I’ve long held that no RPG is quite as spectacular as Kingdom Hearts, and I’m careful to specifically use the word “spectacular.” For every ounce it is great, it’s specifically great to gawk at, ideally with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. This is a game series where, if you die at a climactic moment, Mickey Mouse can emerge from your Christian soul and start killing people with a giant stick. It’s incredible.
A good Kingdom Hearts game is such a delight to watch in action that it’s also kind of great television, so it makes perfect sense to me that an anime is on the way to the Disney Channel and Disney+. The news was announced last week at D23, Disney’s big biennial fan festival. Notably, Disney+ has been named as a priority boycott target by the BDS movement protesting the role of various corporations in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
As for what to expect, Kingdom Hearts famously has a long-winded plot that’s impenetrable unless you’re willing to play about a hundred spinoffs, many of which are on different archaic consoles. Given that, you might be wondering—will a season of TV explain this gargantuan story to me? Will I finally get it? While we don’t have much to go off just yet, the answer is easily guessed: No.
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While Disney has said the show “reimagines the iconic adventure with a brand-new story,” series creator Tetsuya Nomura is involved, and you have to remember this is the guy who was hesitant to let Sora show up in Smash Bros. because it might not get on with KH canon. I’d be amazed if this series didn’t pull from or at least reference the decades of convolution that have come to define Kingdom Hearts, and I don’t even strictly think that’s a bad thing. Picking through the endless sea of details is half the fun.
Will it be better than Seth Kearsley’s abortive 2003 TV series would have been? We can only guess—but it’s still Kingdom Hearts, so at the very least it will almost certainly be interesting.
