The writing and story of Kingdom Hearts series has always been a fairly discussed topic in video game forums. That said, in this topic I want to talk about a specific point – the writing of women in the series.
NOTE: There will be some spoilers of Kingdom Hearts III here. I have spoilered these sections clearly, and tried to use as vague wording as possible inside these spoiler tags. If you see anyone else post accidental or non-accidental KH3 spoilers, report those posts. That said, if you are absolutely trying to avoid all KH3 content, your best bet is to evade this thread till you have played it. I'm hoping everyone can still read this thread with these guidelines though.
So I want to concentrate on the four main heroines of this series so far: Kairi, Namine, Xion and Aqua. There are more women in the series that I'm omitting here, including all disney characters, and few minor original ones. Reason I am omitting them from this OP is due to them either being originally a disney property, or having a relatively minor role in the series as a whole. I'll look at the main women who have a fairly substansial role in the series (to the point that they all appear in the cover art of KH3).
I am expecting you to have basic understanding of the plot of the series, so I'm not going to explicitly explain the plot.
Kairi
Kairi is introduced in the first Kingdom Hearts game as one of the major protagonists of the game. She is introduced with some mystery to her, and her personality is established pretty well in the opening hours of the first game. After this though, she disappears, and one of the main objectives of the game becomes finding and rescuing her.
'Rescuing a friend' plots aren't necessarily a bad thing – and I don't think KH1 does a bad job with it, doing some subversion about it with the 'She was travelling with Sora all along' twist. That said, she has pretty minimal agency of her own in the game, and acts mostly as a plot obstacle for Sora and Riku to fight towards. After she is rescued near the end of the game, her role doesn't evolve much from there. She and Sora are separated at the end, as she returns back to Destiny Islands without Sora. At this point her role is established, and there is room for her to evolve and have an actual character arc.
However, instead her role is greatly disminished from here on out in the later games. In KH2 she is kidnapped, and becomes a plot obstacle for Sora to rescue once again. She has even less agency of her own here in my opinion, her only scene of any actual independence is running away from Axel at one point. It's fairly disappointing, but she is given a Keyblade at the end, hinting at potentially future heroism for her.
…Afterwhich she is almost completely MIA until the epilogue of Dream Drop Distance. In general the handling of Kairi until DDD has been a regression from the first game onwards overall. She doesn't get to do really anything except be the love interest for Sora, and not much else. She hasn't shown any real personality traits since first game either.
Namine
Namine is introduced in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Her role for the most part of the game is to act as a goal for Sora to reach – it seems apparent that the organisation has captured her, and Sora tries to climb Castle Oblivion to save her. The situation ends being bit more complex that that – Namine was forced to manipulate Sora to do just that by the antagonists of the game. After this revelation though, her role doesn't change much. Sora (and Riku Replica) both still end up defending her, and she ends up being a pretty passable player in the end. Still, the aspect of manipulation and her being shown to feel guilty about it does add an interesting layer to her characterisation.
In 358/2 Days she mostly exists as caretaker of Sora's recovery process. She doesn't do much here, except for having few exposition-heavy cut-scenes with Riku and Xion. She mostly fills the same role in Kingdom Hearts 2, giving some exposition to Roxas in the prologue, and then mostly disappearing from the story until the ending save for few scenes. She does show some agency of her own in KH2, when she helps Kairi out near the end of the game, so it's not all bad. Still, her writing is fairly bland, and she doesn't do anything meaningful that doesn't involve Sora or Riku somehow.
After this she mostly disappears from the series. She briefly appears in Re:Coded in data form, but there isn't much substance to it. I don't know about her role in KH3 at this time, so I won't put any spoilers about it. All in all I think she fares in Chain of Memories bit better than Kairi as a whole, but it's not much. She still exists mostly to be a plot obstacle in that game, and her further appearances have been fairly shallow.
Xion
Xion appears in 358/2 Days as a major protagonist, first one in the series. She is introduced as another Keyblade wielder in the game who you go into missions with, and befriend.
