Kingdom Hearts by Shiro Amano
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy
Intended Age Group: All Ages
Publisher: Tokyopop
Volumes: 4
Series Rating: 3/5
See my individual reviews here:
Volume 1 – volume 2 – volume 3 – volume 4
Get your own copies here:
1 – Amazon ThriftBooks
2 – Amazon ThriftBooks
3 – Amazon ThriftBooks
4 – Amazon ThriftBooks
Or get the newer duology versions (published by Yen Press) here:
1 – Amazon Barnes&Noble RightStuf
2 – Amazon Barnes&Noble
Description
Fourteen-year-old Sora and his friends want to see what is across the ocean and visit other worlds. Everything gets turned upside down when their island home is hit by a storm, ripping them from their home and separating them.
Sora finds himself in a new land where he meets Court Wizard Donald and Captain Goofy. Together they fight mysterious creatures called Heartless and travel the universe in search of King Mickey and Sora’s lost friends.
Throughout their travels, they make friends in every world, and quickly discover it’s up to them to save the universe from the Heartless, and whomever is pulling their strings. The power of Sora’s Keyblade and the strength of his heart are paramount to succeed.
About
This is a manga adaptation of the popular game Kingdom Hearts. These are the older editions that make it a four volume series. The newer editions are encompassed in two volumes for a duology set. I got these forever ago, so I don’t have the newer editions.
I can’t stress enough that this is an adaptation. Don’t expect it to be super accurate.
Personal
I’ve been a fan of Kingdom Hearts since back when the first game was still new. It’s one of my favorite franchises, so when the manga came out, I knew I wanted to have it.
There are more Kingdom Hearts manga out there for some of the other games, as well as light novels. I’m in the process of collecting and reading them all. I want to do this in tandem with replaying the games to spot the differences, though, so it may take a while to review them.
As far as the manga versions go, I consider each “game” to be its own series, because they are, at the very least, in sets of two or more.
Characters
Sora is the main character. He is exclusive to the Kingdom Hearts universe. Well, except for his Smash appearance. He’s basically your average joe with a heart of gold.
Donald and Goofy are popular Disney characters associated with Mickey mouse. All three of them have been around for several decades, and they’re kind of the face of Disney, so it makes sense they would be main characters for this kind of story.
Mickey is a king in this universe because he is the ever constant mascot of Disney. Donald is his court wizard, and Goofy is his head knight.
Riku and Kairi are also completely new characters specifically for this story. Riku is the cool edge lord loner type. Part of his relationship with Sora is Riku is always better than him at everything, but that changes a bit as the story progresses. Kairi is essentially the girl next door everyone is crushing on.
Various Disney and Final Fantasy characters make appearances throughout the series. The number of Final Fantasy characters is small, but the Disney quantity is high since pretty much all the worlds are from Disney movies.
Story & Thoughts
Negatives
Honestly, I don’t think the manga does the story justice. There are so many cuts, and the story feels too fast.
The characters seem to have little to no development. You don’t even get to know the characters the same way you would in the game. In the game, you get time to see what Riku and Kairi are like before everything happens. That experience is missing here. The introduction is rushed, and the lack of proper introductions makes Riku come off as a jerk, instead of the cool loner type that actually cares. The rushed plot doesn’t help this later on either.
Entire levels are missing. Deep Jungle and Halloween Town are not in the manga. I have issue with this, because it goes along with the lack of character development. Donald and Sora are supposed to butt heads significantly at the start of the journey. That is barely portrayed at all. The entire point of Deep Jungle in the game is to sort out Sora and Donald’s differences, so they can actually be good friends. The story feels shallow without those experiences.
There is little action. For an adaptation of a game where you fight things constantly, there is hardly any action to be seen. I think this could have been a little better if it embraced more action scenes and showed off more of the epic boss fights. Show off some of Sora’s special techniques, too.
Positives
In the game, we’re under the impression Sora summons and dispels his key blade at will. The manga does things a little differently. I find this part a little amusing. This adaptation actually has Sora use his belt as a sheath. It does not look realistically stable for use at all, but it’s a detail I enjoy.
The cover art for the chapters in each volume are nice. I like seeing them.
Despite my complaints, the manga isn’t bad. It’s not entirely faithful as an adaptation, but it’s enjoyable. I like to think of it as an alternate retelling, because it’s accurate to a point. All the most important story events are there. The route to them and how they occur are just a little different.
I don’t recommend this as your primary Kingdom Hearts experience. But, if you’re just in the mood for some Kingdom Hearts and don’t want to boot up the game, it might scratch that itch. Or if you’ve never played the game, and you just want to see what the story is like, this is a generally accurate enough outline of it to get an idea.