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To start off with, I do not at all disagree with the cosmology scaling itself. The portrayal of worlds being separate universes is extremely and undoubtedly consistent. However, I do have a few issues with believing Low 1-C for the cosmology via the Ocean Between, but that will be saved for towards the end of this. For the sake of this CRT, I will put my issues aside and assume the rating is correct as a place-holder for "true KH's tier" basically.
Anyway, this is going to be a very long post, and one in a 5-part saga CRT. I would not usually want to do something like that, but with all of the arguments towards Kingdom Hearts cosmology, the characters scaling to it has always irked me in a very bad way for various reasons. As stated above, I do agree with the cosmology being 2-B to Low 1-C, possibly even 1-A overall, however what I do have a problem with is the characters actually scaling. This at first might seem very easily disprovable via feats like Sora effecting the Kingdom Hearts of Worlds, or the Endless Abyss sustaining all of the Worlds that exist, etc etc, but I have various problems with all of those feats and the reasoning in which the characters scale. Unfortunately, the latter two I won't be able to get into in this part, but I will admit that I find them far more believable than Low 1-C, which is what the purpose of this part will be focused on addressing why I believe it is inaccurate for the cast to scale to the source of it (the True Kingdom Hearts). On that note, this CRT will be split into 5 parts, as stated above, and these are those:
Part 1 - Scaling to The True Kingdom Hearts
Part 2 - Scaling to The Kingdom Hearts of Worlds
Part 3 - Inconsistencies and Anti-Feats
Part 4 - Lore and Narrative Contradictions of Cosmology Scaling
Part 5 - Potential Counterarguments
(links for all of these will be added as they are created. Part 2 will likely be put out anywhere from tomorrow to Saturday)
Without further ado, let's begin.
Anyway, we will begin by addressing all of the arguments made towards the cast, possibly with the exception of Sora, scaling to the true Kingdom Hearts.
https://youtu.be/_Nvp0vRWc0Q?t=409
Plus, when Rage Form Sora takes his heart back, this light amplification on Xehanort goes away, and in fact causes Xehanort to be drowned in darkness as well, further backing up the idea that Xehanort was simply just amplified by Sora's stats and not the True Kingdom Hearts, hence this cannot be used to prove the scaling.
Not immediately going for the kill on Sora by blasting him with all of Kingdom Hearts at once would also be completely in character for Xehanort. Not only is Xehanort visibly having fun with this fight, but Xehanort has shown many times to purposely hold back to test younger Keyblade Wielders. Xehanort was completely sure and confident in his plan at this moment in time, so this clearly was not a fight to the death in his mind, until he was actually struck down.
And speaking of that, the fact the full power blast killed Sora at all, let alone nearly instantly, itself automatically proves that Sora or any of the other Guardians of Light and Seekers of Darkness do not actually scale to the True Kingdom Hearts' power. You could argue because Sora was able to hold it back for a brief few seconds that he could still downscale, however this is more likely simply put in game for dramatic purposes, and also the full power of the blast likely hadn't been built up yet. Regardless, Sora is still visibly far inferior to power equal to the peak of the verse's cosmology, and as such scaling him to it, the True Kingdom Hearts, makes this scene make hardly any sense.
I can, however, agree that he should have willpower hax that can amplify him to Low 1-C, as Donald and Goofy's hearts restoring him were able to immediately repel the blast and one-shot Xehanort while he still had Kingdom Hearts' power. The issue is that this would not scale to Sora's heart's ordinary, standard strength, as you literally cannot proceed with this until Donald and Goofy revive you, making their presence necessary for Sora to be Low 1-C. This opens up a possibility for the Trinity Limit move itself to possibly be Low 1-C, but I find this to be more of a showing of Sora's willpower hax amplifying him enough to scale to the true Kingdom Hearts for a brief moment in time. I just don't think this would necessarily scale outside of amplifications which Sora has always done when being assisted by his friends, and consistently would not be able to do this in a 1-on-1 fight scenario like most VS fights are set up in.
