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Kingdom Hearts Primer: Kingdom Hearts 1: Episode 1: The Unchosen One

October 3, 2016
Final Mix/ Kingdom Hearts/ Kingdom Hearts 1.5: ReMIX/ Primer

Welcome ladies and gentleman. Interactive Friction returns once more. Sam and I have a new idea for a series, and today we’re excited to share it with you.

So here’s the setup: After Sam, Taylor, and I recorded the Hyperdimension Neptunia episode, the topic of Kingdom Hearts came up. Sam told me at this point, that although he played Kingdom Hearts, he didn’t understand much of the plot to it.
As someone who is a huge fan of the franchise, I know a lot about the lore of Kingdom Hearts. In the middle of answering some of Sam’s questions about the franchise, we realized the could make a whole series about this, so we did.
But then we came at an impasse, for neither one of us wanted to play Kingdom Hearts for the channel. That’s when the idea of taking someone else’s hard work and using it for our purposes. Fortunately, Miguel, javihavi, and Knowledge from Gamer’s Little Playground gave us permission to use their work, so it’s technically not stealing. (In all seriousness though, thank you generous souls who let us use your work.)
And so we set off on our journey across the Disney worlds. However, this is intended to be a series explaining the plot and lore behind Kingdom Hearts. So if you guys have any questions about Kingdom Hearts, or want anything clarified, feel free to ask. 
Please note though, that we will eventually be going through every single game in the franchise. That means that if your question is regarding a subject introduced in a future game, I will hold off on answering them until we cover those games.
With that said, enjoy. 🙂

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Kingdom Hearts Primer: Kingdom Hearts 1: Episode 12: Sacrifices

September 7, 2016
Kingdom Hearts/ Primer/ square enix/ Story

Today, we talk about one of the most legendary scenes in Kingdom Hearts 1:

I’ve talked about my feelings regarding how Kingdom Hearts’ combat feels more plausible than that of its sequels way back when I thought I was good at writing game reviews without scores. (Also, holy shit, that was two years ago.) Generally, the more like DBZ fight scenes become, the more I detached I get from the anime/game I’m watching/playing. There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of fights, and they look really cool, but they don’t have the same weight to me.

The other thing we really need to talk about is Kairi’s place in the game.
It’s really common in fiction for female characters to have a dramatically reduced level of agency in the story. Kairi is, unfortunately, not an exception to this rule. As we have seen, she spent most of this game as an empty shell, her heart locked inside of Sora’s for safe keeping.

But after fighting Riku possessed by Ansem, Sora frees her heart and allows her to finally take action. And when she’s able to, we see that she’s not just some fragile flower. She stops Donald and Goofy and absolutely refused to leave until she’s able to go back and save her friend, Sora. (Sorry, Riku) She restores his human form and is even able to use her light to knock back the heartless.

So when Sora doesn’t take her along because it’s “too dangerous” and she would “be in [his] way,” it is a little annoying. I understand the underlying reason is that we’ve already got an established party that’s gotten through the most of the game, but it does feel like some token effort could have been put in.

This gets even worse in the context of Kingdom Hearts 2, but I’m not ready to get into that just yet.

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