Organization XIII, They're the Bad Guys, Right?

Actually it is, the reason is bad writing :/
@below exactly! honestly though i cant think of any type of media the doesn't have some form of PIS or CIS in it so i can forgive kingdom hearts

 

Man I put a lot of effort into making a convincing post on the subject and then everyone ignored it sdkjfhsdgkjdhks

"Their" desire wasn't to build an army of Nobodies. The members were acting autonomously. In truth, the Organization is not very organized; each member had their own goals and ideas of what the group meant to them, and taken as a whole it appears exactly what it is: chaotic. Self-defeating. The wandering of lost souls, a herd of cats trying to accomplish a single goal that not all of them even signed up for.

They probably had Roxas and Xion fight because the two were getting to be too much to handle. They never intended for the two of them to figure out what was going on, which is what really made their plan seem stupid - because if they were hard to control at the time, how hard would it be when they found out their bosses wanted one of them dead? As for making Nobodies... Wasn't Xaldin the only one actively engaged in that goal? And he seemed to be after it more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. The others just gathered Nobodies where they appeared. More cannon fodder to put between them and Sora in the likely event that he got wise to their plans and decided to come for them instead of faff about with Heartless all day.

I don't think it's that they think they're in the right. Most of them don't seem to care. Why should they? They don't have hearts, so says the Superior. Half of the group is actively, remorselessly malicious, and the other half has no incentive to give a sh█t thanks to the manipulations of the former group. I don't see the moral ambiguity here.

Basically this. They damned entire worlds to satisfy their own selfish desires, and flimsy desires at that; when you get down to it, a good portion of the group seemed just peachy not having hearts, and they certainly weren't loathe to steal hearts from others, or arrange for them to be lost. Their goal was, for the most part, a lie; and even those among them with the best of intentions were still ruthless, cruel, and near-genocidal in pursuit of their goal.

Look, we all know Nomura's not the most gifted writer, but this is the magick of art, especially video games: The observer is an artist as well. Through interpretation we can make the art less sucky. Point is saying it's bad writing is a cop-out when there are other possible explanations. And in general it's kind of rude to the artist :x

 

This is pretty much key to enjoying KH at all on any level beyond gameplay. If you look at what they were probably INTENDING the KH story gets significantly better.

 

dude i never said i hated the bad writing if i did i wouldn't be on a kh forum im just saying it is bad writing............but its not just nomoura who does this almost every form of media has some PIS/CIS so that does not make him a bad writer he just used an old bad writing technique to create a story

 

Beyond that, saying it's rude to the artist to criticize them is just silly on a bunch of levels.

 

For me, they're neither good guys or bad guys. They're just some nobodies without hearts trying to desperately cling to that touch of humanity they used to have. Some of em may act like a jerk and not even realize.

To me, they're just like a program running calculations and doing a single motive because they don't know any better.

 

I lay on both sides.

Organization XIII was comprised of three colliding goals between members. Xemnas/Xigbar who wanted to turn of the members into copies of Master Xehanort, Marluxia and Larxene who wanted to usurp Xemnas and take over. The rest generally bleaved the lie Xemnas told them that they had no hearts and the only way to fix that was to use Kingdom Hearts to restore them to Somebodies except for Axel and Saix who were also trying to take over but more so Saix than Axel.

So in a sense the majority of the members bleaved in what they were doing (the obvious aforementioned members excluded) and saw Sora as a means to an end for a greater good because If they could control the Keyblade they could gather the hearts needed to restore themselves. The machinations of the organization were evil at it's core but most of the members thought they were doing good or at least self-interest.

Sora not exactly being the brightest bulb on the tree just blindly thought the organization and it's members were evil and in a sense he was right but again, alot of the members were being lied into helping Xemnas and in general were misguided so it could be seen that Sora was the villian in this case even though he's not.

The entire idea behind the Nobodies at it's inception was that they were beings of Nothingness. Not light nor dark which could be seen as moral ambiguity or the gray area. Doing deeds that were not good but not entirely evil.

 

It goes beyond just believing a lie though. Pretty much all the Org members go around creating heartless, causing trouble with Nobodies, and such. The greater good in this case is just their own selfish ends. Hardly commendable or sympathetic

 

Never said I agreed with them only that it could be seen that way and again as I said it was in pursuit of a lie. There were some like Demyx who didn't have a mean bone in his body and Luxord who given what little information we have didn't seem to be evil or malicious and was in all respects fair.

And if I'm correct they didn't create heartless but attracted Heartless to them but some thought the greater good was getting their hearts back by any means.

 

Demyx's nice guy thing was a facade, you see this right before his final fight. The Org is seen manipulating the Heartless population in Days, and there are Nobody recruiters in the Organization who basically look for strong hearted people and turn them into a heartless to increase their numbers

 

Kinda have to call bullcrap on that. Demyx by and large was nice but a coward and preferred not to fight whenever possible. Again, because they wanted to use Roxas and Xion to gather the hearts need to make Kingdom Hearts. The recruiting of new members was again so they could get their hearts back by any means.

