cameoamalthea:

I’ve seen a lot of people criticizing Axel as a character or alternatively criticizing fans for liking him.

Based on the criticisms I’ve seen it is clear that many people do not understand Axel’s story or the nature of this character (which to be fair, Kingdom Hearts is confusing).

Some fans dislike Axel because they dislike the dynamic of the Sea Salt Trio including the apparent age gap (which is weird – retconning Axel’s age to 25 so that Lea and Ven could meet at the same age in BBS creates a really awkward age difference – However, Nomura has also stated that Nobody’s do not age – which means Axel is around 16/17). 

Other KH fans who dislike Axel take issue with fans who do like Axel and claim “Axel did nothing wrong and Lea doesn’t deserve punishment”. 

Both fans who think Axel did nothing wrong (if there really are fans of this character who think that) and fans who think Axel is awful and Lea deserves punishment/shouldn’t be treated like a good guy have missed the point of Axel’s character arc. 

To understand this character you must understand 3 things:

1) Axel is a villain

2) Axel is not Lea

3) Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a really awesome show and if you watch at least the first two seasons you won’t be disappointed 

Ok – the third thing is optional – but the vampires on Buffy make a good point of comparison to Kingdom Heart’s Nobodies. In Buffy, when a person becomes a vampire they lose their soul and a demon takes over their body “and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it’s not you.” Without a soul vampires feel no guilt or remorse or compassion. “When you become a vampire, the demon takes your body. But it doesn’t get your soul. That’s gone. No conscience, no remorse… it’s an easy way to live.” 

Much like Buffy’s vampires, in Kingdom Hearts Nobodies lose the thing that allows them to be human and to care, in this case: A Heart. No conscience, no remorse, no feelings whatsoever. Only the drive to exist and to become human again – to feel again.

Nobody’s base their personalities on Memory. Axel allies himself with Saix because he remembers that when they were human they cared about each other. As Nobody’s they don’t feel anything for each other but value the relationship because it’s something they remember from their human life and thus ties them to their lost identity as humans. In order to exist as nothing, no feelings, just memories, the Nobody must go through the motions based what they remember or they’d lose themselves entirely.

Axel and Saix cling to the memory of being friends. Axel takes Roxas to get ice cream after their first mission because getting ice cream together is what he remembers doing with friends. This is imitation human behavior. 

Now that we’ve established what Axel is let’s get to our points.

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