Today is the day! Well, if we want to get technical about things, yesterday was the day, since it was the 28th in Japan. That’s why my posts got a little late, since I was busy celebrating! But I’m here with the final celebration post, which is kind of a relief! Of course, the fun won’t stop there, as I have plenty of Kingdom Hearts content to release int he future, including that special content I was talking about! Anyways, I went back and forth with what I could do to honor my favorite video game series on this special day, and I decided I could only do what everyone else is doing; sharing what the series means to them. Because of that, this may get a little cheesy and sentimental, as I can tend to be sometimes (*cough* most of the time *cough*).
Where do I even start, am I right? Yesterday and today a flood of messages have been coming in on Twitter and everywhere else from the fandom. The whole fandom is sharing their love of the series in different ways, and it’s great to see! The stories that people are sharing about the impact of Kingdom Hearts in their lives just brings all those sentimental feelings in me to the surface.
I’ve talked and talked about my own Kingdom Hearts story. If you’ve been following me for long, then you know I was first introduced to Kingdom Hearts when I was around six. I still remember vividly to this day seeing those Disney characters, and getting excited about watching my dad play through Kingdom Hearts II. I was too young to really comprehend the plot, but I did my best. Of course, it wasn’t until a little longer than ten years later when I actually got into Kingdom Hearts. It was always there in the background of my life, but I became a diehard fan a year or so before Kingdom Hearts III came out.
Since then, some of my fondest memories are related to Kingdom Hearts. Playing KHII on Christmas Eve with my sisters, introducing my youngest brother to the series and playing it with him, and seeing the World of Tres orchestra back in 2019. That barely covers it.
When I was in high school, I was extremely socially awkward. However, I’m an extrovert, so I wanted to make friends. I was successful in doing that, but I still somehow felt left out. As I said, I was socially awkward and often times felt like an idiot talking to my friends, who were not only older than me, but also a lot less geeky/nerdy. Sometimes high school was a pretty lonely time for me. Not to mention that I started to develop major anxiety during this time.
Around this time was when I started to play Kingdom Hearts. I was playing other games as well, like Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda. These games became my friends. The characters became my role models. When I saw Sora, I saw who I wanted to be: caring, optimistic, and courageous. No matter than he was facing, he was going to do it with a smile on his face. No matter how dark his situations became, he was optimistic about it all. Yeah, he had his moments where he’d want to give up. But he never did. I wanted to be like that.
My year book quote upon graduating high school was “may your heart be your guiding key”. I knew I wanted it to be a Kingdom Hearts quote, and this one just felt right. But there are a plethora of other quotes that became my mottos whenever that anxiety or fear of the future would come along (alongside the Scripture that I often recite as well!). In Kingdom Hearts II, Kairi wrote a letter to Sora that had some of the famous lines in the series, including this: “And who knows: starting a new journey may not be so hard, or maybe it’s already begun.”
Another one, which became one of my favorites, came from the Kingdom Hearts III theme, “Face My Fears”. The song talks about the difficulties of facing your fears, but how you’re going to do it anyway. There’s one part of the song that is in Japanese, and it has been difficult to translate, but I saw one translation of the word could be “it’ll be hard”. Ever since then, whenever I begin to get overwhelmed, I always say that to myself. It means that, yeah, I’m doing hard stuff, but I’ve got to face my fears and overcome them. Honestly, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone more and more ever since I started quoting that to myself.
Besides being a source of encouragement, Kingdom Hearts also helped me to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I was going back and forth with options for what I would study in college, but I could never decide on one thing. I remember one morning I woke up, and it just hit me that I wanted to be a video game developer, and that was that. I am now in college studying programming, which will help me to not only create my own games, but to perhaps someday work at Square Enix (the company who makes Kingdom Hearts). My far-fetched dream is to one day help develop a Kingdom Hearts game. Maybe it’s waaaayyy out there to dream that, but never say never!
As I said before, yesterday was technically the 20th anniversary, and to celebrate the day, I baked a cake with the help of my Mom and sister. I am DEFINITELY not a baker, but I like how it turned out!
Please excuse the horrendous lighting, I couldn’t get a good picture, haha! Shout out to my mom and sister for helping me out with the fondant!
I’ll stop with the sentimentality now, because that’s enough for one post! If any of y’all are Kingdom Hearts fans, I would love to hear how Kingdom Hearts has impacted you! Start up a conversation in the comments below!
And as always, God bless y’all and have a wonderful week!
All media property of Square Enix and Disney
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