My favorite Kingdom Hearts fact is that one of the biggest plot-holes that Nomura has never been able to meaningfully retcon or write his way out, a plot-hole so big that it fundamentally breaks the very rules the series is written on…
Is the existence of Steamboat Willie
Let me explain for the uninitiated:
In Kingdom Hearts 2, there’s a small detour in the story involving Maleficent trying to invade Disney Castle, the home of King Mickey. She can’t step foot in the castle due to an artefact of pure light that wards off darkness locked in the basement.
Pete, who is working for Maleficent, opens a door into the past (Before Disney Castle, this land was known as Timeless River) and decides to remove the artifact from it’s place in time so it won’t be there to stop them from getting in.
Sora, Donald, and Goofy chase Pete into the past thanks to another magic door provided by Merlin, and through some shenanigans involving old cartoons and teaming up with Pete’s past-self, they lock the door the villains are using, and return the artefact to it’s proper place so it can exist in the present.
You with me so far? Pretty straightforward-ish time-travel plot right?
Here’s where it goes off the rails.
Time travel would go on to become a staple of Kingdom Hearts going forward and would come with a very strict set of rules over how it operates:
1. You can only travel to a point in time where a version of yourself exists
2. You basically give up your body to do so, and travel as a disembodied soul unless you have a vessel to inhabit
3. You can’t alter the past in a meaningful way, what’s going to happen will happen
4. You lose your memories of said trip once you return, but your actions could leave a lingering instinct on your other self that could influence their decisions
“Wait” you may be thinking “Why should anyone go through all those hoops? Wasn’t time travel super simple that first time?”
And you’d be totally right, because the existence of Timeless River completely renders all of these rules and restrictions meaningless.
There is no version of Sora that existed in Timeless River before he step foot there, everyone kept their bodies, the trio and Pete were able to mess with the timeline as freely as they pleased, and they all very much remember their trip.
Nomura has never been able to meaningfully explain this super simple, easy way of time travel and the more convoluted method co-existing other than a cheap-throwaway line from one of the villains saying that Merlin “broke the rules”
The hilarious part about this line is that it implies that PETE of all characters is actually more powerful than the actual villain of the series, because Pete opened a door into Timeless River through sheer willpower and nostalgia for “the good old days”
But the all-knowing chess-master of a villain who had an evil plan several decades in the making with countless moving parts and contingencies to account for had to use the roundabout, more complicated method of time travel where a lot could go wrong.
Pete though? Dude just casually broke all the rules of time travel because he felt like it. He’s just built different.
TL;DR: Steamboat Willie breaks Kingdom Hearts lore in half, Pete is more powerful than Master Xehanort, and I fucking love this beautiful trainwreck of a series you guys it means so much to me
I love Kingdom hearts so much.
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