Because of this, I propose the Low 1-C rating does remain for Sora, but only as a "up to Low 1-C via bond with others", or some other terminology that sounds better, because that's the best I can think of. I'll elaborate on this more at the end of this CRT.
And also, I did not forget about strength of heart = strength of keyblade, but that, one, doesn't apply here as Sora's heart was being amped by Donald and Goofy in this specific moment only with no implication that Sora wouldn't still die upon being attacked by something with similar power without Donald and Goofy's help. And two, I will be addressing that notion more in-depth when getting into my issues with 2-B for the cast, and why I do not believe it's entirely true. I know I said this at the beginning too, but just in case you missed that...here's another reminder, lol.
Late-KHBbS Aqua, Terra and Ventus: The three of them fought against someone with the X-Blade in BbS, more specifically Vanitas and Xehanort.
Yes, the True KH's involvement in the final Xehanort battle is certainly without question, but not in a way that actually utilized it's full power up until Xehanort's final attack, and nothing really suggests this to be true given how blatant it is that Xehanort's Last Ray is far above everything else in his entire moveset and very explicitly is actually portraying Kingdom Hearts in it's entirety. And the X-Blade does not entirely scale on it's own passively, the blade itself is still just a more powerful keyblade without Kingdom Hearts' power being unlocked and utilized with the X-Blade, let alone the incomplete X-Blade which would just be the latter. And again, the True Kingdom Hearts allowing Xehanort to amplify himself with Sora's light is not the same as using Sora's light to give him the full power of Kingdom Hearts. That was explicitly saved for the final scene.
As stated above, this cannot scale to the true Kingdom Hearts as the incomplete X-Blade is incapable of harnessing Kingdom Hearts' power. Ventus-Vanitas was simply monologuing about what the X-Blade would do once it's fully completed. The True Kingdom Hearts being summoned in BbS is also irrelevant because it was not actually unlocked, utilized, or manipulated in any way outside of attempts to try and make that possible with the completed X-Blade. By saying "if not stopped", that is referring to if it was fully forged, which the incomplete X-Blade was not. Therefore, the incomplete X-Blade very much is not able to scale to the True Kingdom Hearts either, as it literally cannot access it. By "threatening to fully call the True Kingdom Hearts", that is referring to when the X-Blade is finally truly complete.
Also, the argument of Aqua struggling harder than before with the incomplete X-Blade is still just vague, albeit likely considerably large, upscaling. The difference between the true Kingdom Hearts and a Keyblade wielder on par with Aqua is much, much bigger.
That's about it for the main arguments towards the idea of the main cast scaling to the true Kingdom Hearts. However, there are a bit more listed in the actual profiles that I feel are worth addressing, so we'll go over those now:
This would not be Low 1-C. The X-Blade was incomplete here, meaning as stated multiple times above, it cannot do anything to scale to Kingdom Hearts. While the explanation afterwards attempts to justify this by scaling it to the late-game KH III guardians of light and seekers of darkness, I do not believe they scale to Low 1-C either. In short, the entire point of the late-game battles in the Keyblade Graveyard was to forge the X-Blade specifically so Xehanort could basically instantly win by getting Kingdom Hearts' light for himself. In fact, as soon as Xehanort unlocked Kingdom Hearts and corrupted it, the entire cast could hardly do anything to stop that at all. Hell, their entire goal in the climax of the game is to stop Xehanort from unleashing Kingdom Hearts' true power, blatantly implying Kingdom Hearts' power to be far above the main cast. This also implies Xehanort standardly does not scale to Kingdom Hearts' full power either, but again, this will be elaborated on later. There are some problems with the X-Blade itself being Low 1-C too, which again will be elaborated on further on.
