It is time for Part 2 of Unanswered Questions! Yesterday’s post, Part 1, was quite long. I’m expecting Part 2 to be the same since I still have a lot more to discuss, so there is probably going to be a Part 3. But that’s okay, but we still have a lot more days of the celebration ahead of us! Anyway, let’s not waste anymore time with getting into these Kingdom Hearts mysteries…
Time Travel
I yesterday’s post, I talked about Quadratum and how the Master wanted to go to an “inconceivable” world. I’m going to touch briefly on this, because I run the risk of getting into confusing stuff. Without knowing the rest of the Kingdom Hearts lore, you could easily get lost in the theories. But hey, the fandom knows the complete lore pretty much, and we’re still confused!
Time travel is hardly a simple matter when it is brought into a fictional story, and it can often be seen as a cliche. I do think that things could turn South if the creators don’t handle it correctly, but so far I haven’t really been annoyed with the concept of time travel in Kingdom Hearts, since there are unique rulesets int he game. There are essentially three laws of time travel in the KH universe:
- You cannot travel to a time period where no one would remember you. Therefore you can’t travel to a time period where you did not exist (there is only one instance where this rule was overridden, but that was a completely different matter which I will touch on in a minute).
2. There has to be some version of you in the era you wish to travel to, which goes hand-in-hand with the first law.
3. Changing the laws of time is impossible, and events cannot be prevented or caused. When the traveler returns to his/her own time, they will lose all memory of the era they visited. (Again, there was one instance of this rule being overridden).
For the first time the laws didn’t apply in Kingdom Hearts, Sora broke law #3 when he altered time to save the seven Guardians of Light. As far as we know, he was only able to do this because Chirithy, who was trapped in the Final World allowed it. For the second time, in Union X law #1 was broken. When the world of Daybreak Town was being destroyed, Lauriam, Elrena, Skuld, Ephemer, Ventus, and Brain all traveled through time to survive. However, since the ending of Union X is kind of vague, we don’t know if they have lost there memories or not. Also, they did not exist in the times they traveled to (unless by some strange paradox them traveling through time ensured that they existed in those specific time periods…but that would be hard to explain without the first law becoming useless.
I would love to dig into the lore of The Book of Prophesies, which the Master of Masters wrote himself, but things would get incredibly complicated. I’ll just say that the Master gave each of his apprentices a copy of the book except for Luxu, since, in his own words, it would cause “a temporal paradox”. I’ll talk more on that in my Part 3 post though, because a whole other side of the story.
But to touch briefly on it, he sent Luxu on a quest through time with the No Name keyblade and the notorious Black Box. Luxu did not time travel. Instead, he would pretty much do what Xehanort has been doing. He would basically put his heart into someone else, and that person would become the new and improved Luxu. He did this for centuries, eventually ending up as Xigbar in Kingdom Hearts III, which was a major plot twist for us KH fans, let me tell you! But all this time, he had been passing down the No Name keyblade. Why? So apparently the Master took out his own eye and built it into the keyblade. Because of this, he was able to see into the events of the future and write it down in the Book of Prophesies. Looks like we already have a slight paradox going on here!
To conclude this, since it is getting quite long, the Master had another reason for placing his eye into the No Name keyblade and sending Luxu on a quest through the ages: he was going to time travel. With Luxu in all versions of the future, there was someone who had memories of the Master in all eras. With No Name keyblade containing the Master’s eye, there was a “version” of him in all eras as well. And there you have it; the Master could successfully time travel to whenever he wanted. He just couldn’t alter the flow of time.
But here’s the big question. Why did he want to time travel? Is it specifically to see Quadratum? If so, why? I have a few theories for this, but this is already long, and I might just talk about some of them when I discuss the mystery of the Master of Masters himself.
Verum Rex and Yozora
Ok… In the words of Brain, “I am going to try and explain this as simply as I can”. Here’s the thing about Verum Rex. Way back before Final Fantasy 15 was a thing, Square Enix gave a project to Mr. Nomura. The game was Versus XIII, and it was apparently supposed to be a part of the Final Fantasy 13 series. Unfortunately, Versus went through serious struggles, and the game was ultimately taken from Mr. Nomura and given to Hajime Tabata, who directed Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. After this, Versus XIII was turned into Final Fantasy 15. The game had a lot of the character designs changed, but they were not changed to the point where we couldn’t recognize them anymore. Take a look…
Versus XIII (Property of Square Enix)
Noctis, Final Fantasy 15 (Property of Square Enix)
See what I’m saying? Well, when Kingdom Hearts III came out, there was a blaring reference to Versus XIII when you visit the Toy Story world. The first thing that happens upon traveling to that world is a trailer. We see some new characters…but are they actually new? We also find out the game is called Verum Rex, and it’s supposedly all the rage in Toy Story land.
