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palizinhas · 5 years ago

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A Heart Is So Much More Than Any System - An analysis of Nobodies and Hearts in Kingdom Hearts

One of the most common topics in Kingdom Hearts is the nature of hearts, and what it means to live without one. From KH1 to DDD, the way the characters look at hearts changes, but did it really?

KH1

Kingdom Hearts is the most simple game in the series, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t explore hearts. In fact, one of the best quotes about hearts in the entire series is here.

Sora: Although my heart may be weak, it’s not alone. It’s grown with each new experience, and it’s found a home with all the friends I’ve made. I’ve become a part of their heart just as they’ve become a part of mine. And if they think of me now and then...if they don't forget me...then our hearts will be one.

Something that we learn about hearts as the series goes on, is that it can be created as you make new memories. In this, Sora claims that a heart gets stronger by having a connection to others, which is expanded upon in Days, coded and DDD, but is also clear before that. It also foreshadows (even if accidentally) how important to your heart your memories are, which is further explored in future games, like Chain of Memories.

Outside of that, KH1 also introduces us to the first KH character that is looked down on for not being “real” - a Disney character, of course, but DDD brings him back just to make the point that he’s not so different from Nobodies.

Riku: What? You’d rather fight me? Over a puppet that has no heart?

Sora: Heart or no heart, at least he still has a conscience.

Riku: Conscience?

Sora: You might not hear it, but right now it’s loud and clear. And it’s telling me you’re on the wrong side!

Pinocchio may have lost his heart, and he may be a puppet, but Sora recognizes right away that as long as he has a connection to others (namely Jiminy), it’s still wrong to hurt him.

CoM

Chain of Memories introduces Nobodies, so of course this game is very important to what we see in the series from this point forward. When it comes to heart in this game, there are three main threads - Axel, Naminé and Riku Replica. We’ll talk about all three of them.

Axel

We later learn in Days that it’s Axel’s experiences with Sora in Castle Oblivion that starts to shape who he becomes afterwards. Axel’s main point in CoM is that he’s playing pretty much everyone in the Castle, and it’s something he does under Saix’s orders, but there is one specific moment where it becomes more than that.

Axel: Hey, wait. I'm enjoying this. You guys ARE something else!

After Axel frees Naminé, he actually laughs. And not out of memories from what he used to be, but because he’s genuinely enjoying himself. While it’s not exactly a positive thing he’s enjoying, and he’s still acting out of self-interest, it’s more than he has felt in almost a decade, and it’s clear that what happens in Chain of Memories helps shape Axel into the person he becomes in KH2.

Naminé

There is one main reason Marluxia’s plan doesn’t work out, and it’s Naminé. The idea of what she’s doing is technically simple, she needs to shape Sora into their weapon, but it soon becomes clear that she both wants and doesn’t want to do that. Naminé’s reason for wanting to is simple, she’s lonely and has no one, and the idea of Sora caring more about her than anyone else is something that she longs for.

There isn’t a character that shows the importance of memories for your heart quite as much as Naminé. By changing Sora’s memories, she makes herself into the person he loves the most, breaking the chains of his memories to everyone else in the process. But the heart may forget, but the memories aren’t gone. Sora manages to remember Kairi when he tries hard enough, and Naminé’s understanding of that connection is what leads her to believing that one day her promise with Sora will be fulfilled.

Naminé: Don't worry. You might forget about me...but with our promise, I can come back.

Sora: A promise is a promise.

Naminé: Yes. One day the light---it will be ours, and it will bring us together. Til then---I'll be in your heart.

Sora: Right. Forgotten---but not lost.

Riku Replica

Repliku is the main source in Chain of Memories of the idea that people who aren’t real can become so, before we even fully learned that Nobodies aren’t supposed to have hearts. His main conflict comes from fake memories being put into him, and shaping his forming heart into something new, quite similar to what happened to Sora. Riku Replica doesn’t know he isn’t the real Riku for a part of the story, and when he does learn that, he reacts by realizing that if nothing he remembers is real, then neither is he.

