Kingdom Hearts 3 is finally here.
And I have received an excessive amount of requests to explain the storyline.
That seems perfectly reasonable.
You want to be caught up before you hop into the third game.
But judging by the wording on a few of these requests, it seems like I have a…
TALL TASK
ahead of me.
But could I possibly help you understand the gargantuan, magnificent,
epic storyline of Kingdom Hearts?
You sweet summer child.
You babe swaddled in the cashmere blanket of ignorance.
YOU ASK TOO LITTLE OF ME.
Because not only can I help you understand Kingdom Hearts.
But I will give you the tools necessary to understand any story you are ever faced with
for the rest of your life.
*music plays*
Please, oh baby, don’t go.
~Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel tonight.~
*CLAP CLAP*
Spoiler Warning!
I’m about to explain the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts series.
Now, if you don’t want to be spoiled for all of the games released up until now…
I don’t know why you clicked on this video.
Because I feel like the title kinda explained that that’s what I was gonna do.
So that’s on you.
Uh, but ALSO.
Potential spoiler warning!
You see, when I explain the tools of the literary trade, I might just be able to accurately
predict the true ending of Kingdom Hearts 3.
Now, the game hasn’t been released yet, and I have not played it, but…
Consider yourself warned.
We’re talking about the hero’s journey or the monomyth.
This is a concept that’s been around for a long time.
But it was popularized by a guy named Joseph Campbell back in 1949 when he released a book
called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Campbell inspired plenty of other creative writers and literary analysts, including a
guy called Christopher Vogler, who wrote his own book in the 1990s.
But before that, in the 1980s, he was working as a story consultant for a little company
called Disney.
When he was there, he sent out a seven-page memo that basically broke down all the big
ideas from Campbell’s book into 12 simple steps to writing good stories.
Did the memo work?
I don’t know.
Why don’t you ask Timon and Pumbaa?
They…
They’re from the Lion King.
That was a movie that Disney Produced.
A lot of people think it’s a great movie.
Kingdom Hearts as described by the monomyth.
We’ve got 12 stages up here, kinda like a clock.
It’s a story wheel.
And I’ll go through piece by piece explaining Kingdom Hearts 1, so that way you can understand
what these stages are.
Once you do understand these stages, you’ll be able to understand any story!
Because great writers, no matter how dense their sci-fi or fantasy world may be, use
these stages to help orient you.
I’m talking Dune.
Harry Potter.
Space Jam.
Number one, introduction in the ordinary world.
In Kingdom Hearts 1, this is when Sora, Riku, and Kairi are all just hanging out on Destiny
Islands, doing normal kid stuff.
Call to adventure.
What’s this?
Weird creatures showing up on the island?
Sora has a sword that’s also a key?
Refusal of the call.
Now we hit a bit of a hiccup here because he really does seem gung-ho to leave the island
at some point.
But I don’t think he wanted to do it on these terms, so I’ll still call this a refusal.
Meeting with the mentor.
At this point Sora is in Traverse Town, and he meets Leon, who ends up giving him some
guidance on what he’s supposed to be doing.
Crossing the threshold.
Or as true literary critics call it…
boarding the gummi ship.
Tests, allies, and enemies.
This is pretty much the entirety of the Disney worlds.
You’ll notice that a lot of times in these synopses of Kingdom Hearts,
people just skip over them.
It’s cause they all fit here.
Reaching the innermost cave.
This is such a pivotal moment in the story.
In Star Wars, this is when Luke goes into the cave and faces off against a shadow version
of himself.
And in Kingdom Hearts, this is when Sora goes into Hollow Bastion so he can fight Riku, who is
actually being possessed by Ansem, who is the Heartless version of Terra-Xehanort, who
was originally Terra but was then possessed by Xehanort before him.
Same thing.
Enduring the supreme ordeal.
After Sora has faced off against Ansem the first time, he has to stab his own heart with
a keyblade, so that way he can release it and save Kairi.
That’s a supreme ordeal.
Seizing the sword.
Now this is not a literal sword.
Obviously, Sora already has one of those.
But instead it’s the reward or the power that Sora can take with him.
So in this case, it’s him being resurrected, having all of the princesses of heart saved,
and having the power to defeat Ansem.
The road back.
Ansem has been defeated by Kingdom Hearts being opened and him being ripped apart by
the light.
And they are able to seal the doors, but unfortunately, they lose two of their friends in the process.
Resurrection.
Yeah, Sora did get literally resurrected a few stages before this.
Uh, but this is more of a metaphysical resurrection.
