Remember that one time when Aqua almost broke into an old lady’s house to beat the crap out of her and her two daughters.
Honestly, this has always seemed like a great example of an under-the-surface kind of theme that I wish the game had played up a little bit more:
Keyblade wielders are samurai. There are some obvious visual elements that go along with this – Master Eraqus and Terra both wear hakama (with Eraqus in particular looking amusingly similar to video game renditions of Oda Nobunaga), and even Aqua gets samurai-esque cherry blossom imagery, as shown above – but it goes beyond that, too.
So, with Aqua, you’ve got a character who’s written as an “honor student,” except that instead of being an honor student at academic pursuits, she’s an honor student at (as Eraqus says) “striking down any who would upset the balance of light and darkness.” Slaying beings of darkness is what she’s been trained (and, presumably, raised) to do, and apparently she doesn’t think twice before acting on that directive even if the beings of darkness in question aren’t inhuman monsters.
And then she’s confronted with Terra’s struggles with darkness and really doesn’t know what to do. Because if Terra’s a being of darkness… So part of her refuses to believe that Terra could have gone dark and another part is terrified that he did, which makes her swing wildly from “Good, you’re alright, Terra” to “How dare you?” – the idea that she might have to strike him down is completely unacceptable, but she can’t help feel like that’s what she has to do, should it come to it.
Of course, she also has to deal with the fact that both of her friends expect her to be able to do that – both Ven and Terra ask her to kill them to keep the darkness from having them. She’s got problems with that, too, for obvious reasons.
A lot of people seem to think that Aqua doesn’t really have a story of her own, but all of the above is super interesting to me. I just wish it had been made a bit more front-and-center so other people could see it, too!
#the last bit strikes me as really weird #how could anyone not realize how important aqua’s story is to bbs? #there’s a reason she’s the last one standing #and the one to become a master #ven and terra are important too of course #but in many ways their stories serve and build up aqua’s in addition to their own arcs #much like 3d has sora’s story ultimately build up riku’s #i dunno #aqua’s so great #that it’s just really odd to me for someone to claim she doesn’t have a story
What confuses people about Aqua, I think, is that she doesn’t really figure into Xehanort’s plans – Terra’s the potential vessel and Ven is the potential χ-blade, while Aqua is at most a potential backup χ-blade if Ven doesn’t work out. And because of that, she’s more witness to the external events than part of them for most of the game.
Of course, in terms of the external plot, that ends up allowing her to be the spanner in the works who thwarts Xehanort’s plan, most notably due to her destruction of the unfinished χ-blade and her hiding away of Ven.
And her distance from the external story doesn’t result in a minimization of her internal one, either. While Ven is learning about his true nature and Terra is trying to figure out what to do about his darkness, Aqua has to navigate what it means to be a master in light of those things (and her existing friendship with the both of them). Honestly, it wouldn’t be hard to argue that she’s the one with the most positive change, since she’s eventually able to choose her loved ones over her duty as a master.
It’s just easy to overlook that sort of stuff, I guess. =/
