EDIT: The title is not meant to be taken literally. I'm not saying I think KH is stupid because of it's focus, I'm saying KH is perceived as stupid because of it's focus. The title was written under the assumption that the majority of people think KH is stupid because of the writing and aren't aware KH focuses on emotional story telling, thus why the writing can get very convoluted and silly.
After marathoning the entire series, except 3, these past few weeks I've come to understand why people like Kingdom Hearts so much.
At first glance the series is just really a collection of generic JRPG OCs going through Disney worlds with a connecting plot of friendship is power, which for most series is enough to spell disaster because of how uninteresting that kind of plot is, especially with how boring, on paper, the main character of the series is. Sora is almost the definition of a Gary Stu. Everyone he meets likes him, aside from the villains obviously, nearly everyone in the cast praises him for how special he is, and he has barely any flaws.
So if the writing is generic and the main character is practically a fanfic tier self-insert character, why do I fucking love these games? I don't consider myself a massive Disney fan. I like their movies enough but if Kingdom Hearts' appeal was entirely based on the fact it features Disney characters I doubt I'd like the series very much.
Where I believe Kingdom Hearts' succeeds is how it displays emotion with its cast of characters, and it is nowhere more apparent than how characters deal with loss.
Death and loss isn't usually a permanent thing in this series, but the feelings caused by it seem real. For example,
Moments like these cause what I feel to be earned happiness. Most of the time I believe it's cheesy to make a character succeed just to have a happy ending, however Kingdom Hearts makes these characters earn their happy endings.
Instead of going from loss and then immediately redemption, Kingdom Hearts goes from loss, to grief, to reflection, and then to redemption. It allows characters to feel what they have lost before they can try and save it.
I kept mentioning earlier that Sora is almost a Gary Stu and without how the narrative has been told, he might as well fully be one in my eyes. What keeps Sora from being a Gary Stu is that, while he does ultimately fix things, he also has to work in order to fix things. Sora doesn't just show up in a situation and automatically fix everything. He learns about the situation and people around him and offers to help them, which makes him just a genuinely likeable person. He's also not immune to failing and showing flaws.
In summary, Kingdom Hearts should be fanfic tier garbage with how everything is written. But what keeps it from being a stupid Japanese action game with Disney characters is the genuine emotion it creates through its cast of characters.
After marathoning the entire series, except 3, these past few weeks I've come to understand why people like Kingdom Hearts so much.
At first glance the series is just really a collection of generic JRPG OCs going through Disney worlds with a connecting plot of friendship is power, which for most series is enough to spell disaster because of how uninteresting that kind of plot is, especially with how boring, on paper, the main character of the series is. Sora is almost the definition of a Gary Stu. Everyone he meets likes him, aside from the villains obviously, nearly everyone in the cast praises him for how special he is, and he has barely any flaws.
So if the writing is generic and the main character is practically a fanfic tier self-insert character, why do I fucking love these games? I don't consider myself a massive Disney fan. I like their movies enough but if Kingdom Hearts' appeal was entirely based on the fact it features Disney characters I doubt I'd like the series very much.
Where I believe Kingdom Hearts' succeeds is how it displays emotion with its cast of characters, and it is nowhere more apparent than how characters deal with loss.
Death and loss isn't usually a permanent thing in this series, but the feelings caused by it seem real. For example,
358/2 Days focuses on developing a group of three friends, two of which are particularly socially inept including the main character. They do mundane work every day, but the thing they look forward to at the end of each day is watching the sunset and eating ice cream together. The group eventually falls apart because of tensions caused by one of the members. At the end the main character of the group is forced to kill his friend and laments this loss by asking who will have ice cream with him. While the line is stupid out of context, it's a tragic scene of someone losing a friend and expressing their grief of losing what they enjoyed to do together.
Moments like these cause what I feel to be earned happiness. Most of the time I believe it's cheesy to make a character succeed just to have a happy ending, however Kingdom Hearts makes these characters earn their happy endings.
Instead of going from loss and then immediately redemption, Kingdom Hearts goes from loss, to grief, to reflection, and then to redemption. It allows characters to feel what they have lost before they can try and save it.
I kept mentioning earlier that Sora is almost a Gary Stu and without how the narrative has been told, he might as well fully be one in my eyes. What keeps Sora from being a Gary Stu is that, while he does ultimately fix things, he also has to work in order to fix things. Sora doesn't just show up in a situation and automatically fix everything. He learns about the situation and people around him and offers to help them, which makes him just a genuinely likeable person. He's also not immune to failing and showing flaws.
In the first game, he loses the keyblade and has to depend on Beast because he believes he only needs the Keyblade to be strong. In Chain of Memories he gets too caught up in trying to rescue someone that he begins to treat his friends like trash. In Dream Drop Distance he fails to become a Keyblade Master because he focuses too much on trying to stop Xehanort and not the bigger things at stake and falls into Organization 13's trap.
In summary, Kingdom Hearts should be fanfic tier garbage with how everything is written. But what keeps it from being a stupid Japanese action game with Disney characters is the genuine emotion it creates through its cast of characters.
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