a heart, a heart, my kingdom for a heart

2002 was an interesting year.  The first part of it, I spent as a high school sophomore.  I began to focus on the crush that would one day blossom into my exquisite marriage.  I took my first grim steps in the shoes of an advocate as part of my in-class mock trial for the children in Lord of the Flies.  I went to Disney World with my family.  This last may be the dominating factor in my lingering love of the subject of this blog post:

Kingdom Hearts, if you're streets behind, is a video game series created by the Square Enix corporation featuring characters from Final Fantasy games and, much more importantly, Disney movies.  That means you get to go on adventures with Winnie the Pooh, Alice, Aladdin, Ariel, Tarzan, Donald, Goofy, Jack Skellington, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Mickey.  Better yet, you do battle with such nefarious fiends as Maleficent, The Queen of Hearts, Hades, Captain Hook, and Ursula!  It's all dreadfully exciting, and fully rendered in pretty 3D graphics that somehow retain the character and feel of the original animation:

I paid close attention to the development of this game, and decided to purchase it as soon as I was able.  Unfortunately for me, I had no money when the game came out; I took my first job as a cashier at Target five months after the game's release!  Be assured that my first paycheck went straight to procuring a PlayStation 2 and this very game.

And oh, what a wonder it turned out to be.  You play as Sora, a character created originally for the series, who loses his home and friends in a cataclysmic event where strange monsters appear and attack everyone.  Cast adrift in a sea of unknown worlds and chosen for no discernible reason by a mysterious sword known as a Keyblade, Sora eventually meets up with Donald and Goofy, who are themselves on a quest to uncover the whereabouts of Mickey, who vanished while researching the very creatures that attacked Sora's home!  Hoping that Donald and Goofy can help him find his friends, Sora joins up with them and together they journey to all sorts of magical places!

In all of these locales, they come across the same strange creatures, the Heartless.  Most of the Heartless look like this:

Very Ghibli.  And roughly the size of a breadbox.

But some present themselves like this:

Less Ghibli, more Alighieri.  And roughly the size of a bread factory.

They run around attacking people, but they don't kill them...oh no.  Instead, they devour the hearts of entire worlds, transforming their entire populations into Heartless like themselves, like a magical Von Neumann machine.  And, as the chosen Wielder of the Keyblade, the responsibility for holding back these foul creatures fell entirely on your shoulders!  A weighty burden.

The game held deeper levels of fascination than the opportunity to visit these fully realized worlds and cavort with their animated inhabitants, however.  There was an entire subsurface metaphysical discussion of the nature of the "heart" to be found, lurking subtly in diary pages left behind by a brilliant scientist of the soul.  He was primarily concerned with the "True Essence" of the heart.  To what extent does Darkness dictate our thoughts, feelings, and actions?  Does every heart contain within it the capacity for Darkness, or is that only introduced from without?  And can Darkness truly corrupt a heart to the point of no return, or is there always some redemption available for those with the will to fight for it?  What is the heart, and how is it connected to, and how is it separate from, the body?  Is anyone entirely good or bad?

His questions strike at the core of issues that philosophers have contemplated for millennia, but he comes nowhere near an answer.  No, the answer is left to be provided by the player, who must brood endlessly over this melancholy topic.  Even now, the title music plays endlessly in my heart, enchanting me with its simple but enduring melody...

I would leave the title screen on for hours while I did my homework, or just sat and thought about the people in my life, and my relation to them; primarily, how strongly I wished that I could fight for them as easily as swinging a blade into an evil villain.  Oh, if only that were all it took to bring happiness to the people I care about!

Some final images that are forever seared into my mind....

A friendly challenge, a rival you like and respect, your closest friend getting lost on his way...

A cautious smile, an earnest promise, an alliance of convenience that grows into true friendship...

A vision of hope, a crystalline shard of the future, worlds uniting for the sake of everything...

The glimmering blade of a hero, an eternal lock opened, a sage at last set free...

A lost love seen everywhere, a tearful reunion, a memory cherished into diamond...

A song, a light, and a smile....

Belief in yourself, the greatest of risks, and the burst of joy when you first take flight...

These are the words that speak to me of Kingdom Hearts.  You may never experience it, and I'd understand why, but I hope I have brought you some small part of the meaning it holds for me.  Try watching the video below, and see if you can taste some of the magic I felt when I first came to know this game.

Just don't walk away.