Kingdom Hearts Primer – Kingdom Hearts 2 – Episode 37 – The Most Interesting Man in Kingdom Hearts

Welcome to one of the best parts of Kingdom Hearts 2.

I’ve maintained that Roxas is one of the most interesting characters in the Kingdom Hearts fiction. Unlike a lot of the other heroes, he has a solid arc from the start of Kingdom Hearts 2 to the end of the game.

Roxas begins with a strong desire to understand himself, who he is and why he exists. In his effort to do so, he starts to develop his own identity. There’s a tension born from the fact that while his mere existence is tied to someone else (just by the nature of his birth), he is beginning to actualize himself as his own being.

His role in the game is small, but it’s rife with interesting philosophical discussions and has big implications on the lore of the franchise. For most of it, he is unwilling trapped inside Sora, only at the end finally accepting his place as a piece of a larger whole.

I like the character. And as small a role he has in the game, I’m happy for it.

Kingdom Hearts Primer – Kingdom Hearts 2 – Episode 24 – An Single Joke (Please Laugh)

It’s story time, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s weird to think of how Kingdom Hearts 2 is a product of it’s time. I’m not talking about mechanics or how dark its story is (although that’s certainly true). I’m talking about how it references other media that, in hindsight, are clearly only to drum up or capitalize on hype for other projects.

We touched on that topic earlier in Port Royal. In hindsight, it’s obvious that the only reason Port Royal is even in Kingdom Hearts 2 is that Pirates of the Caribbean was taking off in a big way at the time it was being developed. This is silly, but something that one can easily look past, and is no more offensive than any other Disney-world story.

On the other hand, the references to Advent Children are some of the worst offenders in the game. It’s not just that the game is detouring to make a thinly-veiled hype piece for the movie. That could be hilarious, but otherwise inoffensive in its own way. The real problem is that the way the jury-rig the pieces together makes almost no sense. It comes off as awkward, especially when those extremely edgy looking outfits are juxtaposed to “Happy Disney Funtimes”.