Put Your Lights On: A Riku Tribute

*SPOILERS*
This vid contains several KH1, KH: Chain of Memories and KH2 spoilers. Those of you who enjoy silver-haired-bishi-hotness may choose to ignore this warning XD

Yep, my first-ever Riku tribute vid.
I've actually been wanting to make this for over a year now. What was the hold-up? I'll explain later...

This is to one of my favorite songs of all time. Why it's never been used for a Riku tribute by anyone else, in the year that I've been contemplating/attempting at it, I'll never know -_-
Personally, I think it fits Riku perfectly.

This is all about Riku's battle with the darkness throughout Kingdom Hearts. Riku knows all too well what can happen when you fall to the darkness; better than anyone. And so, he tries to warn his closest friends, and everyone else, about what the darkness is really about, and that they should always dwell in the light. All the while, Riku's still plauged by his personal demon of darkness; darkness still lies within him. But with help from the light, and a certain "angel", he hopes to overcome it once and for all.

Just so you know, the parts during the Santana instrumental are Riku's flashbacks on his ongoing fight with darkness.
And NO, I'm not trying to imply Riku/Kairi with the parts with Kairi in this; I just used her for that role because she (SPOILER ALERT) is one of the Princesses of Heart, has no darkness in her heart (...supposedly...), and therefore is pretty much of the light, and so was perfect for the role (I kind of used Namine for those parts too...you'll see what I mean). And besides, they did have kind of a cute way of relating to each other in KH2 (I'm avoiding the word "relationship" here -_-).
This is a tad anti-Org.; only because of Riku's obvious distain for the Organization (as we saw near the end of KH2).
And the part with Axel near the end...I had always planned on using Axel for that part, I just knew of no other part that would fit it just as well. And it shows how Axel, after all that he had done in the past, redeemed himself.
Actually, I've contemplated doing an Axel tribute to this song too...but it really does fit Riku best.

Well, like I said, I've wanted to make this for over a year. I tried once, then I upgraded to WMM 2.1 (temporarily) to try some effects on the clips, but then the Movie Maker got all weird on me and then stopped working, so I had to uninstall the whole thing and go back to 1.1. When I went back to the project file, it wouldn't open because it didn't recognize the effects I did :(
So that held things up for a while...

Then, when I found a certain new scene from Re:COM, I started trying to make it again. But, I got overwhelmed and frustrated -_-
But then, I mentioned it to my friend Caitlin, aka AxelObcessed, she sounded impressed (it's one of her fav songs too :D) and pretty much told me "Do it, man!"
I don't usually have anyone to motivate me video-wise other than myself (ok, I have my subscribers, but I know they're patient...right??? -_-'), and sometimes I need a little encouragement to get a project finished, so this helped me quite a bit ^^

And you know what? I'm glad I waited to do this one. If I had done it last year, I wouldn't have had the Re:COM and Final Mix scenes to work with, and they make the vid much better ^_^

So, to make a long story short, I worked REALLY hard on this.
I hope you like it =)

The video clips are from KH2.co.uk and KH-Vids.net, song info in credits.

SPECIAL EDIT! :D

Won Best Action and Best Video Game in the Venus Doom Awards:
http://venusdoomawards.webs.com/round4.htm

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Kingdom
• Hearts
• KH
• KH2
• KHII
• Riku
• Sora
• Kairi
• Axel
• Roxas
• Organization
• XIII
• 13
• Vexen
• Ansem
• Xehanort

[hurtful22222]

whats the ending song?

[Slewinca]

"Redemption" by Gackt.

Watch the KH AMV of it by AxelObcessed!! :D

[auromkom]

This was a great video, to a great song that really fits Riku, imo.

[n1g3ld34c0n]

T_T; This... was beautiful. Your best work yet. This song is just perfect for Riku, and it made me feel, like, sooo sorry for him. To be honest, watching this, I almost cried. 5 and faved.

[GavenRocker]

the song fits with Riku too perfectly.

[hersh1314]

TIghT

u should check out my kh vids.

one is about the guys and

the other 2 r mushy

PLZ CHECK THEM OUT

[DeathScytheHitomi]

Hm... This song by Santana is really good and to use it for Riku was really cool, good job! :)

[AmaranthDreams]

WELL DONE!

[kisaro88]

omg T_T i love this...thank you so much for making this...i love riku ;D hes a super smexy bishi XD

[JoshuaNY93BX]

wow anothere grate hit from u, im so glad i found u. just awesome