Kingdom Hearts: A Struggle for Sincerity
James Guthrie
I adore Kingdom Hearts. It is a game series utterly full of nostalgia for me, something I played a lot with my sister when I was younger and something I enjoyed basically entirely uncritically as “that game with all the Disney stuff in it.” It is, to this day, a fun journey through a selection of Disney properties with a strangely interesting original story that somehow gets really good, or as good as it can be in the game that it's in. It is also so sad, sad in a way that even as a child I understood was strangely deep for a game that also has an infamous gag where Goofy dies, then self-revives almost immediately afterwards but not before making sure everyone thinks he's dead, for some reason. Writing. It's a hard thing to do.
Kingdom Hearts is, as a series, tragicomically sincere. I always liked how in the Youtube series So This Is Basically it was summed up at one point as a combo of words you can say in any order to make a KH conversation: Light, Darkness, Friendship, Heart, Memories. It is about all of these things, and it is simultaneously about meeting your favourite Disney characters, some you don't care about, and a couple Final Fantasy ones for good measure, and also beating up wacky bosses with even wackier keyblades and Final Fantasy magic. It holds no regard for conventions of its genre: levelling is strange and matters incoherently; magic upgrades randomly throughout the story; combat is a messy balance of reaction and trying to guess what's a good reaction, and party rarely matters, because why would it? It's Donald Duck! He's a wizard!
I also feel I should mention the minigames, which are often the worst and best parts of the series. You will think to yourself, many times, surely [INSERT DISNEY MOVIE HERE] doesn't lend itself to a minigame where I have to kill the corrupted monsters born from the darkness natural to the hearts of humanity? And you would be wrong: in fact, three entries in the series are basically extended minigames in their own right, and literally every world has a silly, often mandatory and often stupidly hard minigame, or multiple minigames, because what is fun if you're not being slapped over the head with having to go down 10 very specific tracks on Goofy’s shield ride through the Frozen world to get the items you need to forge the Ultima keyblade? I'm not bitter, I'm just cold.
The thing is, the gameplay of these games barely matters. They are corporate products through and through, designed to sell by simplifying elements of probably better games for younger audiences, while retaining an overall appealing vibe and galvanising your attention as much as possible. The capitalism behind the series rears its ugly head often, and you will commonly feel a strangeness when the pacing of the original story gets interrupted for round 36 of Disney character in a pickle that Sora has to save only for them to somehow just…pull off the ending of their movie, or even a somehow alternate one that loops back to creating a status quo where nothing changes, and all is exactly as the executives want it to be.
I know all this. I know it intimately. I suffered through the decade and nearly a half of waiting between KH2 and KH3, all that time learning of the terror that is the Disney corporation and their determination to monopolise all art under their evil Mouse King; and yet, I have a fondness for Kingdom Hearts. It is trying, and succeeding, at being a pure expression of sincerity and art despite being so deeply tied into this corporate world. It is a series with its own story to tell.
Let me tell you a piece of the supposedly incomprehensible lore that has always affected me. In Kingdom Hearts, hearts corrupted by their inherent darkness manifest as heartless, beings devoid of emotions that attack relentlessly to consume the light. However, every heartless leaves behind a Nobody: beings of body and soul, but without a heart. Nobodies feel everything you and I can feel (at least according to Dream Drop Distance), but they also feel an innate, and terrible, longing to be more. They all feel like they are missing something, and so they relentlessly pursue hearts, hoping to find one that will fill the gap where their heart once was.
Nobodies are beings of nothingness. There is no light or darkness to them, as they were never meant to be, and are welcome to neither. They are the line between hope and hope lost; they are the victims of an unintentional struggle everyone feels, to give in to your despair or to maintain a facade of being happy. They are, in so many words, a metaphor for loss, depression, hopelessness, unwanted existence, and the struggle to survive. They are so deeply reflective of things alien yet known to every child who encounters them; they are just us.
There is something to that. In amidst all the corporate shilling above you, all the nonsensical jokes and plots you have to make fit, managing to make a meaningful impact with just a group of characters all representing the same things is impressive. It goes without saying that this is of course helped by the best parts of Yoko Shimomura's wonderful soundtrack being devoted to the original story, and not to the well known tracks or leitmotifs of Disney movies. More impressive though is just that it can exist at all.
I discussed how these games are designed with a corporate style. A mishmashing of what works, what most appeals, and what Disney wanted included. What I find fascinating is that Kingdom Hearts is a celebration of creating art. To tell a story in amidst a romp of nostalgia about the inner struggles of humans; to create a world of your own in amidst the worlds of art of many, many others; to create a unique visual, auditory and narrative experience despite being constantly overlooked and forced to streamline your work to fit an executive's plan. It is bizarre, and wonderful.
Sincerity and art are tied together. Sincerity in your art is a different thing altogether. Kingdom Hearts may not be the best series ever or even close to it, but the childlike wonder it has for its own themes, for people, for nostalgia for a past that never was, is beautiful in its own way. I hope that it never loses that earnestness.
“You can't turn on the Organisation! You get on their bad side and they'll destroy you!”
“Nobody would miss me.”
“That's not true!...I would.”