Them finally coming back from the brink.
Kairi going back to Destiny Islands.
Return with the elixir.
Sora, Donald, and Goofy all go back out, using their combined experience to try to save Mickey
and Riku.
And that's Kingdom Hearts!
That was pretty painless, don't you think?
But granted, that's not what people have an issue with.
People have an issue with all of the overarching story of Kingdom Hearts.
But, again, as long as we stick to these 12 stages, we should be able to take this apart,
piece by piece.
And though I am gonna stick with the 12 stages, I am gonna add just, uh, one little extra piece.
It's called historical background.
This is like The Silmarillion.
Or JK Rowling's twitter.
In Kingdom Hearts, this would be Union Cross, or Chi, or whatever the many names of this
web/mobile game ended up being.
Die-hard fans will get upset with me if I say this doesn't really matter to Sora's overarching story.
But I'm gonna say it anyway.
So this historical background is gonna just be up here.
And all of that knowledge is just gonna kind of bleed immediately into Kingdom Hearts 1.
Pat (offscreen): Uh, nope, you gotta do Birth by Sleep.
Pat: It's a prequel.
Brian: But, is Sora in it?
Pat: No.
No Sora.
Brian: Who's this guy, then?
Pat: That's Vanitas.
Brian: Why?
So I, uh, seem to have neglected, uh, like three other heroes' journeys in this hero's journey.
So I'm just gonna...
I'm gonna move these over a little bit so that way I can have a bit more space.
We, we do have to talk about Birth by Sleep.
Starting first with Terra's.
Um, now imagine it has all twelve of the stages of the hero's journey, I just didn't want
to write 'em all out, 'cause he gets norted, so he's not that good of a hero.
Same goes for Aqua, which is intersecting with Terra's.
And then we've got Ventus, who has the biggest bearing on Sora's hero's journey.
It means that it has to not only intersect over here with Terra and Aqua.
But, I'm sorry Vogler, I am gonna have to include another step on your hero's journey.
So here we've got the Ventus Diagram, uh, which intersects here at step point five.
The part of the hero's journey, uh, where the baby hero's heart goes and saves another boy.
That's the only big change we're gonna do to Vogler's story wheel.
Uh, everything else is gonna make sense in Kingdom Hearts.
And now we're going to take the wheel, uh, as if it is the overarching story of the entirety
of the games.
So Kingdom Hearts, the first one, instead of going from 1 all the way to 12, is actually
just gonna go from 0.5 to 5.
And then we start 5 immediately at Kingdom Hearts 2, which will begin with Sora...
Pat (offscreen): Nope.
Brian: What do you mean nope?
Pat: There's two more.
Once again I seem to have neglected a few, uh, interstitial pieces of Kingdom Hearts.
Chain of Memories and also three five eight days over two.
Which is a totally normal title.
It's totally fine, because it just fleshes out Sora's hero's journey.
And also... a different guy and his name is Roxas.
*pained expression*
I went ahead and I categorized Chain of Memories as a "hero's journey redux"
since Sora is just fighting against his own memories, the things that he has remembered
from the past hero's journey.
So it's just gonna hang out around here.
And then we have 358/2 Days, which follows Roxas, who is Sora's Nobody.
And a Nobody is like the shell of a person after they've released their heart.
358/2 Days happens then, and since it's the hero's Nobody, it's actually within the hero's
journey, doing its own thing.
Um, and, I'm gonna call this 4.5 remix.
This is a pivotal part of the hero's journey when, uh, the hero's shadow self goes off
and eats ice cream.
These two are tied together by a character named Xion, who works in Organization XIII
with Roxas, and also is made from the memories... of Sora.
She doesn't really have like a hero's journey...
I'll just tie it out for you.
And since this oblong actually crosses through the hero's journey twice, we're gonna make
this easy to remember and call it the
"Hero's Memories of the Hero's Journey Double Cross Oblong."
Or HMHJXXO.
In Kingdom Hearts 2, we start out with Roxas and Sora, and Roxas is on summer vacation.
We're gonna have him start over here and just kind of go all the way up to enduring the
supreme ordeal, where he finally gives up his body to Sora so Sora can be whole.
And we're just gonna call that "The Antihero's Cradle."
Alright, so, we're done with Roxas, we're back with Sora.
So this should be a breeze.
Kingdom Hearts 2.
Alright, he's already crossed the threshold.
He does the tests, allies, and enemies.
That's just the Disney stuff, we're gonna skip it.
