Story problems with Kingdom Hearts, and the importance of finishing
Prologue: Escaping a Loop
Have you ever been caught in a loop? Ever had just a chunk of time surround you in a haze of repetition and ennui? I’ve been in a weird place for the last…uh, I think seven months give or take in which I’ve been extremely productive in some ways (got a job, curated tons of game design content for this game’s community, finished an advanced animation course), but I’ve also woefully neglected my post here, and in other important places, or at least important to me. I still haven’t figured out how to go to work all day and have enough willpower and energy when I get home to, I don’t know, be an artist of some variety. Is this depression, or just exhaustion? Well, I don’t feel depressed; I have no problem getting out of bed and doing things, or engaging with other people. Similarly, I don’t really feel exhausted, because I clearly have enough time to partake in consumer-level entertainment (video games, film, lots of board games, etc.) and can still craft on some kind of producer-level for the Ashes community (we just hit another milestone on our project goals, in fact). I clearly haven’t “stopped” progressing, but there are still some areas where I feel stuck, namely in writing and animating, and I feel that something desperately needs to change, which all leads to this statement:
I don’t like this article anymore, but I need to finish it.
I started writing this article back in February. I had just finished playing through Kingdom Hearts 3, which I prepped for by playing through the entire rest of the series about a month or two prior. For me, Kingdom Hearts 3 was…extremely disappointing. Neat gameplay, amazing presentation, but the story was so horrendously abysmal that it quashed the other good and great aspects in its gravity. At the time that I started, there was a weird fusion of intents that fueled the piece. On the one hand, I was deeply frustrated with the progression of the series and wanted to express that frustration in a productive manner, and on the other I was trying to peel at the glaze of nostalgia, knowing that at one point I really loved the story these games were telling and wondering why I stopped. In the moment, these intents made a lot of sense, but time makes fools of us all. Nine months later and all the frustration is gone, leaving only a minor reluctance, a pollinated apathy, and knowing the answer to the nostalgic issue and finding it maybe not as interesting as I hoped.
Everything you’re about to read is largely from that period of time, when there was a bit more passion and curiosity attached to the subject. The smartest answer would have been to abandon the article, move onward to other topics. But I’ve never been quite that smart, and the passion lasted just long enough to leave me too invested for a complete abandonment. I liken the whole affair to building half a shed in your backyard, realizing you don’t like it, but also realizing the mess you left is the main reason you don’t invite neighbors over anymore. This is the sort of project that by virtue of remaining unfinished mentally blocks me from getting more meaningful work done. I don’t like this article anymore, but I need to finish it.
Maybe if I’m lucky, there’s still something here that’s worth reading.
I hear something along the following lines mentioned often: Kingdom Hearts is super fun, but don’t bother trying to understand it. Youtube might be more flush with essays attempting to explain the KH series than actual reviews or analyses at this point, which in and of itself marks a point of fascination. There just seems to be this general consensus that while the fans absolutely love the KH series, the story is the one element of the game that is undeniably problematic, and even the fans that love the story and characters aren’t surprised at anyone else’s confusion or irritation. I don’t quite fall in either boat, finding myself flailing on the plank between them because I only think the games are “okay” and the story is only “mostly” terrible. This was not always my position; I remember touting Kingdom Hearts 2 as an absolute masterpiece when it first came out, claiming the story as incredibly epic and poetic to a degree. I’m certain age and inexperience had something to do with it: I was in high school, and literally just discovering the hotbed of prime adolescence that was anime.
For the sake of catharsis, I recently went back and replayed all the KH titles using the recent HD collections (1.5, 2.5 and 2.8). The experience shocked me, as I watched just how much my opinion changed on a lot of these titles, surprisingly not always for the worse. Truthfully, I found a greater appreciation in many of the earlier games, but also discovered one of my new favorite entries in the form of the awkwardly named Birth By Sleep 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage. In playing the entire series, I was hoping for enlightenment regarding the story; after all, perhaps the community fallback around the abysmal narrative was confused with the story being “complicated,” a label that certainly hasn’t stopped me from appreciating other works. But, I’m afraid labels can’t save this one.
Kingdom Hearts, as a series, has a definite story problem. Several (hundred?) in fact, sufficient enough that we would be here all day were I to rattle them off. I mostly want to focus on three (one for each main game), and in the spirit of the series I’ll be splitting each of those into way too many smaller issues. Let me make something clear though, I’m not here to hold this beloved franchise at the tip of a sword and maneuver through its heart of darkness like a butcher with a restless twitch. I like this series too much and have too long a history with it to just be completely brutally honest. I’ll even prove it to you, let’s start by talking about the good stuff.
Heart’s in the right place - Things that are good
I have a number of issues with the KH series, but I want to highlight the positives before going into critical mode. Every one of these games both looks fantastic and sounds fantastic for their given release time. The presentation on display from Square Enix blows me away time and time again; every Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts game exhibits an incredibly clean and fluid visual experience loaded with style, color and flourish. Everything looks beautiful every single time, to the point where I start to question how they are able to achieve such high fidelity in their AAA titles when so many other companies continue to struggle. Kingdom Hearts III might be the most visually impressive action game I’ve played to date, exploding with magic and environmental detail.