I'm not defending their actions but by their nature they operated on moral ambiguity or self-interest.

 

Kind of off topic here but demyx (at least to me anyway) was legitimately a really nice guy especially in the manga there it made demyx out to be one of roxas's friends even if they didn't see each other as much and now im sad that he might not get an appearance again........

 

To quote Demyx
"You shouldn't judge anybody by appearance"
He then goes on to say "Silence, traitor" and reveals he's actually a competent fighter.

 

And before that says: "I told them they were sending the wrong guy..."

Then in the Underworld: "Run, run away!"

Then later on: "Right, man did they pick the wrong guy for this one..."

 

All BEFORE he sheds that and fights Sora for real.
In KH2 they used Demyx to show what not having a heart was like. Demyx ACTED like he was aloof and carefree, but it's just an act.

 

Uh no. Demyx's personality in KH2 matches with his attitude in Days which was that of a coward and aloof to other people. But even if we just go by KH2 when you beat him he goes: "Oh man, I blew it."

 

It matches him in Days, but first of all Days was made after KH2, but the purpose of Deyx is pretty clear in KH2. Yen Sid warns Sora at teh start of the game that Nobodies will try to deceive you by pretending to have emotions. The only time this is brought back up is with Demyx. That's Demyx's purpose as far as things go. To how that Nobodies can act as if they have emotions, but they're ultimately cold and detached.

 

I don't think the organization is bad. They had their own reasons to do what they did. I'm sure Xemnas is bad, Saix and Xaldin strike me as bad as well just because they made a bit of a mess and followed Xemnas. But I really don't think the rest of the organization is all that bad. How can it be bad to want to feel human? I'm glad they created Xion just so they could gather more hearts and get to their goal. Also, you see people like Axel and Demyx, who I believe are actually genuinely nice. There are some there who are kinda mindlessly following Xemnas because that's all they know. But there are others with bigger personalities (Larxene, Luxord, Marluxia) who are in it for their own reasons. They really don't strike me as people who care about Xemnas' motives, they're there to do their own thing, and for the reward.

To look at the organization as a whole and call it "bad" is not really fair, as most of the time you're looking at Xemnas, the people who actually followed Xemnas, and what they did. There are some bad people in the organization, but there are also good. They all have some underlying motive to be human again and to me that's not a bad thing.

I say this as Days being my second favourite game after KH2. I actually love the organization and the whole story (well I haven't played CoM, so not the WHOLE story, but a bit of it)

 

From my experience, I don't see the writing of Kingdom Hearts to be bad. Sure, sometimes it contradicts itself but what plot on the scale of the Kingdom Hearts franchise doesn't? The only bad writing I see is the whole concept behind Nobodies. I think Nomura was trying to say that people who hide their emotions and put on a fake persona to the world only exist as a hollow shell of a person. That you need to be in touch with your feelings/heart to be a full person. And I felt like this idea was conveyed well until Dream Drop Distance *spoilers, I guess* decided that Nobodies did in fact have hearts the whole time, and I don't even remember why that was relevant, I think it was so that Master Xehanort could split his soul into each of their bodies and to do that they needed to have hearts to be possessed or something? I don't get why, if that was the case, they couldn't just be given hearts and then be taken over. Then their mission in Kingdom Hearts II wouldn't have been void, since they were looking for their hearts. The only reason I could think of that Nomura would say they had hearts the whole time was to make Master Xehanort look like even more of a villain, which he already does so there's no point in contradicting a well-established concept just to make the bad guy look even more bad. But other than the Nobody concept, I don't see how the writing of Kingdom Hearts is bad. Almost every great story has at least one flawed concept to it, so I think the Nobody thing can be given a pass. Birth By Sleep's writing was fantastic, along with Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories. I think Chain of Memories had the most to say about people and what we give value to in life, and what we should give value to. Kingdom Hearts II showed the importance of emotions, but other than that it did start the whole Nobody concept that has contradicted itself ever since it was introduced, but not nearly enough to call the writing of Kingdom Hearts bad in general.

 

Definitely villains. Understandable villains, but villains nonetheless.

Their hearts were taken from them, either directly by Xehanort or indirectly by Xehanort. They were told that if they achieved Kingdom Hearts, they would get them back, not knowing that they were probably already growing new ones. They were told that they didn't have any emotions because they didn't have hearts, so they didn't have to feel guilty about the things they did. Then they went out into the worlds and looked for Kingdom Hearts.

They attacked the Beast. They destroyed Sora's memories and replaced them. They created Heartless upon Heartless upon Heartless so Roxas/Xion/Sora could destroy them, adding to Kingdom Hearts. They did all these things so they could get their hearts back. Understandable, but still villains.