Countdown To Kingdom Hearts III: Day 10: Favorite Characters

Countdown to Kingdom Hearts III: Day 10: Favorite Characters

This is it. It feels surreal to think about, but after years of waiting, Kingdom Hearts 3 is only ten days away. To celebrate, I decided to do a countdown where each day I talk about some of my favorite things about the series.

So to start, I’m going to get into my top 10 favorite characters in the whole series. Now, this doesn’t mean that if a character isn’t on this list that I hate them, it just means that these ten are my absolute favorites. While a lot of them I like for other reasons, for a few of these characters, my constant excuses to stare at promo are of them should have been my first clue that I wasn’t straight. 

1. Now Sora being one of my favorites may seem obvious because he’s the main protagonist, and as a teenager I spent a lot of time finding excuses to pull of screnshots and promos of his merman form and stare at him shirtless, but his adaptability and optimism are things that always put a smile on my face even when I’m stressed out and exhausted from life. I don’t think I would have been as invested in this series without a protagonist like Sora. 

2. Maybe it was because Kingdom Hearts II was my first experience with a proper RPG that wasn’t an adaptation or tie in for an existing TV series or movie, but I didn’t really hate the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II the way that a vocal portion of the fandom seemed to. Sure, looking back, it does drag on, but Roxas’ life in Twilight Town was my first introduction to the Kingdom Hearts universe, so I still have a soft spot for him even without all the tragedy of his story. 

3. The main reason I liked Vexen so much in the beginning was because of his ice powers and awesome-looking shield. But thanks to the amazing fanfics Those Lacking Spines and Why The Sun Sets Red, he’s become one of my favorite members of the original Organization XIII and I am desperately hoping that he survives Kingdom Hearts III (Please, Nomura, if not in KH3 then at least let Xion interact with Even when you inevitably start the first post-Xehanort game in the series) #LetTheShittyScienceDadLive

4. Xion is a character who grew on me over consecutive playthroughs. During my first playthrough of Days, I wasn’t really focused on the characters. I was too busy geeking out over finally getting to buy a new Kingdom Hearts game as it’s coming out. But each time I went back into the story, I got more and more attached to Xion and her tragic fate. I can’t listen to her theme music anymore without tearing up at least a little, and I look forward to seeing what role she’ll play in Kingdom Hearts III. 

5. While he doesn’t really do much in the story, what makes Zexion/Ienzo so appealing to me as a character is the fact that there’s so much potential to what we do get of his backstory that I’m thrilled to see KH3 beginning to explore. Ansem being a father figure to him. What were his relationships with the other apprentices like since he was barely eight years old when they started their experiments? Was asking Ansem to build the underground laboratory really his idea, or did Xehanort talk him into it knowing that Ansem would never say no to his surrogate son? Given that Kairi lived near - if not in- the castle, did she and Ienzo know each other? Did they grow up together? Did Ienzo know anyone outside the castle or was he isolated from everyone even before his parents died? The possibilities are endless and the fact that he’s working with everyone and appears to be interacting with Ansem in one shot of one of the trailers makes my heart soar that I may finally get to see some of his backstory explored. 

6. Part of my initial love of Aqua out of all the other BBS protags was that blue is my favorite color and when I was younger I would always gravitate towards the blue member in any color-themed team. On subsequent playthroughs, I started to like playing her campaign more than Terra and Ven’s, both because of how versatile her magic was and the fact that her story continued past the end of the others’. For me personally, what pushed her into my top 10 was just the entirety of what she went through in 0.2, so I was crying when we got THAT image at E3 last summer. 

7. Isa/Saix is another character I gravitated to because he was the one with blue hair, but I also really loved his weapon design and the history he had with Lea. I can’t wait to see what role he plays in KH3, and knowing this series it’ll be appropriately tear-inducing. 

8. Back before 358/2 Days and DDD came out and revealed that all incarnations of Xehanort are manipulative bastards, I saw Xemnas as a tragic character. Nevertheless, I still consider him one of my favorites because of his design. Unlike Terranort (who we all thought was Xehanort until 2010), this isn’t a cast of my subconscious thinking he’s hot even if I didn’t have the words for it. I just really like his weapons, his hairstyle, and the awesome black and white coat he wears in the final boss battle of KH2. 

9. I know, I know, Terranort is litterally just Xehanort in Terra’s body, but before we got that reveal, I had this weird fascination with the guy that I couldn’t really explain ([sarcasm]thanks heteronormativity[/sarcasm]) I would come up with proto-fanfic ideas when I was in middle school that fleshed out his backstory and gave him a redemption arc where he allies with the heroes to atone for all the things he’s done. The reveal that Xehanort was really just an old guy doing to Terra what his Heartless would eventually did to Riku devastated me, not just because of how heartbreaking the entire ending of BBS was for all 3 main characters, but because it meant that the interpretation of the character I’d built in my head had never existed. One personal hope I have for Kingdom Hearts 3 and beyond is that when Terra is eventually freed from Xehanort’s control, he can keep the long white hair look his body sported in all flashbacks to the time period between BBS and KH1. I am not ready to say goodbye to that look forever. 

10. Vanitas was another character with a really cool design who I probably spent enough time staring at pictures of that I should have started questioning my sexuality sooner. Then when I heard about the novelizations’ take on his backstory the tiny kernel of possibility for him to get some kind of redemption arc sprouted itself, and I’ve been eagerly hunting for fanfics with that very premise ever since.