#and it isn’t until Hollow Bastion that Goofy and Donald are separated from Sora again

[bramblequeen]

I am once again reminded of the incredible potential that Deep Jungle/the Tarzan World could’ve had in future Kingdom Hearts sequels but couldn’t due to licensing agreements (and Disney being slimy bastards with their properties)

[khtrinityftw]

Part 10: Rage Against the Patriarchy

Let’s face it: the Kingdom Hearts series has always had something of a woman problem. 

A number of strong Disney heroines like Jasmine and Megara were wimpified, Aqua in BBS was a powerful fighter but a weak character without the kind of arc her male friends got, and I already covered the issues that plagued Namine and Xion.  And by Kingdom Hearts III, things had only gotten worse, as more Disney heroines all the way up to fucking Elsa weren't given their due, Aqua was finally given an arc only to have it rendered meaningless all while her powerful fighter status got compromised repeatedly, and even Organization XIII's resident badass bitch Larxene was revealed to be motivated by feelings for a man.

But when talking about how the series failed its female characters, there's one female character that stands in a class of her own, and that's the original female lead of the KH Trinity herself: Kairi.

Kairi was the emotional heart of the KH Trinity. She is introduced very early into the original game and through several interactions we get to know her and how behind her bubbly front she has deep anxiety over her life changing and the possibility of losing her home and friends, an anxiety stemming from a traumatic past that she might remember a little more of than she lets on. 

After she disappears during Destiny Islands' destruction, she occasionally appears to Sora to provide insights or advice. That's because her heart took refuge inside of his, and she is consciously sharing his journey with him. Riku and many stupid, sexist players identify her body as her, claiming that she's "in a coma" for most of the game and needs to be woken up. But the point of the story that Keiko Nobumoto finalized is to challenge you to look past this kind of objectification and consider the spiritual reality that Sora learns: hearts are who people are in the KH universe. Sora doesn't need to save Kairi because he already did from the start, just by being such a close friend to her and connecting his heart to her's. 

And after the "Kairi's inside me" (heh) revelation is made, Kairi actually saves Sora three times in a row! She stops him from getting his head smashed in by Ansem, she refuses to believe he's gone after he disappears which allows him to hold on to his feelings as a Heartless, and then she shields him from the attacking Heartless with her own body, an act which allows him to regain his human form. That's no mere damsel in distress!

Really, the only quibble I have with Kairi in the first game is that she isn't allowed to go back to Hollow Bastion for no good reason during the big Oathkeeper scene. That was stupid and awkward, that scene really should have taken place at Hollow Bastion before going to End of the World. But otherwise, Kairi was a fully-realized, three-dimensional character with her own emotional growth. The entire ending FMV even focuses on her and how she's learned to cope with a changing life and separation from her friends thanks to the lessons she's learned about the unbreakable connections of hearts from her journey inside of Sora.

But it was all downhill from there.

Kairi is still good in COM and KH2, but not to the same extent. The idea of Kairi is a powerful one in COM and drives the entire story, but Kairi herself never makes an appearance until the end credits of the 3D remake, and I wouldn't mind so much except that Riku gets his own playable story mode in the game which sets a bad precedent going forward.  

In KH2, Kazushige Nojima's writing caused Kairi's personality to be flattened mainly to just 'love interest'; she's like a two-dimensional shadow of Final Fantasy VIII's Rinoa Heartilly. The pacing for her appearances is also sporadic and mainly confined to the last stretch of the game, and she's needlessly kidnapped by the Organization after going to Twilight Town when she could have stayed around longer and developed her character more.  Also, would it have killed them to give her a combat AI? Or explain where her new Keyblade even came from!?

But with that said, she's still a likable character who is spirited and brave, she makes a lot of new friendships like with Pluto, the Twilight Town kids and her own Nobody Namine, she effectively shows her maturity since the first game and even has some small development about learning to stop waiting after a certain point and actually take action to make what you want happen.  Most importantly, she still plays a major role in the story that justifies her existence. Sora still cares deeply for her and is just as motivated to find her as he is to find Riku once he learns she's been kidnapped. And she's the linchpin for the entire finale, as both Sora and Riku's reunion and their return home to Destiny Islands would not have happened without Kairi facilitating them. It really helps establish their friendship trio as just that: a trio, where all three are needed to make it work. Sora and Riku would not have survived the game without her.

Also, she served as the springboard for the manga adaptation's rendition, which fixes all the problems and gives us the definitive version of the character. Gotta appreciate that!

Unfortunately, you might remember that I mentioned Sora and Riku were shipped together by the massively vocal yaoi fangirl community, and they despised Kairi with a passion. This hatred spread to many fanboys too, who called her "useless" for not being an in-game fighter (hey guys, literally all of the playable characters of the KH Trinity wouldn't be around to play as without Kairi! I think that counts as a use!)  And because Nomura is both a sexist pig and a shameless fan panderer, it was clear to him what to do with Kairi.

