Kingdom Hearts Crack

[auronlu]

I'd been avoiding the Kingdom Hearts series for years because I was pained by the idea of Auron being condemned to the same universe as Disney characters and forced to interact with Donald Duck without beheading him. Not only that, but they took away his jug of alcohol. Poor guy can't get a break.

However, after apparently losing my cat Sunday (after several hours of panicked search, she turned up under a piece of furniture in Hide Mode) I needed something brainless. So I grabbed KH2.

Very mild spoilers, since I'm not that far into the game:

1) The Disney stuff is apparently not quite as appalling as I'd feared, because like so many Americans I was brainwashed by Disney as a child into feeling intense nostalgia whenever familiar Disney film snippets and images pop up. Scary. Truly scary. I didn't realize quite how many Disney films I'd seen.

2) Especially after the slickly-packaged Disney worlds and the Planet of the Old Final Fantasy Characters Retirement Home, I was utterly, totally, and completely slain by the b&w Steamboat Willie world. I was cackling like a goon at the sound effects, visuals, and cartoon physics from a bygone era. All the other worlds pale in comparison to the sheer random WTF?!!! of a good old black-and-white 1930s cartoon. In fact, the designers should have dispensed with any semblance of game-related plot whatsoever and just thrown together a bunch of random head-trippy minigames based on various ancient cartoons.

I'd forgotten how much I liked the sound of manic mice running up and down on harpsichords.


I also like Mickey Mouse better silent. He's charmingly simple, instead of gratingly annoying.

No spoilers, please, past Timeless River, even if I've picked up certain spoilers here and there from fandom.

I'm glad that Square-Enix took a little dig at Disney by sneaking in Auron's jug o' firewater as a tiny charm on one of Sora's weapons.
 

Comments

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about Pete/Malificent, but I am sure that Aerith's voice actress was FAIL.

A lot fewer FAILS than in FFX, though. Which made it all the more glaring!

[animecrush.livejournal.com]

Auron, Lulu, and Rikku's voices were probably my favorite of FFX.

I did a serious jaw-drop when I finally heard Seymour's japanese voice. It just sounds so DEEP, intimidating, and creepy in the JP version I'm just like "Wtf went wrong guyz?" when it comes to the English version. I'm sure there are several 180's when it comes to other characters. I also prefer Tidus' japanese VA as well.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Elma's marvellous seiyu was the biggest shock to me (and I agree about Seymour; he's utterly charismatic in Japanese, whereas he comes off a bit smarmy in he dub). She's a minor character, but it still bugs me, because the character is almost totally lost in the American version.

In the Japanese version, Elma sounds like a brash, eager, and highly-caffeinated very young officer utterly determined to make a good impression. "Yes, sir! Right this way, milady! Stand up straight, soldier; we must impress Captain Lucil *idol worship*!" The Gatta/Luzzu and Elma/Lucil dynamics are minor, but they establish the Crusaders as people rather than figures, and by extension represent the people of Spira that you're trying to to protect throughout the game.

Lucil's is better too, but the contrast isn't quite as great.

That was the main reason I got that awful bootleg with the strange subtitles -- the quality is poor, but at least now I know what everyone sounded like in the original.

I love Wakka in both versions, slightly prefer Lulu's Japanese voice, and prefer Auron's English dub (one of the few).