It's about everything, both the artwork as well as story and characters, because as pointed out in the interview and quotes I posted they also care a lot about the storyboard and cutscenes as they show the heart of the characters the most, reviewing every stage, and in Pixar case they even go as far as participate in weekly calls with KH team constantly to assure that the product properly reflects the IPs.
And yeah, they evidently work together, that's kinda the point of collaboration, for different groups to join hands to create a good product that both fulfill its purpose and not damage either series image (though there are some cases where they don't care about the IP image, which obviously is not the case for Disney or Pixar). I never tried to reject the active involvement of both sides and proved the oppose with all the quotes posted, so I really don't know why you got that take.
So this was brought up merely for context and not as a particular aspect of a counterpoint? Well then.
In the quotes I posted in the op they straight up says "It breaks the world setting, but you can still make a new story there" as well as "No, it's not canon, it cannot be" with Nomura insistence (which he himself acknowledge as his insistence) reaching the point where he persisted until the team just answered with a "yeah" to his answer of "So, since it happens between movies, can it be said to be canon and that they remember stuff even if they never talk or think about the game events?", hence me comparing it to when someone in a discussion just goes "Sure buddy" to put an end to the insistence of one of the sides, and it also doesn't help that Nomura himself acknowledges the strangness of his persistence of seeing it as canon.
Uh... I just explained that you were misreading the whole bit, Nomura wasn't around being persistent about his views as far we're told, and the reply affirming canon to TS from Pixar at the end wasn't even directed at him as said at the end of my previous reply, but the interviewer.
You're acting like this is some rabid powerscaler pestering an author in social media for their desired answer, when this was something settled in private interviews with people known to formally work on that sort of stuff, so this is just starting to come off as trying to twist the arguments given for your own's benefit.
Under these circumstances it cannot be taken the canonicity claims of KH team as an objetive true because they evidently are very biased towards making everything canon, even if because of that insistence there will be strange consequences and implications with the original IP.
This claim seems to linger on the assumption that we're only relying on Nomura to confirm canonicity, which isn't the case as explained previously. In any case, Nomura's statement is merely in regards of a basic explanation as to how the process of implementing Disney worlds usually goes for KH, as they try to respect the original canon without being actually canon, most notably as they usually add the characters in the middle of the events of the respective movies, and remove others, Toy Story is simply the exception and not the standard.
TechTV: How much freedom did you have when it came to the Disney characters and worlds?
Nomura: Overall the process was quite smooth. There weren't any big restrictions or a set of guidelines we were given. Disney has its worlds already created, and there's no reason for us to change that, so it wasn't to a point where they had to lead us and take our hands. It was more us trying to bring out the best of what is already made as far as Disney characters go. The only thing we were careful of doing was staying within the characters' established roles and what kind of dialog these characters should have. That's something we all tried to stay within certain boundaries on.
—We were surprised at how the plot of the Pixar worlds were continuations of the original movies.
Nomura: Originally, the basic pattern of the KH series was that Sora and the others get involved in scenes that depict the happenings of the original films. The Tangled and Frozen worlds fit that description. However, with Toy Story and Monsters Inc., upon request from the creators, we went with a pattern of depicting a period set after the movie as an "authorized history." Which pattern a world would follow depended greatly on the ideas of the creators and producers of the movies.
I find it strange to assume that after 4 years of development, or more since it was planned much before, Pixar and Toy Story team would have such a big change of mind despite the strong stance that they had for several years, but alright, my doubts aside, the interview in the link in the op was wrote in 2019/02/11 by Joe Skrebels, IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and I couldn't find in any of the 2017 articles you have shared the content from this interview, so in principle this means that the interview to KH team (including Nomura) by Joe Skrebels came out after the Disney 23 Winter 2018 issue that you are using as evidence, ergo going by the reasoning of your logic this interview would take precedance over the magazine as they are the most recent and in-depth narration made by Nomura about the canonicity of Toy Story (including the admission of the strange consequences that his insistence implies to the IP).
KH3 didn't release until
January 2019, so there was a whole gap of 7 years (KH3 actually
started development in 2012, my bad) of development in total, a lot of things can happen in such timeframe to say the least, especially as Toy Story took the longest for approval even as the first decided series to feature, but interestingly the exact date in which KH3 released was a few days after Joe Skrebels's interview publication.
Edge Magazine also delves into the troubled history of Square Enix, including the bumpy transition to the HD era. Kingdom Hearts III was always a game intended as a title for this generation of consoles (PlayStation 4 / Xbox One) despite development on the game beginning when the PS3 and Xbox 360 were still receiving support from developers (development on Kingdom Hearts III was estimated to have begun in 2012, a year before the next generation of consoles were to be released), and it was destined to be the series' most ambitious and technically demanding game yet.