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

She isn't actually in Days, not even in Mission Mode as a playable character despite even fucking Donald and Goofy being so, and Xion's connection to her is a red herring to make her connection to Sora more shocking.  She's only in BBS briefly - one scene as a child and then at the very end of "Blank Points' - and not given the same amount of importance as Sora and Riku. A data version of her does not exist in Coded, even though data versions of Sora and Riku and even Namine do. As I mentioned before, she doesn't show up in 3D until the last shot of the secret ending. And in 0.2 BBS, she doesn't say anything until toward the end, and is promptly shut up and told to go train alongside her former kidnapper! What the fuck!? I honestly think the most justice done to Kairi past KH2 would be the powerful medals with her image on them in the UX mobile phone game!

This is 6 games over the course of a whole decade, and there is barely any Kairi in them at all, let alone as a playable character despite her being the series' original heroine. Worse still is that when Kairi is there, her character has been rewritten by Nomura and Oka into the weak, boring nice girl that her detractors saw her as: the fire and the passionate desire to act freely whenever she had the chance is totally gone. She just lets Sora and Riku leave her behind on the islands again after specifically saying in KH2 that she won't let that happen anymore, and despite being able to wield a Keyblade she only joins the cause when some old white dude summons her to do so! Hayden Panettiere being replaced by Alyson Stoner as her voice only adds to the effect, she just doesn't have the same spunky quality to her. 

And when Kairi isn't around? She is pretty much never talked about, or even thought about, by her supposed friends Sora and Riku. Per the sexist cliches of shonen writing and the desire to pander to the fans, the Destiny Trio became a Destiny Duo, with Sora and Riku managing just fine on their own without needing Kairi, their bromance was emphasized as the most important thing in each other's lives ad nauseam. This misogynistic brand of queer-baiting worked all too well, with fans continuing to support Sora and Riku as boyfriends while condemning Kairi as a boring, useless character who oughta just die already.

Well, Nomura sure did continue to listen to these fans...

[we-are-trickster]

Trickster of the Month - January 2019

It’s been way too long since I’ve done one of these, but it’s time to yell about characters that fit the Trickster Archetype again.

This month, we’re going to talk about a cute little Trickster who is near and dear to my heart, a sweet young man who’s been a bigger inspiration to me than even I once thought. He’s one of those characters that at first glance you would wonder “that’s a trickster? But how?!” and of course, I’m here to back my point up.

Today we’re taking about Sora from Kingdom Hearts, a Trickster Hero in more ways than one.

-x-x-

“Oh yeah? Well, you’ll see. I’m gonna get out and learn what’s out there!”  - Sora, Kingdom Hearts

The first Kingdom Hearts game came out in 2002, nearly 20 years ago now. It introduced us to a multiverse made up of Disney-movie based worlds under threat from creatures born of darkness called Heartless. These Heartless prey on negative emotion and steal people’s hearts, causing worlds to fall into the darkness. Sora is our main hero in the fight against the Heartless, he begins the game as a carefree youth on Destiny Island. Sora and his two dearest friends, Riku and Kairi, want to get off their island and find whatever’s out there. Unfortunately, they get their wish when the Heartless attack their world and plunge it into Darkness, scattering them throughout the Multiverse.

During this attack, Sora discovers he is a chosen wielder of a weapon known as a Keyblade – a large, key-shaped sword that has more uses than just bludgeoning Heartless to death – and upon his arrival in a place called Traverse Town, a kind of nexus for displaced people who survive the destruction of their worlds, he meets Donald and Goofy and learns from other survivors about the truth of the multiverse and about his place in it as the wielder of the Keyblade.

This begins a journey for the ages as Sora, Donald, and Goofy set off to find His Royal Majesty King Mickey with Sora having a secondary goal of reuniting with Riku and Kairi. Along the way they face many challenges and make many new friends, learning that the strength of one’s heart and the bonds of friendship are what help fight off the Darkness, and that no matter what if you keep your friends in your heart you will have the strength and courage to face any challenge.

So what gives Sora the Trickster mantle?

Throughout the Kingdom Hearts series we come to learn that Sora isn’t the typical “chosen one.” He’s not particularly strong or courageous in the traditional sense, but he does have something unique to himself and that is the depth of his loyalty and the depth of his kindness. He’ll face any challenge if it means reuniting with the people he cares for most. In fact, Sora extends a hand of kindness and friendship even to his enemies, trying to encourage them away from a path of destruction. This fact is highlighted by Ansem the Wise at the end of Dream Drop Distance when he highlights the unique ability that Sora has to not only connect to the hearts of others, but to restore them. Sora is the one person to reunite with his Nobody without destroying him, Roxas still exists as his own person inside of Sora’s heart and Sora is perfectly okay with this fact. He is the one person who looks at everyone in the world of Kingdom Hearts and sees the potential for goodness inside of them and won’t stop fighting until they have a chance to realize that potential.