But wait a second. Mr. Nomura might actually be teasing the future of Kingdom Hearts here, or he could be showing a trailer for a game that is truly in production. Fans assumed that perhaps Mr. Nomura was bitter about Versus XIII being given to Hajime Tabata, and is now taking the trashed story into his own hands. This theory escalated further when Yozora, the main character of Verum Rex, appears in the Kingdom Hearts III secret ending to let us know that he’s more that just a fictional Toy Story-world video game.
In the Kingdom Hearts ReMind DLC, Yozora appears again in Quadratum as the secret boss. He has a short interaction with Sora, but geez, this is one heck of a conversation. I’ll talk more about that convo in a minute, since it brought up a TON of questions, but I want to focus on Yozora himself.
So the main question is, is Yozora somehow related to Noctis? You saw the designs of Noctis I added above…now look at Yozora:
Not only is Yozora’s design incredibly similar to the ones above, but this scene is literally taken STRAIGHT from the Versus XIII trailer. Also, Yozora is Latin and translate to “night sky”. Noctis’ full name, Noctis Lusic Caelum, translates to “a light in the night sky”. And just fyi, Sora’s name is Latin for “sky”. There is certainly no accidents here, but it does beg more than a few questions. While Yozora’s design is awfully similar to Noctis’ design, he also looks a lot like Riku, and his clothes are similar to Sora’s, which is kinda strange. It’s important to note that Yozora states that his appearance in ReMind is not how he really looks.
Yozora seems like a very confused person. First, in the DLC, he tells Sora that he was told he should “save Sora”. However, directly after telling him this, Yozora attacks Sora. So that makes zero sense right now. Even stranger, if Yozora wins the fight (the outcome of the battle is determined by the player), then Sora will “die” and be incased in this crystal. Yozora will tell him “I will save you”. Again, no sense. Is Yozora confused? In their first interaction, he even straight up asks Sora “why he’s using Sora’s name”. Even Sora is confused.
At the end of the DLC, there are two outcomes. If Yozora wins the battle, he will wake up in the back of a car. The driver (who I believe to be Luxord’s Somebody, but that’s a completely different story that probably won’t get talked about in this Unanswered Questions mini-series), has some dialogue, and then Yozora says the famous Kingdom Hearts line, “I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately…like, is any of this for real, or not?” If Sora wins the battle, this exact scene happens (except the driver isn’t involved). One detail is that when Yozra says this line, Sora’s voice is dubbed over his, so they’re saying it at the same time. The last part, though, is spoken by Yozora if he survives the battle. If Sora survives the battle, he’s the one that says “is any of this for real, or not?”
Confusing, right? I’ll stop here, but this is just barely touching the surface of what’s up with Yozora. Oh, and one more thing… the game is called Verum Rex, which is Latin for ‘”true king”, which was the term Noctis was referred to throughout FF15. The cutscene in which Yozora attacks Sora is called “Falsus Rex”, which is Latin for “false king”. Interesting, right?
An Imposter Among Us?
As I said, Yozora asked Sora why he uses that name, implying that there is another character named Sora. Sora is clearly just as confused as the fans are, because as far as he’s concerned, he is the only Sora there is. It’s a strange scene, and instead of getting our questions answered, we just have more to ask.
So is there really a completely different Sora? If so, that would explain Yozora’s hostility towards him. Yozora said he was sent to save Sora, so he could be confused and think that our Sora is an imposter. Perhaps Yozora knows a different Sora who looks completely different from our boy? Entirely possible, but I wonder how all of that would play out.
I haven’t really got many theories for this yet, since there’s not a lot to go off of. There is a very old Kingdom Hearts II scene where Sora makes the comment, laughing nervously, “there’s only one me!”. At first he was responding to being called Roxas so many times, and the comments that there was another “half” of him. But now I wonder if Mr. Nomura was playing the long game here, too, and all along there really was another Sora.
That’s all I have for today! This was a lot, and I know it’s confusing, but thank you for bearing with me! Again, if you would like me to write a single post dedicated to one of these subjects, please let me know! But go ahead and tell me your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you! Part 3 will be released tomorrow. Until then, God bless and have a wonderful week!
I'd Rather Be Geeking! 