Riku & Ansem - How does Riku redefine darkness?

The beloved older brother figure to Sora has some complicated traumas to work through on his journey throughout Castle Oblivion; one of which being that he is tied to the Seeker of Darkness himself. This week, join us as we talk about Riku and Ansem. 

Thank you to Josh and Adrian for your questions on this episode!

Next episode: Riku Replica. Send your questions to sheddingstarlight@gmail.com 

Shedding Starlight YouTube: https://youtube.com/@SheddingStarlight
Hannah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/hanmckinley
Mel's Twitter: https://twitter.com/KHNyctophiliac
The Secret Reports Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSecretReports
Hannah's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@hanmckinley

Transcript

0:26

hello and welcome to shedding Starlight your Guide to the Kingdom Hearts Mythos we've been covering a lot of the events revolving around Sora so far who makes his way through the upper floors of Castle Oblivion fighting for his Precious Memories but today we're going to discuss rku who's in the Castle's underbelly the basement floors and his fight for something entirely different as Nom never touches his memory instead Roo is fighting for independence from anom and for the hope he can redeem himself for his past mist akes another struggle rku overcomes in chain of Memories is his relationship to Darkness and whether or not he would keep using it for power the replica of rku represents the ideal what Riku could be if he only had the nerve the strength to take what he wants at least according to anom and the replica itself before nomina completely reforms the replica's heart into believing it was really rku the replica was proud to be artificial because it saw itself to be lacking all of the real riku's weaknesses unlike you I fear nothing while rku believes he's vulnerable to the darkness it seems those who want to use rku see the situation differently riku's enemies see a strength within him that he doesn't see in himself even being referred to as the hero of darkness no one ever worn the darkness the way that he does it's impossible while rku was at first afraid of the darkness and found a way to overcome that fear another one of his struggles was with anom whenever rku is spoken to by anom only sometimes is it legitimately what's left of the man from the first game but there are other times when it's actually di speaking to rku pretending to be anom this is even more confusing when you realize that in English anom has a completely new voice actor in chain of Memories from the original game so you don't recognize his voice when you're meant to so how can you tell if the anom speaking to rku is the real one or dis in Disguise well Diz who first spoke to rku in the beginning of the game takes a more observational role curious to see if rku will choose light or Darkness the real anom on the other hand is dead set on rku returning to Darkness he wants rku once again to rely on him for power and in turn do his bidding but if anom was defeated in the first game how can he exist[Music] now while one might think he's only a figment in riku's mind or that he's a memory projection like the card worlds anom is actually still alive in a sense as zexian was able to smell him and he poses a genuine threat to Riku it seems through the part of him that lives on in rku he still has a foot in the door for his ominous last words are your Darkness I gave it all to you my dark shadow lingers someday I will return anom and darkness are tightly linked particularly with riku's experiences so the stronger the darkness that rku uses to fight his way through Castle Oblivion the more he strength anom with his heart as well however rku seems to not only have ties to anom but also to the superior the leader of the organization when rku first fights and defeats anom near the beginning of his route zexian says that a smell similar to their superiors defeated another smell resembling Maleficent in this situation anom resembles Maleficent most probably because they both control Darkness Ness and Riku is compared to the superior even later when lexius is defeated by Riku he also begins to compare him to the superior before holding back the thought you are the superiors in chain of Memories smelling someone simply refers to sensing their Vibes or Aura this is why anom smelled like Maleficent and my Nom and Kyrie smell the same in the original Japanese the words used are closer to just sensing people but either way sensing or smelling isn't as prevalent in future games think of it as a cute chain of Memories Quirk while Sora has long had the company of Donald Goofy and Jiminy Riku has been alone during his path through the castle unlike Sora he doesn't mean anyone in the card world besides Maleficent she says his heart is empty and that were it not for his Darkness he would be completely alone thankfully throughout chain of Memories we see a blossoming friendship between him and King Mickey the little King saves Ru from anoms clutches throughout the game some of those times Mickey wasn't even physically present yet was still able to trace the connection between his and riku's hearts what's interesting between Mickey and Nom the the other friend rku made in Castle Oblivion is that they both have their own advice for rku Mickey tells Riku that there will always be light in the darkness to show him the way however Nom helps rku move forward telling him by facing the darkness head on following it without shying away he'll gain a new Strength unlike any other and find the way to his friends this is critical advice that sets rku on A New Path Nam showed rku that he can use the power of Darkness for him self not for anom Maleficent or anyone else in the beginning of his