On the musical front, Yoko Shimamura and Kaoru Wada have managed to elevate the already impressive visual prowess of the series with a killer soundtrack always featuring several iconic orchestral tracks, along with theme songs by Utada Hikaru that I know still leave many of my peers emotionally compromised. I think you’d be hard pressed to find gamers that can’t enjoy at least some pieces from the series’ many soundtracks.
But perhaps most impressive is the thematic and emotional consistency of the series. While the KH series has a bad tendency to get convoluted, all the games match a fixed energy tonally, visually and thematically. The visual style that creates a unique blend of Disney’s playful, colorful shapes and Final Fantasy’s exaggerated yet sleek fantasy vibe is omnipresent in every title, along with a musical style that pays homage to classic Disney theme songs while adding a unique twinge of orchestral arrangement. At the heart of it all are these stories (or more accurately, one massive story) about the journey and power of friendship, belief, and the understanding that distance doesn’t affect the strength of a relationship. At the end of the day, Kingdom Hearts never stops feeling like Kingdom Hearts (for better and for worse), and nothing else feels quite like it.
Also, on the whole, I do think Kingdom Hearts remains the most ambitious crossover idea of any I’ve ever seen in the gaming world — including Super Smash Bros — and features a remarkably fascinating history. Consider the landscape that was 2002. Square Enix (or Squaresoft at the time) was riding high with a string of ultra-successful Final Fantasy games from Final Fantasy VII (1997) to Final Fantasy X (2001), and showing no sign of stopping; meanwhile Disney Animation Studios have been stuck in a financial/cultural slump since The Lion King (1994). I mean, Disney wouldn’t even make a name for itself again until Pirates the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl a whopping decade later (2003), and then not again until Tangled (2010). Disney’s history was powerful, but their Renaissance had come to a decisive end only a few years ago and their future was (at the time) understandably bleak. And yet, a couple executives at Squaresoft — Shinji Hoshimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi — wanted to make a 3D action platformer (similar to Super Mario 64), but couldn’t justify it because they felt they needed an IP that could actually compete with Mario…and the only idea they considered big enough was Disney.
Picture that for a moment, the company that owns Final Fantasy, the hotness of the RPG landscape in video gaming worldwide, believed they needed a franchise as monolithic as Disney, which hasn’t been all that great for the last decade, in order to succeed. What a crazy world we live in, right? Well, it only gets crazier: Kingdom Hearts basically only exists because of a chance collision that brought a Disney executive and Hoshimoto together in an elevator who, again by chance happened to work in the same building at some point, which in turn allowed the pitch to reach Disney directly. I don’t know if it’s such a stretch to say that Disney might have possibly agreed to something as insane as a Disney/Final Fantasy crossover if they weren’t so severely in the bucket at this particular point in time, but that doesn’t eliminate the sheer chaos theory level of butterfly flaps it took to get this project off the ground. This was a project that, by anyone’s estimation at this point in time was completely insane — I mean how do you even pair something like Final Fantasy’s recent gritty styling with Disney’s ultra classical fairy tale aesthetic? Yet somehow all the perfect elements and pieces lined up; both sides approved the project, and the rest is history. I’m not sure any story in KH’s series is more ridiculous that that of its conception.
Finally, while I do think the original Kingdom Hearts is the overall best in the series, Kingdom Hearts II - Final Mix’s Critical Mode is one of the sharpest, most mechanically diverse Action-RPG’s out there, and Birth by Sleep 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage presents a nearly perfect solution of what the series can do to fix its biggest problems (more on that later).
Alright, we’ve put it off long enough. Let’s start pulling teeth.
Simple and Clean
What is the story of a Kingdom Hearts game?
I really don’t want explain the story of any of these games in full detail, because that would be both a feat most Herculean and a strain quite Cheshire. I was hoping to set up a baseline so I can transition into the meat of this essay in a segment I call “Heart of the Problem” in which I identify the biggest problems with the story and how to fix them. What’s catastrophic is that I have to actually talk about the story before I can start addressing any possible fixes, and even the process of describing any KH story is a nightmare, so we’re kicking off early with:
Heart of the Problem 0.2 - The story doesn’t work out of context
One of the more unusual issues surrounding the KH story is that its framework is so interlinked, it’s impossible to mention any individual part without getting sucked into a black hole of minutiae. This is a series defined entirely by details and literally doesn’t work outside of them. Part of why there’s so many Youtube entries trying to explain this mess is because there’s just so much, and it really only works within the context of itself. Even the macro-level analysis I want to give still requires me to get way crunchier than I want, but what choice do I have? Let’s get crunchy.
The story of Kingdom Hearts (1) focuses on three kids named Sora, Kairi and Riku who live happily on a tropical island chain — known as “Destiny Islands” — who one day decide that they want to explore the world. Unbeknownst to them, the stars have been mysteriously disappearing one by one, drawing the attention of one Mickey Mouse, the king of a far off land called “Disney Castle”. He sets out to investigate the phenomena, leaving both a note and a task to find a magical “key” with his most trusted companions, Donald and Goofy. The night before the three kids are planning to set sail on a runaway raft they’ve been constructing, a huge black hole appears above the island and threatens to swallow everything whole, while also covering the land in these lucid black entities known as “the Heartless”. In the event, Riku sees this as the perfect opportunity to travel away from the islands and decides to jump into the black hole. Sora tries to to stop him, fails, and is left with a mysterious object called the “Keyblade”, the only weapon that can actively fight against the heartless. After the island gets swallowed up, the three kids get separated, which is seen from the perspective of Donald and Goofy as “a star going out”. Sora wakes up in the middle of a strange place called Traverse Town, and It’s not terribly long before he meets up with Donald and Goofy (after getting some backstory from some helpful associates of King Mickey). Once the three of them are acquainted, the stakes are set and the game is afoot. Sora wants to find his friends Riku and Kairi with the hope of reuniting them all on Destiny Islands, while also “exploring the world” along the way. Donald and Goofy want to find Mickey while also following the task of keeping track of “the key.” In their adventures. they must also protect the various worlds from being swallowed by the Heartless, aka “stop the disappearing of stars.”
