Kingdom Hearts

About

Kingdom Hearts is a popular game series made by Square Enix. Started in 2002, it is a crossover of Disney and Final Fantasy characters and worlds. Since the release of the first game in the series, it has received with widespread critical acclaim and has been followed up with a myriad of sequels and side-games.

Premise

The story is centered around Sora, a young boy who lives on Destiny Islands with his friends Riku and Kairi. When his home is attacked by darkness and his friends disappear, he uses his new found power of the keyblade to go and find them. Soon joined by Donald and Goofy, they travel many worlds looking for Sora's friends and banishing darkness. In later games other characters are introduced and are sometimes the main focus, such as Roxas, and his search to find his purpose, Riku and his balance between light and dark, and keyblade warriors Terra, Ventus, and Aqua.

Characters

Sora

When beginning development on the first game, Square Enix wanted Mickey Mouse to be the main characters, and Disney wanted Donald Duck. Tetsuya wanted a human as the main actor and so Sora^[4] was born. His original concept showed him as half human half lion with a chainsaw sword. Later they settled on the human boy Sora we play today. Sora is a brave and upbeat character, who is ready to fight for his friends. He is a keyblade wielder which gives him the power to open any lock and remove darkness from worlds.

Riku

Riku^[5] calm, cool and sometimes seemingly emotionless. Still, he too would fight for his friends and do anything to protect them. He is also a keyblade wieldier and has become a master. Riku is filled with light and darkness and controls both of them unlike Sora, who just controls light.

Roxas

Roxas^[6] is the Nobody of Sora and was created when Sora died to restore Kairi’s heart. Roxas has all the same powers as Sora. Roxas has the power to have emotions, unlike other Nobodies. Roxas’s personality is like Soras but he is less happy and upbeat. He is also easily angered, unlike Sora.

Terra, Ventus, and Aqua

Terra, Ventus, and Aqua Are the main character trio from Birth by Sleep.

Terra^[7] is calm and cold, much like Riku, but inside him is a heart that will fight for his friends. Terra is tempted by darkness and can’t control it, leading him to be angry and lose control.

Ventus^[8] is a happy boy but is usually concerned about Terra, who he sees as an older brother. Ventus makes friends more easily than the other two and makes a new friend in each world. Ventus is constantly faced with his dark side Vanitas^[9], who is threatening Ventus' friends.

Aqua^[10] is the most mature of the trio. She is the only one to gain master status and has greater power than the other two. Aqua has a great passion for her friends, shown when she sacrifices herself to save Terra from dying, even though he is evil and lost control. She does all she can to protect those she loves.

History

Kingdom Hearts first started as talk between Shinji Hashimoto^[1] and Hironobu_Sakaguchi,^[2] who were talking about how they wanted to make a game like Super Mario 64, but thought only characters from Disney could rival Mario. By luck, a Disney executive and Hironobu met in an elevator and talked about the idea which led to its creation. Kingdom Hearts was directed by Tetsuya Nomura.^[3] Disney gave him full rights to use the characters and worlds of Disney how he wanted to, but chose to stay true to their source material. Tetsuya began by only using Final Fantasy characters he made but used others in later games.

Gameplay

Kingdom Hearts is a mix between a Hack and Slash action game and an RPG and uses real-time combat. The main character uses melee and magic attacks, can also use summons and sometimes has friends/followers. Gummi ships are in a couple of Kingdom Hearts games as a way to travel between words. Gummi ship levels are much like Star Fox 64. Each game has a “journal”, either written by a side or main character, which contains all the information about the games', story, worlds and characters. Kingdom Hearts takes many things from Final Fantasy, such leveling style, weapon names, boss fights and side characters.

Online Relevance

Kingdom Hearts is very popular online. A deviantART search of Kingdom Kearts brings up over 650,000 results.^[11] On reddit, the sub-reddit for Kingdom Hearts has over 16,000 readers.^[12] On fanfiction.net, Kingdom Hearts has the most fiction of any video game at about 71,000.^[13] Also on Tumblr, there many blogs devoted to Kingdom Hearts and its related fandoms.^[14] TV Tropes has the page for the game franchise^[15], and fanmade wiki pages dedicated to the game series, Kingdom Hearts Wiki^[16] and KeyHole^[17], were launched on April 1st, 2006 and Feburary 1st, 2010 respectively.

On the Japanese illustrator community pixiv, fan illustrations for Kingdom Hearts are not only tagged by the name "キングダムハーツ"^[18], but also tagged by "王国心"^[19], an argot coming from the literal translations of "Kingdom" (王国) and "Heart(s)" (心). The latter tag is usually used for Yaoi illustrations for the purpose of avoiding deletion by Square Enix.

Fandom

Cosplay

As in all fandoms, many people like to cosplay as Kingdom Hearts characters. Some use websites to get official products and others sew and use cardboard to make costumes to show their love for their fandom.

Fan Art

Fan Videos and Parodies

People make many parodies for Kingdom Hearts. Most parodies criticize the games' large friendship messages, the Final Fantasy and Disney crossover, and the franchise's convoluted plot. Some parodies are done like YouTube Poops using clips from the game. AMVs, Miku Miku dance, and anime dance videos are commonly found in the Kingdom Hearts fandom.

Related Memes

Roxas Hates

Roxas Hates is a video showing Roxas destroying a computer. The clip would eventually be subject to remixes and is commonly paired up with a song or video the maker doesn’t like.

Omega Kawaii Cloud Song

Omega Kawaii Cloud Song originates from an animation involving Cloud singing about jokes in the Final Fantasy world. Kingdom Hearts fans have made multiple parodies of this.

Related Subcultures

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is another large video game by Square Enix. Due to the fact that Kingdom Hearts is a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover, both fandoms interact with each other. Many fans write fanfics or draw pictures using characters from Disney and Final Fantasy that weren't included in Kingdom Hearts.

Nightmare Before Christmas

Since Halloween Town is a playable world in Kingdom Hearts, both fandoms have interacted with each other. Arguably, some of Nightmare Before Christmas's popularity comes from its rebirth in the Kingdom Hearts saga.

Search Interest

External References