#vanitus

The complete set! Let the children rest, they deserve it.

Okay but why was it that the first thing I thought of when I saw this was...

Sora: "I'm the real me! You wanna-be, me!"

Roxas: "Buddy, I was the real me when you were still in my short pants."

Ventus: "Hate to break it to ya chum, but I wore them first."

Hey!! Welcome to my Kingdom Hearts fan art blog! I am still playing through some of the games. I just finished Birth by Sleep recently. My favorite game so far is probably 358/2 Days! Roxas is my favorite character but I love them all so far.

In Union Cross we were introduced to the Darklings, which is a breed of heartless born from when keyblade wielders fall to darkness, and in Kingdom Hearts 3 it's heavily implied that Aqua was in the midst of turning into a Darkling.

Now, if we look at Riku's Dark Mode, we can see some similarities between the two, for one the end of Riku's gloves are a red just like the Darkling's claws and the ends of Aqua's fingers in the GIF above. The dark blue of Riku's suit actually goes with the dark blue that we see form on Aqua's skin, which I think is the replacement for the Darkling's black in this case.

Now I think we need to take a look at Darkness himself, Vanitus.

Vanitus color scheme is a lot closer to that of the original Darkling design which makes sense, as it was basically confirmed in Dark Road that he is the one of the 13 original True Darknesses, which Ventus sealed in his heart in order to give Darkness a form that they could actually beat.

Now let me make this clear, Aqua was in the process of transforming into a natural Darkling, so she would not have had the heartless symbol, as the emblem bearing Heartless are the artificially made ones.

Darklings don't have them, as they are naturally formed Heartless.

However, that begs the question, why does Riku's Dark Mode suit have the Heartless symbol but have similarities to both Vanitus and the Darklings?

I think Riku was forming into the very first artificial Darkling.

As at the time Riku was not a true keyblade welder, as he had not forged his own but he did have the potential.

Not only that, there was abundantly more artificial Heartless in the worlds then natural ones at the time, also Maleficent gave him the ability to control the Heartless, now that ability probably is not limited to the artificial ones, but that's probably a good catalyst as one of the reasons that he at the beginning of the transformation into.

One of the other reasons he could have possibly been turning into a Darkling, was the fact that he was exposing himself to so much darkness, but I think the reason why he would not have been a true darkling but an artificial one was because of Xehanort's Heartless, Ansem The Seeker of Darkness had intervened with the process.

As Riku was supposed to be his new vessel in order to gain access to Kingdom Hearts, but as we all know that's not how things turned out.

The Case Study of Vanitas