Fan Thoughts

What is Shadow Kirby Like?

One thing that I find rather odd is Shadow Kirby's interpretation in the general fandom. Most people seem to see him as just as innocent and good as Kirby himself, and while I'd say that Shadow Kirby is certainly a good guy in general, I don't feel like he's quite AS good. After all, Kirby himself has shown some less than heroic tendencies at times, as well as other flaws, that could likely be exasperated as far as Shadow Kirby is concerned, much like how Dark Meta Knight and Shadow Dedede have flaws intensified from their original iterations.

One of the areas in which Kirby often struggles is trust. Whether its trusting certain people too much such as with Marx or Magolor, or not trusting people enough in the case of Dedede in Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland or Meta Knight in Squeak Squad. This comes from a certain degree of naivete, and a tendency to hold grudges respectively. It took quite a few games of Dedede NOT being the villain for Kirby to really trust the guy to any reasonable degree, Kirby's Adventure to Kirby 64 to be precise, and even a longer time for them to truly make up in Return to Dreamland (likely spurred by the events of Revenge of The King from Superstar Ultra). Taking this trait to the extreme in the case of Shadow Kirby, its very likely that if one were to wrong him, he'd be taking that anger to the grave. When he learned that Dark Meta Knight and Dark Mind were really the villains all along, there's little doubt that Shadow Kirby would ever be cool with them. Looking at things from the other side, Shadow Kirby's story in Amazing Mirror seems to follow the standard Marx/Magolor style plot, with Shadow Kirby trusting Dark Mind/Dark Meta Knight before learning that they are the true villains, meaning this flaw from the original Kirby is most certainly present.

Speaking of anger, that's also something that Kirby has demonstrated on various occasions. Or more specifically, a short temper. It doesn't take much wrongdoing to get Kirby into action, whether its something reasonably big like stealing all the food in Dreamland, negating people's ability to dream, or an entire intergalactic invasion, or something small like stealing his cake, or being in a cave he happened to fall into, Kirby's reaction is the same: go beat up the source of the problem as fast as possible. Inflate this reaction with Shadow Kirby and we've got a guy who gets angry easily and forgives extremely slowly, not really the best of combinations.

That said, these mirror world counterparts don't just have the negative aspects of the originals amplified, they also have the positive aspects decreased, such as Dark Meta Knight not following the code of honor the real Meta Knight has. Kirby does have quite a few positive attributes, so lets look at a few of those and see what it could say about Shadow Kirby's character.

First of all, Kirby's a boy of action. if something happens in Dreamland, or in the galaxy in general for that matter, Kirby is typically one of the first responders. This is in stark contrast to most Dreamlanders who just... do nothing. There are tons of Dreamlanders out there who have some pretty sweet abilities, but they don't seem to ever do anything when the world is in trouble. When is the last time you saw Nago or Pitch stand up and help out? Back on the Super Nintendo that's when. the fact of the matter is that compared to the average Dreamlander, Kirby is incredibly driven, and this may be something that Shadow Kirby lacks. We can even see this in his actions from Amazing Mirror. Shadow Kirby doesn't appear much in the game, and when he does appear he isn't even a full boss, just a minor encounter who might send out one attack before leaving, if even that. When you team up with him in the final battle, he doesn't even help directly, he just hands you Master if you happen to lose it at some point. It looks like he just doesn't have the initiative that Kirby does, he might get angry of spiteful, but it doesn't translate to much action. At the end of the game he claims that he'll defend the Mirror World from any who might use the mirror's wish granting powers to do evil, and if Dededetour from Triple Deluxe is canon to any capacity, well, he clearly didn't do all that great a job at that.

Another of Kirby's positives is his capacity to make friends. Kirby befriends basically everyone he doesn't hold a grudge against, whether its the animal friends of Dreamland 2 and 3, his whole crew in Kirby 64, previous enemies in Dedede, Meta Knight, and Bandanna Dee, or even a part of Dark Matter with Gooey, Kirby can often be found working in a team scenario. On the other hand, maybe Shadow Kirby just... isn't good at this. It would make sense considering all the facets we've gone over already. Question is, would he even WANT to make friends? Mirror World seems like it might be lonely, maybe the only reason he took the job was just to hang out on his own? Its hard to say, ultimately.

So yeah, there is a somewhat different take on what Shadow Kirby may be like. He's still a good guy, certainly no destroyer of worlds or anything, but he's not exactly super innocent or sweet. Just a puffball trying to do his own thing who doesn't really want to get super involved with others' problems. That said, if you DO like the super sweet Shadow Kirby interpretation, its certainly ok to keep doing your thing, we really haven't seen much of the character at all, like I said even his appearances in Amazing Mirror were few and brief, and his appearance as the final boss of Kirby Fighters is questionably canonical, so its all pretty up in the air.

Return to the Fan Thoughts Main Page.

Back to the Rainbow Resort main page.