Few things have touched my heart as much as Kingdom Hearts. The comments of any KH music video on youtube will show you I'm not alone.
Something about this series is... glowing? I've played Final Fantasy games (4/7/8/10/14) and of course seen basically every Disney movie.
And while I like these things, none of them come even a mile close to how Kingdom Hearts can make me feel.
When I hear this music, when I see these cutscenes and the way their goofy proportions move, when I hear these voices. Some long-lost
pain catches me at the back of my throat, and suddenly I can't speak any more. But now I will try to.
I was born in 2001. A little too late to make it to the new millenium on time - a trend I've managed to follow forever. I had older brothers and sisters.
All of them 10-15 years older than me. I was learning about the world while they were skateboarding and playing Crash Bandicoot in their bedroom.
The oldest was an absolute Metalhead. He shredded guitar every day and had an internet girlfriend on an MSN chat about Emo music. Actually, they're
married right now. I think about that a lot.
The next in line was Prom queen, about 13 years older than I ever was. She would listen to Dragosteia Din Tei in her bedroom, and I'd come bounce on her bed and dance with her.
This may have been before it was a meme? I'm not even sure if she knew it was a meme.
The next one is a brother. The skater, the pothead, the gamer. He'd always date Emo and Scene girls, and I know he liked all the classic Emo songs (I heard him singing I write Sins
with his girlfriend in the shower a couple years ago, on a group vacation to Lapland). BUT he wouldn't ever show it or dress emo. He was an absolute Skater - maybe a greb?
He showed me the most - "Funny Cats" videos on YouTube, Gaming, Extreme Sports channels, Skate Movies, etc. The stuff an older brother is supposed to show you.
I wish I could be as cool as them! It's not that I don't like Extreme sports channels or Metal or Skating. But for some reason, gaming just is such a powerful force
for me it felt like I didn't have time for much else. This is all to say - I was surrounded by cool cultures I wanted to be a part of, but couldn't ever find my way into.
Gaming was the most home-like culture for me, and PROBABLY still is? Though that said, being a 2001 child meant I was sort of... on the cusp of things. I saw PS1 and Gameboy
Games, but only ever owned a DS. My family wasn't crazy rich, so I had to save up for my own PS3, and eventually 3DS. I was mostly behind on all the popular games,
and was banned from the ones I DID know about - like Zelda or Pokemon. I used to read gaming magazines a lot, in order to stay updated on the cool new games, even if I couldn't play
them. It was around 2012 or 13 when I saw an article about Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix for the PS3. I had a PS3! (BTW i bought both of these at the end of their cycles. like literally months before the ps4 came out.)
Around this time I saw the game Dream Drop Distance on a supermarket shelf. Specifically this red alternate cover - which I haven't ever seen elsewhere.
Something about these dreamy emo anime boys falling backwards in the sky felt so powerful and drawing to me. They seemed so much older and cooler - like my elder brothers.
I noticed Mickey on the cover, and suddenly everything changed into something much closer to me - much more reachable. It's hard to explain, but Mickey's presence made
the boys seem that much cooler, and the game as a whole seem that much closer. I didn't own a 3DS yet. I did not buy that game.
Through some internet grapevine, I had heard Kingdom Hearts was a convoluted emo mess. I heard about nobodies, Roxas, Twilight Town. All the powerful stuff. I should mention at this point I was a huge anime fan. That's a long story that I'll tell another time. I entered my game
store with some money I had saved, with my Mother. I asked the guy at the counter for "Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix", purposefully annunciating everything carefully. The
guy at the counter said "Yeah, it's a confusing ass name" before going to grab it. I felt AWESOME! I was in on the joke with this cool elder game guy.
The price was a little high, so while holding the game I googled the price for Amazon. This was really rude so my mother, embarassed, made me buy the game on the spot. I did
and started playing it that day. That very day. 2013, 12 years old, 1 year too late.
