When Kingdom Hearts first emerged into the universe of video games on the PS2 back in March of 2002 nobody quite knew what to make of it at first. Just what was this unholy marriage of Square Enix’s signature style of spiky-haired adventurers and over-the-top action with some of the most iconic Disney characters of all time? How had the collaboration even come about in the first place? Never had such a combination been asked for by fans, nor would fans of the previous games made by the same people behind Kingdom Hearts have ever imagined that such a game would come to fruition.
In hindsight, Kingdom Hearts had everything going for it. It had iconic character designs from the legendary Tetsuya Nomura of Final Fantasy fame. It even borrowed some characters from the Final Fantasy series and used them in interesting ways, like the awe-inducing face-off against Cloud Strife in Olympus Coliseum. Right there alongside these JRPG favorites were a large stable of Disney’s most famous characters and environments. This winning mixture quickly won over the hearts of fans and players happily began smacking the dark forces of this wacky universe with an over-sized key. It stands to reason then that due to the popularity of the series, the epic scale of the story, and its endless well of characters and lore to draw from that this would be the ideal entry point for Disney to get into the anime market.
If one were to open Disney Plus right now, they would find no shortage of enjoyable content to enjoy within the House of Mouse’s streaming app. There are Disney Channel Original movies, television shows, and classic cartoons. However, there is one glaring omission in content types on this service: Disney Plus doesn’t really have any anime content.
The naysayers of the world may counter this point by stating that Disney doesn’t need anime, they have a rich history of animated content that is all their own. This is true, however with Disney’s recent acquisitions of Fox, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, it’s pretty clear that Disney isn’t content with just sticking to one lane. The jump to anime is inevitable, it’s just more likely that Disney would opt for original content over acquiring the rights to stream shows made by other companies.
This is exactly why Kingdom Hearts is the perfect choice for Disney to jump into anime with. Part of the reasoning here is that the series just wrapped up its original storyline with the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. There’s no additional writing that needs to be done, the whole thing is already set up, albeit in video game form. Surely an adaptation of an already existing story would be a simpler feat for Disney to pull off than having to make something else up from scratch and have to embark on the struggle of introducing the world to a brand new intellectual property. Additionally, as many fans felt that Kingdom Hearts 3 was a bit disappointing, the anime series could help to expand upon the story.
Part of the disappointment around Kingdom Hearts 3 comes from the amount of time that it took to get to the final chapter. Between Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3 there were at least four handheld entries in the series, each with their own wacky subtitle (see Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days for more information). These games are actually excellent distillations of the core Kingdom Hearts experience, but the fact that they all released across different consoles meant that unless a player was lucky enough to own all of these systems, they would be missing out on certain plot points. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance, for example, came out on the 3DS and is essentially the prologue to Kingdom Hearts 3. It was smart business by Disney and Square Enix, but didn’t help the pacing of the franchise from a story standpoint and ended up making the timeline a bit more convoluted overall.
An anime series could help keep the story moving in a consistent manner, taking the best parts of the series and putting them all in an order that would make for a greater dramatic impact. Better structuring of the plot alongside the earnestness of the series and the musical swells of Final Fantasy and Disney classics would pack an emotional punch that would be hard to resist. There’s also the idea that Square Enix and Disney could partner to bring about the best aspects of their respective franchises. Perhaps they could allow Sora and friends to actually visit some of the worlds of the Final Fantasy characters they meet along the way, further capitalizing on fans’ nostalgia for those franchises.
This brings up the next point. Square Enix and Disney are already partners with Kingdom Hearts. Square Enix has made anime adaptations of their own in the past. This means that Disney could essentially piggyback off of their connections and experience in this entertainment space in order to have a practically seamless transition from game to anime. Admittedly the largest hurdle to such a series becoming reality is all of the rights of each franchise involved being accounted for. However, much like with the original Kingdom Hearts, if Disney and Square Enix can figure out the details, the end result would be absolutely unforgettable.
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