I feel like Anti-Aqua was useless and bad used. All that hype for just for nothing, from that experience she hasn't learnt nothing. That was a great time for a character developmemte and grow as a person. But noooooo. Seriously, we could fight with a Demon Tower, with Aqua, Riku and Mickey as party members and that would have been the same thing. How to waste possibilities by Tetsuya Nomura.
I agree. Dark!Aqua was used as nothing more as a plot twist battle. Other than the Soriku moment - a repetitive moment, since we’d seen it in DDD - we received nothing that we wouldn’t have gotten just from retrieving a completely fine Aqua from the RoD.
Aqua could have had a clear moment of realization, at the very least - the moment she woke up in the RoL and thought of Ven and Terra, she could have at least said, “I have to do it right this time.” Or something.
But imagine if Nomura had done it right. Imagine if Aqua turned dark and still used the power of light. Imagine if she attacked Riku because he had darkness in his heart. Imagine!! How much more interesting that would have been!
Aqua, attacking Riku because he carried darkness, even though he’s a master. The battle forcing Aqua to realize that, unlike her, Riku was in full control of his darkness, was the one Mickey was siding with, was the one who still had his keyblade while she had lost hers - a physical impossibility normally, btw, since keyblades can be summoned back to the owners’ side so long as that owner shows the right strength of heart.
Ugh, imagine. Imagine Aqua looking at herself and seeing what she’d become. Imagine that rage and righteous fury that was strengthening her darkness - imagine that switching into despair and horror. Imagine her clenching her fist and whispering brokenly, “is this how Terra felt?” Imagine her looking up at Riku, tears spilling from her eyes, as she asks, “are you what Terra could have become?”
Imagine her falling to her knees, darkness spilling out of her in waves, calling more and more heartless, and she’s not able to stop it. She curls her arms around herself and screams at the creatures to go away, but they don’t. They just multiply, surrounding Riku and Mickey, and she grabs Mickey’s sword and prepares to stab herself through, anything to end what she’s become. Imagine Sora showing up then and stopping her, helping Riku out, and Aqua feels more and more hopeless. “Is that what I should have done?” She looks at Sora. “You… you kept him from the darkness.”
And Sora just laughs and says, “Riku’s strong all on his own! He doesn’t need me!”
To which Riku looks at Sora, eyes soft, and says, “no. You’re wrong.” Sora looks surprised. “You were the one who carried me through. You never stopped believing in me, Sora, and I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
Sora grins. “Of course not! You’re my best friend! I’ll always be there for you!”
And Aqua drops her head, her shoulders hitching in her sobs. She covers her face. “Ven was right,” she says. “I’m awful.”
Sora’s the one who breaks the distance between them all, even though it means fighting through swaths of heartless. He holds out his hand. “Nah,” he says, making her look up. “You just made a mistake. Everybody does. Especially me.” A small, slightly self-deprecating laugh. “But that just means we have the power to fix it. Right?”
Aqua’s eyes widen. Suddenly she sees so much light in this boy - the kind of light she’d wanted to shine, once. She nods and raises her hand, her lips firming. “Right.”
Sora leads her from the darkness, and she promises she will do the same for her friends. The right way this time.
Imagine us getting that instead.