Anyway, scaling the Incomplete X-Blade to the actual X-Blade is completely nonsensical. The whole reason the X-Blade is given the Low 1-C rating in the first place is by it being the counterpart to the true Kingdom Hearts and the fact it is able to summon and control it. However, the incomplete X-Blade very obviously cannot do this, and the whole reason for why Xehanort wished to complete it is so that it can. To suggest that an incomplete version of the X-Blade is still a counterpart on par with Kingdom Hearts despite it being very clear the complete X-Blade is necessary in doing that, is a completely ridiculous notion and completely contradicts Birth By Sleep's story.
The only other justification for the Low 1-C rating for the Incomplete X-Blade is simply generic upscaling arguments which do not necessarily constitute any AP besides the "At least" category:
Plus, the difference between the main cast and the X-Blade's power is very clearly a massive one. Vanitas with the incomplete X-Blade is capable of overpowering Aqua and King Mickey, but they are still very capable of holding him off. When the full power of Kingdom Hearts was used against Sora, well...this happened. The X-Blade page itself even says exactly this but still scales Sora to Low 1-C anyway:
On the topic of this, the X-Blade itself would not scale to Low 1-C without the usage of Kingdom Hearts' power. The X-Blade page fails to mention that Xehanort was using all of the light of Kingdom Hearts in this attack, which itself would be a Low 1-C attack and should be used in the parentheses of the "higher with Kingdom Hearts" justification. Yet the fact Sora is one-shotted by the very same power (that being the entire cosmology which the true Kingdom Hearts scales to) that he supposedly standardly scales to is completely overlooked as a factor here.
The X-Blade is not a weapon which is passively on the same level as the Kingdom Hearts entity. I know I've stated this multiple times above, but I feel like this is worth addressing in-depth. This portrayal of the X-Blade is very consistently shown, most prominently in Kingdom Hearts III. It moreso acts like a, true to it's nature, key to gain access to Kingdom Hearts' power at will. Like with how all Keyblades in Kingdom Hearts work, they are able to "unlock" or "seal" the keyholes of worlds, and the X-Blade is no exception. With the X-Blade, however, the world it is "unlocking" is Kingdom Hearts itself. As a comparison, if you tried using your door lock as an actual weapon to attack people with, it obviously would not come anywhere close to how powerful being slammed with a door will be. However, a key does allow you unlock said door, and because of that, being able to open the door with your hand, and thus become able to slam said door thanks to said key.
This portrayal is backed up by Sora when being bequeathed the X-Blade by Xehanort, using it to seal Kingdom Hearts back away. This means that someone like Xehanort would have to specifically draw upon Kingdom Hearts' power with the X-Blade and amp themselves up with it. And this is what Xehanort does in both the story boss fight and the Limit Cut boss fight. His attack in which he steals Sora's light is an example of him utilizing Kingdom Hearts. When he simply swings the X-Blade, throws it, performs magic with it, or even just casts energy projection, he is not hitting with the Low 1-C power of the cosmology. He would only be doing so with the "Last Ray" situation command, which very clearly does utilize Kingdom Hearts' entire power, and thus the Low 1-C cosmology's power. And, again, Sora is one-shotted immediately by being hit by this. Not once, however, does this happen in the normal boss fight. There is a very clear difference between the physical X-Blade weapon's power and the X-Blade drawing upon Kingdom Hearts.
This would mean that King Mickey and Aqua cannot scale to Ventus-Vanitas just by virtue of the fact he used the complete X-Blade, as he was not utilizing the power of Kingdom Hearts against them in the way Xehanort was against Sora, Donald, and Goofy. This discredits anyone in the cast besides the Kingdom Hearts Entity and the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power being Low 1-C.
While the X-Blade's profile does acknowledge a difference between the standard physical X-Blade and the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power, it does not make any reasonable effort or attempt to explain why the X-Blade itself is still Low 1-C outside of the fact it's shown as being vaguely superior to the main cast by a explicitly far less wide margin than the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power is and how much more powerful Kingdom Hearts itself is from the cast, despite Low 1-C deriving from the Kingdom Hearts entity's tier, which is the source of the scaling to the entirety of the cosmology including the Ocean Between.
