KH Spinoffs The Realm of Darkness

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Clairfarron21

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I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm always curious wondering about Riku's journey in the Realm of Darkness, and how Aqua's doing in that place as well. Sometimes I wish there was a game where we travel around the Realm of Darkness as Riku and Aqua. Maybe it'll take place after the first Kingdom Hearts and before the Chain of Memories.
 
Honestly I am surprised Riku and Aqua did not meet in the realm of darkness, considering they both had strong hearts...I mean, Aqua met Ansem the Wise in the realm of darkness, it just seems silly that she never met Riku, especially considering Mickey was with him and that Mickey and Aqua had been good friends. :/ Just a hole in the plot I suppose, easily explained away as just coincidence that they never crossed paths, though Mickey was in the ROD for all of KH1, and you'd assume he'd of ran into her at some point, even though we know he doesn't.
 
Riku's time in the realm of darkness is pretty short-lived - he's in and out again between KH1 and CoM, which occur back-to-back.

Mickey, on the other hand - I'm not actually sure. If he was in the Realm of Darkness throughout the entirety of the first game, why was he there? How did he get there, if Kingdom Hearts wasn't open until the final battle with Xehanort's Heartless? I'm not so sure he was there the entire time. This would explain why they never bumped into Aqua.

Additionally, I see the Realm of Darkness as more of a concept than a physical location - darkness is a very abstract thing (despite being given physical form in this game) and it's hard to say where exactly the characters were. Perhaps the very nature of the place is to create isolation.

On another note, I've never been quite so sure how Ansem the Wise/DiZ has been to and from the Realm of Darkness?
 
Kh is sort of a clusterfk at this point lol I could answer ur questions but they'll probably be wrong by the next time Nomura says something

I will anyway:

Ansem the wise was "flung" into the ROD (somehow) when his machine thing blew up at the end of kh2. He saw aqua after that and his memories are slowly fading into the darkness (I dontbp understand why since no one else's seems to ever do that). Also its never explained how or why mickey was in the ROD...it was always just assumed that he was locking the keyholes of the dark worlds to keep the balance if light and dark or something...but I don't really get that since there would have to be beings that were the opposite of heartless in the ROD and that's impossible since the Princess of Heart are the only beings that have pure hearts of light, though I guess that could be imaginatively explained away. Also, aqua isn't wearing a black coat or the special armor in the ROD so I don't know why she hasn't green consumed by darkness, same with mickey in kh1. Also, I like us idea of the whole isolation thing, but the breach in the ROD was always supposed to be the dark version of destiny islands, maybe that's a special place people can meet, which would explain why its the only place in the ROD where we ever see two people together, including sora and riku at the end of kh2 where the see the door to the light and end up back on the light destiny islands. So, yeah...

Plus i dont even know wtf kingdom hearts is considering sometimes its just a giant door and sometuimes its a moon.... Lol
Plus i
 
Kingdom Hearts used to be so much simpler. All of these sequels, prequels, and spin-offs have muddied the waters quite a bit, so it's understandable that the happenings within the Realm of Darkness aren't easy to grasp. I'll try to--pardon the pun--shed some light on the situation.

The universe within KH can be partitioned into three realms: the Realm of Light (RL), the Realm of Darkness (RD), and the Realm Between (RB). The RL consists of most of the main worlds traversed by Sora & Co., such as Wonderland, Neverland, Agrabah, Disney Castle, Halloween Town, Destiny Islands, etc. The RL exists on one side of the Door. On the other side of the Door is the RD. While we do not have a complete map or understanding of what lies within this realm, we do know of the Dark Coastline, which has been seen in several cutscenes in KH2 as well as the secret ending to KH1. Since light and darkness are dichotomous, it is implied that they more or less occupy an equal space on either side of the Door. So whereas we've seen quite a bit of the RL through Sora's travels, we have only been made privy to a select few areas within the RD via Riku, Aqua, Ansem the Wise, Mickey, Sora, and Roxas. You can expect that the RD is quite large, so to directly answer your question regarding the meetings of Aqua, Riku, and Mickey, it is not outside the realm of possibility that they simply did not venture through the RD long enough in order to grant themselves a fateful encounter. You figure Aqua was wandering for quite some time before she stumbled upon Ansem, but Riku, as Davey Gaga has already stated, spends a relatively short amount of time within this realm by comparison. He is guided by Mickey to the RB, which, as the name suggests, lies between the realms of Light and Darkness.

Now let us begin to discuss Mickey and his exploits within the RD. As I have previously noted, KH used to be a rather simple story. You only had two realms and two keys. Nowadays, everyone and his brother has a Keyblade and the dev team keeps churning out doors, realms, and antagonists from obscure realms. All of that aside, the original KH was only focused on the absolute dichotomy of Light and Darkness. King Mickey knew more than anyone when it came to the lore of the Keyblade Master, the Door to the Light, and Kingdom Hearts in its entirety.

