I absolutely adore everything about this cover art.
It immediately brings to mind the box art for the very first game, complete with its symbolism in how the characters are positioned.
Every hero who has played a defining role over the course of the series is here. Every previous game's story connects to this game in some way.
Having a Darkling in there makes one think. The Darklings were quite a shock in the story of Union χ; seeing your peers succumbing to the darkness and becoming Heartless put a surprising spin on the plot. In that regard, the Darkling is quite a significant Heartless, and I'm curious to see how it fits into the story of KH3.
7 and 13 are represented quite heavily in the piece.
My only issue is that Riku's new Keyblade is quite heavily concealed. For being such an important plot point and alteration to Riku's character, I feel it ought to be a bit more visible.
Riku honestly got better, in my opinion. He started in KH1 as the stereotypical whiny anime rival character who gave in to darkness. Then, as time went on, he became easily one of the most interesting characters in the story as he struggled to keep the darkness within him in check.
Dream Drop Distance completes his character arc by having him staring down the darkness with confidence that he has risen above it, and puts him in the same role Sora was in during KH1--the hero who has to save his friend from the darkness.
Sora, naturally, got worse. He is a Gary Stu character who always takes the cheap way out of his problems; it was bound to happen.
But hey, perhaps nearly succumbing to the darkness will have made him a little wiser. Some heroes need to fall before they can rise higher.
The climactic battle in Kingdom Hearts III will be between Seven Guardians of Light and Thirteen Seekers of Darkness.
Just after finishing Dream Drop Distance for the first time, I wondered if those two numbers together boasted any sort of significance that I wasn't aware of.
As time went on, the interested faded a bit. But with the recent announcement that Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth would be released outside of Japan for the PS4, something once again sparked my interest.
I looked up some information on Cyber Sleuth because I was interested, and in the process, I learned quite a bit about some Digimon lore that I had little knowledge of. Specifically, the Royal Knights and the Demon Lords.
The thirteen Royal Knights have typically been depicted as antagonists throughout the Digimon series, more often coming into conflict with the protagonists rather than trying to help them, but they are all regarded as Exalted Digimon and were assembled to keep the peace of the Digital World.
On the other end of the spectrum reside the Seven Demon Lords, each of them very sinister or demonic in appearance and representative of one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Greed, Sloth, Lust, Pride, Envy, Wrath, and Gluttony). They've also come into conflict with the heroes of the Digimon franchise over the years, but are more obviously villains than the Royal Knights have seemed to be.
Here's what I find interesting: Kingdom Hearts is now setting up to have a struggle between Seven Lights and Thirteen Darknesses. Digimon, however, has seen a struggle between Seven Darknesses and Thirteen Lights, the former of which are suggested by the Seven Deadly Sins, and thus have a theme. This complete reversal is quite a conundrum and makes me very curious as to what, if any, significance there is to the numbers 7 and 13 used together.
What does this say about the Seven Guardians of Light? Do they represent the Seven Deadly Sins as well? (̶I̶f̶ ̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶L̶e̶a̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶i̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶g̶l̶u̶t̶t̶o̶n̶y̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶m̶.̶ ̶X̶D̶)̶
Or perhaps they could mean some opposite of that, such as the Seven Archangels or the Seven Virtues.