Outside of this, the only other justifications for Low 1-C scaling for the main cast is just a scaling chain circling back to the same reasoning of Aqua and King Mickey fighting off Ventus-Vanitas with the complete X-Blade, which as we've just determined, does not automatically scale to Low 1-C unless it utilizes Kingdom Hearts.
I would be fine with a 2-B, Low 1-C with Kingdom Hearts rating for this, however more realistically I would push for a 3-C, 2-A with Kingdom Hearts rating, and that will be elaborated on in much more detail in the next part of this post.
I'm sorry for splitting this into multiple parts, but with all of the arguments made of Kingdom Hearts' cosmology, there is an absolutely unreal amount to go through and I can't address them all in a singular post. The next one will be talking about my issues with the 2-B scaling of the verse and why I believe very few, if not any characters should scale to it at all outside of very specific circumstances.
Overall, revisions I would make (ignoring what I'll say in other posts, this will be revised at the end of that one):
Xehanort: 2-B | 2-B | 2-B | 2-B, Low 1-C with Kingdom Hearts
Sora: 9-B | 2-B | 2-B | 2-B in base, 2-B, far higher with summons, Drive Forms and Trinity Limit | 2-B, up to Low 1-C with bond with others | 2-B, higher with Formchanges, up to Low 1-C with bond with others
Everyone Else: 2-B lol
Agree:
Disagree:
Anyway, this is going to be a very long post, and one in a 5-part saga CRT. I would not usually want to do something like that, but with all of the arguments towards Kingdom Hearts cosmology, the characters scaling to it has always irked me in a very bad way for various reasons. As stated above, I do agree with the cosmology being 2-B to Low 1-C, possibly even 1-A overall, however what I do have a problem with is the characters actually scaling. This at first might seem very easily disprovable via feats like Sora effecting the Kingdom Hearts of Worlds, or the Endless Abyss sustaining all of the Worlds that exist, etc etc, but I have various problems with all of those feats and the reasoning in which the characters scale. Unfortunately, the latter two I won't be able to get into in this part, but I will admit that I find them far more believable than Low 1-C, which is what the purpose of this part will be focused on addressing why I believe it is inaccurate for the cast to scale to the source of it (the True Kingdom Hearts). On that note, this CRT will be split into 5 parts, as stated above, and these are those:
Part 1 - Scaling to The True Kingdom Hearts
Part 2 - Scaling to The Kingdom Hearts of Worlds
Part 3 - Inconsistencies and Anti-Feats
Part 4 - Lore and Narrative Contradictions of Cosmology Scaling
Part 5 - Potential Counterarguments
(links for all of these will be added as they are created. Part 2 will likely be put out anywhere from tomorrow to Saturday)
Without further ado, let's begin.
Problems with the main cast scaling to the True Kingdom Hearts:
Before we start, yes, I am fully aware of user @Bobsican 's many blogs on the matter of Kingdom Hearts' cosmology, and they are very well done and have a ton of very reasonable scaling of the cosmology itself. However, as I already stated above (and as is the entire point of this CRT), I adamantly disagree with his notion of anyone in the verse scaling to the True KH, as well as (but not as much so), his notion for characters scaling to Sora's 2-B showing of restoring the light to the Kingdom Hearts of Worlds. I believe this feat to be simply Environmental Destruction/Creation, and yes, I am also aware of the arguments of scaling the Keyblade to this via it being on par with Sora's "strength of heart", but I also adamantly disagree with that notion as well, which I will address later on. However, the latter argument I find significantly more reasonable than the cast scaling to the True Kingdom Hearts, which is why I will be addressing that first. But make no mistake, I do still highly disagree with the Kingdom Hearts cast being Low 2-C to 2-B as well.Anyway, we will begin by addressing all of the arguments made towards the cast, possibly with the exception of Sora, scaling to the true Kingdom Hearts.