While I have issues with writing in Days as a whole, it does do some elements fairly well in my opinion – it shows the friendship of Roxas and Xion and Axel building with gameplay in missions rather than just exposition of 'well they are super best friends'. It's more "show, don't tell" type of storytelling that actually works here, in my opinion.
Xion also has active agency of her own, compared to Kairi and Namine. She leaves the organisation, fights back people trying to capture her and has will of her own (for the most part). It's nice to see a character with some actual agency for a change.
That said, she has her fair share of problems. Most of her character is tied to Roxas and Sora, and she doesn't serve much of a purpose in the grand story as a whole but to motivate Roxas and be a plot objective for him, much like Kairi is for Sora. The only way for her to fit the overall narrative of the Kingdom Hearts plot also means that she dies (again, for the sake of Sora and Roxas), and if erased from everyone's memories at the same time to make any sense in the context of KH2. This is pretty bad writing, and it's sad that her writing ends up being defined by Sora and Roxas for the most part. She has a brief cameo in Dream Drop distance, but there isn't much content there to talk about.
I don't have full knowledge of her role in KH3, so I won't discuss it here in the OP. Remember to use spoiler tags in the thread if you want to discuss that part!
Aqua
Aqua was introduced in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep as one of the three protagonists of the game. She becomes a Keyblade Master at the start of the game, and has lot of pretty awesome scenes in the game, including the final boss fight. One would assume she is the best written female character of the game.
However, there are quite a few issues with how she is written in BBS. Biggest problem is that she has no proper character arc of her own. The game doesn't establish any proper personality or goals for her outside of wanting to protect her friends. This is a fine goal, but the problem comes that the friendship she shares with Ven and Terra isn't well established. This comes back to the 'Show, don't tell' principle that was handled fairly well with Xion – we are told multiple times over the game that Aqua is friends with Ven and Terra, yet are never shown in outside the opening tutorial, which frankly isn't enough due to the writing being quite bad.
So what does that leave with Aqua in BBS? Frankly, not much. The game doesn't really establish any meaningful personality traits for her, any wants or needs or anything. For most of the game she is a fairly blank character whose only agency is tied to the characters of Ventus and Terra. The only scene that I remember in the whole game where she shows anything character traits that are not tied to the flawed 'I love my friends' theme is when she turns down Zack Fair's invite for a date. Other than that, all she does in the game is tied to the male characters in the game. This is pretty disappointing, and makes her very bland and forgettable character as a whole. Almost all of her role in BBS as a whole is to serve the plots of Ventus and Terra, and not have any actual character of her own outside of that, which is very disappointing for many reasons.
To note, she does fare a bit better in KH0.2 – A Fragmented Passage. Her character is still mostly only tied to talking about how big friends she is with Ventus and Terra, but there is at least the added layer of fighting with her feelings of desperation, loneliness and darkness. It's not much, but it's at least something.
So why does this matter?
So the Kingdom Hearts' series writing as a whole isn't that great, so it's not that surprising that the writing of women isn't good either. But it is very disappointing to me, since most of the main male characters of this series does get at least some layer of characterization that makes them more interesting, and gives them agency.
Sora has layers of self-doubt and being something of a 'Plan B' for the Keyblade, which while not always well explored, gives him at least some depth. Riku has a fairly interesting redemption arc and fighting with the darkness that has spanned the whole series. Terra has his own internal struggle as well, as does Ventus to a lesser extent. Roxas has an interesting arc in KH2, and Axel has his struggles with Saix and Roxas. None of these plot points aren't amazing, but it is definitely lot better than how the women in this series have been written. The women are mostly treated as plot objectives for the male heroes to reach, or their agency and interests are completely tied to the male heroes. I don't think it's wrong to expect more from the writing of this series.
I know this is a long OP, but I hope you have read most of it (maybe skipping the few KH3 spoiler tags). What do you think about this subject? Do you disagree with my interpretations? Do you have other characters you'd want to talk about (like Larxene?).
NOTE: There will be some spoilers of Kingdom Hearts III here. I have spoilered these sections clearly, and tried to use as vague wording as possible inside these spoiler tags. If you see anyone else post accidental or non-accidental KH3 spoilers, report those posts. That said, if you are absolutely trying to avoid all KH3 content, your best bet is to evade this thread till you have played it. I'm hoping everyone can still read this thread with these guidelines though.
