I was rereading something I'd read about two years ago (gotta love those fanfics) where the main villain is a Heartless Axel and that got me thinking. Some minor backstory spoilers in this, just for a heads up.
Of all the characters who should be upset with DiZ/Ansem the Wise the most upset should be Lea/Axel. Here's why: Ansem discovered (created?) the heartless which his apprentices studied further to the point where they themselves lost their hearts and set a wave of heartless out into Radiant Garden which is where Lea and Isa grew up (aka Axel and Saix). So this destructive wave hits the town and Kairi gets tossed onto Destiny Island and Squall (who will go onto rename himself Leon), Yuffie, Aerith, and Cid (maybe Cloud, Tifa and Seph too) go running for the hills bu ALAS Lea and Isa are swallowed up by the heartless and are turned into nobodies, are adopted into Organization XIII and are renamed Axel and Saix respectively.
So that's strike one against Ansem. He's responsible for Lea becoming Axel. He brings about the destruction of their shared world and the heartless and the nobodies.
Then we have Roxas! Who's Axel's IDKBFF and they have some jolly wonderful times and Roxas makes Axel feel human and Axel gets to teach Roxas awkward lessons about opening treasure chests. (Also, another strike because Vexen creates Xion who only tends to cause Axel a lot of trouble and "heart ache" because Ansem > Even/Vexen > Xion.) So yadda yadda, Ansem (under the codename of DiZ) needs Roxas to wake up Sora so he can use Sora to extract his revenge on his apprentices (WHICH IS SO ASSBACKWARDS! Revenge, how about "cleaning up your own mess"?). So he gets Riku to go grab Roxas off the mean streets of The World That Never Was (which forces Riku to give into the darkness) and punt him into Digital!Twilight Town. So ANOTHER STRIKE for taking away the only person that Axel ever (or at least remembered that he) liked.
So Axel shows up to either kill or obtain Roxas in Digital!Twilight Town but Ansem shows up and starts a petty shouting fight (really Ansem, really?) and confuses the hell out of Roxas so Axel never really gets a chance of maybe possibly bringing Roxas back SO ANOTHER STRIKE! Which forces some real ugliness of Axel and Roxas duking it out and Roxas almost killing Axel and those horrible seven words that I cringe just thinking about ("We'll meet again in the next life.").
So what are we at, four strikes? I could add hypothetical strikes like "if Axel had survived the events of KHII the chances of him ever finding his heart would be ZILL thanks to Ansem blowing up a good chunk of Kingdom Hearts" and stuff along those lines but HONESTLY! Every thing that has happened since game one can be traced back to Ansem being a total dick head! And here's the rub. He never really atones for his sins. He gets caught up in this whole revenge thing and trying to understand hearts that he completely ignores all of the horrible things he has done. Yes, he attempts to make up for it at the end but its to little to late. He apologizes for Riku, he apologizes to Roxas, he says he's sorry to Mickey but never any kind words for Axel. Axel knows who he is too and that's the rub of it. Axel knows fully well who Ansem is, he knows him both as Ansem the Wise (from his childhood) and as DiZ (when they come face to face on day four in Twilight Town Axel says "You!" in a very harsh way). So either Ansem doesn't know who Lea/Axel is, doesn't realize Axel is Lea's nobody or doesn't give a shit. Oh, and Ansem's great selfless act? Trying to digitize Kingdom Hearts, cause you know... that's worked really well for him in the past. He ends up BLOWING a giant mystical heart resting spot moon thing UP! In doing so he creates THOUSANDS of new heartless! At least he admitted he was a fool in the end. I could spend the next hour stating why I hate Ansem, really I could.
Any particular reason you like or dislike Ansem? Got a fun Axel fact for me? Drop a comment, I'm always up for Kingdom Hearts debate. (Also Kingdom Hearts Philosophy might become a new segment here on Waffle's Rant, I might retag some older entries that would fall under this topic.)