https://youtu.be/_Nvp0vRWc0Q?t=409
This doesn't really mean anything. This is simply a showing of power absorption, a hax ability. And it is not Kingdom Hearts' power he is draining, it's Sora's. He's simply using the light of Kingdom Hearts as a means to drain Sora, that doesn't mean he is amping himself up with the entire Low 1-C light of Kingdom Hearts. While he is undoubtedly drawing upon Kingdom Hearts' power to do this, it most certainly is not the entire Low 1-C power of Kingdom Hearts that is behind this amplification. By draining Sora of his light, he is transferring it to himself in the process, which is responsible for amplifying him while simultaneously depowering Sora. It is an incredible leap in logic to assume that Xehanort was instead amping himself up with the entire Low 1-C light of Kingdom Hearts at this moment, and believing this to be the case simply because he used Kingdom Hearts as a means to drain Sora's light to use for himself is a faulty argument. By similar logic, we can scale, say, Obito Uchiha is Low 2-C due to being able to harness Kamui to empower himself and pull people into it's dimension, which is a separate space-time. It's far more likely Xehanort simply used Kingdom Hearts to manipulate Sora's heart inside and drain it of it's light. Hence, this is simply a hax showing of Xehanort using power absorption as an application of using the true Kingdom Hearts. When Xehanort actually uses the full power of the True Kingdom Hearts, Sora is immediately one-shotted, and this is something which is made abundantly clear is the actual time Xehanort harnesses Kingdom Hearts' full power.
Plus, when Rage Form Sora takes his heart back, this light amplification on Xehanort goes away, and in fact causes Xehanort to be drowned in darkness as well, further backing up the idea that Xehanort was simply just amplified by Sora's stats and not the True Kingdom Hearts, hence this cannot be used to prove the scaling.
Not comparable to the previous example. Xehanort when draining Sora of his light was doing an entirely different action. Xehanort using the light of Kingdom Hearts to drain Sora's light was not being explicitly used as an attack, it was being used as a means to depower Sora and amplify himself with Sora's light. He was NOT calling upon Kingdom Hearts' full power to amplify himself, and the presentation in both of these scenes shows these two things very explicitly differently and not at all comparable in the way Bobsican claims. The "glowing" is not at all the same, and the Last Ray situation command hardly shows glowing rather than visibly draining Kingdom Hearts and turning it into Darkness. Xehanort is calling upon the full power of the True Kingdom Hearts in this example, that much is true. The usage of Xehanort saying "This ends here and now!" very much implies that even further. The problem here lies in the fact that this is not something which Xehanort did in any comparable way in the entire final boss fight. Sure, he utilized Kingdom Hearts' power to manipulate the fight in his favor, but he wasn't explicitly harnessing it's entire power all at once up until he was drained to 1 HP.
Not immediately going for the kill on Sora by blasting him with all of Kingdom Hearts at once would also be completely in character for Xehanort. Not only is Xehanort visibly having fun with this fight, but Xehanort has shown many times to purposely hold back to test younger Keyblade Wielders. Xehanort was completely sure and confident in his plan at this moment in time, so this clearly was not a fight to the death in his mind, until he was actually struck down.
And speaking of that, the fact the full power blast killed Sora at all, let alone nearly instantly, itself automatically proves that Sora or any of the other Guardians of Light and Seekers of Darkness do not actually scale to the True Kingdom Hearts' power. You could argue because Sora was able to hold it back for a brief few seconds that he could still downscale, however this is more likely simply put in game for dramatic purposes, and also the full power of the blast likely hadn't been built up yet. Regardless, Sora is still visibly far inferior to power equal to the peak of the verse's cosmology, and as such scaling him to it, the True Kingdom Hearts, makes this scene make hardly any sense.