It was because of Nomura's love and passion for Toy Story that it was the first IP, Edge reports, that Square Enix entered negotiation for. As it turns out, it had the longest approval time as well, as it took several years for Disney and Pixar to okay the story and the character designs.
Either way, as he was the one that redacted the results of such interview in that link, it's fair to claim that others merely paraphrased or got their sources independently, case in point there being multiple sources for Pixar's involvement on KH such as KHInsider, KH13 and even some Disney sites as it was the highlight of the D23 event in 2017.
In any case, as I've pointed out earlier,
Joe Skrebels's interview is narrated in a chronological manner (meaning that he goes over the early takes from the developers as well as their initial struggles, then how they fared from there up to the final result), so even if we subscribed to your point of view in that Pixar dismissed canonicity early on, such premise doesn't work, as said earlier, they didn't and merely concluded with a different approach to respect the plot and explicitly avoid blatant plot holes on the narrative like Sora not being brought up in the movies.
Additionally, as you brought up how Toy Story team could have just changed up their minds, as well as that the reason why the KH story was set chronologically between Toy Story 2 and 3 was to not break the story setting and allow it to be canon, I would like to point out that Toy Story 4 was released in 2019 (same year as KHIII) and there are no mentions to KHIII events (which ngl, could have been a big chance to promote the game), which means that despite their years collaborating together the Toy Story team did not consider to add elements related to KH franchise to canonize the collaboration formally/officially despite how doing so wouldn't break the complete world of the first three movies (which was the reasoning why Sora had to a appear in a void in-between movies), maybe things could change in Toy Story 5, but in principle it seems that Pixar and Toy Story team don't really care about Nomura vision of KH being canon to Toy Story, something understandable as they are different companies and creative teams.
Not gonna talk about the other quotes you posted in this section as I see them irrelevant to the canonicity topic.
I feel like you are ignoring the point that each Pixar team was very different, with the common point between them all being that they deeply cared about their IP setting and tried to not break it as much as to accurately represent the characters and original story feeling, hence the Toy Story team deciding that if KH wanted to use their setting for a collaboration they would need to create a separate story that has no direct or indirect connection with past and future Toy Story projects (as again, there's no connection with Toy Story 4 despite how adding the mention of KH elements wouldn't break the past three movies).
While Toy Story 4 actually released quite a few months after KH3 (
June 2019), KH3 was
subject to multiple delays prior its final release date, so with the sheer disparity of the original release dates, advertising would just risk poor timing.
Part of the reason for placing KH3 in-between TS2 and TS3 also has the fact that TS3 happens a whole decade after TS2, so any dialogue to be had from the events would've transpired long ago, and by the time in TS4 they've already moved out of Andy in general, so there's no real reason to make a reference to KH events without coming off as forced, but in fact there's
a minor KH easter egg in TS4.
MORE ART OF _ BOOK PDFS HERE.Pixar's next leap forward will take viewers back to the story that started it all. This summer, Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Mr. and...
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The camera slowly pulls out to reveal that the image of young Andy is actually on a home video, linking the sequence to the present, which is in fact a decade later.
And, again, of course they worked together, Disney and Pixar are big and strict companies that have to care a lot about their IPs image so there's no way they would accept a collaboration project if they cannot participate and supervise the production of the project, I never claimed otherwise nor understand how you can come to the conclusion that I claimed so, what I claim is that it's not really canon to Toy Story as:
- Nomura has made clear how much opposition and reticence Pixar side has to making KH canon to their works.
- Nomura admits to being biased towards his vision of KH being canon to everything, and makes clear how much he has insisted and persisted to make it so despite the IP owners/creators not desiring that.
- There’s no direct or indirect mention about anything related to KH in Toy Story products, not only in the past movies but also those that came after the original trilogy, which is contradictory to the claim that the KH event is canon and that the events there couldn't be mentioned in the trilogy as they would break the setting, because by mentioning or referring to those events in later movies wouldn't cause any conflict with future movies, a decision that Pixar consciously made despite working simultaneously alongside the KH team for years.
1: Nomura merely made a statement to how it was for Pixar's first impression of the original proposal, as showcased previously and extensively, most of the work after sorting a plot out with Pixar (before the main plot for the rest of the game was done, even) had to do with designing the characters, both Sora and friends as well as new characters like the Gigas or Angelic Amber, to fit in the setting, and even then if we went with the premise that they declined it, it's still evident in the same source you've been using this whole time (Joe Skrelbs's interview) that in the end it was deemed by them as a part of the plot.
2: He was only persistent on Toy Story's inclusion for KH3, not on its canonicity, even the one who asked about canonicity to Pixar wasn't him, but the interviewer, Jow Skrelbs, as explained previously, so there's no bias concerns as it's not like he has direct ties with Nomura for this sort of argument.
3: Absense of evidence is not evidence, in fact the
Crossover standards only bring this up as supportive evidence, rather than some mandatory qualification to be deemed as such in the site, that much was settled in the original CRT as Jason Katz brings up this sort of concern being kept in mind when developing stuff as to abide to Pixar's meticulousness about the continuity.
