Not for lack of trying, but I can no longer put off the inevitable: it is time to recap Kingdom Hearts II. A game so nonsensical, and so frustrating, and so packed to the gills with bullshit mini-games, and so fucking good, god dammit, that it may finally break me for good. (Don’t tell me you thought that was Xenosaga. That shit is a Sunday stroll by comparison.)
A few administrative notes before I start nitpicking cutscenes. First, I’m taking a break on my poor, ancient PS2 and playing the PS3 HD rerelease. What can I say, I like prettier graphics, and not having to sit a maximum of four feet of controller cord away from the TV. Since this is technically KHII: Final Mix, this means there are some differences from the original version, but I don’t care and neither should you.
Second, my original plan, particularly since this is a “new” version of the game, was to play through it again on a dry run, so I’d be able to take some notes and generally try to avoid making a gigantic jackass of myself. But…you guys, Kingdom Hearts II is really fucking long, and I have but one life to live. So even though I haven’t played this game at all in almost a decade, and about the only thing I remember about the plot is that it’s insane, I’m gonna wing it. Why, it’ll almost be like I’m experiencing it for the first time! I’m sure this won’t bite me in the ass.
Third, I’m not going to bother going into too much detail about Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the Game Boy Advance game (fuck, I am old and death is looming over me) that functions as a plot link between our two main installments. Mostly because it’s kind of boring, but also because all these tweener games in the series seem to do nothing but take a fairly simple story about light and darkness, doors and keys, and HEARTS THAT BELIEVE, and over-complicate the hell out of it with 5000 new characters who all kind of look the same and have origins and backstories that would leave Stephen Hawking confused and a bit dizzy. And if I get into CoM, do I also get into 358/2 Days, which takes place in the same time period but hadn’t even been published yet when this game came out, et cetera and so on. The whole thing is a hassle we’re all better off without. Believe me, this game is going to be enough of a clusterfuck on its own merit.
Everybody good? Have I scared you all away with my hot takes on the series’ mobile offerings? Super. Let’s get started. An even more melancholy, violin-accompanied mix of the original title theme takes us through the Disney and Square logos and into the title screen, where our beloved selfless hero Junior, last seen wandering through green hills pretending to look for his friends, is sitting on a ledge with another boy, namely the Mystery Blond last seen exchanging smoldering looks with Riku while twirling double Keyblades. The two of them are sucking on pale blue popsicles and staring broodily into the distance, as if they’ve never encountered anything more existentially challenging than eating ice cream. I mean, we’re talking about Junior, so this is probably true. So: new game, on standard mode, because the next mode up is “Proud Mode” and I have no pride when it comes to Kingdom Hearts. My difficulty is set, my controller is ready to vibrate erotically, and we are off!
The Disney and Square logos precede the title once more, now over shimmering dark blue water. Elsewhere, at nighttime, Junior has his massive clown feet planted at a dirt crossroads through those same green hills. He stares up at the stars and the clouds, as his (much older-sounding) voice recites the text now flying across the screen: “A scattered dream that’s like a far-off memory. A far-off memory that’s like a scattered dream.” Whoa. Deep, man. We cut away from Junior, but not his voice or the text, which is doing loop-de-loops and barrel rolls like some Square intern just learned how to animate their slide titles in PowerPoint. Junior goes on, “I want to line the pieces up–yours and mine.” Well, isn’t that sweet. Just one thing, buddy: the pieces already were lined up just fine, but then you banished Riku and Mickey to Bumfuck Heartless Land. I mean, oh no, poor Junior misses his precious friends!
Of course, as becomes clear in the next segue, Junior actually wants to line up his pieces (ew) with Token’s. Speaking of, I’m just going to call her Kairi again. Sometimes I get tired of nicknames. Anyway, as the opening bars of Utada Hikaru’s “Passion” “Sanctuary” take over the soundtrack, we cut to Kairi, as she appeared in the last game, sitting on a beach at sunset. She is holding a paopu fruit and turning it over and over in her hands. (It actually looks more like a dried, flat husk. I don’t know–maybe it’s her stupid keychain, magically back in her possession.) A few feet away, another fruit that looks like an eggplant is swallowed by an incoming wave. I’m sure there’s some deep Island of Wankers significance to an eggplant bobbing off into the ocean, but my degree is not in imaginary fruit symbolism, unfortunately. From here, we cut to our original trio staring at that same sunset, Junior and Kairi sitting on their special bendy tree trunk for lovers while Riku leans against it with his arms folded, looking typically hot as shit. Kairi giggles at something stupid Junior says, but when he turns away, her body dissolves into dust and blows away in the wind. A beat later Riku is similarly gone (Junior barely notices, obviously), and right as the opening guitar solo ends and the theme song begins for real, Junior leaps, size 18s first, off his tree as the whole goddamn island disappears into white nothingness.