I can, however, agree that he should have willpower hax that can amplify him to Low 1-C, as Donald and Goofy's hearts restoring him were able to immediately repel the blast and one-shot Xehanort while he still had Kingdom Hearts' power. The issue is that this would not scale to Sora's heart's ordinary, standard strength, as you literally cannot proceed with this until Donald and Goofy revive you, making their presence necessary for Sora to be Low 1-C. This opens up a possibility for the Trinity Limit move itself to possibly be Low 1-C, but I find this to be more of a showing of Sora's willpower hax amplifying him enough to scale to the true Kingdom Hearts for a brief moment in time. I just don't think this would necessarily scale outside of amplifications which Sora has always done when being assisted by his friends, and consistently would not be able to do this in a 1-on-1 fight scenario like most VS fights are set up in.
Because of this, I propose the Low 1-C rating does remain for Sora, but only as a "up to Low 1-C via bond with others", or some other terminology that sounds better, because that's the best I can think of. I'll elaborate on this more at the end of this CRT.
And also, I did not forget about strength of heart = strength of keyblade, but that, one, doesn't apply here as Sora's heart was being amped by Donald and Goofy in this specific moment only with no implication that Sora wouldn't still die upon being attacked by something with similar power without Donald and Goofy's help. And two, I will be addressing that notion more in-depth when getting into my issues with 2-B for the cast, and why I do not believe it's entirely true. I know I said this at the beginning too, but just in case you missed that...here's another reminder, lol.
This is not at all true. Xehanort was simply monologuing about what his entire goal in the series was from the beginning. He's explaining what he was planning to do with Kingdom Hearts, not what it's still doing. I respect Bobsican a ton, but this argument genuinely is one of the worst he's ever made on any of his blogs. It is completely nonsensical quite frankly. This would be like saying The Infinity Stones were threatening to destroy the Universe in the MCU while 2014 Thanos was explaining what he was going to do now when he got a hold of the stones. Kingdom Hearts still being present is because it was unlocked by Xehanort and that can't exactly be undone without sealing it back up. Also, the true Kingdom Hearts clearly was no longer a threat after Xehanort drained it's power, it's quite literally shattered with it's keyhole exposed, which is how they were able to seal it. The True Kingdom Hearts was absolutely not passively threatening to do anything here. It had the potential too if someone for some reason nabbed the X-Blade and decided to betray everyone by doing something like that, sure, but without anyone using it to harness Kingdom Hearts, it is literally not "still" doing anything.
While a reasonable one, this is still an assumption that is not entirely confirmed. The X-Blade can and does harness the true Kingdom Hearts' power, however it does not passively scale to it automatically just with it's blade, it has to specifically use it to unlock and attack with the light of Kingdom Hearts, the blade itself is still just a much more powerful keyblade. The official X-Blade page we have even directly acknowledges this. By extension, the incomplete X-Blade used by Vanitas and Ventus-Vanitas cannot utilize Kingdom Hearts in any capacity, and itself is no different from any other Keyblade outside of being vaguely more powerful and obviously having a unique design. This discredits this as an argument for Terra, Aqua, and Ventus scaling to Low 1-C as well, along with King Mickey and the rest of the cast by extension.
Late-KHBbS Aqua, Terra and Ventus: The three of them fought against someone with the X-Blade in BbS, more specifically Vanitas and Xehanort.
Yes, the True KH's involvement in the final Xehanort battle is certainly without question, but not in a way that actually utilized it's full power up until Xehanort's final attack, and nothing really suggests this to be true given how blatant it is that Xehanort's Last Ray is far above everything else in his entire moveset and very explicitly is actually portraying Kingdom Hearts in it's entirety. And the X-Blade does not entirely scale on it's own passively, the blade itself is still just a more powerful keyblade without Kingdom Hearts' power being unlocked and utilized with the X-Blade, let alone the incomplete X-Blade which would just be the latter. And again, the True Kingdom Hearts allowing Xehanort to amplify himself with Sora's light is not the same as using Sora's light to give him the full power of Kingdom Hearts. That was explicitly saved for the final scene.