In hindsight I wish I had gotten into the series on the DS. My best friend, Riley, started with Chain of Memories, but fell in love with 358/2 Days on the DS. I know myself
quite well, and I know, just like them, I would have collapsed inwards on the DS game. Taking it everywhere, playing it everywhere, falling inside. I did this with Animal Crossing
and other similar DS titles. The DS is just like that. Especially if you're a kid. Especially if you're an outcast kid. It was my only console for like 10 years, so even though I was
a huge game fan - I couldn't partake in any discussion about real (Console) games. People didn't care about handheld really? INSANE to me .. I love handheld games often way more than console. They're so small and intricate..... The DS. One time on a bus going to a theme park for my birthday, I saw a cool older kid on the backseat with a DS. I asked my father to pass me my DS VERY LOUDLY to let that kid know I was there. With a DS. I opened pictochat and waited to see if he opened it too. He never did. I was dissapointed for a while. But after some time he approached me. I came over to sit down next to him, and he started showing me his game - Pokemon Diamond. It was so cool. He showed me how you could jump over ledges! I thought the game looked like nothing I'd ever seen. Pokemon is ubiquitous so it may be hard to imagine now, but to see Pokemon for the first time is an insane experience. The design of the clothing is so boxy and game-like. Seeing everything on a grid, the blended 2D and 3D and the colours, and something about the shape of your hat in the game. I can barely put it to words but its SO videogames to me. This feeling has faded a bit as I got older, but I remember how I felt in that moment. The design of the pokeball, the text font,
the shadows around everything. The boy showed me a battle - a voltorb. He explained this was a failed experiment to turn a pokeball into a pokemon (what's a pokeball?!). In an instant my mind began to formulate the scope of this world - scientific experiments, white and red pokeballs - The World. I'm struggling to express what I feel in my heart. I should mention that I like square things, and rectangles too. Pokemon is a very square game. It feels like the original 3DS. You hold it in your hands and its yours. I'll ask my best friend for help in expressing this later. The only games I had to show this boy were Scooby Doo and Ratatouille - the sort of games your parents buy you for christmas if you don't specifically ask for something. LOSER games. I was never as cool as this kid. I saw him once more after that and then never again. Later in my life I would make friends with 2 more strangers through the shared possession of a DS. I wonder if I'll ever feel like that again. I asked my parents for Pokemon for my birthday. I got Diamond! Go watch the Pokemon diamond opening scene. The twinkle, the roar, the eerie music - this is what it feels like to exist. My parents are [REDACTED] which meant that before long the other [DATA EXPUNGED] had made it clear [???]. So Pokemon was to be taken away from me. It was really painful. In exchange they let me open an early Christmas present. Tamagotchi Corner Shop 2. A GREAT game for sure - but not Pokemon. Not Pokemon in 2006 when all the other kids at school are trading Pokemon. This was torture. I asked to swap back, they held steadfast. I researched, I made powerpoints, presentations - why I should be allowed to play Pokemon. It fell on dead ears. Alright. I need to find a new avenue to satiate this FEELING. This NEED to collect them and to exist in a world like that. I became obsessed with similar media. Digimon, Beyblade, even Cubix. It was hard to find series I was allowed to participate in - but I got lucky every now and then. Digimon and Beyblade were huge for me. I even managed to get Digimon World Dawn for DS!! What a joy. People at school were even a little interested in it - though more in a weird curiosity at what the weird kid was playing than any genuine interest. I tried to convince people to buy Digivices to play with me lol. Aaa...... I played Digimon world dawn so much it broke. My Father phoned Nintendo and complained "The disc was broken." I was mortified !!!! It's a GAME CART NOT A DISC!!!! I exclaimed. Either way the game was lost - it was ordered from America and Nintendo of the UK would not help with foreign imported games. I lost Digimon. I was excluded from the excluded game club.
I hope with the above introduction, you can begin to understand my headspace with Kingdom Hearts. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be cool - cool in the Gamer way.
I wanted to be Emo. I wanted to be whatever those 2 boys were, falling backwards through the sky. Hearts in sync. . .
I clench my teeth. My self-bought PS3 and TV are set up at the end of my bed. I live on the first floor. I have a Dell XPS 17 laptop. I am in my first year of Highschool and
I love My Chemical Romance and Emo music. Though I only know Emo through the lens of Dan and Phil. I have felt like an outsider my entire life - too much of an outsider to even
BE an outsider - something even further out. So far I have loved Sonic, Warrior Cats, Naruto, and any other anime thing I could get my hands on. My TV flickers to life and the
grinding of my PS3 breaks the silence. I am about to play Kingdom Hearts for the first time.
Most people will tell you this - but the opening of Kingdom Hearts is eerie. Maybe even scary. Not the opening video, I actually disliked that due to the song. I didn't like
club music much at the time, and I had heard Simple and Clean through tumblr and was expecting that emotional hit at the beginning of the game - NOT the end.
The opening Segment of gameplay - the Dive to the Heart section, in Sora's heart, his station of awakening. (I want to make it clear I LOVE all the terminology used in
the KH series, I will be using it as much as I can.)
Black is a really interesting concept to me. I remember reading these books as a kid called Funny Bones which really emphasised blackness and darkness as a solid wall
of pure black. It seemed less like a colour and more like another world. Deltarune feels like this at times too. Darkness is felt as a presence.