 Sora as Traveler

After Destiny Island is swallowed by Darkness in the first Kingdom Hearts, Sora becomes a homeless wanderer. He goes to many places and makes many allies, but he never stays in one place for very long.

This echoes the “dweller at the threshold” aspect of Tricksters. A Trickster has no set home, they are welcome in many places both civilized and wild but they have nowhere that they truly belong.

Sora travels the multiverse, popping into various worlds to visit some very familiar faces to any Disney fan. He makes friends and enemies wherever he goes, but he can never stay for very long nor can he reveal where he is from - outside of their world. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but one of the tasks Sora is charged with is keeping the worlds secret from one another. The only heroic character to realize he is from another world is King Triton from Atlantica and when he realizes this, he admonishes Sora for “meddling” even though Sora is trying to defend Atlantica from the Heartless. At first, Sora has difficulty hiding this fact but by the time of Dream Drop Distance he has become practiced at hiding this fact, blending in successfully. 

 Sora as an Outsider

As previously mentioned, Sora is an outsider to the worlds he travels. While he eventually adopts Traverse Town and Hollow Bastion as home bases, everywhere else is a place he visits. And whenever he goes somewhere, he can instantly be picked out by his behavior and manner of dress as an outsider. There are a few notable exceptions where his form changes via magic to fit in better in certain worlds, but overall he’s easy to pick out from the common people of a given world.

In the first game he is new to traveling the multiverse and thus is a little more obvious and oblivious to his outsider status, but by the time of Dream Drop Distance he’s become a seasoned traveler and has developed a friendly vagueness. He knows he can’t fully reveal himself, but the nature of his work requires him to interact with the denizens of a given word on some level, so he has developed his kindness into its own cloak of obscurity. He becomes the kind stranger you meet and who does good works but disappears and avoids recognition and accolades. He brings an outsiders’ perspective to every situation he encounters, having the secret knowledge of other worlds and the threats of the multiverse – Heartless, Nobodies, and Dream Eaters – as well as how to deal with them. 

 Sora as Teacher

Despite his status as an outsider, Sora does manage to leave an impression on the places he visits and not just because he deals with the dangers present there. He often imparts important lessons to the residents of these worlds, especially in later games when he’s gotten a wealth of experience under his belt. He imparts bittersweet lessons of friendship and loss, learning to heal from hurt – which can be a long and painful process. Sora never turns his back to someone who he believes can be saved but also doesn’t hesitate to fight those who are too far gone. His most driving goal is to reunite with Riku, and then see Riku brought back to the light. Even when Riku doesn’t believe in himself, Sora still believes in him.

Sora is a good example of “the wise fool.” No matter how serious he gets, he is still a silly young man. His youth hides his experience and wisdom, but he does still enjoy simple pleasures. The look on his face when he sees Christmas Town for the first time and is confronted by Santa Claus is a look of pure wonder and childish glee. But at the same time he takes his duties seriously and can be quite profound in his observations. Not only that, he is willing to take authority figures to task when they need to be. Even King Mickey himself isn’t exempt from Sora’s questioning and lessons. He defies orders at times, choosing instead to follow his heart.

 Sora as a Crosser of Barriers

Throughout the Kingdom Hearts series, connections and barriers are a reoccurring theme. The Keyblade itself is a weapon that can both lock and unlock worlds. It has the power to both seal a place away, removing its connection to the greater multiverse or reconnecting it in the same manner. It also has the power to unlock the potential of its wielder, responding to the strengths of the one who holds and only lending its power to those deemed worthy. In the first game, Riku attempts to take the power of the Keyblade for himself, to use for Dark purposes, but the Keyblade rejects him and returns to Sora when he realizes his own strength. In this manner, it cannot be separated from its wielder. It is as much a manifestation of the power within Sora as it is an actual weapon.

During some points of the games, characters try to shake Sora’s belief in himself and his worthiness to wield the Keyblade – implying that it is a weapon that can be passed from wielder to wielder. Of course, this information often comes from the villains of these games so it’s hard to tell the reliability of this statement. Keyblades seem to be weapons manifested by the wielder, so I believe that it’s more a matter of strength of heart and ability. You can’t take someone else’s Keyblade, you simply manifest a copy of your own.

Sora uses the Keyblade time and again to open paths between the worlds. This is most powerful use of a Keyblade and is likely the reason that Keyblade wielders must be carefully tested and trained. It’s less about teaching them to wield the Keyblade, but rather teaching them to wield its power responsibly. Thanks to its ability to lock and unlock hearts and worlds, connecting them or closing them off, it is a weapon that has terrible power to destroy if a user so desires. Sora uses the Keyblade’s power to travel between the worlds to protect them, which does seem to be one of the original purposes of the Keyblade Masters like Aqua, Terra, and Ventus. During these travels, Sora associates with both the highest of the high and the lowest of the low, even treating the computer program TRON like a living person. There is no place that Sora will not travel to, no place he will not defend. In the first Kingdom Hearts he faces off against Chernabog in an area that can be described as a “underworld” of sorts. It’s called “End of the World” and represents an area where remnants of worlds that have fallen to darkness gather, awaiting restoration.