As stated above, this cannot scale to the true Kingdom Hearts as the incomplete X-Blade is incapable of harnessing Kingdom Hearts' power. Ventus-Vanitas was simply monologuing about what the X-Blade would do once it's fully completed. The True Kingdom Hearts being summoned in BbS is also irrelevant because it was not actually unlocked, utilized, or manipulated in any way outside of attempts to try and make that possible with the completed X-Blade. By saying "if not stopped", that is referring to if it was fully forged, which the incomplete X-Blade was not. Therefore, the incomplete X-Blade very much is not able to scale to the True Kingdom Hearts either, as it literally cannot access it. By "threatening to fully call the True Kingdom Hearts", that is referring to when the X-Blade is finally truly complete.
Also, the argument of Aqua struggling harder than before with the incomplete X-Blade is still just vague, albeit likely considerably large, upscaling. The difference between the true Kingdom Hearts and a Keyblade wielder on par with Aqua is much, much bigger.
That's about it for the main arguments towards the idea of the main cast scaling to the true Kingdom Hearts. However, there are a bit more listed in the actual profiles that I feel are worth addressing, so we'll go over those now:
This would not be Low 1-C. The X-Blade was incomplete here, meaning as stated multiple times above, it cannot do anything to scale to Kingdom Hearts. While the explanation afterwards attempts to justify this by scaling it to the late-game KH III guardians of light and seekers of darkness, I do not believe they scale to Low 1-C either. In short, the entire point of the late-game battles in the Keyblade Graveyard was to forge the X-Blade specifically so Xehanort could basically instantly win by getting Kingdom Hearts' light for himself. In fact, as soon as Xehanort unlocked Kingdom Hearts and corrupted it, the entire cast could hardly do anything to stop that at all. Hell, their entire goal in the climax of the game is to stop Xehanort from unleashing Kingdom Hearts' true power, blatantly implying Kingdom Hearts' power to be far above the main cast. This also implies Xehanort standardly does not scale to Kingdom Hearts' full power either, but again, this will be elaborated on later. There are some problems with the X-Blade itself being Low 1-C too, which again will be elaborated on further on.
Anyway, scaling the Incomplete X-Blade to the actual X-Blade is completely nonsensical. The whole reason the X-Blade is given the Low 1-C rating in the first place is by it being the counterpart to the true Kingdom Hearts and the fact it is able to summon and control it. However, the incomplete X-Blade very obviously cannot do this, and the whole reason for why Xehanort wished to complete it is so that it can. To suggest that an incomplete version of the X-Blade is still a counterpart on par with Kingdom Hearts despite it being very clear the complete X-Blade is necessary in doing that, is a completely ridiculous notion and completely contradicts Birth By Sleep's story.
The only other justification for the Low 1-C rating for the Incomplete X-Blade is simply generic upscaling arguments which do not necessarily constitute any AP besides the "At least" category:
Plus, the difference between the main cast and the X-Blade's power is very clearly a massive one. Vanitas with the incomplete X-Blade is capable of overpowering Aqua and King Mickey, but they are still very capable of holding him off. When the full power of Kingdom Hearts was used against Sora, well...this happened. The X-Blade page itself even says exactly this but still scales Sora to Low 1-C anyway:
On the topic of this, the X-Blade itself would not scale to Low 1-C without the usage of Kingdom Hearts' power. The X-Blade page fails to mention that Xehanort was using all of the light of Kingdom Hearts in this attack, which itself would be a Low 1-C attack and should be used in the parentheses of the "higher with Kingdom Hearts" justification. Yet the fact Sora is one-shotted by the very same power (that being the entire cosmology which the true Kingdom Hearts scales to) that he supposedly standardly scales to is completely overlooked as a factor here.