So the conclusion that I'm pointing out is that the canonicity claims from are very weak and unreliable, as the KH side is evidently biased and persistently tries to insist in their game being canon to the IPs they collaborate, and that Pixar doesn't take those claims seriously as they have decided to not make any type of direct or indirect mention or connection between the events in the game with future movies set after the original trilogy despite the freedom to make so (and arguably the bond they supposedly developed through years collaborating). Hence, my proposition of separating KH keys into their own individual profiles, the same way collaboration keys are standardly handled in the wiki, which would also have the added benefit of making it easier to understand for those visiting the wiki why those 10-C toys suddenly made a jump to tier 1 (which contradicts their portrayals in the original media).
Eh, as explained previously Nomura merely provided a basic explanation, in a prior interview he went into more detail as cited previously, in which he clarified about that, in fact his perfectionist approach to things would make him notice that something
like this wouldn't fit in the original film of Tangled, or
this in Frozen (for context, the final boss fights of those worlds happen near those scenes, which then tie into the ending scene of the respective worlds).
Co-Director Tai Yasue also revealed to Edge the kind of work environment he and Nomura built up over the years. The two have duelling personalities, with Yasue being a bit laid back and Nomura being a perfectionist. However, they were able to use it to their advantage as Yasue took charge of a lot of the battles in the game while Nomura focused his attention on character designs and the story.
Finally Pixar did make a minor reference to KH in TS4 as showcased previously (namely the key resembling
Kingdom Key, Sora's Keyblade), so the second bit doesn't hold up.
Because of this, at this point I think that mods should start to voice their thoughts, as any further discussion will just further devolve into a back and forth that will be a headache for many to read.
BTW, to address some new bits brought up...
If there’s no narrative connection nor implications from Toy Story movies about such events happening, and the canonicity claims are very weak, then there’s no real reason why we have to consider it canon under this context.
In general that's not how the policy for canon and crossovers is formally sorted out in the site at present, it just so happens that users like more tangible changes besides the capability to claim that something is canon or not. In this case, technically it serves to give the readers of the wiki pages a more accurate description of the capabilities a given character incarnation has displayed across their history, so this is no different from indexing the stats of a mundane human pilot even if they only fight while in a mecha or in some transformation, ultimately accuracy is a fair priority to strive for, and the proof provided as explained above is more than solid, with bits of your own proof if anything going against your premise.
It would also be riskier to do so, as any changes in KH can affect in a retroactive way the entirety of Toy Story and contradict the constant portrayal of the characters being just toys with conscience, and if the claim of that not happening because of the collab ocurring in an special and separate enviroment that doesn't affect whatsoever the original characters then it makes one naturally ask: What is then even the point of considering it a two-way canon? It would naturally call into question the purpose of doing so if there’s no connection, weak claims, and no effect whatsoever on the original characters.
Then we act accordingly, so far there's been no real contradictions between the lore of both series, in fact I bothered addressing some potential concerns
here, and if anything the rules they abide to are extremely consistent, case in point we do see a object gaining life from the love of a child (something previously confirmed in KH to be a part of TS's world mechanics) as one of the core premises in TS4 (Forky).
No offense, but Bob is the one doing all the KH stuff, and I have seen with my own eyes how the past weeks he has been trying very strongly to push for the Pixar theory being real so to retroactively make KH canon to all Pixar works and thus make them be retroactively affected by changes in KH. He did give up with the Pixar theory but came to the conclusion that Monster Inc. happens in the same universe as Toy Story, so those characters would be retroactively affected by KH.
The implications of it being a real two-way canon are bigger than what you may think, so under those circumstances far stronger evidence should be needed to be shown from the original IP side to allow such potential changes to affect the original material, because as it currently stands the evidence of the two-way canonicity claim is too weak.
Uh, no? Quite a lot of indexing wouldn't have been possible without the resources and feedback I get from tens of users, some not even dedicated into the series. While I did bring up the Pixar theory as a casual topic, as I did notice that no one has even brought it up in the wiki forum yet, I did admit shortly after with the same citation you're using to dismiss the Pixar theory that it was a waste of time to do so. I never concluded on whether Monsters Inc. was canon to Toy Story or vice-versa, as the strongest proof was some licensed comic that I couldn't find a way to cite canonicity to the film (as basically the development crew involved for the comics had no overlap with the film's). Even then this'd all have been a whole separate CRT, and as implied previously I'm not doing it as it's simply a waste of time as a premise.
KH doesn't even fit in the Pixar theory and in fact would debunk it as it treats Monsters Inc., and Toy Story as separate universes, while the Pixar theory claims that all Pixar movies happen in the same singular universe, with Monsters Inc. being somehow in the far future and using the doors to time travel to a past version of the same world.
