On the topic of Platonic Love

While on vacation in Barbados, one of the many things I decided to tackle head on was that dreaded DS game, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 days (I still have no idea what this means and please do not attempt to explain it to me.) Fanbase of Kingdom Hearts aside (also see: throwing it into a deep, dark pit where thirteen year old girls can writhe in their throes of bishonen ecstasy until they grow up and clamber out the sides) I am actually rather fond of the game series. It was a massive mixture of Disney and Square Enix Nostalgia; People who didn't play games picked it up for the princesses (as was the case with my friend Sarah) and people who did play games picked it up because apparently Cloud mugged Vincent and stole his clothes before hitting the road on a massive hitchhiking spree to Athens.

Okay, let's bring a little bit of context into this. Let's get this out there: I missed every generation of consoles before about 2002. My heart had always been in games, yes, but they were primarily this ephemeral thing that my dad brought home with him. RTSs like Red Alert and Empire Earth on the computer, a peek at an SNES here and there; which I honestly don't remember much of as the SNES era began on the date of my birth and ended around the time I was six, and most of this time was spent on the computer instead. I don't have many of the memories that gamers only slightly older than me do, or the ones who had a playstation instead of an N64. My first Final Fantasy was X-2, and I had no idea what was going on but I still had a great time playing it. Therefore, most of my late teens geek life has revolved around obtaining these titles that I've missed, filling in my library, playing them, and generally pretending that I knew what it was like when these things came out.

Therefore, when I first played Kingdom Hearts, I wasn't driven by Disney, nor was I really aware of Final Fantasy. They were both non-entities in my life as I was past the point of actively viewing Disney films (although I had experienced close to all of them. Except Tarzan.) And, well, my PS2 had finally started working and I had a grand total of three games for it. (This probably explains my love for Star Ocean 3 as well -- it was the first game that actually worked on my poor old PS2.)

This was a magical little gem of a game. The protagonists were fourteen years old, at best. There was your goofy looking kid, his literally goofy sidekicks, the mysterious prettyboy/rival, and the token princess chick. It was all about light and darkness and tried to be metaphorical and deep -- and was rather trite, in hindsight, if you take it at face value. There is no metagame to Kingdom Hearts. It was a story about nothing more than innocence. Unlike a lot of media at the time, no aspects of the real 'loss' of innocence were involved other than in the most base of terms. There was good, and there was the evil inside of everyone, and a mysterious force of destiny, and that was it. The ending was the epitome of bittersweet and I think it was the first ending of a game I actually ever cried at. (Also was probably one of the first games I beat once I actually got into 'real' gaming. I am setting aside all gameboy and N64 games, because, well, I always completed Pokemon and in Ocarina of Time I was too scared to do anything so I just threw chickens around for days on end.)

The second game came out in my first year of highschool, probably the waning year of my rabid frothing fangirl-ism. I looked forward to it because it was probably one of my earlier game sequels that I was actually there for, and, well, it came out on a day that I had off, so I just took it to the basement and played the hell out of the damn thing. It was everything I wanted to be; it coincided perfectly with my own adolescent sense of heightened drama and coolness and sparkles and did I mention drama? The characters were sufficiently pretty, the lines were clean and simple, and I really think it's the only thing I have liked from Nomura since he became lead designer. Well, the sketchy things, at least, and the watercolours or more pastel-y illustrations. They fit the mood.

The first game was an expression in innocence with very little parts 'coming of age' story. It's just a kid trying to get home. Oh, and save his friends along the way. Maybe everybody around him seems to be growing up too fast?

In the second game, we see that the protagonist has jumped ahead two/three years in age without ever really 'growing up', so we've got this weird kid who's not really naive, but I hesitate to use the word innocent. He's got a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, and he knows it. There is a world to save, they're the only ones that can do it, and it's silly and cute and wonderful. But still all he really wants to do is go home. Oh, and save the other friend this time. It's more of a coming of age story this time, except it's still really subtle and not-so-much there; the character's really skipped that breaking-into-teenager part of his life and really the plot is more concerned with questions of What is our existence, why are we here, what's our purpose, WHO DOES ORGANIZATION 13 WORK FOR, Is there really a darkness in everyone's hearts that can't be extinguished--

And ultimately, can we ever go home?

Light and Darkness and yadda yadda yadda aside, the game answers all of these questions in a highly cliched manner. They're silly and childish, and they handle a lot of older characters with the traditional Squeenix drama, but therein lies the point. The whole second game is about that sense of childhood that we remember, that nostalgia just out of reach, that we're trying to get to and keep with us and we know that we're older and we can't go back but it was nice anyway. Sora's always looking for his old life back, even though the people around him have changed so much that they're really beyond the point of ever really being the way they were. He breaks down in tears at his friend's feet because it's another sign of things finally being alright again. There's a world to save, there are people to defeat, destinies to uncover -- but he's got that little bit of home back. Axel, in all ways a gigantic bishonen character, longs for things to be back the way they were -- a simpler time, or so he thinks, where all of them can just be friends and nothing can go wrong. But it does. And he knows for a fact that they're older. So he dies a death full of melodrama and teen angst. I still bawled.

And in the end, through faith, they all go home. The golden trio get to their island, the nobodies find peace in death, and maybe everybody really can meet again in the next life.

It's a story about hope.

Now, you know what ruins it for me? The fangirls. I know, I was one of them once, pairing up anything hot that moved. But this condition has lasted long beyond the 14-year-old-girl phase. Some people never get rid of it, I guess. With the introduction of Organization 13, they've got a whole treasure trove of slightly feminine boys to pick from. (I have to say that I have a slight thing for Luxord's facial hair. Mmm, neatly trimmed goatees.)

Because of all this innocence in the game -- that being the entire point -- it just comes off as inherently wrong to me. It's like trying to sexualize a Disney movie. You could try to do it, and it works well in theory, but in practice the whole action seems inherently like wish fulfillment. The game is about Friendship. There was no sex going on behind the scenes here, or at least, it's a non-entity, a seeming missing element that was nonetheless inherent to the plot. If one tries to take it as romantic love, they're getting it all wrong. You could call it friendship, in loosest terms, but I like to see it as the love and devotion shared between the closest of friends, the ones who you would move mountains for and end up in jail with. The hope that they're still alright, the quasi-family status they attain, the vague sense of comfort.

Sexualization makes it all wrong. It's about longing for the past, and the acceptance of things that have changed, but not for the worse. About the love between friends, about hope, and the generalized good and evil and grey area inbetween where kids ask who am I?

The island of Barbados resembles the one from the game in a very loose sense. I laid on my back and let myself be pulled out by the tide; I got cut by coral, I got salt in my eyes, I got burned by the sun, but it was beautifully visceral and I was utterly at peace. Reminded of days lost, days found, lazy days I didn't know what to do with, and active ones that I let fly by. And again, that beautiful bittersweet that comes from an ending where you got what you wanted, but at what cost? It's not a poginant or wonderful game for the DS, but it carries the feeling along with it.

I beat it and got teary eyed.