Listen, the Disney crossover aspect of Kingdom Hearts is rancid, I absolutely loathe it, it made me feel actual cringe-contempt even while I think I was still comfortably within the target age demographic when it was released. Hmm… hang on.
…Well I just checked instead, as of the release of Kingdom Hearts, in fiction Sora is 14 years old, on March 28th, 2002, I was not even a month and a half away from my thirteenth birthday, and really the clearest indication that something is being marketed to that age demographic is if the protagonist is of that age demographic. So, yeah.
However, I’ll be generous, and say I could be pulling an old revisionist memory here, I am pretty sure I was well aware of it while it was being made, and I do remember seeing it being played at a friend’s house, but I probably didn’t play it that close to release since I didn’t have a PS2 for a while. But even assuming I didn’t actually feel that way when I played Kingdom Hearts except as my idealized self in my memories, I’m positive my long term memory is correct in being certain that my second-hand embarrassment producing glands had come in fully by the release of Kingdom Hearts II and I did buy and play it at release for sure (hypocrite that I am). And that was the game that made me love the TV in my bedroom for having a headphone jack in the front and being able to pause cutscenes. I hate that Mickey Mouse and Tarzan and The Little Mermaid and the rest of all of them is in this mopey anime bullshit action rpg, I hate how it is a monument to the most nonsensical and alienating kind of mass market commercialism possible, and maybe most of all I hate Sora’s big round shoes A LOT. I think if Sora was real I would attack him on sight.
…………………………………………………………………..the ONE exception to this rule is that hanging out and doing JRPG anime battles with Donald Duck and Goofy rules and it’s hilarious????????? It kind of sucks when they have to take their turn to chew through the esoteric mopey anime teen dialogue but they aren’t usually doing that, and actually, no, I changed my mind, it being spoken by Donald and Goofy is the only thing that makes that dialogue tolerable because, it’s Donald Duck and Goofy voice. I will maybe never get over the idea of how funny it is that Goofy The Dog used shields as a weapon and Donald Fucking Duck was in three entire JRPGs and either no one thought to put some goddamn pants on him or Disney forbade that freak from being depicted with even one single unnecessary nonfunctional belt on there.
So in fact Kingdom Hearts is simultaneously the worst megacorporatized media crossover to ever exist but also in fact one of the most intangibly perfect cultural products in human history because it made Donald Duck say “SORA, IT’S SEPHIROTH” and for some reason I can’t even look at this screenshot of Goofy (From Cartoons) with a literal screenspanning health bar without laughing