But Sora once again doesn’t accept that.

Sora: Wait! Who cares if someone created you? You are you and nobody else. You have your own heart inside you. Those feelings and memories are yours and yours alone. They're special!

Sora once again recognizes that even if someone isn’t “real”, they are still important due to their feelings and connections to others.

Riku Replica ends up trying to hard to be “more than a shadow” (which is also how Naminé sees herself in comparison to Kairi) that it results on his demise, though this isn’t the last time we see him.

Chain of Memories as a whole is one of the best characters explorations in the series, and its use of hearts and memories is a huge part of that.

KH2

Chain of Memories may have introduced Nobodies, but KH2 gives us our first official explanation of what they are - but both the base game but especially Final Mix asks us if that explanation is right.

Here’s what Yen Sid has to say:

Yen Sid: An empty vessel whose heart has been stolen away... A spirit that goes on even as its body fades from existence---for you see, Nobodies do not truly exist at all. Nobodies may seem to have feelings, but this is a ruse - they only pretend to have hearts. You must not be deceived!

Between this and what Naminé says earlier in the game - that Nobodies are only half a person - the answer behind what Nobodies are seems clear, but there’s more to it than that.

The main examples of it are Roxas, Naminé and Axel. Because the other Nobodies in the game are only villains, we don’t get to see much of them, but of those three we do see. And it’s not just our observations of the characters that matter here, because even Ansem the Wise - the biggest detractor of Nobodies - comes to admit otherwise towards the end of the game.

Ansem the Wise: A heart is so much more than any system. I saw it when Roxas and Kairi crossed paths. I knew. But I was too stubborn to accept it.

This is the core of this analysis - a heart is much more than a system. Even so-called experts in the matter of the heart don’t understand everything. Ansem the Wise was so caught up in his revenge against his former apprentices he was willing to consider all Nobodies being without hearts, but he also recognizes, during the Roxas prologue, that what allowed Roxas and Kairi to make contact was their hearts connecting.

And maybe that doesn’t make complete sense - but does it have to? A heart is more than any system, after all.

There are several comments throughout the game that hint at there being more to Nobodies than what Yen Sid told us, such as Axel saying Roxas and Sora made him feel like he had a heart, but the biggest example was added in Final Mix... and actually asked that question directly.

Axel: You know, I've been thinking about something Naminé said. Roxas... are you really sure that you don't have a heart? Is it possible that we all have one? You, me, her... Or is that just wishful thinking?

The issue with exposition in games is that we often take what we hear from trustworthy characters at face value, but people can’t always be right. And by raising a question fans had already been wondering, KH2FM tells you to understand that there is more to the story than that.

Days

As Days is the only KH game to star a Nobody, we learn much about Nobodies through this game, both through Roxas himself as well as Xion - who may not be a Nobody herself, but doesn’t Vexen call Replicas a special type of Nobody?

Days often goes to the question of whether Nobodies can feel anything, and when Roxas is reminded by Axel that he’s not actually feeling things because he can’t, that makes you wonder whether that’s not just what they think.

Roxas starts out without a heart or memories - two very important things that are established in past games as making people who they are. As such, he starts out as a “zombie”. But he doesn’t stay that way. By interacting with Axel and Xion, Roxas becomes more than that. Your connection to others shapes you, and that’s what it did to Roxas.

Memories shaping you is also a theme with Xion, but in a much more literal way. It’s taking memories from Sora that make Xion who she is, but she also grows beyond that due to her friends.

Roxas isn’t Sora, and Xion isn’t Sora, and that’s because they formed connections and memories that are unrelated to Sora. They both wanted to become their own people so hard that that’s exactly what they did.