Dive to the Heart also makes me feel this way. These stained glass towers that rise out of such a thick darkness you can't see the bottom, connected by these glass tiles
that disappear once you walk on them. Even the versions of the disney princesses presented on them have their colours altered - it triggers something in my memory but
it's not quite right. It's a wonderful place. The music here is Destati - the theme of absolute darkness. At times it feels structureless, and more just a general aura of
unwelcoming. In this section you make 2 choices. A sword, shield, and staff - you must pick one and lose one. The wording used is so strong - "To give up the power of magic". The
generic fantasy items feel almost out of place here. They're holy. I didn't understand what the game was really asking - "Which stat boosts would you like?". To me this was
a choice of utmost importance. I kept the magic staff and dropped the shield.
A voiceless text speaks to us in this segment. Sora never replies, but he does look around when the text is on screen - implying he can somehow hear, or read it too. I think this has been confirmed to be Mickey, but I personally much much much prefer the idea that it's no one - just a dark mysterious voice in this world.
This section introduces you to the Heartless. They twitch erratically, looking around fervently with their heads low. When scared, they hide in shadows and bury themselves away. They are pure dark with eyes of beaming brightness. They act the way I do when I feel most neurotic. I'd like to hope even when I'm burying my face my eyes still glow.
It's easy to take for granted this opening section. It's very Videogame-y. Even if this is your first game you can assume this is just a temporary tutorial segment. But really . . .
how many games take you to a world of darkness and shadows within the protagonists' heart for their introductions? Final Fantasy doesn't. Zelda doesn't. Dark Souls, Mario, Sonic, Pokemon - all the classic games don't even use alternate world tutorials. I wonder why the game starts like this - at the very core of the boy who's heart we too would inhabit throughout the game. A door appears in the darkness, and opens with a blinding, shining light. Sora doesn't walk through, but when he opens his eyes he stands on Destiny Island, at the far edge by the treehouse. 3 characters from Final Fantasy 8 and 10 stand in a triangle around Sora. If approached, they ask him each a personal question. Similar to the 3 choices of fantasy weaponry, these options don't change anything aside from some balancing and stat changes. However, the presentation is so vague and mysterious, I'm sure any first time player would gulp before picking an option. The difficulty options you select here also affect the time of day your journey starts. Everything you do here feels so important. It feels like you're being watched, judged, and seen entirely through. To your core. No matter which option you choose, your answer will be questioned - "Is that really so important?". I remember feeling so small at this point. In the presence of some kind of God - no matter what I say it would never amount to anything. If you've played Final Fantasy before this game,
maybe this section feels different to you! The way this game treats these 3 FF characters is really weird. You can talk to them and play with them - they appear to be as relevant to Sora's life as Riku or Kairi. However once the island falls, they are never mentioned again - I presumed they died. It feels like Sora doesn't care about them, or maybe even remember them. It always made me feel so uncomfortable. It probably contributes to this section feeling so dreamlife and unreal. You meet Leon later - I wonder if he would remember Selphie.
Some of the answers in this section feel incredibly cold. You can choose to have close connections - or to become stronger. When I was a lonely 12 year old I chose to find connections. I showed the game to 2 close friends 5 years later - finally where I wanted to be. They chose to become stronger; I realised even then I was different from those I loved.
You are the one who will open the door
At the end of this section we fight a being called Darkside. This is a really mysterious figure - the series still hasn't really given a clear definition on who this is, but most would agree it's Sora's dark side. He grows from Sora's shadow, and towers above him. "The closer you get to light, the larger your shadow grows."
Sora runs to the edge of the tower, but must confront his fear. Text appears "Do not fear, and do not forget." They speak akin to an angel. This game, and series as a whole, is a bildungsroman - a growing up story. The larger stature and masculine figure of Darkside
could be a sort of Adulthood that Sora must confront and accept in order to grow up. It is in this section, the first opening hours of the game, that Sora is the most innocent and most childlike he will ever be allowed to be ever again. Darkside has a whole-shaped heart in his chest, from which it sometimes shoots orbs of darkness. The entire being is darkness, aside from those beaming glowing eyes - just like the heartless. It has a spiky silhouette, with crooked feat and sharp wings. It truly looks like an adult heartless. You can win the fight or lose - either way it will eventually overpower Sora, and drag him into darkness. The camera shakes, the text moves erratically. "Do not fear. You have the strongest weapon. You are the one who will open the door." That weapon - that power - is surely his friends. We see a few shots of Darkside - and in these little glimpses it seems so sorrowful to me. Its face is almost completey bound by some kind of dark tentacle or hair or bandage. Scratch marks streak down from its eyes - like it was trying to rip them off. It's a little too early to go in depth on this - but I'd like you to think about Sora and Darkside. What is that inside him? That which he cannot defeat?
I like Green tea. This is a lot of text already, and we have only finished the first cutscene. Maybe we should go pour some tea?
His eyes open, and he awakens to a classic shot of the sky.