path through Castle Oblivion rku struggles coming to peace with his mistakes and Carries this burden alone even though anom is defeated remnants of him follow in rku Shadow but with Mickey as a new companion namina giving life-changing advice and now that rku knows Sora is resting safely in Nom's hand hands rku has friends to fill his heart's cavity once created by darkness and[Music] loneliness hi everybody Welcome to the discussion portion of this week's episode on rku and anom Hanah how are you doing today I'm good I started my day early and like I'm here I'm ready to talk about rku because I [ __ ] love Ru I love him he's great he's great okay so the first thing I wanted to address with this is that in writing this script I realized that to me a lot of what the enemies talk to rku about is they always say like you're too scared to use the darkness you're too chicken like like you used to have you used to be braver and now you're not or whatever and it really reminds me of the line rku says in the beginning of Kingdom Hearts one before Destiny Islands Falls to Darkness where rku goes like I'm not afraid of the darkness and I think in that moment he really means it so I think that it just goes to show even though he won't admit it in chain of Memories he is scared of the darkness because of everything he's been through the things that he has done yeah um and I think it's just such a turn for his character yeah rku truly lives A Million Lives already in these two games because like yeah that shows like him being that way at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1 you know he was so desperate to get off the island like he was willing to Traverse Into Darkness to do it to you know get a different life and that's just kind of that childlike naive of him of you know kind of plunging it head first Without Really knowing what you're doing and then after the whole journey of Kingdom Hearts one and figuring out you know he's been hurting his friends this whole time he's been hurting Sora he's been hurting Kyrie and now he is afraid of that happening again yeah and then after that going through the whole Arc of this game of being like hey maybe like this is a unique thing about me maybe I can use this to my advantage without hurting the ones I love yeah so you are so real for calling rku naive in Kingdom Hearts 1 because I don't think that that's an adjective people would typically describe rku as because there's always Sora to compare to rku and so I don't think like trusts enemies or bad guys or whatever but I still would think that people tend to call Sora naive before rku yeah but it's true you're right like he did they both are yeah you're right yeah it's like you know we've said this a million times this game is about kids and like RKO is seen as like the older brother figure and like you know for people who have older siblings you know if you grew up with them then they're the person you look up to and rku is the person that Sora looks up to but he's still a kid he's not that much older than Sora yeah you know he likes to pretend that he knows what he's doing but that's really how it feels though I remember when I was a kid when I was 14 I was like 15 is so old and now that I'm in my [ __ ] 20s mid 20s I'm like yeah wow you're a whole month older than your friend like way to go I remember when I was like probably like 9 or 10 I was like I can't wait to be 12 like 12 is like I don't know why I just really liked that number I'm like 12 is going to be so old and I'm going to know you know blah blah blah but yeah it's funny I swear to God the older I get the small I feel like Sora and Ru and Kyrie every single game release they like shrink their models like they get shorter and smaller every it's crazy yeah it's it's like I think I've said this before but it's wild to think about that I think I was younger than Sora when I first played these games and now I am yeah twice his age I think at this point um but yeah they're just little babies just you know thrown into this fantasy Universe yeah it's past figure it out go to bed dinner's ready go eat dinner Sora dinner's ready um so my first point that I wrote down here um I think we're going to talk about this more later according to Mel but I this whole script was kind of about the relationship between R and anom and then we talked to about Di and I was just kind of curious um if we I felt like we had already discussed this maybe but I couldn't remember if we had talked about how how di can talk to Ru as anom or at all yeah like if he has some sort of connection with rku that allows him to do that yeah it's definitely weird I don't think we've talked about it if we have I've completely blocked it from memory um but I do think so hopefully di can have his own episode um I'm just a little worried that if we do it might be a little bit shorter because he's just so mysterious there's so much we don't know about him but I do think that there's got to be some connection between Di and anom not even rku but anom himself and we'll talk about this more in his episode but like if you look underneath the Red Rags of of dis he to me looks exactly like anom yeah he does agree there's just there's something weird going on there especially because it's not referenced it's not rku doesn't go like you look like anom dude like what's going like nobody nobody like the closest scene we have is Mickey going like I think I've met him before and that's it you know so there's definitely something weird going on there but unfortunately we can't talk about it yet because [ __ ] know yeah one we don't know and two it's not his episode so he can [ __ ] wait in line get in the back of the queue yeah it is very weird like he does look exactly the same with those weird orange eyes and the dark skin tone