So, as the story goes, this is the point in which the adventure is laid out in full for the player, and the tasks of the story are clear. Sora (the player) must travel throughout the universe with Donald and Goofy to find all their friends and keep the worlds safe from The Heartless. At each world, Sora will continue to explore the many worlds he was hoping to see on his journey, build a treasured bond with Donald and Goofy, and come to grow from a flaky child with little direction to…well, still a child, but strong enough to take a stand and protect that which matters most to him. There’s a lot of little threads that weave together to form this tapestry, but the pattern itself isn’t much more complicated than a standard hero’s journey, making it pretty easy to follow.
As for the universe itself, each world traveled to is constructed from a well known Disney film (Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Aladdin, etc.) and offers a story that is new, but shares familiar beats/characters/moments from the films in which they’ve been adopted. What’s often overlooked is how effectively each of these worlds either continues to apply new pressures and ideas to Sora’s journey and development, or advances the overall plot and machinations of the villains. It’s not unusual that the overarching structure of Kingdom Hearts is awfully similar to the plot of a Disney Renaissance film, as a lot of similar messages and themes carryover well into this game: love conquers all, be true to your heart, believe in yourself, and so on. Additionally, a majority of the stories in these individual worlds are self-contained, with Sora and company largely working as a vehicle to explore other characters’ stories, though that’s not to say that the trio emerges emotionally unscathed from these places or that they are free from impact. Sora’s influence is all too important to the well-being of these worlds, it’s just that he’s never the main character of any of their stories. I have some issue with the notion that the KH series never succeeds at telling a story, because in retrospect I think this first game really knocked it out of the park.
Still, even that macro explanation leaves a lot out, mostly in the way of construction. I would need to talk about where the Heartless come from, how the Keyblade works, something about the separation of worlds, and the list just never ends. What I’ve come to understand about the first Kingdom Hearts is that the minutiae is way less important than the way the story “feels”. Once you stop reveling over the intricacies of its mechanics, the story is pretty emotional and follows a boy’s journey to simply explore the unknown, save his friends from ominous forces, and bring them all back home again. This first game is really the series at its finest, where the details and crunch ultimately matter the least, and it’s tragic watching the series force these meaningless details further to the front over time.
What’s also regrettable about trying to address any series’ story is that it’s impossible to talk about it meaningfully without spoiling it. I’ve gotten about as far as I can talking about the least amount of “bits” that I could, so from here on we’ll need to start getting specific.
Heart of the Problem 1
Series Abandonment Issues
As an isolated experience, Kingdom Hearts was damn near perfect. Despite having almost nothing but nostalgic offerings from other games and movies, the story weaves in and out of them in a rather creative fashion. The main conflict/rivalry between Sora and Riku is given ample attention, and their differences are well highlighted along the way (with some of Riku’s nuances getting more flesh and blood throughout Chain of Memories). And, despite it’s lightly hanging ending, the first game ultimately felt like a complete and finished experience. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been allowed to stay that way.
I don’t actually have any issues with Kingdom Hearts getting sequels, but one thing that does bother me is their fixation on ret-conning events of the first game to fit an increasingly elaborate narrative. “We beat Ansem and locked away Kingdom Hearts” — well actually that was just a heartless clone of Ansem, and he wasn’t actually Ansem the whole time cause there’s this other guy. “We stopped Maleficent from doing bad stuff with the princesses of heart” — well actually she can come back to life apparently just by saying her name on accident and she just does random things in the background every now and then. “Man, that weird hooded man from Destiny Islands must’ve been Ansem the whole time, just messing with us” — well actually you’re half right, but that was a super old version of him from the future that came to the past to give his past self some time travel dust and JUST STOP. I could spend a whole day just going full “well actually” until my jaw falls off and I still wouldn’t be able to cover everything. Not to mention some of these changes are only a couple degrees shy of full blown delirium in their absurdity. Did you know they inserted a scene in one of the sequels to explain why Mickey Mouse wasn’t wearing a shirt at the end of the first game?
Yeah, crazy to think this character would ever not be wearing a shirt.
What’s really at the heart of this problem is that the KH series is seemingly incapable of release (I’m speaking metaphorically here, but I guess also literally; can you believe the window between Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3 was 14 years?). Every game introduces new characters and new concepts, but never is an old idea let go even if its already served its term within the larger narrative, and it’s usually pretty obvious. If anything magical or beyond explanation ever occurs, it’s fairly likely an entire game will be dedicated to filling all the cracks in the concrete, leaving not a single entry for mystery. Anytime a character ever dies, some deus ex machina will assuredly bring them back in the next title. The story often needs to warp and stretch to cover all the finished characters, forcing in small talk and recaps of past events just to make sure that no one is forgotten. It’s not enough for a character to be there, they need to be important somehow, even though most don’t have anything to offer. Forget the keyblade, the most damaging weapon in this series is Chekhov’s Gun.