At this juncture, it is imperative that I define Kingdom Hearts, for it is very easy to confuse it with the Door to Light and the Door to Darkness. Kingdom Hearts is the heart of all worlds. It encompasses everything that is both light and dark, and harbors within it great power and wisdom. We can assume that this power is omnipotent and its wisdom is omniscient. This assumption rests on the fact that all hearts--for individuals and worlds alike--are born from Kingdom Hearts, and it is therefore imbued with god-like attributes. This is most likely the reason why the Ansems (Xehanort's Heartless, Xemnas, Master Xehanort, etc.) all want to obtain these attributes. The Door to Darkness and the Door to Light are not Kingdom Hearts, but they can lead to it. As their names suggest, the Door to Darkness leads to the RD and the Door to Light leads to the RL. Whoever opens one of these doors can choose to access Kingdom Hearts either by summoning it via the darkness or the light. An example of this is seen in KH1 when Ansem attempts to summon Kingdom Hearts through the darkness, but is foiled when Sora instead summons the light.

To return to Mickey's involvement: the king knew about these doors, as well as how to access them. He unwittingly divulged this knowledge to Ansem (or if you want to go by the KH2/BBS story, he instead spilled the beans in front of Xehanort). By doing so, Mickey set off a chain of events that he was too late to stop. If you read the Ansem Reports in KH1, you learn about the experiments Ansem conducts on his own subjects. Under the rationale that he is researching a way to protect his subjects from the Heartless, Ansem plummets into madness as he greedily experiments on the hearts of individuals and then moves on to the heart of the world. Mickey is too late to stop this. One of two things happens now: either Mickey has great foresight and knows that two Keyblades are needed in order to stop Ansem so he purposefully finds a way to have his heart condemned to the RD, or he tries to take on Ansem without a key and is condemned to the RD regardless. The former is more plausible than the latter because Mickey is the holder of all the cards; the only reason Ansem was able to accomplish so much devastation in KH1 is because he was acting off the information fed to him by Mickey. You could say that in a way, Mickey caused all of the chaos in KH1 lol. Because of this, it's fitting that he should inherent the Keyblade of Darkness--the one wielded by the Keybearer who was said "to bring ruin and shatter peace". So in order to specifically answer the question of "how did Mickey get to the RD?" the answer is simple: the same way Riku did. When a strong heart from the RL is consumed by darkness, it is transported to the other side of the Door and retains its corporeal form.

Granted, if you want to take KH2 and BBS into consideration, the situation changes a bit. Xehanort the assistant is an amnesiac, so Mickey's discussions with Ansem the Wise did one of two things: they either piqued his curiosity or awakened some of his latent memories and desires for Kingdom Hearts. Either way, Mickey was the catalyst.

Two keys were needed to close the Door to Darkness once Ansem opened it: the Keyblade of Light wielded by Sora on the side of the RL and the Keyblade of Darkness wielded by Mickey on the side of the RD. One Keyblade for each realm. You might be wondering: why two keys? Why can't the one be enough? I don't have a definitive answer, but I can offer my speculative theory. Because Kingdom Hearts was accessed, the Door ceased to have any regular properties that would normally allow it to be shut and locked by one key. The Door, now imbued with the powers of Kingdom Hearts, required both Light and Darkness to conjoin in order to close and lock it on both sides.

While all of this was going on, you figure Aqua--after being trapped in the RD for 10 years--is deep within the realm, and therefore had no means by which to encounter Riku or Mickey. Aqua meets Ansem the Wise after the events of KH2, however. He was transported to the RD after his machine's explosion. The span between KH2 and KH3 is ample time for Aqua to stumble upon Ansem, unlike Mickey and Riku who were just transients by comparison.

Regarding the black coats: because of the way Mickey was sent to the RD, he did not have a coat. He has never been able to summon Corridors of Darkness, and the only reason he wears a coat in later games is so as to not draw unwanted attention from Organization XIII. He is most likely not corrupted by the darkness either because as wielder of the Keyblade of Darkness he is impervious to the corruption, or because he did not spend enough time within the RD to be corrupted. As for Aqua, I can only speculate that the light in her heart is strong enough to delay the corruption.
 
There's a lot in there, and I like a lot of it, but I pause at the assumption that Mickey's Keyblade is one of Darkness. I've not seen any evidence to support that, and I feel it would really stick a spanner in his self-righteous chat about living in the light.
 
apparently this was confirmed through ultimania or interview.

but other than that, the coast line we see in KH2 and the one we see in BBS isn't the same one. unfortunately.
 
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