but they don't have the same voice actor so that's that's true there you know thums up there yeah um so speaking of R and anom um it took me a bit to kind of wrap my head around this idea of when zexian is talking about um the smells of uh the superior and Maleficent yeah um I had to rewatch the cutscenes to kind of get through this through my head I know because they're making like I wasn't quite sure just reading it from your script what the connection they were trying to make there was yeah it seems like so after rewatching it um it seems like they are not making a direct connection between I think what was really tripping me up was rku and the superior like those two specifically what was really tripping me up is I I thought they were trying to make a connection directly between the two of them but I think what it actually is is that there's not a direct connection between them but it's just like they they've how do I explain this it's the the actual quote is his existence was once doubled in darkness and that's their explanation as to why rku and the superior have similar Vibes so they've like been through the same thing so they have the similar VI who his existence are you saying the superior's existence or rku existence I think rku I think that yeah so his I think I'm pretty sure he's talking about rku there so riku's existence was once doubled in darkness so you know implying that that is similar to The Superior and that's why they smell the same not because they have a connection does that make sense yes yes and that kind of reminds me of I wasn't sure if we had already talked about because I think we did with sunny right what what maybe we didn't what light smells like what Darkness smells like yeah we yeah we talked about that we asked what Castle Oblivion smells like I think the okay so it was Castle Oblivion but like I want to say all Darkness smells the same and that all light smells the same but I don't know if that's true because zian said specifically smells like Maleficent and so I don't know know if if two people's Darkness can smell alike which that makes a lot more sense like if that's true that makes it a lot easier to grasp I think that people can like you know so to compare something in real life something can smell bad but they can smell bad in different ways something can smell good but it can smell good in different ways yeah that if that's similar with light and dark I think that would make a lot of sense especially like here when you're talking about like people yeah and like how they use their darkness and how the darkness affects them and stuff like that and I guess you know we also have to take into account that I that in the Japanese it's not about smelling it's not about the sense the the scent of the nose or whatever it's just about people's vites and auras so I guess in that sense like people can have dark auras but it doesn't necessarily mean they have like the same Vibes or people can have dark Vibes but not this I don't know whatever yeah it's hard to [ __ ] talk about it because you know maybe I'm just not sensitive but like I don't feel like people have auras in real life I can't[ __ ] you don't get it m you're not a psychic yeah so that was just something that I took some time some extra time to try to like wrap my head around yeah especially because like I tried my best to write it in a clear way but when cutcenes have like four different names and like two of them are comparing it to each other it's hard to write it's hard to write in a clear way yeah um so I do apologize if anybody else listening was like what yeah yeah that's why we're talking about it that's why that's what this whole discussion portion is about I feel like for the past few episodes and some episodes in season one it's kind of been like a is b b is C like you know we get it but it's like stuff like this where it's like this is what this is kind of made for so we can have a back and forth you're so right you're so right um speaking of the superior one thing that I do think is interesting is how not even just ru but like if you're right in that they both smell like Darkness but but um two different smells there is that other time where rku is fighting Lex sayth and he goes like you are the superiors dot dot dot and then he like I he either Fades away or he apologizes to zian or whatever but either way he doesn't finish the thought and either way I think there's something weird about like throwaway lines in Castle Oblivion that involves not just rku but Kyrie and Sora as well were nominated is like I'm the shadow of Kyrie and then vexen is like this town is from the other side of your heart or whatever you know and it's just interesting that chain of Memories out of nowhere seems to be making these connections to these three kids that we thought we knew everything about like we feel like I feel like we've seen their whole life story like they lived on a boring Island for most of it to leave yeah it's just interesting that there's things going on on about them that we don't know yet and that they clearly don't know yet yeah I really want to[ __ ] know what lexius was about to say I want to know what he was going to say me [ __ ] too I can't [ __ ] stand that [ __ ] when people write characters not finishing their sentences I can't stand it but yeah so that um that point led me to ask and I know I know that there's going to be a lot of people that know the answer to this and I don't know if we know the answer to this and if we don't I apologize um but that makes me wonder since this is we're specifically talking about the remake of this game um it was all of that like dialogue and stuff completely true to the original uh Game Boy Advance game because like that makes me wonder I don't don't [ __ ] tie me to a post and burn