Kingdom Hearts isn’t merely succeeded by a slew of sequels and spinoffs, but forcibly tethered to them in a nightmarish weave of all powerful continuity. All this, in a series that’s largely about not getting weighed down in the details and “believing in the power of friendship.”
Heart of the Problem 1.5
The Mismanagement of Mickey Mouse and Maleficent
This is a hilarious thing to mention out of context, but the KH series is rather careless in its use of Mickey Mouse. The legendary Mickey Mouse — historical figure and company mascot — representing the ultimate force of everything Disney in this series. Nothing in the Disney canon is more iconic or on brand than Mickey Mouse, so if you were to pair together newcomer Sora with somebody, Mickey would’ve made the most sense, right?
Who are these two losers?
So, the original Kingdom Hearts doesn’t pair you with Mickey, opting instead to go with Donald and Goofy, characters that are also iconic but clearly second fiddle by comparison, and that’s a precedent they’ve maintained ever since. And to be completely honest, I think that decision was brilliant.
By excluding Mickey from the main playable cast, he’s allowed to become something of a legend within KH’s mythos. Mickey is briefly mentioned at the start of the first game, missing from action only because he’s too busy investigating the cause of the disappearing worlds, and doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the entirety of Kingdom Hearts until the very last moment, and only at the heroes’ most desperate time. Of course Mickey Mouse is going to save the day, and of course he has a keyblade just like the main hero; he’s freakin’ Mickey Mouse. Just as soon as he arrives, he not only helps save everyone, but also vanishes into the darkness just as soon as he arrived. In this way, Mickey remains an enigma of surreal power and stature, talked about more as myth than mouse, and remains a secret weapon for the story going forward.
With every other game to follow, Mickey would become increasingly regular within the story, making more frequent appearances and just generally being around at all times. All of the allure and mystery of being “Mickey Mouse, King of Disney,” has been worn down to “just another keyblade wielder” (put a pin in that for now).
On the flip side, there’s Maleficent, the grand face-value evil of Kingdom Hearts. As the lead villain of all things Disney, Maleficent was a solid choice. Her combined competence, seriousness and purely evil demeanor hit all the right bases; paring her with Riku as his primary influence creates a fantastic divide between him and Sora. We only find out about Ansem as the greater evil about 85% of the way into the game, so Maleficent has to do the heavy lifting in the story and largely does. When she’s finally conquered, it feels like a real victory and the stakes of the story are allowed to advance again because her presence no longer obfuscates. She served her purpose.
So why does she keep reappearing in every other KH game? I ask because far as I can tell, she hasn’t done ANYTHING in any game since. She has a permanent lackey in Pete (another of the most iconic Disney villains out there), but in every title they do and accomplish basically nothing. Maleficent poises herself at the forefront time and time again, acting like she knows so much more than everyone else involved, but never creates any meaningful impact. I mean, she literally spent all of Kingdom Hearts 3 just looking for a box and doesn’t find it until the post credits scene, yet she still occupies a fair amount of screen time in the process being a complete non-player (and at best, heckler) all throughout. Maleficent had her moment to shine, performed beautifully, and has now been relegated to chores of non-importance for the last five or so games.
Though, it’s not just Mickey and Maleficent that suffer from this kind of misuse. Truthfully, everyone in this game feels a bit underutilized.
Heart of the Problem 2
Main Characters aren’t interesting
Who are the main characters of the KH series? In just about every case, it’s a group of three teenagers — two guys and a girl — that all have a relatively shared goal. Maybe that goal is something tangible like exploring the universe or becoming keyblade masters, but it could also be a something emotional like trying to understand the meaning of friendship. From among these three characters, one will usually be given the primary focus of the story (often the boy with spiky hair going in every direction), one will often be relegated to the position of an observer or sideliner (usually the girl), and the last character is often either self-conflicted or riddled with depression and takes out their frustrations on one of their other friends at some point in the story.
Sorry, I realize that intro is just a tad faux pas in its tactility and more than a bit deriding. Yes, the individual stories of each of these titles is a bit boilerplate, but I also don’t want you to think of that as a primary weakness. I’ve seen plenty of works with simple arrangements like this absolutely flourish because they make up for their easy framework with strong characters, magnificent writing, or a whole host of other positive qualities. Regrettably, KH doesn’t have many of those, and more so than the story’s framework this is the true hamartia at work.
For the grander narrative, I like to think of the story in terms of groups of three. You have the current main cast (Sora, Riku, and Kairi), the precursor main cast (Ventus, Terra, and Aqua), and the alternate main cast (Roxas, Axel/Lea, and Xion), and each group presents unique strengths and weaknesses. The current main cast is the focus of most of the games, with much of the plot orbiting ‘heavily’ on either Sora, Riku or the intricate relationship they share. Either things happen to or between Sora and Riku, and the neutral, innocent Kairi is applied towards them often as a catalyst, either driving them apart (Kingdom Hearts), bringing them together (Kingdom Hearts 2), or amplifying emotional stakes (Kingdom Hearts 3). This group is a little awkward because while they’ve been the flagship heroes since 2002, their stories and character development has unfortunately been finished since 2005. There’s really nothing left to do with these characters, and Kingdom Hearts 2 would’ve been the perfect place to simply let them be and move on.
