@topic: Actually, I never really understood what the scene where Ventus is threatened by the Neoshadows was supposed to say. Ventus could've probably slain these guys without a second thought which would not have included succumbing to the darkness. He was clearly nearer to succumbing to the darkness when he let them overpower him than if he fought them and I'm sure fighting these little creatures wouldn't have brought out the x-blade so I really don't know why he didn't fight back. I can understand why he wasn't able to resist Xehanort since he was still a little kid, but I don't get the Neoshadows thingy.
You have to keep in mind that these scenes take place four years before BBS, a time where Heartless as enemies are totally unheard of and Ventus
was a 10/11year old little kid and a rookie, of course he'd be frightened by an army of Darkness monsters and unlike the normal shadows, the Neoshadows actually look as threatening as they are.
Alongside Invisibles, the Neoshadows were one of the most threatening normal enemies in KH 1 (Final Mix) and Sora & co. meet them only at the End of the World.
Beside that, in order to "slay these guys without a second thought" one certainly needs to have the confidence in his or her own abilities to do so, something Ventus at that time certainly
didn't have.
I'm inclined to agree that speaking on physical ability and potential power as a Keyblade is super effective in dealing with Heartless, Ventus would be theoretically
equipped to deal with them on his own even at age 10/11, but he certainly wasn't
mentally equipped to deal with them at that time.
He was obviously
terrified but about the reasons we can only speculate.
One cannot compare this i.e. to a totally pissed off Roxas storming around with two Keyblades hacking away at everything in sight, who was confident in his own prowess and had a clear goal in mind.
We can't have a JRPG where the enemy doesn't mock the hero at least once, right? Saix was trying to break his will back then by telling him that he had done exactly what they wanted him to. I guess it was similar to what they planned in CoM: They told him certain stuff to guide him in a direction that was comfortable for them, in this case they were trying to make him feel insecure for some reason - maybe lure Roxas out or something like that? Later, Saix "undoes" this by telling him they kidnapped Kairi to fuel his anger so I have a hunch that Saix played him a little for his personal fun in the prior scene.
Narrative-wise it was certainly a device to portray Saix as villainous and emphasize his callous and uncaring attitude, just like they made sure to emphasize Xaldin as calculating yet brutal and straightforward man with a penchant for forcing cruel decisions on others.
Yet for the sake of their plans it was certainly counterproductive, but the whole thing was a rollercoaster to begin with and as Sora points out, they're in reality not really a "very organized Organisation" at all.
Nonetheless there are many of little and not so little contradictions in KH 2's story structure thanks to the writing and while the following titles, including BBS and DDD, all tried to somewhat rectify and "order" the mess made by KH 2 they fell into the same pitfalls in some areas.
I remember an essay somewhere where the author wrote that if the Organisation members had just
asked for help in the endeavour of trying to get their hearts back (and not turning people into Heartless and throwing the worlds into chaos like they did), they would not even have been classified as villainous and a threat to universal peace to begin with.
Of course, both Xemnas and Xigbar are massive scumbags and their actual goals do not line up with those propagated to the rest of the Org while members 3 to 6 are those who started to take Ansem the Wise's original "tame" experiments into horror territory and, as seen in CoM, intended to further experiment around the heart anyways.
So with
that leadership around it is no wonder things get irritating fast.
