Kingdom Hearts is an ambitious crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy, which ironically excels precisely when it’s not covering either brand, but being its own thing.
The protagonist of the game is Sora, a kid who lives on an island and dreams of traveling with his friends, Kairi and Riku, to discover new places. They start building a raft to go sailing, but before they are able to depart, their homeworld is engulfed in shadows and, after a battle against a monster, Sora wakes up in another world. There, he meets Donald and Goofy, who are looking for a key that is supposed to help their king, Mickey Mouse.
The game begins with an uncanny atmosphere. It asks personal questions (“You want friendship. You’re afraid of getting old”) and some abstract ones with no expressed purpose. It also starts to build mysteries right away: “You are the one who will open the door” a voice says to Sora from nowhere. His own home doesn’t feel like a home, but has this dreamlike feeling to it: the place is called Destiny Islands and only kids appear to live there, since no adults ever show up – there is only one scene in which an adult’s voice can be heard, but the person remains off-camera. It’s also interesting to notice how Sora always cares for Kairi and Riku, but never once he mentions his parents. Therefore, Sora traveling to other worlds and meeting Disney characters doesn’t feel too far-fetched in that universe: the boy’s home was already strange enough to begin with.
The quest to find his friends has Sora making many more during his journey. Kingdom Hearts’ story is primarily about friendship, with the protagonist’s own strength coming from the people he meets and helps: “I don’t need a weapon. My friends are my power”, he says at a climactic scene. But it also talks about the ambivalence of human nature: a person’s heart can be home to light and to darkness, no matter who they are. That is why it’s so important to have Sora’s longtime friend and rival Riku become an antagonist, being manipulated by evil forces. Both Sora and Riku share the same goal – save Kairi – but they take opposite paths to reach it. While Riku becomes bitter and jealous of his friend, and has his heart aligned with darkness in the process, Sora remains cheerful until the end and even smiles before making the ultimate sacrifice. He refuses to use people to achieve his goal, instead always finding ways to help those around him. If he’s helping, he’s happy. In Kingdom Hearts, Riku and Sora are the both sides of the same coin. However, that doesn’t mean that Riku is evil – far from it – but he lets himself be persuaded by it. As the villain says: “I believe darkness sleeps in every heart, no matter how pure. Given the chance, the smallest drop can spread and swallow the heart.”
It’s also great that the villain himself is not treated as unidimensionally evil. His journals reveal that he was a kind man, but one that, precisely like Riku, allowed himself to be led to darkness. He even shared the same dreams as the protagonist and his friend, stating that he felt caged and needed to explore other places and meet new faces (“My people and I are all but prisoners of this tiny place”). Kingdom Hearts’ story shows that the no one is born evil or good, but is led to a certain path by what happens to them and by the influence of those around them.
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