So I got thinking not too long ago about how much I always hated the KHII design for Kairi, and by extension the KHIII design but not nearly as much, which is why whenever I draw Kairi I generally just age up the KHI design and say it's an alternate universe where she kept the same fashion sense as she aged, because that design is frankly just better. Unlike the updated designs for Sora and Riku where they look older but still have their defining characteristics and can easily be recognized, KHII Kairi might as well be a brand new character, and having always been such an underdeveloped milquetoast character that her design pretty much was her personality, I mean that literally. I never even noticed that about her until I was old enough to participate in online fandom, I would get confused when I saw people criticize her character, even in the first game. "What do they mean she has no personality? KHII, sure but KHI? She had tons of personality there!" Until it occurred to me that the personality I always envisioned her having was made up in my head pretty much entirely based around what she looked like. The short hair, the skirt with a pair of shorts built in under it, what looks to be the straps of a sports bra visible under her top, sneakers, the fact that her closest friends are two dudes, I always got the impression from her of a total tomboy, just one of the guys, countercultural, followed the beat of her own drum, and wasn't one to conform to what society expects of her, and for the longest time accused KHII of ignoring that and shamelessly changing her, so now her personality is just "girl" and they stopped writing her right there with a design that reflects that. And I mean, yeah I still think that's true, the part I was wrong about was that not being true of the first game too, the KHI design is the one that wasn't appropriate all along and kid me just had too strong of an imagination to see it that way, so much so that I pretty much made up an entire character so immediately and instinctively that the part where I made it up faded to memory. And it's not even just that, there is so much lore in KHI specifically that me and my sisters just made up and accepted as canon for the longest time, making Kingdom Hearts in its entirety probably a much different game for us than it was for anyone else. I dunno if that's a testament to the game for how easily it captured kid-me's imagination or a testament to kid-me's imagination for being able to work with so little.

So that got me thinking about how I would have handled Kairi if I went back in time and was on the Kingdom Hearts production team, but only having control of the one character. First thing I would do is make the personality I made up for her in the first game canon and then expand upon it, coming up with a Jet Grind Radio-inspired punk look, keeping the shorter hair and the red color but now having the tips dyed a second color. Since Sora's hair didn't change between games, and Riku's did, I felt as though her hair should be different in some way and that Sora's not being different would be because he's the main character and he's special. Since the shorter hair matches the punk look much better than the longer hair of her actual KHII design I knew it needed to stay, and neither of the other two had their hair color changed, so I thought just coloring the tips made a good compromise. Her outfit keeps the same color scheme because so did Sora's and Riku's, although the colors on Sora's outfit have the amounts of each color rearranged. I tried to do that here, my initial idea being to make the two main colors black and purple with white saved for smaller details, but I didn't want to make her look too much like Xion, even if at this point in development Xion wouldn't have existed yet, so I decided her outfit colors would follow Riku's rule and stay more or less the same while Sora's colors moving around is just more of him being the main character and therefore special. The choice to give her so many zippers specifically at this point in the timeline is to convey her nonconforming nature, as in KHI when half the characters were covered in zippers from head to toe, she wasn't. In KHII, zippers were out and belts were in, so now she's finally into zippers now that she can claim them for herself. Well except for Donald and Goofy, but ducks and dogs aren't supposed to talk and Donald and Goofy do, so they're like the ultimate nonconformists so she would think they're cool enough to share. Also, I thought a pair of those pants that unzip into a pair of shorts made a pretty natural evolution for the skirt with built-in shorts that she used to wear. (Did anyone ever actually unzip those? I owned exactly one pair of those, unzipped them once, then had such a bitch of a time getting them back together that I never unzipped them again, then because that ruined the gimmick I never bought another pair ever again. I think there's a reason those things went out of style fast) Carried over from the canon KHII design is the belt with...I dunno what those dangly things are, I think they're suspenders but she's not wearing them for some reason, which actually makes them look more in place on a punk-inspired design than on the other, the pouch hanging off of one of the suspenders, and the boots which have been color-matched to the rest of her outfit. Although not visible on the drawing, I imagine that the boots would be designed for rail-grinding and also have small wheels embedded in the soles like those Heelys that were all the rage at the time, just to fit in more with the Jet Grind Radio influence.

The choice to have her carry around cans of spray paint and be into graffiti comes from expanding on a creative side of her we see in the first game, as she makes necklaces out of thalassa shells and also made the wayfinder that acted as the keychain for the Oathkeeper. That would evolve into a version of Kairi that shamelessly values self-expression to the point she'll even do things she's not supposed to in the name of it. If she's got something to say that nobody wants to hear, she'll paint it on a wall in big bright elaborate designs, make it someone else's problem, make it impossible to ignore, then pull a Sneakers O'Toole and skate off so fast that you'll never catch her, not in *those* shoes. This would also come in handy during the year between games, as, although it probably wouldn't all be covered in the final story, my reimagining factored in what I imagine life was like for her after the first adventure, namely that more people than just Selphie in that one scene would have wanted to know where Riku is. Destiny Islands appears to have a small town on it, probably with a tight-knit community, Riku's disappearance was probably not just noticed, but also a big local story. Being his closest friend that anybody can remember thanks to Namine's mindfuckery, she was probably the first one Riku's parents talked to about where he could be. Obviously she's not going to tell people that he's in another world going on a Disney adventure, the most she can tell them is what happened on the island leading up to it, and there's only so much of that part of the story she could keep under wraps since Tidus and Wakka were there and would probably be next to give their side of the story, making it very likely that Kairi had to look Riku's parents in the eye, and also possibly police running an investigation, and tell them that the last thing she saw Riku doing was building a raft with the intention to take it out and go exploring, and not only did she not try to stop him, but she helped him build it. Everyone except Kairi is probably certain that Riku is dead, and at least some people are gonna believe that it's her fault.