me in the Town Square for not playing the original Game Boy Advance game but since this is a remake it makes me wonder if they like put Clues to the Future because this is a remake and the second game had already been made yeah um that's a good good question so do you know how much like if it's all if this is all there all these Clues all these weird things I don't know I actually don't know that much about the Game Boy advanced except that I mean the Game Boy ADV version of the game except for like the way it looks because I'm obsessed with Sprites and pixel art so I would always look it up on the spriter's resource um and I will say that like from what I can remember all the bosses are the same all you know there's nothing I don't remember anything missing from like this spriters resource.com that like you end up seeing in the PS2 version right um because rku story is in the in the Game Boy Advance game right yeah I think so I feel like I remember seeing sheets of all his different Sprites that makes me want to okay hold on if anything I wonder if some nerd please God please I love nerds I love you please if somebody wrote like the entire script of the original Game Boy Advance game see literally that's what I was about to look I was looking up the original cut scenes on YouTube but I don't know if they're going to be there like uh ru dead on the ground in his first is [ __ ] funny hold on I want to show you this oh my God oh my Lord okay okay so I found this I know this is the script of the original Game Boy Advance and I know it because at one point only in the Game Boy Advance version does Axel say it's about time you gave me one hell of a show and they didn't includ that line in the PS2 version so that's how I know this is from in the GBA um so let me just type in like Superior yeah that's the line I was going to look up to see if lexius still says that I'm almost there this playlist is a couple different videos so I'm scrolling through them oh look at this line that vexen says okay so he's talking about marusia if if he if marusia gets Sora then we need only acquir rku if he is truly if he truly is like the Superior then we will be Untouchable isn't that a gag oh my God oh my God God H wait a minute so in in a line before he says okay so zian says rku unsh shouldered the darkness perhaps that made him half dark that's such an interesting line and then vexen is like and that's why you mtic him for the superior fascinating the dark power given to rku facilitated his Escape From The Realm of Darkness okay interesting that's kind of like like yeah he does say that in the in the PS2 version I believe um one with ties with both the keyblade and the power of Darkness this merits further reearch so I wonder if they're saying like if riku's strength in his darkness is similar to The Superior or something yeah I so lexius does not say that line no way such such power Alexia says rku says what's wrong is that all Darkness can do well it seems I'm beaten but the organization all Triumph I may perish but the dark all all the darkness Within Me will Billow forth and devour you and then he disappears yeah you're right he doesn't say that line interesting so some things were changed in between the the original release and the actual game or the original release in the the Remake weird[Music] St well question answered I want to say that I'm a little sad that you know we do talk about you know obviously the organization is still around cuz Axel is still around so you know there's and there's we only see like six of at least 12 members so we do know that the organization even after chain of Memories is still you know snooping about um but one thing that I'm going to be upfront about is that for some reason they don't use the term the Superior in later games yeah and that kind of makes me a little sad because I think that that term is so [ __ ] good I love it the superior it's hot it sounds powerful it sounds scary it's everything it sets the tone it really does you know who who this person is someone where obviously going to be encountering in the future yeah um so crazy yeah I I agree I wish they kept it so to move on another point that I again had a little trouble wrapping my head around is Maleficent talking to rku at the beginning of his route where we talked about in the the part where we were talking about about I don't remember it's somewhere in the script um when Maleficent is talking about how there's nobody in riku's memories because he can only see uh people who are who are dark um so I again rewatch some of the cut scenes here to kind of get like a fuller explanation of this and I'm not saying that your explanations aren't amazing and great now um but I I just needed some more of the context um so her quote she says that his heart is steeped in darkness and he can only see people steeped in that same darkness which is like I wrote here that uh it feels like a little like the Castle's fault as to why like I don't know it's just it's a weird little Quirk I guess as to like being able to read that darkness in in riku's heart despite like using a card I don't know um and just kind of the whole concept of riku's heart being empty really kind of threw me for a loop like what does that mean your heart is empty but like in the actual scene Maleficent is kind of teasing him because was oh he Cast Away his friends and his family and light you know to chase the darkness and now he's saying he threw away the darkness he cast it away but did he really because she's there like you know there's still obviously some darkness in you and you're seeing the people who are in darkness so I don't know it's just like a wild kind of concept that is like I don't know it feels so physical this like spiritual thing that he's doing he's like physically casting