After seeing a video pointing out that Pureblood Heartless don't have shadows, I went back to see footage of Sora as a Heartless and Ansem. The former has Sora have no shadow when he's a Shadow. During the fight with Riku with the Keyblade of heart, Riku's body still projects shadows. However, in the End of the World where Sora encounters Ansem posing as Riku, "Riku's" body doesn't appear to produce a shadow, and nether does Ansem himself, despite having the Heartless emblem on his chest.
The fact Ansem doesn't produce shadows normally yet still has the Heartless emblem on him is likely the reason why the Kingdom Hearts wiki doesn't make a statement as to whether he is an Emblem Heartless or a Pureblood Heartless. The infobox only says Heartless, where generally other Heartless characters have their infobox say if they're either an Emblem Heartless or a Pureblood Heartless.
So, do you think Ansem is a Pureblood Heartless, an Emblem Heartless, or some other kind of Heartless that doesn't fit into those groups?
I've never thought about this before, but I have a bit of a strange idea for an explanation - the black thing that Ansem fights with is the hearless (normal, generic, everyday heartless) and Ansem is just the guise it puts up.
Think about it - the other people shaped heartless (Riku black, corrupt Clayton, dragon Malifecent, etc) don't have a black shadow attached, but the normal every day heartless DO have weird and wonderful attachments (Shield hound from hollow bastion, pot spider from agrabah, any number of bosses). So this is a bit more of a unique one, but thats not unusual since almost every world has at least 1 unique heartless, and many of them can transform when they take sufficient damage. The only confounding factor is that he can talk, and we don't see any other heartless do that, but that could just be another uniqueness - we do see others make noises, so his could just be more refined. Thoughts?
That's a nice idea for a fan fiction. Though, the official lore states that the Dark Figure he uses is a vessel for Terra's heart. So how would that work? Unless you're talking about the World of Chaos being his true form, not the humanoid Dark Figure?
Hmm, I forgot about Birth By Sleep. Does Terra have a confirmes nobody? His heart was certainly strong enough to leave one behind. What if the Terra's nobody is the forward facing Ansem, and it paired up with the heartless shadow part?
Terra did not have a real nobody. Xehanort used his body as a vessel for his heart, so the body was still occupied.