To be fair though, I could also easily see the whole raft thing as having been a game they were playing. I mean really, if they were building that just to get off the island and go explore, couldn't they just use the boats they already had? Evidently they wanted to build the raft just for the sake of building it. And did anybody actually think Kairi's little grocery list at the start of the game was gonna feed them for very long? Three mushrooms, three fish, a single bottle of water, two coconuts, and a seagull egg, split three ways that's at most a single meal for each of them. I don't think they were actually gonna take that raft as far as they implied, they were probably gonna take it out a little ways, pretend to have an adventure, eat, and go back, basically just have a picnic on the water. When the Heartless came and Sora was concerned about the raft, I don't think he was concerned about his "ticket out of there," I think he was concerned more about his and his friends' new "toy." So Kairi could still very easily say that she didn't expect him to take the whole raft project seriously. So maybe some people would blame her for Riku's disappearance very briefly and then quickly decide not to hold it against her, but that wouldn't make it any less painful for her to know fully well where he is and not be able to tell his worried/grieving family about it.

Totally different story when Namine's mindfuckery wears off and everyone remembers about Sora though. That would start the whole thing all over again, having to talk to parents, police, possibly even the media and have to admit that the last time she saw Sora he was helping Riku and her build the raft and very likely went with Riku. Nobody's going to admit that they forgot about Sora, especially his parents who are not only now hurting from his disappearance but extremely confused by the mindfuckery, having no idea that otherworldly magic was involved, and possibly looking for any kind of scapegoat to not have to question it, taking it out on Kairi and accusing her of keeping her mouth shut for a year about Sora's involvement in something she was already questioned about. Even without knowing exactly what happened to everyone's memory, Kairi at least has the means of guessing what could have happened, nobody else does, so she has no choice but to go about her life knowing her best friend's parents hate her, and just like with Riku a year ago she knows the truth but can't say it.

This will inspire Kairi to go about tagging "Riku Lives" and then once the mindfuckery wears off she'd also start tagging "Sora Lives," sorta like the "Aerith Lives" graffiti seen in Wreck-It Ralph. The longer this reignited controversy goes on for, the more elaborate the graffiti gets until she's painting gigantic murals depicting events from the first adventure, telling the story of what she saw while her heart was inside of Sora. Not necessarily convincing anyone that this story happened, but maybe some people start "believing" it in an ironic way just because it's a better more hopeful story than the one they think is true.

Because of all this nonsense she has no choice but to put up with, this version of Kairi refuses to put up with any more. When Axel shows up to kidnap her, rather than run daintily through the dark corridor, instead she sprays Axel in the eyes, kicks him to the ground with her big-ass feet, and THEN runs.

During the scene where Saix sics a buttload of Heartless on Sora, Kairi will still say the line "you leave Sora alone" but this time the voice actor will be instructed to sound like she gives a crap. She'll still do that badass jump off the bridge, but when she's overwhelmed by Heartless she'll actually put up a fight before going down. Instead of being saved by Riku and given her keyblade (seriously, that's never explained, why did he have to give it to her?) she would instead gain it the old-fashioned way, being chosen by it like Sora's and Riku's did for her willingness to throw herself in harm's way to protect someone. And instead of watching her get to swing it twice very weakly as if she's trying not to hurt the Heartless TOO bad, she'll swing like she actually wants to kill the fuckers and also use her spray can as a weapon like she did with Axel. We'd get a dynamic shot where she's surrounded, she swings at the Heartless in front of her, turns around to spray the Heartless behind her in the eyes, then swings at that before knocking out the next couple in front of her. Just let the player get to see more stuff like that.

In addition I would also have her do her training with Lea in the not-hyperbolic-time-chamber between games right after II, that way she can take her Mark of Mastery exam at the same time as Sora and Riku, allowing her to particpate in Dream Drop Distance. Because going a Jet Grind Radio-inspired route and not letting her be playable in the game with Flowmotion would just be a crime, which also means she can do something in KHIII besides get grabbed by the wrist, not even struggle, and then get killed. Seriously what was all that training for? Canon Kairi was such a missed opportunity of a character. And I'm not one of those people who gets hung up on "damsels in distress" or thinks every female character needs to be a self-sufficient badass, I just wish Kairi specifically was. Is it actually that that would be better, or is it just that I thought that's what she was as a kid and want my crusty old headcanons validated? Eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Whether you like self-sufficient badassitude in your female characters or not, at least going that route with her would make her an actual character instead of a plot device, hopefully we'd all agree on that at least