Question About Kingdom Hearts · 3:34pm Sep 23rd, 2022
Is there an explanation for why Sora's wooden sword doesn't work on Heartless while EVERYTHING ELSE works? Same for Roxas when he attacked the Nobodies with a Struggle Bat. I mean, I would understand if they had an explanation like the weapons needed to be enchanted to hit Heartless and Nobodies, so this would explain for Goofy, Squall, Yuffie, and some others who are prepared to fight them. And magic obviously works so no problem for Donald. And there are special characters like Hercule for who this is not a problem either. But then there are the Disney characters, some of them not even possessing weapons like Tarzan or Ariel, who can somehow attack them. This is something that will need to be clarified for when Kingdom Hearts will come into play in the story, to see if characters like Mario or Little Mac will be able to fight them.
Tarzan is no longer canon and Ariel was primarily a mage IIRC (I started with KH2). That still leaves Beast and Johnny Depp though.
Also worth mentioning 358/2 Days. Hitting Heartless with a stick you literally just picked up off the ground in the previous cutscene didn't do much, but it wasn't completely negated the way the things you mentioned were. I think that's the "canon" interaction and a real weapon would have worked decently (although obviously not as well as a Keyblade, because those are especially effective against Heartless and apparently the only way to permanently defeat them).
5688099
Thanks. But what do you mean "Tarzan is no longer canon"? I didn't know that they removed it from canon.
5688103
I think that heartless unless fought with a keyblade, and maybe light, darkness, and heart based attacks will just re manifest themselves
On another note, I think undertale color magic would be unusually effective against them
5688103
Rights issues mean that they have to pretend that whole world never happened, much like the characters Marvel can't use anymore because they were tied too closely to the Transformers license they no longer have (and being created by Marvel means Hasbro can't use them either).
I suspect that the Heartless cannot be harmed by mundane weaponry like Sora's wooden sword. I think a lot of other things might be explained by magic. Keyblades are magical weapons produced by one's heart and other weapons like Goofy's shield could be explained by Donald having enchanted it at some point. It might explain why Tarzan was non-canonical becuase they couldn't explain that one with magic. Aladdin's sword could be provided by Genie. Jack Skellington could be empowered by some sort of Halloween magic like Santa with Christmas magic. Beast was transformed by an enchantress so perhaps some of that enchantress's magic was behind Beast's attacks. Peter Pan obviously had pixie magic behind him. Jack Sparrow I can only guess found a cursed blade somewhere and that's how he could hurt the Heartless. As for Simba...and this might be a stretch...but the world might be more in tune with spiritual magics allowing for shamans like Rafiki but also the spiritual magics would affect all residents there to an extent.
5688118
Again, 358/2 Days. While it's mathematically impossible to kill anything before Xion does, the fact that a regular stick does technically deal damage is undeniable.
5688121
Ever consider there might have been a little magic in the stick? Magic coursed through everything in Equestria, why not other worlds too, even if to a lesser extent? This doesn't have to be the case for every world though.
As for SSB characters who could fight Heartless, I would say yes for Mario and any resident of the Mushroom Kingdom. Samus, yes. Sonic, maybe if he had a Chaos Emerald on him. Kirby, well there may be a strong similarity between Heartless and Dark Matters so definitely. Ness, yes. Link, yes. Star Fox, as long as it's not hand to hand. Pokemon, yes.
Little Mac, maybe not. I can't imagine his universe having magic or a technological substitute. If his gloves were enchanted though then that would change things.
5688116
Technically this is only half true, later games like Chain of Memories and Re:Coded didn't acknowledge Deep Jungle due to copywrite issues at the time, but the remakes of KH1 did not remove the world. At the same time though it is of note that Melody of Memories skipped Deep Jungle, and in fact it's the only world that was skipped with even Re:Coded getting it's unique world represented.
as for the Wooden Sword, I think it may be a case of something being retconned in later games and likely it did do some damage, but being a blunt toy sword such damage was likely so minimal that it practically did nothing. Discounting gag weapons like Roxas's Stick everything that we see damage Heartless were designed for battle including the Struggle Bats. KH2 even explicitly stated that the Keyblade is special not so much that it's the only thing that can kill Heartless, but it's the only thing that can properly free Hearts when defeating them, as anyone else that defeats a Heartless just causes it to respawn somewhere else later on and was thus useless for Xemnas's plans in KH2. This does imply that anything can damage if not flat out kill a Heartless, just that it doesn't matter as it's only a temporary victory in such situations.
