Sora – Champion of Kingdom Hearts
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You ever come across two things that shouldn’t work together but do? Like Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or Robocop and the Terminator. How about Disney and Square Enix? That’s right. The creator of the cutesy-named Mickey Mouse, and the videogame giant responsible for Final Fantasy (the most epic adventures in the gaming industry), came together in 2002 to make a video game so different and unexpected that it should have unraveled from the get-go. But that game didn’t just survived, but became one of Square-Enix’s most famous franchises. That game: Kingdom Hearts. This article will focus on the game’s hero Sora.
Sora is a classic Disney hero. He’s friendly to a fault, outgoing, will do anything for his friends and makes new friends everywhere he goes: everything that generations of children would expect from Disney. Together with Donald and Goofy – yes you read that right – Sora travels the Disney worlds, pushing back the Heartless horde (can’t be a Disney villain without the cutesy names). Even Sora’s weapon is distinctly Disney: a Keyblade (a key/sword capable of sealing the breaches from which the Heartless descend). Everything about Sora is tailor-made so that he fits right in with Peter Pan or Simba.
As any Disney fan will tell you, a Disney character is only as good as the actor who voices them. Since the voice actors have only the nuances of tone and pitch to work with, the fact that Kingdom Hearts’ full-fledged, relatable characters are a testament to the actors’ talent. Think about it. The gritty Final Fantasy characters have no place in the Disney universe. Yet the Final Fantasy characters are just as important as Disney. Take one brand away, and the franchise simply doesn’t work. You can’t do that without major talent. As the flag-ship character, Sora is the embodiment of that effort.
Herein lies the problem. Sora’s relatable to Disney’s target demographic because in many ways he is a child. But like all children, Sora must grow up. Haley Joel Osmont was fourteen years old when he began voicing Sora. But what happens when he’s twenty? He can’t be expected to maintain a voice that he outgrew. And what about the fans? Just because the majority of them are children, it doesn’t mean they won’t take notice. The longer the series goes, the more likely the children will be alienated. The truth of the matter is that Haley Joel Osmont is growing up, and the more he does, the less he sounds like Sora. No amount of Disney characters can change that.
The world is full of things that shouldn’t go together. Cake-flavored Oreos. Yogurt-covered pretzels. And now Kingdom Hearts: the lovechild of Disney (creator of the eternally optimistic tales of anthropomorphic creatures) and Square Enix (the videogame giant responsible for some of the industry’s most epic stories). A child’s world and an adult’s world, coming together. Such a union between two diametric brands shouldn’t exist.
But now it’s 2015, and Kingdom Hearts spans seven games, with an eighth on the way. It works because of the voices behind the characters. Sora is relatable to Disney fans because he sounds like a kid. But I could be wrong. Maybe fans will accept Haley Joel Osmont as an adult. Maybe he’ll be re-cast with a younger actor to preserve that vocal connection. Only time will tell.
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