The Ultimate Barrier that Sora has ever crossed was during the first Kingdom Hearts. There is a moment towards the end of the first game when Sora has sacrificed himself to give Kairi back her heart that Sora becomes a Heartless. Up to this point, we had never seen anyone return from losing their heart. But Sora manages to maintain enough of his personality and memories as a Heartless to seek Kairi out and what’s more when he finds her, he is able to leverage their connection in order to return to his original form. This is just the first of many times that Sora crosses what can be interpreted as a Life – Death barrier. If Death doesn’t even have a firm grasp on Sora, how can he be anything but a Trickster?  

 The evidence is staked very high in Sora’s favor as a Trickster. Kingdom Hearts represents one of those rare times that a Trickster is unapologetically heroic. Sora teaches us that unashamed optimism in the face of danger and our connection to others is an intense and extreme power that anyone can wield. In a world where cynicism and darkness rule, having an open hand of friendship is a revolutionary act. Tricksters are agents of Change and Transformation and Kingdom Hearts is ultimately about the purest kind of change, the change that occurs when we open ourselves up to becoming part of a greater world. When we leave the safety of the familiar and step into the unknown, facing it not with fear but with kindness and an open heart. That is Sora’s Trickster Lesson, and an important lesson in these times where people close themselves off from one another.

-x-x-

If you enjoyed this analysis, considering buying me a Ko-fi!  

[themattress]

Ah, see, a chapter from this crappy book was put online.

Many comments down below argue against it, point out what’s wrong with it, and deconstruct its main thesis....but I feel I can do it better, so that’s what I’m going to use this post to do.

When I played Kingdom Hearts II for the first time, one moment stuck with me above all else.

Wow, OK, so this one moment (the Sora/Riku yaoi bait moment) stood out above all other of the many magnificent, memorable moments in the game to you, did it now? Goes to show where your priorities are, and they are NOT where most KH players’ are. But yeah, you’re such a KH “expert” whom we should totally take seriously. After all, you wrote a book! 

Before the final string of boss battles, after reuniting with Kairi—a brief hug and the murmured words “this is real”—Sora prepares to continue his trek through The World That Never Was to find Xemnas. Ansem, tall and ominous in his black coat, watches this exchange from a dozen feet away. Silently, he turns and begins to walk away, only for Kairi to run after him and demand, “Riku, don’t go.”

LIE! This is NOT how the moment went at all. The hug was not “brief” - Kairi throws herself at Sora out of pure emotion, hugs him, says “this is real”, and then Sora, recovering from the surprise, closes his eyes dramatically and emotionally as she hugs Kairi back, tightly. This shared hug lasts long enough for Donald and Goofy, our resident in-game Sora/Kairi shippers, to nonverbally react to it with happiness. This moment is given respect and weight, and it only falls flat for you because you don’t care about Kairi or Sora/Kairi.  Sora also does NOT “prepare to continue his trek”, he and Kairi both only get snapped out of the hug when “Ansem” tries to leave. Also, let’s see how long it takes for you to gloss over Kairi’s role in making the reunion happen, even when you admit Riku would have left if not for her. 

(Btw, the hug and Sora crying on his knees both lasted the same amount: 20 seconds.)

Sora spends every free moment he has in Kingdom Hearts looking for Riku, inquiring with everyone he meets about his whereabouts and lamenting his absence.

LIE! This is NOT what Sora does with “every free moment” he has. There are other friends he genuinely wants to catch up with, other people he doesn’t particularly need to help but does, mini-games he wants to play...oh, and after Kairi is kidnapped, he also asks about her in addition to Riku, even to the point of getting on his knees and begging Saix to take him to her. Nobody’s arguing that Riku isn’t very important to Sora, but you are very deliberately and dishonestly slanting things to make it look like he’s all he cares about to boost your argument.

But the moment Kairi speaks Riku’s name, Sora’s face twists, displaying a confusion and pain we haven’t seen before. 

LIE! Sora’s face is first one of “WTF!?” surprise, and then of just-plain incredulous confusion - he doesn’t immediately believe that “Ansem” is Riku and is likely wondering if Kairi’s lost her mind. And really? We haven’t seen these expressions from Sora before? You need to replay this game which you believe yourself to be such an expert at that you write a book about it.

A slow, almost mournful song plays in the background as Sora closes his eyes, and looks past Ansem’s guise to Riku, the friend he has so desperately searching for. 

Aaand you neglect to mention that it’s because of Kairi’s powers that he is able to look past Ansem’s guise to Riku, and that as the song plays in the background, we see all three friends joining hands. Heaven forbid you imply that Kairi means anything to Sora and Riku.

