richer on account of the sheer scope it has on the plate from a build up of several years where always more new questions were asked compared to those truly answered with finality is logically sound where the whole "everything has to be darker and more grim" comes more from certain parts of the fandom.

I'll never 100% dismiss the possibility of something, but the chance of it happening is so slim that Sora has a better shot at being her father.

With Nomura you'll never know, lol.

Ehheheh, there's people already making such theories about who Ansem the Wise could be blood-related to and then there's me scratching my head and wondering "why the fuck would there be any importance in that"?
Like there would be suddenly a huuuge change in importance for both characters and a (non-existant) character relation just because Ansem was the semen-donator for one of them?
Why should Kairi suddenly care more about AtW just because "they're blood related"?