Sora and Kairi: Two Sides to the Same Journey

How would the story change if the hero wasn’t the main character? Think of all the details you would miss by only getting the main character’s perspective. In the Kingdom Hearts series, a video game series mixing the elements of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy and the magical worlds of Disney, there are many heroes, but the game focuses on a young man named Sora. Sora goes on adventures to save the world and find his friends Riku and Kairi.  As interesting and amazing as Sora is as a main character, I personally prefer to focus on Kairi, who the rest of blog post will be focusing on. This is actually my second blog post on Kairi, and rather than go back and do a full description again you can read that by clicking here. If you don’t want to go that post, I’ll do a quick description here. Kairi is a childhood friend of Kingdom Heart’s main protagonist Sora and lived with him in their home world, The Destiny Islands. During the first game, Kairi is captured by the antagonists and is going to be used to grant their wishes because her heart contains pure light. Sora goes on a journey to find the helpless Kairi and she is more of a prize to be won than a character on her own.  She is kept in a pod in a coma for a majority of the game until Sora comes and rescues her, traditional Disney Princess story. After Sora defeats the main antagonist, Sora and Kairi are separated again and leads into the events of Kingdom Hearts II. In this game, Sora is again searching for Kairi trying to protect her from the evils in the world. The new antagonists tried to capture Kairi again, but this time she escapes and goes looking for Sora on her own so she can help him. Both are looking for each other, and Sora no longer has to rescue the helpless female Kairi. When they finally meet, Kairi and Sora work together as equals to defeat the antagonists and save the world again.

As the title of this blog post, and that very brief description says, there is two sides to the same story here, each following two characters that are very involved in it. First we have Sora’s side of the games, which is the main viewpoint which the player sees while playing the game. On this side of the story, Kairi is a childhood friend and love interest which Sora needs to save and protect throughout his quest. She seems helpless, and she was in the first game cause she was in a coma and all, but Sora never learns about her new personality and character development. Sora believes that it’s part of his quest to find Kairi wherever she is and help her. On Kairi’s side, she was helpless and needing rescuing during the first game, but she developed into a strong, independent character, which Sora and the player didn’t learn about until the end of the second game. While Sora was searching for her during the the entire second story, Kairi was going through her own brave adventure looking for Sora. Their journeys were each part of a larger story, and the player was only shown Sora’s half.

This idea of different narratives changing the view on a story is called Narratology. To word that better, Narratology is the study of how the narrative or structure of the narrative can affect the viewers perception of it. In this case, the viewer/player is given the story through the viewpoint of Sora, which turns the story into a typical Disney tale. But by looking at both narratives, you get two completely different ideas or perceptions of the story.

One large example from the game series is a scene that is shown many times throughout them. In their home world, The Destiny Islands, there is a cave near there home where the children would constantly play. During the start of the first game,  Sora, being a young boy and being in love with is friend Kairi, draws secret pictures of them together on the walls of the cave. He thinks he needs to keep his feelings a secret and tries to keep these drawings as a little sanctuary for himself. But, in the sequel, there’s a flashback of Kairi who not only found these drawings on the wall, but added on to it. She added the drawing of the paopu fruit, which is a magical fruit that when you eat together your destiny become intertwined.  It’s revealed that Kairi had the same feelings for Sora, but that part of the story was left out from Sora’s perspective. This changes a lot of the first game, rather than Sora having to prove himself to win Kairi’s love, whether it’s by showing he’s better than his childhood friend Riku, or saving her life, he already had her love and could have not worried about it for the entire game.

Cave drawing of Kairi and Sora sharing a Paopu Fruit

There’s even more characters in this tale, each with a different perspective and take on the events, meaning that there’s hundreds of ways to see this story. The games even touch upon the story seen through the lenses of other protagonists, Ventus, Riku, Aqua, Terra, Xion, and Data-Sora. Kairi’s side of the story from the events past the second game are not as explored or explained as Sora’s side, so we’ll have to see where Kairi’s story, and the story as whole, goes in the upcoming sequel.