Taking Riku’s hand in both of his, Sora falls to his knees. “It’s Riku. Riku’s here!” he cries, weeping and visibly shaking. “I looked for you! I looked everywhere for you!” The scene reminds me of a moment earlier in Kingdom Hearts II, where Saix kidnaps Kairi. Saix calls Kairi “the fire that feeds Sora’s anger,” assuming that harming the girl will rankle Sora, leaving him emotionally vulnerable. This statement is wildly incorrect: Sora’s fervor for Riku far outweighs his fervor for Kairi—or for anyone else in the game. Riku is Sora’s fire.

LIE! The scene it SHOULD have reminded you of is when Saix tells Sora that he has Kairi, at Hollow Bastion. Sora pleads with him to take him to her. Saix asks if she’s that important to him, and he replies “Yeah! More than anything!”  Saix says “Show me how important” and Sora...falls to his knees, pathetically prostrating himself before Saix, whimpering “Please.” 

When Saix then replies “No”, Sora jumps up, visibly shaking and with a sob in his voice as he yells “YOU ROTTEN...!” Very clearly, Kairi IS Sora’s fire just as much as Riku is, and harming her WILL rankle him and leave him emotionally vulnerable, which it did seeing as he had to fight his way through Heartless, despite knowing the consequences of doing so at this point, in order to reach her, and when he saw Kairi again he got distracted and was ambushed by Heartless that Kairi has to rescue him from. Leaving this info out is dishonest as fuck.

Sora and Riku’s reunion is the big emotional payoff of Kingdom Hearts II, while meeting up with Kairi doesn’t even get a fraction of this attention.

Because Sora and Kairi’s reunion in the original Kingdom Hearts was already ITS big emotional payoff. It receiving as much attention this time around would make no narrative sense given that Kairi was only until recently safe and sound, whereas Riku has been missing and presumed dead for a long time, and Sora never got to fully reconcile with him before this happened. You need to consider the context when making your conclusions.

That’s because there is no traditional romance in Kingdom Hearts.

LIE! See here. Note that it includes Sora/Kairi and Roxas/Namine.

Rather, we get a picture of intimacy between two young men, two best friends. It’s exceedingly rare that any kind of media portrays non-romantic love between two boys so deeply

Except for literally almost every shonen manga/anime/game in existence ever, you clod.

As Kingdom Hearts’s main storywriter, Tetsuya Nomura seems keen on positive portrayals of male intimacy. He worked on the main premise of Final Fantasy VII, which featured a handful of close and complicated relationships between male characters. Cloud’s relationships with Zack and Sephiroth—two former brothers in arms—color our experience in his shoes. In Final Fantasy VIII, the rivalry between Seifer and Squall is borderline flirtatious, with Seifer’s antagonism towards Squall nearing obsessive. These male relationships would continue to play a role in future Final Fantasy games even without Nomura’s involvement—the camaraderie between Braska, Auron, and Jecht in Final Fantasy X, for instance, or the budding mutual reliance and respect between Snow and Hope in Final Fantasy XIII.

Nomura DID have involvement in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII, you CLOD!

The relationship between Sora and Riku is not the only intimate male friendship featured prominently in Kingdom Hearts II. There is also the bond between Axel and Roxas.

Oh, boy. Now you open up THIS can of worms. Why am I not surprised?

Throughout Kingdom Hearts II, we see the same flashback a handful of times: Roxas walking away from Axel and saying, “No one would miss me.” “That’s not true!” Axel shouts behind him, then drops his voice and murmurs, “I would.”

Um, we literally only see that flashback twice, and the part you referenced just once.

After encountering a brainwashed Roxas in Twilight Town, he is saddened to hear that his friend does not remember him. He becomes increasingly upset when Roxas continues not to cooperate with him, and in Roxas’s second fight with him it feels as though his anger is turned more on himself than on his former comrade. 

You just point out that Axel becomes increasingly upset when Roxas does not do what he, Axel, wants / needs of him, without considering at all whether it’s what Roxas himself wants / needs. That’s not a good thing. And no, Axel’s anger is absolutely on Roxas in the second fight. There is a glimpse of self-loathing as well, but he is able to overcome it and perform his duty as an assassin, willing to kill his friend so that he can avoid punishment from Xemnas. 

When we watch Roxas’s flashbacks of Axel pleading with him not to leave the Organization, we hear the sorrow in the latter’s voice as he says he’ll miss Roxas. Counter to everything the Organization has been led to believe, Roxas inspires true emotion in Axel: friendship, sorrow, understanding, compassion, love. If Nobodies can regrow their hearts, what emotion more powerful than love can jumpstart their reconstruction? Roxas is the driving force behind Axel and influences his every decision, even when Roxas no longer exists as a separate, complete human being.

First off, who said Nobodies can regrow their hearts? That’s not part of KH2.

Secondly, while it’s true that Roxas inspired those feelings in Axel, the fact that Axel lacks a heart means that he still is completely self-centered about them. Roxas himself is not Axel’s driving force, AXEL is Axel’s driving force. That’s the fundamental point of his character: that he pursues his own agenda above all else, and Roxas now being the main component of that agenda doesn’t change this. Your romanticized, whitewashed view of Axel is not canon.