things away to make his heart empty it's just I don't know it's weird yeah what do you think it's hard to cuz I mean like for me I guess I'm just so practical that like my mind goes to the question like how come Ru doesn't see anybody um but then I have to remember that like that's not all Kingdom Hearts is Kingdom Hearts right this is something I struggle with and I feel like I've been getting better with the podcast is is analyzing Kingdom Hearts and stories from an emotional point of view and so it is kind of weird because I do feel like Maleficent is kind of like saying different things at once like like you only see me because I'm as evil as you or I'm only as deep as Darkness as you or she's like you only see me because you cast out everyone away except for me and and dark things like me and so to me those are like two different answers and so either way I don't know I guess it's hard to have an opinion about this because I unfortunately chain of Memories I've been trying to avoid it in this podcast series but unfortunately with chain of Memories my kner reaction is to just like brush things aside and be like H whatever it's just chain of Memories like abstract talk like it doesn't matter you know uhhuh yeah but I know that that's not the point of the of the podcast you know cuz if someone is listening to this and genuinely has like a question about it of like what's really going on here what does this mean what does this mean physically for the castle and its abilities and what it's showing rku and what does it mean for Rico emotionally and what he's feeling and what he's going through and I guess I personally just don't have a hard grasp I know I just wrote a whole[ __ ] script on this but yeah this scene with Maleficent is is weird because to me she's implying like you're sad and lonely but for two different reasons you know like J yeah and like it brings me back to the way that I like to look at things as like from a story standpoint point of like I don't know maybe this is just an excuse to uh get Riku to go on that lonely route just so he can have that contrast with Sora Sora revisiting all of his friends that he made along the way and you know rku obviously making the choices that he did in Kingdom Hearts 1 you know I've you we've used the word contrast so many[ __ ] times in this season already but like I don't know it just makes it different for him and it really kind of sets in that loneliness that he's going through and the point that I wrote after this is whenever Mickey shows up at the towards the end of riku's Route he literally falls to the ground he literally falls on his ass because of how relieved he is to see a friend which is crazy like it's I don't know it's just this poor little guy just going just trying to make things right with himself and all these adults are just antagonizing him the whole time I love rku I love him so much you know um you saying all that makes me kind of remember that the whole thing about what the castle does is that it reflects your memories so maybe it's not not even about like like what Maleficent says is objectively true but rather what rku things of himself so like Riku feels like he's alone because he's like [ __ ] like I [ __ ] betrayed my friends I threw away my home and you know it's not Maleficent saying you did this it's rku saying I did this and I guess maybe you know when I feel down I feel like there's a bunch of different reasons why I'm down and so I think maybe in that sense to me that gives me a more satisfied um feeling on all these different things that seem to be contradictory but in the end they're just different things rku has clouding his mind and bringing himself down yeah that makes a lot of sense um but before we move on I do want to bring up this one line this is a text line that's in uh the scene and I just thought it was a really good line rku is talking to Maleficent and he says if I'm stuck seeing people like you people of the dark I'll take you out one by one and then Maleficent says then you mustn't forget to destroy yourself last and it's like what a hard line like holy[ __ ] I'm telling you there's something about like the chain of memory script writing that has such an edge yeah that I don't know I just don't feel like we see it in now modern Kingdom Hearts games but you're right that line goes[ __ ] hard it does is H I love this game I love Kingdom Hearts I will say writing doing this both with Kingdom Hearts 1 but especially this game actually like sitting down talking about it like looking at it over and over it's really made me appreciate it not that I ever disliked chain of Memories yeah but there's something about like going through it line by line really analyzing the characters that really gives you such an appreciation for things that you didn't at least I didn't really appreciate to the full extent before yeah same yeah and it's like it seems that people who played this game when they were younger they really [ __ ] love this game people are very passionate about this game and we listen we see you we acknowledge you we get it we understand we're it just took us a little bit longer to get to where you were we should have been listening to you the whole time now the card mechanics you're going to have to wait a little bit longer I don't know about that one um and then my last Point here just kind of sweet talking about nomina helping rku um give him the giving him the advice of you know facing the darkness headon as Kyrie and then you know Ru figuring out that it's Nom she's just so smart I love Nom she's like she was able to see things that Mickey is not able to see like see it see the darkness from a different perspective which is you know something that was able to rku On A New Path than anybody else like she clearly has knowledge