The precursor cast of Ventus, Aqua, and Terra appears more interesting than the current cast on paper. An individual collection of characters with unique motives, backstories and some unique group dynamics presents itself in front of you, further emphasized by being the only KH game in which you can play as every member of this group and watch their individual stories play out. And each of them definitely seems more interesting, again on paper. You’re hoping to watch these three develop into uniquely enticing figures, but once you start moving through the plot you’re forced to watch the three become engulfed in a story much more interested in connecting the past to events in Kingdom Hearts (1). Ventus is never allowed to really escape the confines of his identity as part of a weapon, quashing much of his emotional development with one solely defined by plot details. Terra sorta goes through a journey about learning to accept all of himself instead of letting his master hold him back but that never quite reaches a satisfying conclusion since the plot needs him to escape the influence of one master to…get completely manipulated and abused by a different master? Aqua probably undergoes the most interesting journey, growing up in an environment that encourages and rewards her for abandoning emotional decision making and accepting good and evil as absolutes, but coming to find that she makes the best decisions for herself and her friends when she allows her heart to do the talking. So, I mean, I guess one in three isn’t terrible, and Aqua was also lucky enough to get an entire game to herself (Birth by Sleep 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage), allowing the writers to continue exploring what has so far been one of the most interesting characters in the whole series.
Still, for all of Aqua’s advantages, I would still say the alternate cast remains the strongest batch of characters, which is quite remarkable since the story of 358/2 Days is rather subdued. Not a whole lot actually happens in that game and the majority of it is only told through the journal entries/perspective of Roxas, allowing the experience to be hyper focused and clearly character driven. I didn’t like 358/2 Days much as a game, but the story is definitely one of the most interesting in the entirely of the KH series, devoid of major conflict till the very end. I thoroughly enjoy the more nuanced ideas driving this trio’s journey, especially when they begin to question the nature of the heart, having been told that it’s impossible for them to feel yet somehow “feeling” that something about their circumstance is wrong. While most of the story is hampered by forcibly setting up events for Kingdom Hearts 2, the numerous smaller moments of character driven self-inflection and simple conversation create some of the best moments in the series.
All that being said, the larger narrative is still primary driven around Sora, Riku, and Kairi, and that’s unfortunate since those characters don’t offer much in the long term, especially given the available options. If anything, Sora has been going through retrograde as the series inches forward, seeming to act increasingly oblivious and almost rapidly de-maturing over time. There’s a logic to this, as in every scenario Sora is required to play the role of “the child”, so he can’t mature too much or he won’t have a good enough reason to keep that bright, child-like enthusiasm and wonder wherever he goes. This unique “light” that the character shines upon his adventures is part of what makes him special, part of what even enabled him to wield the keyblade in the first place, but this particular take on optimism and unrelenting hope has become a liability in the hands of the current writers, using it as a roadblock instead of a stepping stone. This all goes back to the first major problem, this inability to release, that forces the story to maintain a weird sort of status quo, which in the face of a story that’s constantly weeding with complexity creates an unfortunately tangled mess. These weeds come in a variety of incremental problems, from micro issues like characters needing to constantly justify their reason to exist (often through exposition), to macro problems of character relevance being attributed to a single defining characteristic…
Heart of the Problem 2.5
Everyone (important) has a Keyblade
It’s not enough that the KH cast is no longer interesting, none of them are really that special anymore either. No, I’m not just referring to the fact that apparently about half the villains are all time clones of the same bad dude, but rather a large-scale identity issue especially around “the keyblade”. In the first title, the keyblade was intended to be an icon of greater things to come, and the fact that it chose Sora set him on a path of destiny with which the entire game revolved. It chose Sora not because of his strength or wisdom, but for his empathy and devotion to others, a combination of powerful qualities only represented by one other character by that point in time — Mickey Mouse. The keyblade did function as a bit of a mcguffin throughout that first title, but there was still a symbolic cadence to the whole proceeding (however blunt). I’m especially fond of the game allowing you to improve your keyblade over time by simply changing out the attached trinket with new mementos of the journey thusfar, allowing it to be a physical manifestation of Sora’s growth via the connections he makes with others.
(As an aside, this may explain why there’s so much cross pollination of fandoms between this and the Persona franchise. Guess young adults really love obvious symbolic icons of “human connection” in their anime video games.)
But there’s a vicious proliferation of the keyblade’s presence going forward. By the time we get to Kingdom Hearts 2, nearly half the protagonists have keyblades, and one of them even has two. Come Birth by Sleep, they’ve introduced the Keyblade Graveyard, an entire plane filled with used keyblades like they’re a dime a dozen. These aren’t manifestations of the chosen or exemplification of greater purpose, but common tools usable by basically anyone. Heck, the plot of Kingdom Hearts 3 comes down to the villain recreating an ancient war only made possible by gathering a whole ton of keyblade users, which encompasses more or less the entire cast, all for the sake of reforging a “super keyblade”. In many ways, the keyblade has taken the same path as the lightsaber in it’s self-destructive multiplicity.
