I feel like this often gets kinda sidelined as a mere stopgap on the way to Kingdom Hearts 3, which is a real shame because I feel like this is the best the series has done at integrating the Disney worlds with the wider series themes of growing up and the horror of the childhood's end since the original game.
The spaces here are wonderful, easily some of the most evocative in the entire series, and Aqua's depressive trudge through the shattered ephemera of broken Disney Worlds is a phenomenal reflection of what it is often like to revisit one's childhood as an adult. This is the kind of stuff I love Kingdom Hearts the most for, the way it explores the liminal space between childhood and adulthood with sophistication belied by the series' reputation. I could take or leave the wider series plot and continuity, and accordingly, it's when the game goes about tying up a bunch of loose ends that no one really needed tying up that it ceases to enthrall me in quite the same way.
It's still fun, don't get me wrong: extremely fun, actually. Mickey's shirtless explanation is surely one of the funniest things in the entire franchise and I'm enough of a fan of KH3's sandbox that even the restrictive, underdeveloped version here is a riot. But it's a reminder that the things that I value most in this series are patently not the same things it - or, indeed the wider series fandom - is interested in. And while I've made my peace with that from the day the beautiful Roxas prologue of KH2 first ended, the moments when the series brushes up against those feelings just make me want them all the more.
KINGDOM HEARTS SEXISM WATCH: well this is a game about the second most prominent woman in the series having an absolutely miserable fucking time for a decade, but on the other hand it does portray her with agency and nuance...when she isn't playing second fiddle to a cartoon mouse that is the icon of the late capitalist nightmare world we all live in. the fact that they did not carry over the fashion into KH3 is demonstrative of Square Enix's enormous cowardice. let sora be a catboy!!!!!
The spaces here are wonderful, easily some of the most evocative in the entire series, and Aqua's depressive trudge through the shattered ephemera of broken Disney Worlds is a phenomenal reflection of what it is often like to revisit one's childhood as an adult. This is the kind of stuff I love Kingdom Hearts the most for, the way it explores the liminal space between childhood and adulthood with sophistication belied by the series' reputation. I could take or leave the wider series plot and continuity, and accordingly, it's when the game goes about tying up a bunch of loose ends that no one really needed tying up that it ceases to enthrall me in quite the same way.
It's still fun, don't get me wrong: extremely fun, actually. Mickey's shirtless explanation is surely one of the funniest things in the entire franchise and I'm enough of a fan of KH3's sandbox that even the restrictive, underdeveloped version here is a riot. But it's a reminder that the things that I value most in this series are patently not the same things it - or, indeed the wider series fandom - is interested in. And while I've made my peace with that from the day the beautiful Roxas prologue of KH2 first ended, the moments when the series brushes up against those feelings just make me want them all the more.
KINGDOM HEARTS SEXISM WATCH: well this is a game about the second most prominent woman in the series having an absolutely miserable fucking time for a decade, but on the other hand it does portray her with agency and nuance...when she isn't playing second fiddle to a cartoon mouse that is the icon of the late capitalist nightmare world we all live in. the fact that they did not carry over the fashion into KH3 is demonstrative of Square Enix's enormous cowardice. let sora be a catboy!!!!!