I'm not at all good at articulating my points, but I'll do my best... I mostly wanted to address it since some people say there's nothing or little to Sora and (more frequently) Kairi and since I rewatched a playthrough of KH1 recently, I wanted to talk about it. Sorry if it comes out sounding kinda dumb, though :frown:
I don’t think I’d call Kingdom Hearts 1 a self-contained story, because of the ending leaving a lot to the sequels, but it’s probably one of the most straightforward stories in the series. It’s told in a simple way, but it belies complex, nuanced things about growing up and responding to change.
It was really good at kicking off the story and giving perspective to the trio’s sudden coming of age and having their world turned around. I joined the fandom kind of late, so I don’t know if this has already been done to death or not, but at least from opinions on Kairi and, to a lesser extent, Sora, I’m guessing it hasn’t really.
KH1 is a story that sets up each of the members of the main trio as wet behind the ears, kids who were thrown into more than they bargained for, kids who were changed by it. Riku’s a play on the usual villain, Sora’s a play on the usual chosen hero, and Kairi’s a play on the usual damsel.
Riku’s arc is most obvious. He’s the best on his islands, the strongest, the smartest, the most adventurous, and everyone talks about how capable Riku is and how Kairi won’t have to worry about anything as long as he’s around. Riku’s a protector, and he’s the best –those are important aspects to his self-image. And the islands are too small for him. He’s strong, but never strong enough, but there’s nothing on his islands that he hasn’t seen enough of. There’s more out there, and his desire to see it and grow from it and lead his friends to it is so sincere that it’s changing him.
So he does whatever he can. A raft can only take them so far, so he “thinks of something else,” something that’s been on his mind since he first saw the keyhole. But he made a mistake –despite his expectations, neither Sora nor Kairi was there. And the next time he meets Sora, Sora’s already got new friends and can stand on his own two feet, even though Riku’s always been the protector and the best.
And then Riku’s fall to darkness, his defeat, his regret and desire to at least see Sora and Kairi one more time if he was really dead, it’s all well-known and straightforward, especially with the new scenes in the Remix, I really don’t need to go into it. He sought freedom the most, and ended the game by giving up his freedom and becoming effectively trapped in a much worse prison than Destiny Islands ever was.
Sora’s is subtler, but his character arc is there, too. Sora’s excited to see the outside world because it’s adventure. Sora’s the not-as-good-as-Riku, the laid-back, happy-go-lucky kid who will do anything for his friends. He’s pretty simple minded and easy to read.
His growth is all about expanding his horizons. He didn’t hate the islands or think of them as some prison, but he did want to see all the worlds out there. He didn’t care about saving the worlds or finding Donald and Goofy’s king at first, though. He went along with them solely because the others told him it might be a way to help him find his friends, even though Donald didn’t care either way if they could or not. Sora has his moments of weakness, sadness, and confusion, but he tends to downplay them and put on a smile in most of those times.
Through seeing the other worlds and meddling, he gained more connections than he ever had on his little island. The climax of that came when he said that his power came from his hands, who would be with him no matter what –and used that line against his long-time best friend, himself. Sora’s a play on the usual hero because he didn’t care about saving the worlds or abstract things like that. He cared about the relationships he eventually developed, and that’s what made him want to help the worlds and that’s what gave him his power. Despite being built on the power of friendship, he’s willing to call out and fight his best friend, and despite having the least personal reason to seek outside worlds, his horizons where the ones that were extended the most.
It’s usually ignored, but Kairi had a character arc in the first game, too. She’s introduced as a carefree, playful tomboy that both Sora and Riku are implied to have feelings for, but there are hints that imply that she’s more insecure than she lets on. It implies it in her introductory scene, where she hesitates and loses her smile before she reiterates that she remembers absolutely nothing about her hometown, in her talk with Riku while they were sitting on the paopu tree, and most obviously in her talk alone with Sora where she admits to sensing a change in Riku and tries to get a reaction out of Sora to see if he senses it, too.
These hints imply that Kairi’s claim of “remembering nothing at all” about the world she grew up in may not be entirely true, and she later goes on to show nostalgia at the picture of a castle, share a memory of her grandmother with Sora, and admit that Hollow Bastion was her original home, although she also admits that she doesn’t remember much about it anymore and considers Destiny Islands her true home.
It was mostly illustrated in the scene at the pier with Sora, that she has a deep-rooted fear of change and wants to just be assured that nothing that changes will be permanent. She wants to go visit her original world, and her heart feels warm when she’s in Hollow Bastion again, but before they leave, she’s torn between the desire to go back to see her old home and the fear that she might lose the new home she’s come to love. She asks two things of Sora: (1) for him to never change, and (2) for reassurance that no matter what happens, they can always come back there. She’s even making a charm to keep the three of them together, no matter what might happen.
Kairi’s stuck together with Sora for the whole game, and seems to remember it all, or at least to some degree, and says that she made it that far by sticking together with him. She talks to him, cheers him up once or twice, and shares her feelings.
Kairi still doesn’t make it clear how much she knows about at the end of the game, and she still wants the three of them to just stay together and for things to be how they were before, but the end of her arc in the first game is about her learning that change will always happen and coming to accept that in one way or another, as long as their bonds could tie them all together at the end of the day. The entire ending sequence focuses Kairi, and Kairi says the last line of KH1. She’s clearly at peace with Sora having to leave her life because she knows that the bond between them remains and that it will bring them together again someday, and together with Riku, too.