5688163
That said, you don't have to permanently kill something to stop its immediate plans. If you're mostly fighting a given Heartless to stop it from killing you than discorporating it is good enough.
5688118
I don't think this is the right explanation. Some of them are rather far fetched, and nothing of what you said would explain toys (Woody and Buzz Lightyear) being able to attack the Heartless. As far as I know, magic, curses, and all that stuff don't exist in the world of Toy Story. Toys being alive there is just as natural as humans being alive because... reasons.
5688110
Yeah, I remember that part about Heartless respawning if killed with anything else than Keyblades (excepted maybe Light magic).
5688116
I didn't know that. That's too bad.
5688163
But that's the thing about the Struggle Bat. When Roxas attacked Nobodies with it, it did no damage. It just passed through them, like the Wooden Sword with the Heartless. I would guess that this was something that only happened in the games' respective prologues to show the desperation leading to the characters unlocking the Keyblade, but I remember this whole annoying part in the first Kingdom Hearts where Sora was only armed of the Wooden Sword while exploring the beginning of Hollow Bastion so we couldn't do anything in the battles and were forced to let Beast do all the job. At least, for this part, they could have given the sword the possibility to do a bit of damage, if not much. After Tarzan punching Heartless with his bare hands, that was ridiculous.
As I said, they finally got this right with 358/2 Days. The stick during that mission is probably only doing 1 damage so you aren't killing anything if only because Xion exists, but it at least acknowledges that non-magical attacks work.
5688170
Another explanation would be Sora's power to connect hearts giving others the power to fight the Heartless. I know I'm grasping at straws but other than that I can only guess that SquareEnix retconned the concept.
Plus in Toy Story, humans are not very observant or they would have noticed that their toys were not where they left them.
Also, its Disney, the masters of BS storytelling.
5688170
Fair, I honestly forgot that it worked like the Wooden Sword did in the first game, that is perhaps trickier, even more so considering there's never any explicit statement that Nobodies have the same properties as Heartless seemed to have in the first game. My best guess is perhaps the KH2 situation was that perhaps Roxas was just failing to actually land any hits of note? he was basically brainwashed and forgot all his combat experience at the time, It's entirely possible that he couldn't deal with something as slippery and fast as a Dusk until he started getting more instinctual knowledge from his connection to Sora/the Keyblade and the lack of damage was simply a matter of gameplay simplifying the situation.
That's my best guess anyway, like you said it does seem a bit odd that something like Tarzan's fists/spear or Beast's Claws can inflict serious damage to Heartless and Nobodys and a simple stick is more effective than a wooden toy sword or foam weapon. Probably best to just write off those specific situations as gameplay and not actual canon events.
5688170
That is why I mentioned it
Keyblades can defeat them permanently
Light and dark are connected to the heart in kingdom hearts
And Undertale Color, or soul magic could be interpreted as heart magic…
At least in my opinion, and in how the human souls act in undertale when by themselves
Tarzan didn’t fight with his bare hands, he used a spear.
5688198
Right. I forgot.
I got a theory, and this is a theory only so I could be way off. What if the weapon used was connected to their mind set. Sora knew that a wooden sword wouldn't be effective in battle though on the island before the heartless attacked they were over all pretending the swords were effective against each other. Plus a wack with something made of word does sting. For Roxas it was the fact that the struggle bat isn't a weapon but a sports tool.
In short your mindset for your weapon you would is how effective it is against the heartless or nobodies. If you had a kick ass keyboard but got it replaced with a wooden sword your first thought is 'what can I possibly do with this, I can't hurt anybody with this'.
Ariel is able to hurt the heartless and nobodies because she knows what she is doing is an attack and she knows it's going to hurt them because she was trained to think it will hurt them. Same with everyone else who attacks and can harm the heartless and nobodies. Those like Mario and Little Mac will be just as effective as Samus Aran in combat against the heartless and nobodies because they know what they are doing, they know they can harm them and believe it.
Which does bring up a fatal flaw. If the heartless and nobodies got into your head and made you believe you can't harm them then everything from lightsabers to thermo nukes won't harm them. Believe in yourself, believe in what you can do, believe in your weapon no matter what it is a d the heartless and no bodies will fall before you.
5688484
Similarly, Roxas picking up a regular stick hurt them about as much as you'd expect hitting someone with a regular stick would, but the fact that it worked at all was indeed a change from KH1.