that no one else does like damn we love her for that yeah I one yeah I because she you know she is dressed in white but she uses terms to describe herself like a shadow you know and everything in everything in chain of Memories is kind of different from Kingdom Hearts 1 because Kingdom Hearts 1 is kind of about like the light and the dark but chain of Memories is kind of about like okay well what about the in between what about that little gray area between those two overpowering powers and I feel like Nomine is there Castle Oblivion is there and Nomine tells rku hey you can be here too it's okay like Mickey seems to be biased towards the light but but you're not[ __ ] awful if you use this power for your like yes anom uses Darkness for evil to take away the hearts of girls around the universe or whatever and Maleficent does it to [ __ ] antagonize whatever uh you know but nomina tells rku like but you can use this power to find your friends you can use this power for yourself and for what you want even though what you want is not evil you know and I feel like that's probably something rku had literally never heard before yeah you know and so while it does take him a while to kind of get to that point um I think you know by the end of the game rku says you know I'm not taking the road of light or Darkness I'm taking the one in between yeah he really I think really takes her advice to heart which um kind of reminds me so you know moving over to emails we got an email from our friend Josh hi Josh um Josh no offense I will have to shorten your email down I wouldn't say this or do this to anybody else but you and me and Hannah are friends you stayed at Hannah's house like I'm going to say this to you because you know you need honesty you know anyway I sh your question down a little but Josh asks one of my favorite things about RKO is him becoming a hero despite his affiliation with Darkness lots of Final Fantasy games and spin-offs really focus on the concepts of light and darkness as we can see with Kingdom Hearts I have seen plenty exemplify light is not good and darkness is not evil which I feel like Kingdom Hearts doesn't do much of at this point obviously Ru resolves riku's resolve comes through his story and he comes to realize just because he is one with Darkness doesn't mean he has to let it consume him like when he sees through zexian Sora illusion and I wanted to bring that up because that is when he gets that advice from Nom is during his fight with zexian and then Josh continues on is there anywhere else where they could talk about Darkness being necessary and light not being the end all and that's what I think is so powerful about what Nom says here is that it does cover what Josh asks it's that light doesn't like light is good but like Darkness isn't something that isn't this power that you need to like like what's the word I'm looking for exercise from your body completely you can use it to help your friends and to find your friends and that is something that I kind of like I love stories like that where it kind of reminds me I'm going to digress a little but it kind of reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh GX don't kill me but in Yu-Gi-Oh GX they talk about the gentle darkness and then the light of Destruction which is like oh my God that's so crazy you know but I love when stories kind of take the black and white normal typical tropes and really flip it on its head and say they make you look at yourself they make you look at yourself and go like okay what is this part of you that you're ashamed of that really actually isn't all that bad and then this part of you that you think is good you think you're doing good for the world but you're actually hurting people it really makes you look inside yourself and kind of readjust yourself and that is something I really love in stories yeah that makes it interesting it it gives you know a very natural conflict like if light was truly good and light or Darkness was truly evil they would be the same word right like they would there would not be different words for these things like they do kind of touch on this a little bit in these first two games that like light cannot exist without the darkness and darkness cannot exist without the light um yeah I don't know it's like it's a very interesting way to look at things it's it creates that like you know that gray space of like moral gray and literal gray of like white and black in the middle is gray um it's just it's so interesting because like there's a saying that like the road to hell is paved with good intentions right so like so real you know so people can do bad things with good intentions people can do good things with bad intentions it's just that's just kind of how life is and I I think that is something worth exploring in in these games and I hope that we explore it more and rku is definitely you know to look at in the future for for that sort of thing yeah so I I really enjoy that you asked this question Josh because I I love I love reku if I haven't said it enough in this[ __ ] in this[Laughter] episode um thank you Josh yeah thank you Josh so we got a few more questions unfortunately we won't be able to answer all of them for various reasons and limitations um but Adrien also sent us a couple questions and Adrian first question is do you think the anom inside of riku's heart is the same anom as saurin and Company defeated or an echo or is he just the form of riku's Darkness takes after his ordeal in Kingdom Hearts one and I personally think that if if this anom we see in chain of Memories was just an echo or just riku's darkness taking shape I personally you know kind of like how we just talked about Maleficent how Maleficent wasn't saying your own opinions she was reflecting riku's opinions of