The character arcs aren’t as full in themselves as Riku’s full arc, of course, they’re all just the starting points for the main trio that flesh them out as three-dimensional and show who they are and where the coming of age changes left them. Riku was left in a dark place, Sora was tasked with going to find him, and Kairi was separated from the people she loved again and left to wait in a lonely but familiar place, as she's basically the token normal by the end of the story. Riku's been searching for his way back to his light and back to everything he pushed away before, Sora's been expanding his connections and making more friends, and Kairi's become more estranged and is trying to keep things together, although of the three, Riku's the only one with a fully realized character arc as of yet.
I don’t think I’d call Kingdom Hearts 1 a self-contained story, because of the ending leaving a lot to the sequels, but it’s probably one of the most straightforward stories in the series. It’s told in a simple way, but it belies complex, nuanced things about growing up and responding to change.
It was really good at kicking off the story and giving perspective to the trio’s sudden coming of age and having their world turned around. I joined the fandom kind of late, so I don’t know if this has already been done to death or not, but at least from opinions on Kairi and, to a lesser extent, Sora, I’m guessing it hasn’t really.
KH1 is a story that sets up each of the members of the main trio as wet behind the ears, kids who were thrown into more than they bargained for, kids who were changed by it. Riku’s a play on the usual villain, Sora’s a play on the usual chosen hero, and Kairi’s a play on the usual damsel.
So he does whatever he can. A raft can only take them so far, so he “thinks of something else,” something that’s been on his mind since he first saw the keyhole. But he made a mistake –despite his expectations, neither Sora nor Kairi was there. And the next time he meets Sora, Sora’s already got new friends and can stand on his own two feet, even though Riku’s always been the protector and the best.
And then Riku’s fall to darkness, his defeat, his regret and desire to at least see Sora and Kairi one more time if he was really dead, it’s all well-known and straightforward, especially with the new scenes in the Remix, I really don’t need to go into it. He sought freedom the most, and ended the game by giving up his freedom and becoming effectively trapped in a much worse prison than Destiny Islands ever was.
His growth is all about expanding his horizons. He didn’t hate the islands or think of them as some prison, but he did want to see all the worlds out there. He didn’t care about saving the worlds or finding Donald and Goofy’s king at first, though. He went along with them solely because the others told him it might be a way to help him find his friends, even though Donald didn’t care either way if they could or not. Sora has his moments of weakness, sadness, and confusion, but he tends to downplay them and put on a smile in most of those times.
Through seeing the other worlds and meddling, he gained more connections than he ever had on his little island. The climax of that came when he said that his power came from his hands, who would be with him no matter what –and used that line against his long-time best friend, himself. Sora’s a play on the usual hero because he didn’t care about saving the worlds or abstract things like that. He cared about the relationships he eventually developed, and that’s what made him want to help the worlds and that’s what gave him his power. Despite being built on the power of friendship, he’s willing to call out and fight his best friend, and despite having the least personal reason to seek outside worlds, his horizons where the ones that were extended the most.
These hints imply that Kairi’s claim of “remembering nothing at all” about the world she grew up in may not be entirely true, and she later goes on to show nostalgia at the picture of a castle, share a memory of her grandmother with Sora, and admit that Hollow Bastion was her original home, although she also admits that she doesn’t remember much about it anymore and considers Destiny Islands her true home.
It was mostly illustrated in the scene at the pier with Sora, that she has a deep-rooted fear of change and wants to just be assured that nothing that changes will be permanent. She wants to go visit her original world, and her heart feels warm when she’s in Hollow Bastion again, but before they leave, she’s torn between the desire to go back to see her old home and the fear that she might lose the new home she’s come to love. She asks two things of Sora: (1) for him to never change, and (2) for reassurance that no matter what happens, they can always come back there. She’s even making a charm to keep the three of them together, no matter what might happen.
Kairi’s stuck together with Sora for the whole game, and seems to remember it all, or at least to some degree, and says that she made it that far by sticking together with him. She talks to him, cheers him up once or twice, and shares her feelings.
Kairi still doesn’t make it clear how much she knows about at the end of the game, and she still wants the three of them to just stay together and for things to be how they were before, but the end of her arc in the first game is about her learning that change will always happen and coming to accept that in one way or another, as long as their bonds could tie them all together at the end of the day. The entire ending sequence focuses Kairi, and Kairi says the last line of KH1. She’s clearly at peace with Sora having to leave her life because she knows that the bond between them remains and that it will bring them together again someday, and together with Riku, too.
The character arcs aren’t as full in themselves as Riku’s full arc, of course, they’re all just the starting points for the main trio that flesh them out as three-dimensional and show who they are and where the coming of age changes left them. Riku was left in a dark place, Sora was tasked with going to find him, and Kairi was separated from the people she loved again and left to wait in a lonely but familiar place, as she's basically the token normal by the end of the story. Riku's been searching for his way back to his light and back to everything he pushed away before, Sora's been expanding his connections and making more friends, and Kairi's become more estranged and is trying to keep things together, although of the three, Riku's the only one with a fully realized character arc as of yet.
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