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jadeepicp · 30 days ago

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…The parallels…

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jadeepicp · 30 days ago

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For whatever reason today, I had a bunch of brain worms about one of my favourite scenes in Kingdom Hearts II. Endgame spoilers for that game incoming btw.

Seeing Sora, Riku and Kairi all finally reunite is something we’d been waiting for since the opening hours of KH1. And now, in this scene, we finally get that payoff. And there’s so much stuff going on here that makes this scene so heartwarming.

I feel like the reunion between Sora and Kairi gets downplayed to ‘just a hug’ considering what comes directly after. But I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Context is everything. Sora comes across rather awkward and embarrassed here because he feels like he let Kairi down. And it’s no wonder considering what he hears her say: “You and Riku never came home. So I came looking for you”. Sora left Kairi on the Destiny Islands at the end of KH1 with the promise to come back because he didn’t want her to get hurt. And who could blame him? She’d almost died and been left comatose once after all. But that also meant he ended up leaving her for a whole year, one that he doesn’t even remember. And what happened after that? He left her so long that she ended up going to look for him, and in the process was caught by the Organization. Exacrly the opposite of what Sora wanted to happen. He feels like Kairi got pulled into danger because he wasn’t there for her. And what does she do? She hugs him before he can mumble out an apology. She lets him know that she forgives him, that he doesn’t need to feel like he failed her. And Sora just wordlessly hugs her back. They know, more than anything, that they’re just happy to see each other again, safe and sound.

And then of course, we have the reveal of Ansem as actually being Riku. And I really like that Kairi is the one who learns this before Sora. And she’s the one who can use her vaguely-defined Princess of Heart plot magic to show the truth to him. It presents her as something of a bridge between the two, able to finally bring these two long-seperated friends together. And that honestly tracks. Sora, Riku and Kairi are a trio, they always have been. Take one away and things just aren’t the same. When Kairi was gone, Sora and Riku started fighting to keep her safe. When Riku was gone, Sora and Kairi agree without hesitation that they need him back. They don’t even consider going on without him for a second. When Sora was gone, Kairi was stuck alone, and Riku was skulking about ashamed over his past actions. These three aren’t complete without each other. They will never be happy unless it’s the three of them. It also gives Riku and Kairi some nice closure. You got the sense from how they reacted around each other at the start of KH1 that she could tell Riku wasn’t in a good place or the healthiest mindset, and that resulting distance never really got resolved. Now how ever she sees Riku about to distance himself from her and Sora again, and she doesn’t hesitate to tell him not to go.

You don’t need me to tell you how touching Sora’s reaction to finding Riku is. He watched Riku vanish on the other side of the door. And unlike with Kairi, he couldn’t promise that they’d see each other again. All he could do was hope and keep looking. So when he finally finds him again, it’s a moment of catharsis and relief. Sora is a character who smiles even when things are rough. No matter how much punishment he takes game after game, he keeps that sunny disposition. But now, he can finally let the front break and admit how much losing Riku hurt. I also wanna come back to that point about context. Sora reacted as he did to Kairi because he felt guilty, and she unconditionally forgives him. But here we get a reversal of that dynamic. Here, Riku is the one holding back because he feels guilty for letting down his friends, and Sora is the one showing unconditional love and forgiveness for his best friend. Seeing Sora of all characters break down and cry is incredibly powerful, and as a character beat it feels earned. Because we’re right there with him. We’ve seen how far Sora has gone looking for Riku, how afriad he was of never seeing him again. And we feel that moment of release when Sora can just let his emotions flow for once.

Kingdom Hearts can be incredibly dumb and messy in its writing, but this scene shines as a genuinely great payoff and evidence of what a great wrap-up 2 was to the prior two games. It pays off a moment we’d been waiting three installments for, gives the scene plenty of emotional complexities and time to breathe.And most of all, the writing treats all three characters with care and respect. And that leads into a gripe I have with both DDD and KH3. They both only focus on two of this trio at a time, instead of letting them be a group. DDD does a wonderful job exploring Sora and Riku’s relationship and capping off Riku’s arc (Soriku fans were freaking fed in 2012) but at the cost completely ignoring Kairi. KH3 gives some really charming scenes between Sora and Kairi, but shafts Riku almost entirely (Riku and Kairi don’t even TALK to each other the whole game). And that’s something I hope the Lost Masters arc takes time to remember. Let these three be a trio, where all three are valued, and explore all of their relationships like this scene did. Kingdom Hearts has no shortage of characters I like, but if you asked me who were the three that got me invested, and kept me coming back, I would say it was still the Destiny Trio. Sora, Riku and Kairi were the gateway for all of us into this series and the ones who stuck with me the most. I don’t think their relationship has been handled perfectly, most notably, KH’s tendancy to constantly do its female characters dirty restricts Kairi especially. But moments like this will always drive home why I love these characters and these games.

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jadeepicp · 30 days ago

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