I love Days and there's plenty in there I wouldn't want to trade away, but consider me +1 for loving a lot of what the KH2 manga showed of Roxas' life with the Org. I like to think that the things not directly contradicted later on still happened, like the sparring, since we don't see them every minute of every day in the game.
Honestly, Axel’s, “Just like the good ol’ days!” line while fighting Roxas in the manga really struck me, because like... What’s it trying to imply? At that point their fight is pretty brutal and neither of them are really holding back, yet here Axel is, saying that with a huge (slasher) grin on his face.
It comes across as so weird to me, because there have been flashbacks earlier showing Axel and Roxas talking and, like, they’re not having fun and the mood is pretty somber, but they aren’t going at each other’s throats or anything.
So, I can reach two pretty different conclusions based on that.
The more benign of which is that Roxas and Axel sparred with each other and they’ve probably gone overboard with it and didn’t hold back. The atmosphere the manga built around the Organization at that point has had a vaguely brutal/gritty edge where this wouldn’t be out of place.
The other conclusion I could make was that Roxas has tried to escape multiple times before being kidnapped, but Axel was always there to bring him back. (ha) Which would explain why Roxas isn’t even surprised to see him waiting for him in the Dark City. The only difference between that time and all the other times was that this time Axel did grow to see Roxas as a genuine friend and didn’t have the heart (h a) to fight. And then Roxas went and got kidnapped.
This makes the “Just like the good ol’ days” line seem a lot more bitter and possibly self deprecating and that makes it hit pretty hard.
Of course, Days completely discredits that whole conclusion, so yeah. Axel and Roxas sparred a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
