Ah, Kingdom Hearts. I spent years resisting this game because of the childish element and the fact that Disney was never a favorite of mine. Yet, I ended up playing the game, and actually liked it. The battles were fun, the plot was actually interesting(well, sort of), and while much of it seemed like an advertisement for Disney movies, it really wasn't so bad.
I was in it for Final Fantasy, and the for the newer characters, but the Disney characters turned out better than I ever imagined. Maleficent is a goddess of a villan, and she's hard to top. Is it any wonder why we see her again in KH2, DESPITE the fact that she was defeated in the first one? According to IMDB, 95% of fans polled wanted to see her again. I think she had her moment in the sun, but why not? She made things more interesting in Kingdom Hearts 2. Then there's Ansem, who proved to be a "Sauron-like" villan at first, but unlike Sauron, you get to meet Ansem and experience one of the most exciting battles in gaming history.
Things only got better in Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2. In the former, we meet the fandom GOD of Kingdom Hearts--Axel, who rules all, and half of the sinister Organization 13. In the latter, we meet Demyx, a radiant character who had less than three minutes of screentime and yet rivals Axel in popularity. We also meet the rest of Org 13(known as the 13th Order in Japan). Honestly, most of the standout Organization members were in the second half. I'll get to that later.
Course Kingdom Hearts isn't about any of the Organization and not even Disney characters, really. Kingdom Hearts is, of course, about Sora and his best friends, Riku and Kairi(who, for some reason is constantly bashed by fans). Obviously, this is common knowledge, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Kingdom Hearts sports a HUGE fandom, one of the largest, most divisive, and intimidating that I have ever seen. I know that if the characters were paper thin, the game would still be popular, at least for awhile, but the fandom would not have been this huge. No one would have cared if the characters weren't made the way they were. The same could be said for lots of fandoms, but Kingdom Hearts has been widely popular for quite some time, and won't be going away anytime soon.
Which is one of the reasons why I made this blog. Yea, trendwhore, whatever. Still, I enjoy running my mouth about Kingdom Hearts, and that won't be going away anytime soon either.
This is a game I love, it's a game I hate, it's a game I enjoy, it's game that frustrates me to no end. I've been ambivalent about it for a long time, but it's addictive. I can't get enough of it, and the characters are to blame for it.
Despite all that, since I made this blog, I'll be in it for the long haul, and I don't think it'll be a bad thing either.
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