So I want to concentrate on the four main heroines of this series so far: Kairi, Namine, Xion and Aqua. There are more women in the series that I'm omitting here, including all disney characters, and few minor original ones. Reason I am omitting them from this OP is due to them either being originally a disney property, or having a relatively minor role in the series as a whole. I'll look at the main women who have a fairly substansial role in the series (to the point that they all appear in the cover art of KH3).
I am expecting you to have basic understanding of the plot of the series, so I'm not going to explicitly explain the plot.
Kairi
Kairi is introduced in the first Kingdom Hearts game as one of the major protagonists of the game. She is introduced with some mystery to her, and her personality is established pretty well in the opening hours of the first game. After this though, she disappears, and one of the main objectives of the game becomes finding and rescuing her.
'Rescuing a friend' plots aren't necessarily a bad thing – and I don't think KH1 does a bad job with it, doing some subversion about it with the 'She was travelling with Sora all along' twist. That said, she has pretty minimal agency of her own in the game, and acts mostly as a plot obstacle for Sora and Riku to fight towards. After she is rescued near the end of the game, her role doesn't evolve much from there. She and Sora are separated at the end, as she returns back to Destiny Islands without Sora. At this point her role is established, and there is room for her to evolve and have an actual character arc.
However, instead her role is greatly disminished from here on out in the later games. In KH2 she is kidnapped, and becomes a plot obstacle for Sora to rescue once again. She has even less agency of her own here in my opinion, her only scene of any actual independence is running away from Axel at one point. It's fairly disappointing, but she is given a Keyblade at the end, hinting at potentially future heroism for her.
…Afterwhich she is almost completely MIA until the epilogue of Dream Drop Distance. In general the handling of Kairi until DDD has been a regression from the first game onwards overall. She doesn't get to do really anything except be the love interest for Sora, and not much else. She hasn't shown any real personality traits since first game either.
In Kingdom Hearts III she is rendered again into a plot obstacle for Sora to fight towards. She has few scenes of her own independence, but there is nothing very substansial over there – in the end she seems to only exist to be the Love Interest, and to be rescued. It is very disappointing overall.
Namine
Namine is introduced in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Her role for the most part of the game is to act as a goal for Sora to reach – it seems apparent that the organisation has captured her, and Sora tries to climb Castle Oblivion to save her. The situation ends being bit more complex that that – Namine was forced to manipulate Sora to do just that by the antagonists of the game. After this revelation though, her role doesn't change much. Sora (and Riku Replica) both still end up defending her, and she ends up being a pretty passable player in the end. Still, the aspect of manipulation and her being shown to feel guilty about it does add an interesting layer to her characterisation.
In 358/2 Days she mostly exists as caretaker of Sora's recovery process. She doesn't do much here, except for having few exposition-heavy cut-scenes with Riku and Xion. She mostly fills the same role in Kingdom Hearts 2, giving some exposition to Roxas in the prologue, and then mostly disappearing from the story until the ending save for few scenes. She does show some agency of her own in KH2, when she helps Kairi out near the end of the game, so it's not all bad. Still, her writing is fairly bland, and she doesn't do anything meaningful that doesn't involve Sora or Riku somehow.
After this she mostly disappears from the series. She briefly appears in Re:Coded in data form, but there isn't much substance to it. I don't know about her role in KH3 at this time, so I won't put any spoilers about it. All in all I think she fares in Chain of Memories bit better than Kairi as a whole, but it's not much. She still exists mostly to be a plot obstacle in that game, and her further appearances have been fairly shallow.
Xion
Xion appears in 358/2 Days as a major protagonist, first one in the series. She is introduced as another Keyblade wielder in the game who you go into missions with, and befriend.
While I have issues with writing in Days as a whole, it does do some elements fairly well in my opinion – it shows the friendship of Roxas and Xion and Axel building with gameplay in missions rather than just exposition of 'well they are super best friends'. It's more "show, don't tell" type of storytelling that actually works here, in my opinion.
