STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: GAME - “Kingdom Hearts”
Disney and Final Fantasy.
Yeah, we’re talking about this. Welcome to the world (or universe) of Kingdom Hearts.
From here on out, I will only be discussing the first game that was released in 2002 on the Playstation 2, as it is a self-contained story anyway, despite the very cliffhanger ending (not the secret ending, the actual ending.)
Kingdom Hearts was published by Square (before it became Square Enix), directed by Tetsuya Nomura, and written by Jun Akiyama & Daisuke Watanabe & Kazushige Nojima.
On Destiny Islands, childhood friends Sora, Riku, and Kairi want to leave their island to explore new worlds. One night, the island is attacked by the Heartless, creatures without hearts that take on a variety of forms. Riku and Kairi have suddenly disappeared. Sora obtains a mysterious weapon, the Keyblade, which can destroy Heartless, right before he disappears as well.
Meanwhile, King Mickey of Disney Castle (seriously) has left to find out why “… the stars have been blinkin’ out, one by one.” He leaves a letter, which states that “there’s someone with a ‘key’—the key to our survival.” He leaves these instructions to his court wizard, Donald Duck, and the captain of the royal guard, Goofy (how HE succeeded in being a soldier at all is a mystery they never explain), telling them to find the wielder of the “key” and stay with him.
The pair meets Sora in Traverse Town, the first world of many, where they set off to find their king and friends, respectively, as well as saving each world they come across from their Heartless invasion.
While Final Fantasy characters do appear in the game, they are underutilized compared to the amount of Disney characters.
All of the worlds Sora, Donald, and Goofy (get used to hearing that introduction over and over) travel to are Disney-related. These include Wonderland from Alice in Wonderland, Agrabah from Aladdin, Atlantica from The Little Mermaid, and so on. When the trio enters each world, they more-or-less interrupt the plot from their respective films. The only worlds that features FF characters are Destiny Islands and Traverse Town. Olympus Coliseum from Hercules features only one FF character, but I won’t spoil who it is here.
I came across this game by watching a commercial for it. The visuals, along with the remix to Simple and Clean, created and sung by Utada Hikaru, immediately got me hooked. The problem? I didn’t have a PS2. However, I was able to borrow the game and a PS2, and was able to beat 95% of the game. I don’t mean 95% full completion; I mean, I progressed through the story, and couldn’t beat the final boss! (JRPG’s, am I right?)
There is shockingly good chemistry and interaction between the Disney characters. Even the scene that introduces the villains in silhouette is written well because they feel true to their characters. Hearing them bicker among each other (because of course they have to one-up each other) is just an added treat.
Really, what drags the game down is the dialogue delivery (I am specifically talking about the English dub). There are lots of pauses during monologues, mainly meant to fit within the lip syncs. Long pauses also occur during dialogue conversations as well, which just come off as awkward.
But of course, these previously-created characters are just the selling point. What about the original characters?
Honestly, for anyone who has ever played a role-playing game, especially a Japanese one, they fit the archetypes one would expect from these kinds of games. Sora is the optimist who will do anything for his friends; Riku is the opposite side of the same coin. He, too, will do anything for his friends, but he is easily swayed by darkness (saying anything more will be spoilers). Kairi, sadly, is underdeveloped. For the majority of the game, she is a damsel in distress. However, her purpose is to anchor the boys: when it looks like they are pushing themselves too far, she pulls them back. The good news is her character does develop and become stronger throughout the rest of the “Xehanort Saga” (which is the story arc being told by all the Kingdom Hearts games that have been released from 2002 to… whenever KH III comes out).
However, despite my claims that they are nothing original to this genre of game, watching Sora and Riku interact with everyone and each other, you can tell one can’t live and function without the other. Again, without going into too much, these two are 14 or 15 year old boys, and they go through HELL; at least, the Kingdom Hearts version of Hell. It’s a miracle they are able to retain their sanity by the end of the game. They help balance each other out, which is tough to do in reality, but is a great lesson for the intended players of the game.
As for the older players, there is a theme of power hunger and temptation, with one of the characters (I wonder which one it is…..) that is touched upon, as well as the exploration of light and darkness on a literal level. It’s a concept that you wouldn’t really see in a Disney game, but that was the point. Nomura was told by executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi that the game would be failure if it didn’t aim for the same (story) level as the Final Fantasy series.
As of this post, Kingdom Hearts as a game and franchise is very popular among the American geek community, but is relatively unknown to the mainstream, despite the Disney name. After all, it’s Japan that keeps the franchise alive.
The slight glimmer of hope is that now, the Walt Disney Company does show their recognition of the franchise. There were two launch event gatherings celebrating the release of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix (2013) and 2.5 Remix (2014), the latter of which was hosted at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It just goes to show how much influence the franchise still has.
OfficialTGAvideos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY3uJQXzObGKDMkEaiWXpKQ
SquareEnixPresents
https://www.youtube.com/user/SquareEnixPresents/featured
I could go on forever on what makes Kingdom Hearts amazing: the story, the characters, the premise, the voice actor choices (for the most part), the music, the theme song, and so on. Whether you play the game, or watch the cut scene movies, check it out for yourself, and explore the worlds.
