Kairi (Kingdom Hearts series)
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Though Kairi gets little screen time in the Kingdom Hearts series, she's one of the more important characters. In the beginning of the original Kingdom Hearts, Kairi lives on Destiny Island along with friends Sora and Riku. In a typical twist of events, a love triangle is born and the trio ends up split apart post catastrophe on said Destiny Islands.
As it would turn out, Kairi is necessary for Maleficent to carry out her evil deeds in the game, though Sora (and to a lesser extent, Riku) manage to save Kairi through a long series of events, culminating in one of the saddest-yet-happiest endings in gaming come the final events of Kingdom Hearts. The most touching part of it all is a small scene in which Kairi discovers a secret drawing of Sora's on Destiny Island, and fills in the rest, not to mention Riku's final words.
In Chain of Memories, Kairi's role is diminished, yet still important. Naminé, a character with the ability to reshape and manipulate memories, invades Sora's heart and replaces all memories of Kairi with memories of her. This leads Sora to come close to forgetting about Kairi altogether, though in the end he chooses the right path and asks Naminé to stricken all memories of Castle Oblivion from his memory and to put him in suspended animation.
Which leads us to the fanservice of Kingdom Hearts 2, in which Kairi goes from Sora's cute little friend to skimpy outfit schoolgirl. The base story remains the same in that Sora's ultimate goal is to find Kairi and live peacefully again, but Kairi's character gets changed a lot. On top of the aforementioned change in appearance, Kairi ends up fighting alongside Riku near the end of the game in an effort to save Sora's tail. Works for the Hollywood effect, I guess.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is on the horizon, and one wonders what comes next for Kairi. She's the prototypical damsel in distress character, but has the potential to be more for the series.
"You and Riku never came home... so I came looking for you." -Kairi
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Win-Loss Record1-1 Summer 2006 ContestSpazer Division - 2 Seed Spazer Round 1 --- Defeated (7) Claire Redfield, 56291 [52.08%] - 51795 [47.92%]
Spazer Semifinal --- Lost to (3) Rikku, 54043 [41.72%] - 75494 [58.28%]
Extrapolated Strength --- 36th Place [25.87%]
Kairi's opening round match with Claire was debated to hell and back, because everyone knew it would be close. It was, but the Kingdom Hearts day vote buried Claire, prevented the upset and gave us a good look into how the time of day would effect voting trend throughout the rest of the contest. And if this weren't enough, Kairi proved the performance was no fluke by putting up nearly the same vote total against Rikku in the following round --- in an SFF match, no less.
Kingdom Hearts fans are a fanatical bunch; no matter how big or small the role is, the fans seem to vote for anything in the KH games above *anything* else. Except Ansem, but he sucks.
-Ulti
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