While he calmly accepts responsibility for Naminé from DiZ

He accepted responsibility from RIKU, not DiZ, who wanted them dead. Clod, clod, CLOD!

Axel’s behavior shows that he sees his self-worth only within the context of his friendship with Roxas. Without Roxas, Axel does not value himself or his own existence, as evidenced by his readiness to sacrifice himself to save Sora.

This is partly true, but you’re a little off the mark. Axel doesn’t value himself only because of Roxas personally, but because of how Roxas makes him feel. Roxas inspiring feelings within him makes him feel like a complete being, like he has a heart. And like he says, Sora makes him feel the same way, so if he wanted to, he could have just stayed alive and stayed with Sora in order to get his feelings fix. The reason he sacrificed himself was because he had realized at last that his selfishness was wrong, that friendship is a two-way street, and after having screwed up with Roxas to the point of trying to kill him, he now wanted to redeem himself by giving to Roxas (and thus Sora): giving his life. This was a redemption, yet you’re skewing it to be “There’s no reason to live if I can’t have my boyfriend Roxas back!”

We never see this level of emotion in Sora’s reunion with Kairi.

You do remember that Sora pretty much killed himself to save Kairi in the first KH, right?

Roxas, who you were just talking about, wouldn’t have been a thing without that happening?

Are you that misogynistically averse to Kairi that you zone out whenever she’s a factor?

Sora crying for Riku, Axel crying for Roxas. The boys are the only ones who cry because their vulnerability is tied up with their dependence on each other. These are the believable relationships. These are the characters whose relationships players are never supposed to doubt. The emotion is raw and crystal clear in both of these scenes. We never see this level of emotion in Sora’s reunion with Kairi. It just isn’t there.

So boys crying ultimately places these relationships above all others, and every other relationship in the game (Sora/Kairi, Roxas/Namine, Roxas/Hayner,/Pence/Olette, Sora/Donald/Goofy, Mickey/Donald/Goofy, Mickey/Riku) can all be swept aside as irrelevant, doubtful and not believable because no visible tears are shed? That’s your argument?

Part of what makes Roxas and Axel’s relationship so beautiful is this outright rejection of their Nobody nature—they feel for each other and they let each other know it.

Here’s the problem - aside from that Axel crying scene which was not in the original version of the game, we actually NEVER see Roxas truly let Axel know that he feels for him. We literally NEVER see their friendship. It is a totally informed statement. We only see Roxas leaving and coldly saying “no-one will miss me” to Axel, and Roxas fully remembering Axel and being touched but still surprisingly blasé over what looks like (and originally WAS) Axel’s death in front of him. Yet this one-sided relationship is one of “the believable ones” to you?

And OK, let’s move away from KH2 and bring 358/2 Days into the equation. Even in that game, Roxas’ feelings of friendship toward Axel, while undeniably sincere, are nowhere close to the intensity of Axel’s feelings of friendship toward Roxas. Roxas actually has stronger feelings for Xion, and is willing to sever all ties with Axel, TWICE, because of something bad he does to him and Xion. This is not the paragon of m/m love you fangirls make it out to be!

Also, Roxas is 15. Axel is in his 20s. Just pointing that out.

Which is why the game’s ham-fisted implications of a romantic love triangle between Riku, Sora, and Kairi are so unconvincing. 

WHAT romantic love triangle!? There isn’t one at all in KH2, and in fact there never was one in the original game! It was always Sora and Kairi who liked each other that way. The official Character Report book confirmed that Riku did not like Kairi that way, knew Sora did and teased him about it, often acting as a potential romantic rival just to push Sora further and make Sora stronger - he’s the big-brother figure, it’s what he does. He only became posessive of Kairi and fought with Sora over her after he thought Sora abandoned him for Donald and Goofy (and the Keyblade). It was basically his way of saying “you throw away our friendship, then I take away your friendship / romance with Kairi, and she’ll stay MY friend!”

The implications are unconvincing because they’re a product of your deranged mind!

While the narrative wants you to believe these two are destined to become lovers, any implied Sora/Kairi mutual affection comes off simply as friends bound together by happy childhood memories. 

Right, because the Paupu Fruit (called “so romantic” by Selphie) is totally just a friendship thing, Sora killing himself in order to save Kairi and Kairi being able to bring him back because they are that close (in the present, not just in “happy childhood memories”) is totally just a friendship thing, the whole plot of CoM hinging on Kairi as Sora’s most important person (which he later re-iterates to Saix) is totally just a friendship thing, Sora imagining himself and Kairi in place of Jack and Sally slow-dancing is totally just a friendship thing, Sora and Kairi’s connection being able to bring Sora and Riku back home is totally just a friendship thing, Xion having Kairi’s face because Kairi is Sora’s most precious memory is totally just a friendship thing, this is totally just a friendship thing...I could go on. You. Are. DELUSIONAL.