Pretty sure he’s going to land on someone’s neck and steal their binoculars.
As the cinematic quickly recaps the climactic events of the last game–notably, Junior and Pals’ arrival at Hollow Bastion, Kairi in her Mary Sue coma, Riku’s white butt cape, Riku eating Billy Zane, and Junior Keyblading himself in the chest–let’s talk “Sanctuary,” because it’s a wee bit off to my amateur ears. I suppose I’m so used to “Passion” that the English lyrics feel awkward–almost stretched too thin over too long a song–but I am willing to concede that I’m just a sad aging weeaboo who nonetheless had no such issues with “Simple and Clean.” Also, the opening line is, “In you and I, there’s a new land,” which makes me think the Island of Wankers is literally inside Junior and Kairi’s hearts, which may in fact be literally one heart, a weird and dumb thing we will get to later.
Back to Kairi, alone on the reformed Island of Wankers. She stands there looking confused for apparently an entire day in time lapse, and as twilight approaches she’s surrounded by the same golden shower she and Junior got at the end of the last game. I guess this is just an extended riff on Kairi as she returned home, because she again sees a vision of Junior silently jabbering at her in the sky, until he fades away and Kairi is left staring into a massive blue nebula on the horizon. That might be my rage at what happened to Riku made manifest. And then, at the break of day–a lot of time is passing here, is the point–Kairi again turns into dust, but instead of blowing away, the particles shift to another spot down the beach, and she reforms as the Kairi of today. I didn’t get much into this in the last game’s epilogue, but Kairi now has hair just past her shoulders and is wearing a cute pink mini-dress with zippers running the length of it on either side and in the middle. (The one in the middle is unzipped partially, so we know Kairi’s womanhood is flowering, but there’s a tasteful camisole underneath it, because she’s still innocent and pure. Thankfully my degree is in overwrought wardrobe analysis.) You know how Square is normally obsessed with putting dozens of useless belts on every costume? Not that they’re going to stop doing that, but the more dominant motif for this game is zippers. It used to just be Junior and a couple others, but now everyone loves them. This might mean Junior has become a fashion icon throughout the gummiverse, and we are in the darkest timeline.
Kairi, despite the hair and clothing updates, still has the same concussed puppy expression she’s always had, though in this case there’s more of a reason for it. We’ll get there. Gazing at the ocean, she mouths something–and it’s supposed to look like she says, “Music will tie,” along with the song. Or she says, “Who was that lame guy?” I could go either way. From Kairi we fade cut to another girl mouthing the same words at the same time. This girl has a haircut almost identical to Kairi’s, but she is blonde, in a plain white dress, and inside an all-white room. It’s almost like they’re trying to make some kind of point about this girl!
Leaving Kairi for the moment, we turn our focus to Mystery Blonde, sitting in a white chair, surrounded by white vases full of white flowers. Actually, that’s not quite it. It’s more like they’re white ceramic sculptures of vases with flowers. I’m worried they might be going too subtle with this. Maybe we could see a giant animator’s hand erasing Kairi until only Mystery Blonde remains? Just brainstorming. Mystery Blonde is doodling in a sketchbook (thankfully not with only white pencils), and before we all die of suspense regarding her artwork, the camera zooms in on her sketch of a long, bannister-less spiral staircase, and tiny dark figures dotting the stairs like ants. The camera zooms in from there to show a real staircase, full of real bug Heartless, as Junior, Donald “@%$#!!!” Duck, and Goofy hack and slash their way up the steps. @%$#!!! even unnecessarily zaps a bunch of Heartless with Thundaga just as Junior was about to swipe through them anyway. It’s like I never even left!
