Backlog Dialogues

Welcome to the back half of Kingdom Hearts Coded!

And that means it's time to hurt.

Join Data John, Data Jared, and Data Matt once more for a Data Podcast, this time in the wheel spinning, repetitive, glurge-y, and just genuinely awfully told story of how two Data Soras have to learn the important lessons that real Sora should be learning. There's some good to be found, but you have to dive deep in to the data to get it. 

It's our first Data Podcast (whatever the heck that means.) Join Data John, Data Jared, and Data Matt as they unpack the weird as heck, but ultimately good, first part of Kingdom Hearts Coded. Experience the story of how Mickey created digital life to try to solve the mystery of a strange message appearing in Jiminy Cricket's journal. What starts as another retread of the Kingdom Hearts 1 worlds becomes so, SO much more. Donald and Goofy finally get their time to shine with major character moments! The animation engine improves dramatically! Maleficent and Pete show up to move chess pieces further down the line! It's great, we promise!

This week on Backlog Dialogues is a Minilog that will pierce the heavens! Join us as we discuss the now classic Mecha anime Gurren Lagann, and trace the character arc of Simon as he goes from a simple digger in an underground village to a liberator of humanity and warrior among the stars. Before the spoiler section we break down the first three episodes, and after we discuss the series on the whole as it builds its themes of confidence, love, and hope.

And Drills. Drills are also a theme.

It's time to complete Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep! Complete in the positive sense as we unpack both Final Episode and Secret Episode and their ramifications on Kingdom Hearts as a whole, and complete in the negative sense as in, *gulp*, completionism. Sandwiched between the very excellent epilogues we discuss the very not so excellent completionism experience, including ice cream, minigames, the mirage arena and more! Rounding off with the four optional bosses, of which only one is actually unquestionably fun, and one other is kinda fun, but the others are hot garbage, in what John describes as the worst experience he has ever had with completionism in any game ever.

We've made it to the end of Aqua's route! Aqua has a brief encounter with Riku and Sora on Destiny Islands. Afterwards she heads to the Keyblade Graveyard in a desperate attempt to keep her friend group from falling apart. There, she faces Braig for some strange reason as well as Vanitas in Ventus's body. But while it's the end of the route, it's not the end of her story in Birth By Sleep...

Aqua confronts the greatest evil in all of Disney - sexism! But before that she has to finish up what passes for a story in Disney Town while becoming a Fruitball star. After we cancel Phil for being a sex offender, we have some marginally less bad worlds in Deep Space and Neverland (though Neverland still has a racism problem...) It's not a great set to close out Aqua's time in Disney stories, but we're still talking about it here!

Aqua goes to Radiant Garden.

Some stuff happens there that we've already seen.

And a fight with Vanitas we didn't see.

And I guess she meets Kairi?

...That's still not enough to fill a full episode.

Hey guys, wanna talk about Scrooge McDuck for half the episode?

(The Force Awakens is a terrible movie name but we had to riff on it somehow)

It's the start of Aqua's route in Birth By Sleep! Let's be the best girl as we clean up the messes of our easily duped big brother and highly distractable little brother. Aqua gets into antics in the Castle of Dreams and we speculate on the shady history of the Fairy Godmother. Then Aqua watches the end of Snow White from the sidelines and does the same mirror fight Terra did a few hours ago in the Dwarf Woodlands. Finally, Aqua stages a jailbreak in the Enchanted Dominion and fights Maleficent, who learns nothing other than that Keyblades are awesome.

My favorite part of Birth by Sleep is when Vanitas yells "It's Vanitasing time!" and Vanitases all over everyone. (Sorry, I know we've all gotten past Morbius as a society but this episode was recorded in the time period when it was a thing so there's Morbing jokes.)

Anyway, it's time for the conclusion to Ventus' route! Ventus has his last sidekick check-in with Goofy and Donald, then gets one nasty reveal after the other as he learns his true purpose is to fight Vanitas to forge the χ-Blade (pronounced Key because Nomura is a loon). This culminates in said clash and a battle within a dive to the heart, which is simultaneously among the most narratively satisfying moments in all of Kingdom Hearts along with one of the most frustrating gameplay moments. Truly a tragedy.

Time to be tacky clout chasers and drop a bunch of names we have no business saying! Also time to discuss Ventus' second half of Disney worlds for Birth By Sleep.  In Disney Town, Ventus unlocks powerful movement skills way too early and also shoots ice cream at children doing a butt dance in a terrible music game. In Olympus Coliseum, Ventus sits on the sidelines but does make friends with young Herc. In Deep Space, Ventus helps Experiment 626 escape the law. And in Neverland, Ventus visits poorly named areas while we contemplate what kind of artificial world Neverland is and what kind of Demiurge Peter Pan is.