Riku and Sora spend all of the first Kingdom Hearts looking for this girl, but at the start of Kingdom Hearts II it’s clear they are more invested in one another.

Which is probably because their goal in the first game was completed and Kairi is safe and sound on Destiny Islands at the start of KH2, while Sora and Riku are still in precarious situations. Once Kairi is put BACK in danger, Sora and Riku both become invested in her as well. Your constant lies by omission are bordering on sociopathic now!

Kingdom Hearts II begins with Kairi on Destiny Islands without Sora and Riku. Despite Sora’s promise during the ending events of the first Kingdom Hearts that he would find her again, he has still not returned home or even bothered to contact Kairi. 

LIE! His promise was NOT “to find her again”, he knows where she is, his promise was to come back to her with Riku, something she agreed to since, contrary to hateful fangirls’ portrayals of her, she cares about Riku too. At the end of KH2, he is finally able to keep that promise, plus the other promise of returning her lucky charm to her once his task was complete. Why the fuck would he return home without Riku, thus breaking his promise?

Instead, his search for Riku led him to Castle Oblivion and the events of Chain of Memories

Which, as mentioned above, his feelings for Kairi were instrumental to.

Meanwhile, that someone else is hopping from world to world looking for Riku, taking no time to stop by Destiny Islands to let Kairi know he’s okay. Everywhere he stops on his journey, he asks the same question: Has anyone seen Riku? Why not ask for directions back home to Kairi? Despite the game’s flashbacks and shoddily shoehorned-in visions of Kairi, she’s just not Sora’s priority.

Because, again, he KNOWS Kairi is safe on the islands so she’s not a priority, and his promise was to bring Riku back home so that the three of them could live happily together again. Why the fuck would he ask for directions back home when he’s made it repeatedly clear that his objective is only to return once he has Riku back, since that’s what Kairi wants as well? Also, once Kairi is kidnapped, she DOES become his priority and he asks about her / a way into the Nobodies’ world to rescue her just as much as he asks about where Riku is.

Sora’s constant search for Riku makes it clear that this is the relationship we need to be paying attention to. 

No, it’s ONE of them. Kingdom Hearts is made of MANY important relationships. His constant search for Kairi in addition to Riku once she’s kidnapped shows that his relationship with her is another one, and Donald and Goofy’s continuing quest for King Mickey shows that their relationship with him is another one. And let’s not forget the core one of Sora! Donald! Goofy!

You pushing Sora/Riku as the end-all, be-all is your agenda, not the game’s.

If there is supposed to be romantic love between Sora and Kairi, it’s not present in the writing. 

LIE! I’ve already pointed out why.

Their reunion is brief, and their conversation is clipped and bland. Kairi tells Sora she came looking for him because he never came home, and Sora’s reaction lets us know that he knows he screwed up. Sora apologizes to Kairi, and even as she hugs him, his response to her presence is anemic compared to the complete emotional breakdown he has when Riku is revealed.

This is your take on it, not a fact like you are presenting it as. Other views may differ.

Even after Riku’s abominable behavior, and even as he spends a majority of Kingdom Hearts II desperately avoiding Sora, his friend is still overcome to the point of tears when they meet. Sora does not rebuke Riku, he simply asks him why he has been avoiding him.

Um, yeah. That’s Sora. That’s his character, very easily forgiving. So what?

Sora is a benevolent guy throughout these games, but it’s not like him to give a free pass to his opponents.

LIE! See Maleficent and Pete, Axel, Beast when he’s under Xaldin’s control, Riku in the first game, Riku Replica in CoM, “Ansem” at the end of KH2...heck, he’s even OK going up and talking to Hades to sign up for the Paradox Cup even after all the shit Hades has pulled. He also is known to give opponents chances to back off and survive, like Vexen and Demyx.

Despite the atrocities committed at Riku’s hand in the first Kingdom Hearts, Sora still sets out in Kingdom Hearts II passionately searching for the lost Riku. He is the only one who gets Sora’s all-encompassing forgiveness.

Yeah, because they’re best friends, close as brothers. And they already had the start of a reconciliation at the end of the original game, when they closed the Door to Darkness. Exactly what’s your argument here? That if Kairi was to inexplicably go evil, Sora wouldn’t give her a pass or forgive her? Because if you believe that, then you’re a (bigger) dumbass!

The final boss sequence of Kingdom Hearts II could have easily pitted Sora solo against Xemnas.

Um, why? The previous final bosses didn’t have him go solo. Why would this?

One of Xemnas’s most common attacks involves grabbing Sora with an electrical field and holding him in place while he slowly drains the boy’s health. During these segments, players are given full control over Riku as he makes his way across the battlefield to rescue his friend. “Rescue” is even the word used for the command you must input to free Sora. It’s one thing to have these boys tell each other how they feel; it’s quite another to see them act it out in a climactic battle sequence.

