Clickbait Boyfriend fans, we are just one day away from that most magical (or, let’s be honest, magically confusing) moment: Kingdom Hearts III release day. That means that Clickbait Boyfriend has a lot of work to do if he’s going to be caught up and ready to jump into his first brand new Kingdom Hearts game ever. He’ll be playing 0.2 tonight, but first, we’ve got one more cinematic watch. In a Clickbait Boyfriend first, Josh and I watched Back Cover for the first time together! The baby is all grown up and knows the same amount about the series as me! I just shed a tear.
But this isn’t the time to get sentimental! We have some weird cat creatures and Keyblade intrigue to watch!
(New to Clickbait Boyfriend? This is the perfect time to get started! Check out all of his adventures here.)
“I can’t believe that cat thing from the Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer is from Back Cover.”
-on making sense of those last few trailer secrets
I was going to ask where else it could possibly be from, but 1. it could very well be a Dream Eater and 2. Kingdom Hearts has never shown much (any?) restraint about throwing new wrenches into the mix.
Kingdom Hearts > everything else
“Dang, this looks intense.”
-on the most positive early feedback CBB has ever given a Kingdom Hearts game
Clickbait Boyfriend is clearly pretty dazzled by the pretty graphics on the PS4. He’ll never admit it, but I’ll bet that’s half the reason he’s been at least relatively positive toward the 2.8 collection.
Not as intense as this leaked Kingdom Hearts 3 footage.
“Whenever you make a grunt of understanding, I’m going to get very insecure.”
-on the perils of a slightly spoiled girlfriend
In the process of writing dozens of Clickbait Boyfriend blogs, I had to do a lot of Google Image searching. Inevitably, I occasionally encountered light spoilers for games I had yet to play. It’s an occupational hazard. That said, as I mentioned in the introduction, this was also my first time watching Back Cover, so I had just enough insight into this new wrinkle in the Kingdom Hearts universe to make Clickbait Boyfriend nervous. It doesn’t take much, apparently!
This is still me.
“This is the master? Why does he talk like a skater boy?”
-on bold vocal choices
Emma’s theory is that having such a laid-back master is what caused all of the Foretellers to be so serious, but I think that it was just a strong but wrong vocal choice.
This is the voice actor’s Twitter.
“This does look gorgeous.”
-on the beauty of a PS4 original
What did I tell you? He’s dazzled.
It’s also all pre-rendered cinematic, so it helps that we don’t have any of the weird mid-cutscene transitions in and out of the game engine.
“Got it memorized? That’s my current working hypothesis.”
-on bizarre, impossible conspiracy theories
For some reason, Clickbait Boyfriend convinced himself that the master was going to be Axel. This makes no sense, as Back Cover takes place about one hundred years before any of the other games, and we saw Lea as a child in Birth By Sleep. However, this whole series makes no sense, so I can’t mock him too much.
This series is nuts. Got it memorized?
“Arthur!”
-on ever-present fists
The Arthur fist is more of an animation trope than I realized.
Frankly, how dare you.
“Damn, okay Morgana. Oh man, he’s whipped.”
-on obeying the orders of side-kick kitties
This is why we aren’t cat people.
Chirithy, running to tell me its past my bedtime.
“Uh oh, Aced acting a little sketch.”
–on sniffing out the traitor
Don’t let the darkness into your heart, Aced!
There are days where I would betray everyone I love for some chocolate too, honestly.
“This is killing me. Who is it going to be?”
-on plot investment???
If I take anything away from watching Back Cover with Clickbait Boyfriend, it’s that he is in deeper than I realized. He’s incredibly invested in the plot of the most esoteric Kingdom Hearts game available on a console system. I have created a monster.
Maybe the real traitor was the friendships we made along the way.
“Their names put together are probably an anagram of something. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
-on justified intuitions
A Nicaragua Lea Vivid
A Racial Guava Divine
A Vaginal Vicar Adieu
Valiance Aura Via Dig
…nope
Pictured: Clickbait Boyfriend, attempting to anagram every name in the series
“I just want a feature length KH movie.”
-on unexplored media forms
We’ve hit almost every gaming system, both handheld and console, plus manga and cutscene cinematics that are somehow either too short or far too long to be considered “feature-length.” It’s only a matter of time before Kingdom Hearts hits movies theaters. Maybe Sora can make it into the next generation of Marvel movies.
Or Star Wars?
“Honestly, this is up there with the Moogle.”
-on the Kingdom Hearts Cuteness Continuum
It’s about time the Kingdom Hearts Hotness Continuum had an E-rated counterpart! Chirithys are pretty cute, but I don’t think anything will beat a flesh and blood Moogle for CBB.
Everytime I type Chirithy, I want to type Cthulhu. What a cutie.
“Maybe these are the children.”
-on the Dandelions
It feels like the Dandelions have to show up in Kingdom Hearts 3, but I am deeply afraid that if they do, I will completely lose touch with the plot.
Me telling Clickbait Boyfriend to leave the room so that I can play Kingdom Hearts 3 in piece
“Ansem and Xemnas are ‘names,’ so I know something is going on here.”
-on anagrams…anagrams everywhere
Is there some kind of connection between ‘names’ and Namine??? The world may never know.
Little Known Fact: Unicorn Ira actually anagrams to Yusuke!
“That’s bad that’s like the pose Xehanort does, that’s bad.”
-on disconcerting similarities
Just go ahead and Nort me now. All of the additional confusion of this movie has made me welcome the darkness.
You know what else is bad? 100 year old Ventus, that’s what.
“WHAT NO NO NO!”
-on the black box
Pictured: Maleficent (left) and Pete (right) searching for answers in Kingdom Hearts 3
“Punch me in the face, please.”
-on the correct reaction to this whole series
If Kingdom Hearts doesn’t make you want to punch yourself in the face, you’re doing it wrong.
Pictured: Clickbait Boyfriend (left), me (center), and Emma (right) freaking out about tomorrow’s big release
Next time: Clickbait Boyfriend plays 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage and makes some predictions about Kingdom Hearts 3!