He goes over, reaches the innermost cave, that would be the World that Never Was, where
he faces off against the supreme ordeal.
Xemnas, Organization XIII.
Seizes the sword.
He gets the power to close Kingdom Hearts.
And then finally, the road back.
They get home.
They get a letter from King Mickey, the contents of which will be revealed in...
Kingdom Hearts 3?
Pat (offscreen): No.
FUCK!
ALRIGHT ASSHOLES.
I have no more space here, so I made you a DATA CUBE.
ARE YA HAPPY?
The data cube contains the entirety of Kingdom Hearts Coded, which is all in a virtual space.
The data cube is that thing where the hero goes on a journey into his inner thoughts
and finds some data that an old guy put in him.
It's that THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE HERO'S JOURNEY.
And then at the same time, we also have Dream Drop Distance, which... is another hero's
journey inside of the hero's journey, and it's part of seizing the sword.
Because they have to go... into sleeping versions of the world's they've already been to.
But also maybe they're... they're going into each other's dreams?
And one of them is...
No, it doesn't fit here, I've got a better...
There's another part of the hero's journey, and it's called the Dream Drop Bucket.
And it's where you put the Dream Drop Distance until you need it later, and hopefully you won't.
That brings us up to Kingdom Hearts 3.
Granted, I thought when I started this, I would be able to...
perfectly predict, uh, Kingdom Hearts 3.
But, I don't know, I feel like I"m just missing something.
*CAUSE He GeTs NOrTEd.*
*BeING POsESSed bY AnSEM.*
*By XeHAnORT.*
*CAUSE HE GETS NORTED.*
I forgot about the villain's journey.
The villain's tridecagon.
The villain's tridecagon is definitely the key.
The tridecagon of villainy.
This is a 13-sided shape that goes one further than dodecagon of the hero's journey.
We have almost entirely ignored Xehanort.
He is the impetus for all of the anger and anguish in Sora's life.
And so he deserves a wheel as well.
We have to start at the very beginning of Xehanort.
And that starts in stage one of all villains.
You have to be contacted by a future version of yourself.
That brings us to stage two.
It gives you the ability to time travel.
And that's what this means.
This special string just shows that they can go wherever they want to in time.
Step three, you need to learn about a great power.
This is when Xehanort first discovers Kingdom Hearts and all of the power it could hold.
What do you do after you find out about that power?
You nort a boy.
Once you've got that boy under your possession, time to get real into unethical science.
That's when you're going to learn all about Kingdom Hearts and how to release people's hearts.
That means you can become a guinea pig yourself, therefore creating two versions of yourself.
A Nobody and a Heartless.
But are you happy with just those two versions of yourself?
You shouldn't be!
'Cause you're a villain.
That's right, it's time for nort boy redux.
Stage eight.
This is when Ansem, the Heartless version of Terra-Xehanort, the original norted boy
form, takes control of Riku.
And now that you're jazzed and ready to go, time to fail.
You do have to fail once, uh, in order to succeed later as a villain.
But don't let that failure get you down, it's time for stage 10.
You develop an organization to trick young boy into committing Heartless genocide in order to create
a new pseudo version of that great power you discovered back in stage three.
And then you fail again.
But guess what!
It's time travel time.
Your young self is gonna help you out by coming from over in step two to step 12.
You just do the same tenth step again, except instead of using other people, you use 13
versions of your own self.
Which leads us to the thirteenth point in the tridecagon.
The villain's variable.
You're either gonna win, or you're gonna lose.
This is the thing that we were missing.
The villain's variable is what will tie together the rest of story.
It's what will help us understand what will happen in Kingdom Hearts 3.
And judging by the villain's tridecagon, I can say that I don't believe Sora will seal
away the darkness.
In fact I expect Xehanort to win...
by norting Sora.
And then think of the repercussions of this.
Donald will kill Goofy by throwing him off a dock.
Riku will start cutting his own bangs.
Kairi will continue to not matter.
It's so much more interesting.
It's the true way that this story should end.
And I think this is what people want.
This is the modern hero's journey.
The true thing that all stories should follow from here on out.
As Utada Hikaru would say: Simple and clean.
So the next time someone tells you, "I don't understand Kingdom Hearts!"
You say, "Hey Bucko.
I think what you don't understand is basic storytelling."
Basic storytelling.
Did that work?
I don't know.
Ask...
Aladdin.
Did the memo work?
Why don't you ask Sebastian the crab. *sings Under the Sea*
You nort a boy.
*laughing*
Pat (offscreen): Ohhh no.