Where Stuff Happens!

it seems that the author/artist for the manga, shiro amano, wasn't given as much liberty or time to twist kh3's narrative in the same way that he did the kh2 manga. lots of dialogue is rewritten to better fit the format of a manga, but the flair of personality that amano gave these characters in kh2 is very absent in 3. and if i had to guess, it's a combination of restraints from publishers (ie disney and square) as well as deadlines pushing him into a corner to go with old reliable shot compositions and poses, as well as not rewriting some otherwise awkward scenarios.

there's a lot of "original" content still in the manga, but it's nowhere near what was being poured into the kh2 manga, and it's frankly disappointing. to expect better than what kh3 gave us is a privileged thing for me to say, but kh2's manga delivered quite a lot for a game that was already near a 9/10 for most fans of it. and given kh3's divisive position in the series, i hope i'm not the only one to put my faith in the manga being able to spruce up parts of the game that were, for lack of better terms, underwhelming.

alas, it seems they had their wrist grabbed and hand forced for much of the latter half of kh3's manga. scenarios that were otherwise bland or underwhelming in the game were given little extra flair or flatulence.

a wishlist from me, if you were curious:

roxas's return and how exactly that happened

kairi being kidnapped would be rewritten to be more believable

sora and ventus forced to confront vanitas in a more direct light

the main cast other than sora getting dialogue between themselves

while you can argue a handful of these aren't necessary and were probably just me getting my hopes up, some stuff DID get expanded on and proved to be intriguing food for thought for the reader. vanitas gets a much more expanded section than he has in the game. kairi, while not escaping her unfortunate dilemma, was more proactive before being nabbed.

if we're down to personal preference, the entire ending of OG kh3 felt rushed and like the writers were trying to hop, skip and leap over hurdles to get to the end, without taking the time to put proper thought and care into every character's dilemma, dialogue, and their actions. a lot of characters just stand around and wait for them to be talked to by sora, before they engage in the conversation. or they just go mute after having their brief moment, and remain a background character for the entire ending of the game. re:mind somewhat remedied this, but writing errors are still present in a vanilla playthrough without the dlc, and frankly, that matters regardless of what future endeavors may fix.

(also the dlc does not retcon any of the issues present in the base game, so they're still absolutely worth bringing up)

the manga sadly does not stray far from what kh3 established, and actually feels like it's rushing FASTER through the ending of the game than the game itself ever did. one page can cover up to a minute's worth of dialogue and blocking. expressions aren't varied, and a lot of shots are just taken close-ups of characters faces, or they appear to be shot-for-shot recreations of some angles seen in the in-game cutscenes.

kh2's manga took 11 years to produce and fully release. comparatively, kh3's manga took 5 years to achieve the same. and before there's any concern, kh3 also takes a considerable amount of its dedicated pages to show off the disney worlds, like kh2 did.

that's not to call any of the work bad or poor. just an observation, rather. the kh3 manga seems to have suffered from timecrunch, or overall lack of care that was present in the kh2 manga. either the product wasn't intended to be more than just a retelling, or maybe there was some external pressure.