Xion also has active agency of her own, compared to Kairi and Namine. She leaves the organisation, fights back people trying to capture her and has will of her own (for the most part). It's nice to see a character with some actual agency for a change.
That said, she has her fair share of problems. Most of her character is tied to Roxas and Sora, and she doesn't serve much of a purpose in the grand story as a whole but to motivate Roxas and be a plot objective for him, much like Kairi is for Sora. The only way for her to fit the overall narrative of the Kingdom Hearts plot also means that she dies (again, for the sake of Sora and Roxas), and if erased from everyone's memories at the same time to make any sense in the context of KH2. This is pretty bad writing, and it's sad that her writing ends up being defined by Sora and Roxas for the most part. She has a brief cameo in Dream Drop distance, but there isn't much content there to talk about.
I don't have full knowledge of her role in KH3, so I won't discuss it here in the OP. Remember to use spoiler tags in the thread if you want to discuss that part!
Aqua
Aqua was introduced in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep as one of the three protagonists of the game. She becomes a Keyblade Master at the start of the game, and has lot of pretty awesome scenes in the game, including the final boss fight. One would assume she is the best written female character of the game.
However, there are quite a few issues with how she is written in BBS. Biggest problem is that she has no proper character arc of her own. The game doesn't establish any proper personality or goals for her outside of wanting to protect her friends. This is a fine goal, but the problem comes that the friendship she shares with Ven and Terra isn't well established. This comes back to the 'Show, don't tell' principle that was handled fairly well with Xion – we are told multiple times over the game that Aqua is friends with Ven and Terra, yet are never shown in outside the opening tutorial, which frankly isn't enough due to the writing being quite bad.
So what does that leave with Aqua in BBS? Frankly, not much. The game doesn't really establish any meaningful personality traits for her, any wants or needs or anything. For most of the game she is a fairly blank character whose only agency is tied to the characters of Ventus and Terra. The only scene that I remember in the whole game where she shows anything character traits that are not tied to the flawed 'I love my friends' theme is when she turns down Zack Fair's invite for a date. Other than that, all she does in the game is tied to the male characters in the game. This is pretty disappointing, and makes her very bland and forgettable character as a whole. Almost all of her role in BBS as a whole is to serve the plots of Ventus and Terra, and not have any actual character of her own outside of that, which is very disappointing for many reasons.
To note, she does fare a bit better in KH0.2 – A Fragmented Passage. Her character is still mostly only tied to talking about how big friends she is with Ventus and Terra, but there is at least the added layer of fighting with her feelings of desperation, loneliness and darkness. It's not much, but it's at least something.
Her role in KH3 is mostly again is to serve Ventus' and Terra's plots. The idea of her darkness is explored again to some extent, but other than that she is there in relation to Ventus and Terra. In a weird point of regression, she actually has to be saved multiple times by other male characters, even though she has some agency of her own, including a boss battle. Still, it's nothing to write home about.
So why does this matter?
So the Kingdom Hearts' series writing as a whole isn't that great, so it's not that surprising that the writing of women isn't good either. But it is very disappointing to me, since most of the main male characters of this series does get at least some layer of characterization that makes them more interesting, and gives them agency.
Sora has layers of self-doubt and being something of a 'Plan B' for the Keyblade, which while not always well explored, gives him at least some depth. Riku has a fairly interesting redemption arc and fighting with the darkness that has spanned the whole series. Terra has his own internal struggle as well, as does Ventus to a lesser extent. Roxas has an interesting arc in KH2, and Axel has his struggles with Saix and Roxas. None of these plot points aren't amazing, but it is definitely lot better than how the women in this series have been written. The women are mostly treated as plot objectives for the male heroes to reach, or their agency and interests are completely tied to the male heroes. I don't think it's wrong to expect more from the writing of this series.
I know this is a long OP, but I hope you have read most of it (maybe skipping the few KH3 spoiler tags). What do you think about this subject? Do you disagree with my interpretations? Do you have other characters you'd want to talk about (like Larxene?).