And with that notion comes a harsh reality that none of the characters we’ve been told are special are anything but ordinary people that just happened to fill minimum criteria; heck, “keyblade master” used to sound like an oddity but I think there might be more masters than novices at this point. I don’t make this observation to say that none of the keyblade wielders are interesting (at least 2-3 of them still are), rather that any sacred quality of this poignant symbol has become supersaturated. It’s kind of crazy to think just how much of each game’s story still orbits the keyblade, to the point where any semblance of real creativity is gone and the story really suffers from it.
Though, to be honest, the story also suffers nuance in other crucial places, and maybe not where you’d assume.
Heart of the Problem 2.8
The Disney material lacks originality
Okay, so, I can feel your eyes circumnavigating the globe with how hard you’re rolling them, and I can understand why you would think I’m making a joke here. “You telling me the worlds based directly on various Disney films, each of which is loaded with iconic scenes and specific references to said films, aren’t completely original? Do me a favor and file that under a memo titled ‘stuff I already know.’” But I’m afraid it’s not a typo, or a joke. Let’s talk.
It’s true that just about every single world you travel to in Kingdom Hearts [1] is heavily inspired by a classic Disney film: Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Tarzan, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Peter Pan. The game also features a handful of references from other titles like The Sword in the Stone, The Lion King, Mulan, Dumbo, Bambi, and even Fantasia. The influence of these works not only pervades the overall story, but reverberates throughout its themes and core values…but the world of Disney is not the only thing there. Part of why this material works so well within the confines of the first game is because “heavily inspired” is a hard line drawn in the sand. Each individual planet’s scenario only pays lip-service to its film of origin, instead focusing on creating stories that are considerably more original to the game. Even the few worlds that follow their film scripts most closely (Tarzan, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid) still transform enough to present an experience that only feels familiar but still reads unique.
However, as the series marches onward, most of the newer worlds are either trying desperately to follow the scripts of their films to a detrimental degree, or are overly dedicated to the increasingly bizarre grander narrative without considering the worlds with which it takes part. Kingdom Hearts 3 is definitely one of the worst offenders so far, with many of its worlds effectively following the stories of its individual worlds to the letter, having made no effort to really adapt the work into a different medium. I still cannot comprehend how we got KH3’s “The Carribean” world, which basically lays out the story of Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End almost exactly, with the only major change being a few heartless and there being a clone of Jack Sparrow made out of crabs. Nothing at all matches pace with the grander narrative, and the story basically happens with or without Sora like he’s not even there. This is in fact a pattern for all the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3 (notably not Pixar, just Disney). In older titles there was an effort made to integrate Sora and his pals into the going-ons of a world, make them feel like important enough players but never full on leads; in newer titles, Sora could just as easily have not shown up and almost nothing would’ve changed.
At times, it feels like the Disney representation has transitioned from nostalgia into advertisement, and this problem also manifests in other unusual ways.
Heart of the Problem 3
Too much homework
Don’t fret about this, the problems are actually deeper.
With each entry in a series you have a choice to make: build up your existing story and mythos expanding it further and further, OR tell a completely new story but utilizing the framework of previous entries. In the case of films, sequels are often direct continuations branching outwards, but games tend to swing the revolving door inwards instead. Every game in the Persona series takes place in a new town/city with a completely new cast all trying to achieve a new goal. Similar phenomena happen with each iteration of other popular franchises like Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and especially Final Fantasy. By having the story “start over” without necessarily abandoning all of the rules, you can make something new that still feels attached to previous work. There is an advantage to the film approach, namely that you can build a much larger story than was originally possible, or even tell a massive narrative through the lens of multiple smaller stories, and depending on the work this repeated revisitation allows for strong bonds to set. So what does Kingdom Hearts want? Well, apparently it wants to have both a raked leaf pile and to jump into said pile.
The KH series expects a staggering amount of homework to be done ahead of time. No, I don’t have an issue with traditional sequel structure, and in this case I’m not actually talking about the story of Kingdom Hearts itself. Saying that Kingdom Hearts 2 is worse because it requires you to have played through Kingdom Hearts AND Chain of Memories isn’t a completely fair criticism; it’s the equivalent of saying one of the problems with reading The Wise Man’s Fear is that you are required to read The Name of the Wind for it to make sense. But instead of worrying about the strictly Kingdom Hearts side of Kingdom Hearts, this observation is actually aimed at the Disney draw.
Kingdom Hearts is obviously best enjoyed with a couple classic Disney films under your belt, but there are no hard requirements as each world is very clear about stating its identity, concepts and story independently of your previous reading of the source material. To play the first game, you need nothing; even without having seen a single Disney film you will still be capable of enjoying the game in its totality, though maybe not to the fullest. To play Kingdom Hearts 2, it’s required that you play the first game as the stories are directly connected, and heavily recommended that you also play Chain of Memories as some portions of the narrative only makes sense with the structure that game establishes. Once again, no outside media is required to understand the going-ons of the Disney worlds, though having seen The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Lion King, and having played Final Fantasy X will definitely assist the task of fully comprehending their associated locations and characters. This trend largely continues throughout the side games as well, at least until you get to Dream Drop Distance in which you might be required to have seen Tron Legacy and much of the game structure means basically nothing if you haven’t played The World Ends with You. You can also get through most of the side games having basically only played KH1 and 2 and be okay, whereas Dream Drop Distance marks the point with which you pretty much need to have fully played every single game (except the mobile games?) or the story will simply leave you behind. But that’s all mostly okay, you bought into this with the expectation that this is all one giant story constantly building on itself, and the Disney material is really just kinda extra places to explore and maybe drool nostalgic all over. See, that thinking’s fine until Kingdom Hearts 3 saunters in and asks you to hold its beer. Are you comfy? You might want to sit down.