Kairi: Damsel in Distress to Feminist Heroine (Kingdom Hearts Franchise)

 

 

Kingdom Hearts I

The Kingdom Hearts franchise is a videogame series mixing the elements of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy games and the worlds of Disney. The games follow the main character main character Sora’s adventure through these worlds in search of his childhood friend Riku and his friend/ love-interest Kairi after they were separated when their world was devoured by darkness. During the search, Sora learns that Kairi was captured so her heart could combine with other Disney Princesses, like Jasmine and Belle, so their pure hearts of light could grant the antagonist’s wishes. The antagonists, led by the witch Maleficent, want to plunge all of the worlds into darkness and let the evil creatures known as the heartless rule them all. Sora sets out to save Kairi and all of the affected worlds by traveling between them, defeating all the enemies, and finding clues for Kairi’s location. After Sora finally finds and rescues her near the end of the first Kingdom Hearts, it’s shown that Kairi loves Sora as well, typical Disney princess ending. But, as the title says, Sora is not the hero I’m focusing on, Kairi is. You’re probably thinking, “Wow, Kairi doesn’t seem like a heroine at all. She was just kidnapped and had to be rescued by her love. That doesn’t sound heroic at all, how is she a hero?” Before continuing Kairi’s story through the rest of the franchise, I want to stop here and look at Kairi as a character through a feminist lense to show what the first game offered as well as Kairi’s development as a character.

I’m sure many people are aware of what a feminist lense is, or has an idea at least at what feminism in this sense could mean. For those who don’t, a feminist lense looks at how a piece of media portrays women, and how women are compared to the men in the story, focusing mostly the inequality between them. In the first game, Kairi is used more as a motive and a prize for Sora rather than a character with depth. She doesn’t have much development throughout the game, mostly because she was kidnapped and put in a pod where she slept. I’d show you a usual scene starring Kairi here, but it would just be a picture of a pod where you can’t see her inside. She has to rely on a man to rescue her, unable to fight or do anything for herself. While Kairi is sleeping and waiting, Sora is getting stronger and stronger, saving countless worlds and trying to save the one he loves. When Kairi is eventually saved at the end of the story, the main reward is a passionate hug from Kairi showing that she loves Sora too. Looking at this part of the game through a feminist lense brings up a couple of red flags due to the unevenness between the two genders. The men are shown as brave heroes that save the day, while the females are helpless. Sora, representative of men,  develops throughout the game, becoming more brave, building more bonds, turning into a deeper character, where Kairi and the other female characters have little to no development besides showing her love for the main character when rescued. The is exactly what you don’t want when looking through a feminist lense, and the franchise is lucky this was not the end of the series.

Kingdom Hearts II

To continue the story, we have to delve into the sequel, Kingdom Hearts II. After Sora defeats the main antagonist of the first game, everyone returns to their worlds. Sora and his party continue their search for their friends to save as many people from the heartless as possible. But, Sora and Kairi get separated again, and the plot point of finding Kairi repeats. Kairi was sent back to her and Sora’s original world, the Destiny Isles, and all memories of Sora disappeared besides the bond of friendship and love that will always be there.  She tries her hardest to remember Sora, but fails. One of the new antagonists, named Axel, believes that if he kidnaps Kairi he’ll be able to use her against Sora. He appears at the Destiny Isles and surrounds her with enemies, but instead of letting herself be kidnapped this time she fights back. Right before she is captured, an unknown portal opens before her covered in darkness, where Pluto the dog pops out. Knowing that it’s her only option, she dives into the unknown world and escapes from Axel and starts searching for Sora on her own. When getting near the end of the game, Kairi meets up with her childhood friend Riku who has been battling the heartless. Instead of letting Riku fight for her, she is gifted a magical weapon of her own and fights along side Riku to find Sora.

Kairi Getting Her Weapon

When they finally all meet, there’s a romantic hug because they’re in love, but it’s not because Sora has done anything to win her. Sora, Riku, and Kairi work together as equals to defeat the main antagonist of the second game. This is where the story ends for now, and we don’t know how Kairi will continue to develop in the upcoming sequel.

Looking at the game now with the feminist lense, things have changed dramatically. There is no longer a giant divide between the males and females with everyone being equal. Kairi is no longer a prize for Sora to win through his journey and is a heroine on her own. Sora needs her to succeed and wouldn’t be able to finish his quest without her.  Kairi is able to develop as a character rather than be a plot point in the story. Overall, this is exactly what you’re looking for when observing something through a feminist lense. Men and women are equal and there are no roles that each gender has to fill in. Everyone is just a hero. Luckily the first game was able to do well enough to spark a sequel, so we have an ending of equality rather than end on a gender unbalanced cliche.