Re:coded

Data-Sora also isn’t a Nobody, but he’s also a being that grows beyond his initial programming. Data-Sora was created to solve the message in Jiminy’s Journal, and he was given a fake Keyblade to go along with it. But after it gets broken, his connection to others becomes so strong he can make his own, despite that being seemingly impossible.

This game brings back Ansem the Wise’s line - a heart is so much more than any system. Even being part of that system doesn’t mean your heart can’t be more than that. Data-Sora becomes more than the system. His connection to others also helps him understand hurt, and accept the hurt of others into himself - with someone else’s help.

Memories and connections are more important to a person than the way they were born, after all.

DDD

DDD has the huge “revelation” that Nobodies can grow hearts, but if you’ve come this far into the series, is it really a surprise?

DDD brings up the question of what makes people real several times, and when it comes to the question of Nobodies, there are three most important ones.

The first is when Sora meets up with Xemnas inside Pinocchio’s world, and this exhange happens:

Xemnas: My my, a hollow puppet that's managed to grow a heart. Just imagine that.

Sora: Pinocchio isn't anything like you Nobodies. But if Pinocchio could be given one--shouldn't you be able to have a heart inside you, too?

Pinocchio has been around since KH1. His existence already established this all the way back in the first game. Days was originally going to feature him to drive home his connection to Nobodies, even.

And of course, there is the reveal itself.

Sora: You know, right, because you all have hearts! Axel and Roxas and Naminé, and that other girl. I felt what Roxas felt and...they laughed together, got mad, and they grieved. You have to have a heart to cry.

Xigbar: It's about time you noticed.

??????: Indeed.

(Xemnas appears behind them)

Xemnas: A heart is never lost for good. There may have been variances in our dispositions, but a number of us unquestionably showed signs of a burgeoning replacement. Once born, the heart can also be nurtured. Our experiments creating Heartless were attempts to control the mind, and convince it to renounce its sense of self. But understand, one can banish the heart from the body, but the body will try to replace it the first chance it gets, for as many times as it takes. And so I knew, even after we were divided into Heartless and Nobodies, it was just a temporary separation.

Sora had already reached the conclusion that Roxas deserved to be his own person by this point, so it should come as no surprise that just like he questioned whether Roxas being trapped within him was right, he also questions something he fully believed in KH2 - whether Nobodies can have hearts.

In addition to Xemnas’s explanation, we also get Ansem the Wise’s.

Ansem the Wise: Yes. A clue, I hope, to finding yourselves or your lost friends in your hour of need. The heart has always been quick to grow. Each exposure to light, to the natural world, to other people, shapes this most malleable part inside of us. Nobodies are not different from us in that manner. Sora was the only one able to return to his human form without destroying his Nobody. That is a statement to the love in his heart for other people, and the bonds that tie them together. Perhaps...he has the power to bring back the hearts and existences of those connected to him-- to recreate people we thought were lost to us forever. Our most precious treasures--even an empty puppet--the trees of the forest, and the petals on the wind--there are hearts around us everywhere we look. And it does not take superhuman powers to see them. Surely we remember as children the way our hearts made everything seem so shiny, and perfect. Sora has a heart like that--uncorrupted, willing to see the good before the bad. When he sees the heart in something, it then becomes real. When a connection seems broken, he may have the power to mend it. He has touched countless hearts, he has accepted them, and he has saved them. And some of those hearts have never left him--whether they fell into darkness or were trapped there-whether they sleep in the darkness of Sora's heart, or were welcomed into its warmth--they can be saved. All Sora needs to do is be himself and follow wherever it is that his heart takes him. It is the best and the only way. The rest is in there.

This moment is Ansem the Wise recognizing that there is more to a heart than what it starts out as, and the main point for it is the connection people form with one another.

In general, the way KH treats hearts is that what matters isn’t who you are in the beginning - it’s only through new experiences, through meeting others and making memories with them that you become who you are, who you can be. And all of these things were clear within the first two games.

#kingdom hearts #kh meta #mine #this is ridiculous too long and makes no sense #but oh well

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