To understand Kingdom Hearts 3, here’s everything you NEED to have played: Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, Birth by Sleep, Coded, Dream Drop Distance, Union X and its Back Cover movie, and Birth by Sleep 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage. Again, this is still fine since the narrative is all self-contained, right? Nope, this time we have some extra homework. You also NEED to have seen the following Disney films: Tangled, Frozen, and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films (arguably, also Big Hero 6). That’s nine games and five films, just so the story of Kingdom Hearts 3 — the third game in the main series — will make ANY sense. Also, yes, you do need to watch the first three Pirates films because the world is based on the story of the third film specifically for some reason, and features a bunch of characters that literally never get introduced while you’re there, so either you know what’s happening or you don’t.
Earlier I mentioned that the Disney worlds lately have lacked originality, to which this is basically an extension. Traversing through the “Arendelle” world’s story is almost laughable; the events of the movie play out more or less exactly, with Sora actually getting sidelined out of the story by the villains. If you haven’t seen Frozen beforehand, then nothing that happens in this world is going to make any sense. Yes, “Let it Go” is a great song and has a nice performance attached to it (feels a lot like a stage musical, which I gather was the point), but a lot of that song’s power within the film is built around knowing Elsa as a character and having the framework of her struggle prior to that moment. Kingdom Hearts 3 literally delivers that moment without any of the buildup, and with Sora, Donald, and Goofy literally just watching it from the side with no input whatsoever.
Clickbait title: You laugh you lose, Kingdom Hearts edition.
The whole of this makes me wonder if the story of this series really means anything anymore. Like, why are there even Disney worlds to visit in Kingdom Hearts 3? What does it really add? In the first game, you needed to lock away the heart of each world to keep it safe from the Heartless, and in the second game you were traveling to each world to help reopen the pathways that closed the universe off from itself. In the third game, there is literally no reason to travel from world to world, except to have your enemies wax philosophic on you in a farcically imposed self important manner (there’s a reason why “darkness and light” are practically memes in the context of this series), and deliver fan-service moments like “Let it Go” and the lantern scene from Tangled.
So what’s left? Is it possible for Kingdom Hearts to tell a meaningful story again?
What the Heart Wants - A Soliloquy for Aqua
Along the path of playing through the entire series again, I hit a bit of a roadbump. I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing the first couple games; Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, Re:Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix+ left me feeling positive, and I got to remember just how much good stuff 358/2 Days contained while watching the cinematic compilation (which somehow ended up a more positive experience than playing the actual game). But, that’s about when things petered out. I played through Birth by Sleep: Final Mix feeling bad that the characters were poorly utilized, Re:Coded’s cutscene reel felt a bit like pulling teeth, and Dream Drop Distance HD remains one of the least satisfying / most frustrating video games I’ve ever played. I had pretty much given up on the series by that point, but right around then I got a rallying call in the form of Birth by Sleep 0.2 — A Fragmentary Passage.
Yes, this might be the KH game with the dumbest title.
A Fragmentary Passage takes place immediately following the events of Birth by Sleep and follows Aqua as she journeys through the world of darkness, a journey spanning all the way across to the end point of the first game (a total period of about 10 years). Instead of dwelling too much on the mythos at hand, A Fragmentary Passage focused its time on Aqua and her inner struggles, very carefully observing and tracking her slow descent into depression and isolation. The game starts you off basically at the end game, with your character already supremely powerful, and tailors all the difficulty of the game less around level ups and skill unlocks but rather a sense of mastery as the challenges get harder and simply ask you to respond in kind. Finally, while there does exist some vague and subdued reference to the Disney-powered universe, the game clearly wants nothing more than to simply traverse the intricate facets of Aqua as a character and what it is that she’s feeling. How does she process the weight of a journey with no apparent end, especially when time begins to lose meaning during her long exposure to such a blighted world. How does she cope with the burden of loneliness, especially in a dimension that twists the fabric of perception and truth around its inhabitants? The only encounters Aqua has with others on this long and treacherous road are simple phantoms of her friends back home…and herself, or a mere shadow she needs to overcome. All this, paired with an incredibly slick control scheme, a surprisingly imaginative and luminous aesthetic (far more varied and challenging than all prior attempts of this setting in the series), and the unbelievable visual and aural prowess that has come to define the series as a whole and still remains nearly unmatched in all the AAA industry space.
There’s a lot of reasons why I appreciate A Fragmentary Passage, but I also hold it as an example of what a good Kingdom Hearts story can look like in the landscape they’ve created. The series is convoluted as hell, no doubt about it, and I’m glad that there’s a huge audience that appreciates it, but one thing that always bothers me is this franchise that seems to be constantly skipping past all its best material — the characters. It’s funny, in many ways the series started as a nostalgic scratch for the all too familiar Disney childhood many of us had, but the crazy irony of Kingdom Hearts is that it’s now old enough and established to be an icon of nostalgia for itself, with Disney content or otherwise (possibly even in spite of that). We now have people who have grown up with characters like Sora, Riku, Kairi, and these pseudo-fantasy slick versions of Donald and Goofy. I’m sorry to break it down like this, but Kingdom Hearts is 17 years old. I was at the tail end of middle school when I first played it, and I’m sure many of its fans were even younger. But we’re not that young anymore, and often times I’m not sure Tetsuya Nomura realizes that (at least, if Sora’s character development is any indication).
