I’m personally a huge fan of Ariel’s summon animation in KH3. She’s always had a special friendship with Sora. They wanted the same thing in KH1 and connected over it. In KH3, not only does Ariel get her wish, but her brief interaction with Sora in her summon animation has a lot of character. Them holding hands before kicking ass together is a heartfelt little nod to their friendship, and shows that they still care for each other even after so long. Maybe I’m overemphasizing it, but god damn does it make me feel warm and fuzzy

In KH3 Ariel might have story relevance (her story mostly) depending on future games.
In KH1 Ariel learns that Sora and the others are from other worlds and she wishes to see them (much like Sora and Riku on Destiny Islands).  While disappointed she is told she cannot due to rules she tells Sora "So many places I want to see... I know I'll get there someday. I'll find a way somehow. I'm sure of it." (In KH1 and a memory Sora recalls during his Sleep in KH3).
In KH2 Mushu and Simba shows that know of what is happening even as a Summon and I think I read that even as a Summon they are aware of the story and worlds even when not summoned.
In KH3 Ariel is now a Summon.  A work around the rule that prevented her before.  Now it means Ariel is seeing other worlds (provided that summon lore remains the same or similar to past summon lore).  She got her wish from KH1.

Chicken little disrespect is WILD

Simba can absolutelly MELT the Hyper Armor phase of Yozora

In the original CoM on GBA, the Clowd summon was godlike. The change to a huge 3D field in the remake makes it too hard to hit with him.

For me, the summon I used by far the most is kh3 Simba.

13:51 one important note, bambi in terms of versatility also helps with the synth grind, and drops items too, its a niche but useful mechanic i wish was talked about more as i found it great fir gathering items as i went around worlds

5:49 the strong reason is reuniting with my child bro that creature is my child

aerial helped me beat yozora.... 25/25

I feel like Mushu’s relevance could be bumped up to 3, and KH1 Simba to a 4, as they both recognize Sora when he meets them in KH2

I spent hours as a kid messing around with Genie in KH2.

KH1 Simba's animation deserves a little more of a bump since Sora's portion of it was used at the end of the trailer to transition into the logo.

I think you're slightly underrating Bambi, as his charge meter mechanic is actually extremely useful for synthesis material farming as there are several spots and methods you can use to collect guaranteed rare synth materials. Considering how time consuming the max moogle grind can be in KH1, it is extremely relevant to mention and the lack of even a passing gesture to it is disappointing.

I've never used summons, except maybe once each, to see what they're like. Maybe I used Tinkerbell a couple of times in KH1, but that'd be it.
Also, "Control Chiken Little's balls..."

I'm glad you brought up the cases for the usefulness of chicken little such as speed runs and those damn cars lol. I was like how is he ranked so low I always use him in my critical speed runs lol

I know it's a niche use, but Ralph helped me so much the first time doing Chaos Carriage on critical. Each fully charged use basically one shot one of the segments of the body, and also blasted some of the flowers around the edge of the room to help refill the mp bar along with an ether, so just using Ralph a few times in a row really simplified a fight that was giving me a lot of grief.

9:33 We almost had more Final Fantasy summons in the series, as Bahamut was originally going to be a summon for Kingdom Hearts 1.

In fact, someone I knew wanted Gex the Gecko to be a summon for Kingdom Hearts 3, as SquEnix owned him at the time. So we could’ve had more Square Enix summons in Kingdom Hearts, in addition to the Disney Summons.

22:45 fun fact: this is pulled directly from the Aladdin movie from when Aladdin first meets genie

CL is my goat 🐐

it's interesting to think about what we look for in a summon! i like Stitch in II. he just helps out so much passively. plus he helped me meet target the target score in the Hades Paradox Cup. And bringing out Dumbo against Ansem in the first game is just real funny to me for some reason, I like doing that.