Rescuing your friend is now apparently a big, earth-shattering deal. Um, OK.

You realize any character can rescue one another in battle, right?

The team-up offers an insight into the dynamics of their friendship. Giving Riku more of the heavy lifting in their combo attacks—breaking the buildings and hurling them at Xemnas as well as having to rescue Sora from the electrical attack—sets him up as the more protective of the two. Sora is active while Riku is reactive, and in the same way he spends all of the game trying to avoid Sora, he spends the final battle allowing Sora to set up powerful attacks for Riku to execute. And by having Sora be incapacitated and requiring rescue says something about how the developers want players to view their relationship. In the end, Sora will always need Riku. Riku’s presence makes Sora more confident, makes him stronger and more sure of himself. We see more of this feeling in Dream Drop Distance, where Sora fails his mission and needs Riku to bail him out, but the first seeds sprout in Kingdom Hearts II.

FUCK OFF. You’re falling into the common “seme/uke” yaoi stereotype for Riku and Sora here. For as much as you disparge Kairi for needing saving by Sora (while ignoring the times she saves him), you seem to actually get off on the idea that Sora always needs saving by Riku. I highly doubt the developers wanted you to think about the relationship like this, Nomura even said the main reason it happened was just because a lot of fans back then wanted to play as Riku, the same reason Reverse/Rebirth mode happened in CoM. Ironically, by the time of 3D, Riku’s popularity in Japan had died out, and the game didn’t sell so well.

Setting the boys up as partners in the final boss fight—literally your final act as a player—telegraphs to us that the game is about Sora and Riku’s friendship.

No. It’s one of the big themes of the game and what takes precedence in the last act, but to say that the ENTIRE GAME is about it and ignore all the other rich content that is packed into the game does it a disservice. I again ask why you even wrote a book about this game. Was it just to push your personal fangirl fantasies? We already have Tomoco Kanemaki for that!

You can’t tell either boy’s story without the other.

Tell that to CoM and 358/2 Days...or this game, where we hardly see a “story” for Riku.

Their friendship, Sora’s desire to find Riku, and Riku’s desire to protect Sora by only helping him from the shadows, is what drives the story forward and what lays down the game’s emotional foundation.

Really? Because it had nothing to do with Roxas’ story, or Axel’s story. Or the story of the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee. Or Organization XIII’s plans. Or Mickey’s own quest and connection with Ansem the Wise. Or many events in the Disney worlds. Or...yeah, you get the message. Once again, you simplify a wonderfully complex, multi-layered game and boil it down to a yaoi story. I doubt you’d BE a KH fan if not for the yaoi-bait given this pattern of behavior. I hate to play the “True Fan” card, but...you’re not a True Fan. You don’t get it.

Following the final battle, as they sit on the edge of oblivion, Sora and Riku confess their feelings to each other.

And you deliberately phrase it romantically. More lying.

This climactic scene isn’t Sora and Kairi confessing their love

You realize that 1.) There’s still a series to go for that to happen, 2.) Nomura doesn’t want romance and shipping to be the main focus, and 3.) We actually get a credits scene where Sora sees that Kairi has returned his feelings with the chalk drawing on the cave wall.

We see her again in the very last scene welcoming Sora back to Destiny Islands, but the sweetness of her homecoming words is outshined by this exchange between the boys on a dark beach.

Which is a fact, not at all an opinion. And this is not sarcasm, not at all!

They’ve won the fight, and they don’t know if they’ll be able to return home. 

And who ends up being the catalyst for them coming home and not dying? KAIRI.

While Riku and Sora are not in love, the boys’ friendship is one of the deepest and most moving relationships of any kind that I’ve seen in a video game. And part of why it works is because it’s not a romance. Without sexual tension or expressed desire of any kind, these relationships appear as the deepest forms of male intimacy: mutual dependence, connectedness, and respect.

LMAO! After all this, you’re now trying to claim you’re not a yaoi fangirl and that you understand and accept that Sora and Riku are not in love and their feelings not sexual!? 

You aren’t fooling anyone, Alexa. You’re the typical obnoxious, toxic KH yaoi fangirl. Own it.

Kingdom Hearts II is the tale of these broken bonds becoming whole and being used as power against the creeping darkness. As Sora says in the first Kingdom Hearts, “My friends are my power.” Kingdom Hearts II proves that for Sora and Riku, this will always be the case.

And for Sora and Kairi, and Riku and Kairi, and Sora, Donald and Goofy, and Mickey, Donald and Goofy, and Mickey and Riku, and Riku and DiZ, and Roxas and Hayner, Pence, and Olette, and Roxas and Axel, and...OK, I’ve already made this point before, I’m done now.

Bottom line: this so-called fan lies with reckless abandon, omits key facts, presents her opinions as truth, and completely maligns the entire rest of the game just to prop up the one aspect she feels dominates all others and that other players should feel the same way about it as she does. To all True KH Fans, avoid her, her book, and future writings like the Plague!