There’s something notably different about A Fragmentary Passage, and it’s something I felt sprinkled in bits and pieces around 358/2 Days. The KH series has always been themed heavily around the bonds we make with others, and how those bonds stay with us and slowly change us, but in these more somber titles (and in the main games’ more somber moments), there’s a secondary focus about self-discovery, and trying to understand the real value and emotional attachment of those bonds. A Fragmentary Passage is about Aqua traveling through the duress of isolation, but ultimately persevering through it and finding hope in the will of the people she dedicated so much to. There’s an idea that all of Aqua’s power comes from that dedication, this drive to find and be reunited with the people that matter most in her life, and combined with her brutal landscape and the constant duress she experiences, it all coalesces into a strong and occasionally brilliant story.
I’ve seen the roster. I know there are characters other than Aqua capable of such powerful inflection and discovery. To me, a good Kingdom Hearts game is one that examines these moments, these decidedly more intimate journeys, and really explores them. But, you know, maybe with keyblades and magic and high fantasy stuff.
Kingdom Hearts has some story problems, largely in the form of content/detail critical mass, characters that are slaves to the plot, and the Disney inclusion feeling exponentially arbitrary, but I don’t see why these elements can’t be salvaged. This horrendous web of continuity might be a bit foreboding, but now would be a great time to flesh out some of the sprawling foundation and get some landmarks down. Everyone somehow loves your characters despite how unbelievably vacant you’ve made them, but now is a great time to dig a little deeper and really flesh them out. Maybe not every game needs to be infinitely tied to the grand stakes of the plot; as much as I praised A Fragmentary Passage, the entire third act forcibly inserting itself into the background of the first game was definitely the worst aspect of that story by far. In short, I wish Square Enix would take a page out of Frozen and just let it go.
Epilogue: Riku’s decision,
and the Importance of Finishing
Well, that was kind of a disaster. I mean, my stance regarding Kingdom Hearts as a series hasn’t really changed in the last 10 months, but it just feels so angry to read it now. I can tell, at least between the lines, that I was very clearly upset, and I think there’s a pervading lack of structure in the work that reveals that…at least to me. Maybe you liked it? Maybe you loved it? Well, I hope you “something” it, good or bad, because in this case similar to Kingdom Hearts I don’t think the details matter as much as the feeling. And, much like these games’ end credits scenes, I have a couple of mostly disconnected but possibly fascinating thoughts to close with.
It’s funny, I’m not sure why, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Riku’s decision at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts. Out of the three kids, his reason for wanting to sail off the island is the most desperate. Sora just wants to go out there and explore, and Kairi just wants to be together with her friends, but Riku’s sole motivation is to basically be anywhere that isn’t home anymore. It’s not necessarily a need to be independant per say (though I’m sure that factors in a little), but rather this need to escape his everyday life. I stated earlier that I don’t know exactly what depression feels like, but Riku’s situation helps me contextualize it a bit. It’s not that anything in his life is wrong, but nothing in his life feels especially right, and given enough time it’s possible that everything starts feeling wrong. Given that state of mind, is it really that unusual for him to have so calmly plunged head first into the darkness, hoping for the unknown, maybe even knowing that it was wrong?
It’s not a perfect parallel, but in Riku’s situation there’s a little bit of what it felt like to have this unfinished business effectively collecting dust in the closet. Life is going alright for me these last 10 months. My job is fine, there are relatively few opportunities for real stress, and I’m still managing to be productive; I really can’t complain. But, even though nothing feels wrong, somehow leaving this to squander has ultimately prevented a lot of other things from feeling quite right. I still haven’t figured out how to go to work all day and have enough willpower and energy when I get home to be an artist of some variety, and even though life isn’t so bad it somehow feels worse because at the end of the day I am still some kind of artist at heart. Somehow without writing and animating, I feel incomplete even when I’m being productive.
I know, believe me I know, there were such better ways I could’ve proceeded here. The absolute right decision was to abandon this article and simply move on, make something new, and especially something more relevant. Like, it took me so long to get this article out that Square Enix had enough time to announce Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind (speaking of the importance of finishing, let’s see if Tetsuya Nomura can ever get an ending to stick). But, we don’t always get to choose how we feel about things. This project’s incomplete state somehow pulled me into a mock-depression (or maybe a real one) in which I somehow felt like a failure. Worse, my brain somehow also reached the conclusion that the only way out of this funk was to forcibly finish this now ersatz endeavor. I didn’t like this article anymore, but I needed to finish it because I knew I would remain stuck until something changed. This was the project that by virtue of remaining unfinished mentally blocked me from more meaningful work. So, knowing that my choice would be wrong, I still plunged calmly into the darkness, hoping that it would be a strong enough change to somehow unsheathe my creative edge again. I made the wrong decision not because I had given up, but because I knew there was light somewhere to be found.
I’m excited to think about what I might write next.
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I’m especially curious to know how the KH fans respond to this one,
so feel free to leave some comments.
