YMMV / Kirby: Canvas Curse

• Common Knowledge: Drawcia Soul is not a result of Drawcia being possessed by Zero in the Japanese version of the game. No such evidence of this exists outside of rumours and how Kirby games pre-Kumazaki were scarce on details, leaving a lot of things up to speculation.
• Ending Fatigue: Ironically, it suffers from both this and the opposite problem. If you attempt to go for 100% Completion, be prepared to sink in several hours, as you have to clear the story mode five times, plus finish Rainbow Run under the targets, and complete the hardest difficulty of each of the sub-games. While the main story can be beaten in about three hours, getting 100% completion bloats that up to over 15 hours, even for an experienced player.
• Evil Is Cool: Drawcia is pretty popular among fans for both her usual look and her Soul form.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Drawcia having a connection to the Dark Matter doesn't seem all that implausible when you consider a few things. For starters, her Sorceress form is quite similar to Dark Matter Blade's design, which is most noticeable in the game's intro. The final boss of this game is actually quite similar in concept to the True Final Boss of Kirbys Dreamland 3: The first phase has a slow-paced battle theme against the main antagonist and the second has a fast-paced theme against a spherical monster with a prominent eye.
  • If anything, the fight with Drawcia Soul could be considered a reimagined version of the fight with Zero due to them both of them summoning minions to attack Kirby, a dash attack and mainly attacking with projectiles with both bosses being considered quite creepy.
  • There's also Void, who not only has strong connections with Dark Matter, but also almost exclusively uses attacks from all soul bosses before him, including Drawcia.
• Good Bad Bugs: The game is supposed to solve Kirby running into intersecting lines drawn by the player by detaching him, but this is interpreted as a massive gain in speed and launches him into the opposite direction. The TAS takes advantage of this by using pixel perfect scribble placement to make Kirby so fast he clips out of bounds, skipping large swathes of each stage.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Having knowledge of Paintra makes The World of Drawcia sadder. Given how dark it is and that there are no enemies aside from the paintings that giggle and reveal their disturbing smiles when the player approaches, the world apparently reflects the emptiness Drawcia was feeling ever since she was separated from Paintra, since during Canvas Curse, Paintra is nowhere to be seen. This association got even worse with Kirby Star Allies; its True Final Boss, Void, has a name that means "emptiness", is implied to be the progenitor of Dark Matter, and makes references to Drawcia.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The surreal sketchbook landscape and childishly giggling posters making up The World of Drawcia makes it look like Kirby crossed over into one of the witch's domains in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Drawcia herself resembles one of the witches from that series, making some fans wonder what she may have been like as a human Magical Girl before turning into that form, let alone Drawcia Soul.
  • The old rumor that Drawcia made a deal with Zero in the Japanese version of the game, and that Drawcia Soul was simply Drawcia possessed by Zero seems slightly less implausible when years later, there was concept art revealing that Zero and Dark Matter were intended to be playable characters.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Several critics have expressed disappointment at the game's length, as the main story can be beaten in roughly three hours, and the rest of the content ends up being Hard Mode Filler.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Canvas Curse introduced the concept of Soul forms for the final bosses to the franchise, and as the first of them, Drawcia is fittingly outright horrifying — a giant, five-eyed marbled glob of paint that rapidly changes color and constantly utters distorted screams and laughter from her gigantic mouth. Upon defeat, her mangled body twists in on itself as she is sucked into the canvas she spawned from. Combine this with the increasingly disturbing laughter during her transformation, and you had potentially the most disturbing Kirby final boss until Fecto Forgo came along.
    • She gets worse when you realize that Drawcia Soul doesn’t aim for Kirby most of the time, she aims her attacks towards the screen. The screen as in you, the player. The one who has assisted Kirby throughout this entire adventure. Yes, you read that right, Drawcia knows that you’re there and actively tries to attack you!
  • Drawcia's domain itself is an eerie realm built out of strokes of paint with their colours garbled into each other and floating in a sketched void. There are no enemies apart from the paintings that giggle and reveal their disturbing smiles when the player approaches, and the BGM is a minimal tune with high-pitched organs and droning that matches the atmosphere perfectly.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Kirby automatically floats when entering any body of water. To dive, the player must either repeatedly tap him or trace a path leading underwater; but the former method is slow, monotonous, and can lead to a lot of awkwardly drifting back and forth, while the latter is limited by the quickly depleting ink gauge.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • A lot of fans ship Drawcia with Dark Matter Blade, despite Dark Matter Blade having been killed off years before Drawcia came into existence. The main reason people ship the two is that the boss fights against Drawcia and Dark Matter Blade are rather similar: Kirby first faces a more humanoid form (Drawcia Sorceress, Dark Matter Blade), followed by a blob-like Eldritch Abomination form (Drawcia Soul, Real Dark Matter). However, people also make Drawcia have a similar backstory to Dark Matter Blade: it's widely accepted that Dark Matter Blade attacked Dream Land because he didn't have any friends and was jealous of Dream Land for being a land in which everyone is everyone's friend, so they made Drawcia jealous of the fact the inhabitants of Dream Land were "more real" than her. The ship became Hilarious in Hindsight with Paintra's reveal, since it implies Drawcia attacked Dream Land out of loneliness, not unlike Dark Matter Blade, and with Void's existence, Void being implied to be the precusor of Dark Matter and, as such, Dark Matter Blade's ancestor, as well as Void referencing Drawcia.
  • Fans also like to ship Drawcia with Daroach despite Drawcia herself eventually being destroyed in a painting at the end of this game, ensuring the two never meet. The main reason people ship the two is because of them being Kirby villains introduced in the early Nintendo DS era. The pairing is especially popular on the Japanese website Pixiv, where it's associated with the "cheshia"^note A Portmanteau Couple Name of Drawcia's and Daroach's Japanese names tag.
  • Some people go the extra mile by shipping Drawcia, Dark Matter Blade, and Daroach together as a One True Threesome.
• Surprise Difficulty: The Kirby franchise has always been strongly associated with cute visuals and simple gameplay designed to entice younger players. However, Canvas Curse is far more challenging than previous titles, due to the inability to control Kirby directly, the necessity to carefully manage the Rainbow Meter when overcoming obstacles, and the labyrinthine level design in later worlds.
• That One Sidequest: Getting an A Rank in Paint Panic Level 3. The minigame requires the player to put some distance between Kirby and a horde of Bombers by completing several drawings as quickly as possible, but is extremely strict when it comes to detecting the player’s inputs. Some drawings take up to 4 different strokes to be finished, and the Paint Roller battle every few rounds further slows Kirby down, essentially turning the minigame into a Luck-Based Mission.

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