himself back right so because of that I don't if that was the case I don't think anom would have said I will return because I don't know if rku is really worried that anom will return I think anom saying that and being like my shadow l like I have you know whatever I think to me that's saying that like this anom that we see in chain of Memories is sentient is aware has it has plans you know and to me that means like he's really there in some sense yeah the way I kind of see it and I know this is horrible what I'm about to do but I do kind of relate it to like Harry Potter how he had a piece of Voldemort inside of him for his whole life oh like after having his encounter with him there's still a piece of him left inside that's kind of how I see this yeah I think it's a good way to describe like literally what's going on so I get it that that's how I see it yeah I I'll e I'll read uh adrianne's last question that we're going to answer I also couldn't help but Wonder would rku have even struggled with and his Darkness had dis not agitated and tempered the darkness within him so I personally I personally think that even if rku had cuz you know when rku is floating in that little void umh the voice of quote unquote anom which is really Diz is like you could sleep in the security of sleep or you could wake up and see what's going on and find your truth and complete your journey you know or whatever and I think that no matter what if even if Diz never said anything I think eventually anom would have kind of crept back into Riku and like his the void he's in or in his dreams if he's really asleep right now or whatever I think anome is like eager to return eager to control ru again mhm eager to have some connection and some physicality some goon that can like do his bidding and what he wants and so I personally don't think anom would have left Ru alone I think he would have come crawling back sooner or later and he does he [ __ ] does yep I agree I guess the one thing that we learned in this episode is how anel's not gonna [ __ ] let rku go let him go he's gonna be an annoying [ __ ] and say fight me every 5 minutes when rku is walking through the castle Ru needs a like a popup ad block that's what he needs yeah oh my God yep um all right well I think that's it we've reached the end of our questions um Mel what are we talking about next week so I've been debating on if next week's episode should be either Diz who we keep you know dipping our toes in and then saying oh n yet or if the next episode episode would be rku replica Hannah what do you think what do you what what do you what would you like to do I I think I would like to dive into R replica yeah I think he's waited long enough I agree I remember I remember having questions about him as I was rewatching the cutcenes yeah so yeah especially because like I wanted to write about him more in this one and I was like no I got to hold it off I got to hold it off so you're right di will have to wait in in line again um we'll get to him we'll get there but yeah next episode is going to be about that replica of rku yeah okay okay um Mel do you want to do our our little CTA yes okay since you opened so I don't really remember all the things they have to mention but right now we just went over a bunch of emails and if you were listening and you were asking yourself well I got some [ __ ] questions how do I send them in you can send them in at shedding Starlight atgmailcom thank you very much and we are also on Spotify question mark and Apple iTunes question mark uh Apple podcast Apple podcast that's what it's called and be sure to rate US five stars because that really helps us out and L knows that two couple of cute people like us could [ __ ] you know use the help we deserve the Stars We Are Stars listen the best way you can if you really like this podcast the best way you can spread the news about us is by word of mouth so if you have a friend who likes Kingdom Hearts especially if they're starting to play them and haven't finished all the games and you know me and Hannah have a friend who hasn't finished all the games yet and there's so much that he can't do he can't look up cutcenes of of Kingdom Hearts on YouTube because you know he'll get spoiled on the suggestions so if you have a friend that you're really looking out for and you're going to be you're trying to like make sure that their experience doesn't get ruined well guess what you can trust me and Hannah because we don't talk about spoilers of future games that's what we're doing here that's what we're here for we are newcomer friendly so if you have a new Kingdom Hearts fan you send them our way we'll take care we'll take care of them right now like a breakfast we'll take real good care of them we'll give him a little kiss on the head and on way yes give them a lunch box um I'm digressing and I don't know what else to do um YouTube YouTube um be sure to like our videos on YouTube if you do watch us on YouTube and be sure to leave a comment because I'm in a bad habit of getting to questions on YouTube but I know that people do have questions on YouTube so don't be afraid to ask questions on YouTube because emails can be long can be tedious and associated with work and nobody likes to work I don't like to work and so you can always leave your opinions on there especially you know if maybe there's something we can improve on we like to read you know on what we can improve on and stuff we don't always agree but you know we do the best weend nobody nobody's perfect um y And subscribe And subscribe oh my God duh And subscribe okay help us grow I think that's it that's it yeah well thank you everybody for listening we love you we love Kingdom Hearts we love Oru and we'll see you next episode and we'll see see you in the the staright[Music]