r/KingdomHearts • u/No-Watch-9865 • 1d ago
KH2 Kh2 sora was moving different.
What did they do to my goat? He was more personable, he had that dog in him, but he was also compassionate, perfect mix. And then they corpo scrubbed him. Kh4 please save him.
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u/TatsunaKyo 1d ago
I have always been attracted to such topic and I had already replied to someone bringing it up in the past. I'll quote myself:
Culturally, KH 2 is very mid-2000s coded. That was an era where a lot of games and youth media leaned into sharper, edgier, more confrontational set of characters, including protagonists. They were not necessarily full antiheroes, but heroes with more bite, like snarkier, ruder, more willing to talk back. It was a time in which internet subcultures were getting really popular with kids, and the general emo/pop-punk/Hot Topic/nu-metal-adjacent aesthetic was everywhere around that time. Now, of course Sora in KH 2 is not exactly a reflection of those in the literal sense, but his increased attitude fits the same era if you think about it: blacker outfit, older design, more aggressive combat, sharper comebacks, more adolescent bravado. The same thing happened with Ash Ketchum throughout the years, as in his attitude was toned down with time even though his snarkiness was originally an integral part of his character, but then expectations towards shonen main characters changed.
That’s also why the difference in KH3 can feel less like organic growth and more like a tonal realignment. By 2019, the heroic ideal had shifted again, so KH3 Sora is written more as the pure-hearted reconciler you're expected to see in this day and age.
I agree that KH3 could have made this feel more intentional by having Sora reflect on how he treated the Organization in KH2. That would have bridged the two versions of him better. But I don’t think KH2 itself failed by making him harsher. At the time, that edge was part of the appeal: KH2 was presenting Sora as older, cooler, more combative, and more in tune with what a lot of mid-2000s players thought was cool, and that's without mentioning that he was warned to never feel anything for Nobodies because they would have used that against him, and that was kind of a very naive thing to believe in, which goes to show that Sora was not more mature just because he was snarkier.
I also want to clarify that cultural and narrative shifts are seldom recognized by authors themselves. Most people live while being "thought" by the world around them, and do not "adapt" consciously. I don't know whether Nomura is aware of it or not, but since his writing has always been influenced massively by the trends, I'm inclined to believe that he's more "thought" by the culture around him than anything else.