So, the other reason I didn’t want to get too much into Chain of Memories is that I didn’t need to. Because–as “Sanctuary” enters the dance remix bridge portion and Hikki rather pointedly lets us know, “My heart’s a battleground”–the cinematic helpfully provides a a highlight reel of the entire game, stripped of all the confusing details and dumbshit card battles. Through a door from the staircase, past two ominous figures we’ll be meeting shortly, Junior finds a man in the same black hooded trenchcoat Mystery Blond and Riku were both wearing in the last game’s epilogue. (It has a long chunky zipper! And cute tassels!) This guy has long feathered hair the same shade of pink as Kairi’s new outfit, and a massive pink scythe that is giving Junior some unfamiliar feelings of inadequacy. Junior’s fight with this fabulous cotton candy tuft of a man (who is named Marluxia, and no, it doesn’t matter) is intercut with Riku, in his butt-cape Heartless slave ensemble, fighting against Billy Zane in the very same all-white room. As usual, Riku looks better than Junior, who basically goes “DERP” and flings the Keyblade right at Marluxia’s face, to no effect. I’m sure he’s going to convince everybody later that he meant to do that.
Proto-Lightning here looks pretty happy to have Junior’s surrogate wang flying into his face.
Back to the stairs, which are now free of cute antennas and little yellow eyes. Riku, back in his yellow scuba suit, is also running up the spiral, separately from Junior, @%$#!!!, and Goofy. Or at least, it appears he is, but eventually he is shown running on the underside of the staircase, and heading down. Because he and Junior are on parallel journeys, on either side of the door of darkness and light! Or some fucking thing. Basically, when Junior closed Kingdom Hearts in Riku’s face, he also shoved him down a staircase into the basement. BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.
But lo, what is that I detect? Is it the faint, but unmistakable, whiff of comeuppance? Junior reaches the top of the staircase and barges into the creepy white dollhouse room of Mystery Blonde, who is actually named Naminé. The game itself will get to her in due time, but I wanted to provide her name now because she’s about to do something awesome. Junior stumbles through the door and stares at Naminé dumbly. She stares back at him, then looks back down at her sketchpad, which holds her just-completed drawing of Junior trapped inside a bubble. She looks back up just in time to see the bubble materialize and envelop Junior like a plastic dome around an action figure. He has this shocked pout on his face, like, “What? But bad things don’t happen to meeeeeeeee.”
Karma’s a bitch. And Naminé. She may also be a bitch.
Junior pounds on his bubble prison, which I guess is supposed to resemble a lotus flower, but looks more to me like an artichoke. And Junior is its heart! Wokka wokka wokka. Naminé mouths at him, “Angels in flight,” or maybe “Have some Crystal Light.” At least she has the grace to look guilty about what she’s done to him, mostly because how is he going to drink that Crystal Light? The artichoke doesn’t have a trap door for food and drink. Unfortunately, Junior forgot to eat breakfast before ascending that endless staircase, so he was already in dire need of some calories, and he therefore stone cold passes out in his bubble two seconds later. Oh no!!! Is Junior going to be okay?!
As usual, nobody can ever just hit the ground when they pass out around here, so Junior’s limp body flies through a white void that eventually gives way to the ocean around the Island of Wankers. Naminé, still in her room, closes her sketchpad after looking one last time at her depiction of an older Junior with blond highlights in his hair, eyes closed, presumably still asleep in his artichoke cocoon. And in whatever dream land he’s been put into, Junior is now napping on the beach at home, holding hands with the also-asleep Kairi and Riku. It’s pretty fucking cute and my only snarky comment is that of course Junior is the one in the middle. We know how these three function.
Kingdom Hearts is light sad threesomes.
From this peaceful dreamland of Junior’s, of course we have to dive into confusion again. Another figure plunges below the surface of the island’s ocean and his body sinks down into the dark. It’s Mystery Blond, Boy Edition, and he’s asleep too. These people sure do sleep a lot. His long descent through the water does give me time to assess his outfit, though, which I always appreciate. Now out of his fancy black hoodie coat, our boy is wearing some kind of olive shirt and jeans combo, or possibly a baggy olive bodysuit, layered with beige chaps and a matching beige overshirt with (surprise) chunky zippers and checkerboard detailing. Accessories-wise, he’s sporting a silver cross pendant that Squally would probably cut a bitch for, a checkerboard wrist cuff, some black tape around one finger, and some sweet skater boy Vans. He looks like he is really, really into Operation Ivy.
Twink Sami Zayn here lands on his feet at the bottom of the ocean under Junior’s dream beach or whatever the hell, and since he’s underwater, the logical followup is that a flock of doves takes flight upon his feet touching bottom. Sensing a motif! The scattering birds expose a glowing stained glass tableau of Junior (who we know is a Disney princess), featuring Riku, Kairi, @%$#!!!, and Goofy, with the Island of Wankers in the background. Mystery Twink goggles at the doves, since hello, underwater, and with the end of “Sanctuary” we leave him for the moment, looking as confused and disoriented as I do.