The X-Blade is not a weapon which is passively on the same level as the Kingdom Hearts entity. I know I've stated this multiple times above, but I feel like this is worth addressing in-depth. This portrayal of the X-Blade is very consistently shown, most prominently in Kingdom Hearts III. It moreso acts like a, true to it's nature, key to gain access to Kingdom Hearts' power at will. Like with how all Keyblades in Kingdom Hearts work, they are able to "unlock" or "seal" the keyholes of worlds, and the X-Blade is no exception. With the X-Blade, however, the world it is "unlocking" is Kingdom Hearts itself. As a comparison, if you tried using your door lock as an actual weapon to attack people with, it obviously would not come anywhere close to how powerful being slammed with a door will be. However, a key does allow you unlock said door, and because of that, being able to open the door with your hand, and thus become able to slam said door thanks to said key.
This portrayal is backed up by Sora when being bequeathed the X-Blade by Xehanort, using it to seal Kingdom Hearts back away. This means that someone like Xehanort would have to specifically draw upon Kingdom Hearts' power with the X-Blade and amp themselves up with it. And this is what Xehanort does in both the story boss fight and the Limit Cut boss fight. His attack in which he steals Sora's light is an example of him utilizing Kingdom Hearts. When he simply swings the X-Blade, throws it, performs magic with it, or even just casts energy projection, he is not hitting with the Low 1-C power of the cosmology. He would only be doing so with the "Last Ray" situation command, which very clearly does utilize Kingdom Hearts' entire power, and thus the Low 1-C cosmology's power. And, again, Sora is one-shotted immediately by being hit by this. Not once, however, does this happen in the normal boss fight. There is a very clear difference between the physical X-Blade weapon's power and the X-Blade drawing upon Kingdom Hearts.
This would mean that King Mickey and Aqua cannot scale to Ventus-Vanitas just by virtue of the fact he used the complete X-Blade, as he was not utilizing the power of Kingdom Hearts against them in the way Xehanort was against Sora, Donald, and Goofy. This discredits anyone in the cast besides the Kingdom Hearts Entity and the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power being Low 1-C.
While the X-Blade's profile does acknowledge a difference between the standard physical X-Blade and the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power, it does not make any reasonable effort or attempt to explain why the X-Blade itself is still Low 1-C outside of the fact it's shown as being vaguely superior to the main cast by a explicitly far less wide margin than the X-Blade with Kingdom Hearts' power is and how much more powerful Kingdom Hearts itself is from the cast, despite Low 1-C deriving from the Kingdom Hearts entity's tier, which is the source of the scaling to the entirety of the cosmology including the Ocean Between.
Outside of this, the only other justifications for Low 1-C scaling for the main cast is just a scaling chain circling back to the same reasoning of Aqua and King Mickey fighting off Ventus-Vanitas with the complete X-Blade, which as we've just determined, does not automatically scale to Low 1-C unless it utilizes Kingdom Hearts.
I would be fine with a 2-B, Low 1-C with Kingdom Hearts rating for this, however more realistically I would push for a 3-C, 2-A with Kingdom Hearts rating, and that will be elaborated on in much more detail in the next part of this post.
I'm sorry for splitting this into multiple parts, but with all of the arguments made of Kingdom Hearts' cosmology, there is an absolutely unreal amount to go through and I can't address them all in a singular post. The next one will be talking about my issues with the 2-B scaling of the verse and why I believe very few, if not any characters should scale to it at all outside of very specific circumstances.
Overall, revisions I would make (ignoring what I'll say in other posts, this will be revised at the end of that one):
Xehanort: 2-B | 2-B | 2-B | 2-B, Low 1-C with Kingdom Hearts
Sora: 9-B | 2-B | 2-B | 2-B in base, 2-B, far higher with summons, Drive Forms and Trinity Limit | 2-B, up to Low 1-C with bond with others | 2-B, higher with Formchanges, up to Low 1-C with bond with others
Everyone Else: 2-B lol
Agree:
Disagree:
