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Kingdom Hearts and the Narrative Paradigm 1 Running Head: KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 1 Kingdom Hearts and the Narrative Paradigm Kyle Friedrich Undergraduate Marketing and Communication Student Aurora University KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 2 Abstract Kingdom Hearts is a video game series that began in 2002 as a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix. It is one of the best-selling and fan-loyal series in the world and continues to exert strong influence on our culture. This paper seeks to answer the questions of how the series maintains coherence in its narration when combing different established stories together into a new plot and how the values expressed in the series resonate with the audience to create an emotional connection and loyalty to the series. When analyzing the games using Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm, which explains why certain stories are more popular than others, it was found that the series was consistent with both key elements for a story to resonate with its audience — coherence and fidelity. Despite mixing multiple stories from different franchises together, the games do so in a way that it makes sense to the audience. By structuring a narrative around universal “good” values and identifiable characters, the series is able to connect with the players of the games. Because Kingdom Hearts offers a narrative that is both coherent and has fidelity to its ideal audience, it can appeal to a large, worldwide audience and create a lasting impression. KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 3 Introduction During the 21st century, the economic power of the video game industry has come to rival the impact of the film and toy industries (Abrudan & Prundaru, 2009, p. 30). Following the release of the first Kingdom Hearts game in 2002, the franchise has since released seven additional titles across seven gaming platforms, with all games in the series having now received a remake. Given that Kingdom Hearts ranks in the top 80 best-selling video game series in the world, the socio-economic impact of the games is quite significant (“Best-selling video game franchises,” 2015). Kingdom Hearts is a video game series that crosses over the universes of Disney stories and Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise. The main plot of the series is as follows: The universe is in danger from the forces of darkness known as the Heartless. One day, a teenage boy named Sora is chosen by the mysterious weapon known as the Keyblade to protect the worlds from the Heartless and other forces of evil. Sora teams up with the Disney characters Donald and Goofy, and they travel to different worlds battling the darkness and seeking to reunite Sora with his lost friends — Riku and Kairi. While some of these worlds are unique to the Kingdom Hearts series, most of them are based on Disney movies (mostly the animated ones, but the worlds of Pirates of the Caribbean and Tron have also appeared). In addition to dealing with the Heartless threat, Sora and company also thwart the plans of Disney villains and take down a group known as Organization XIII, a shadowy collection of beings called Nobodies with its own secret agenda. Spinoff titles such as Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days feature characters other than Sora as the protagonist and provide backstory to the characters and events found in the main titles. Prior to the 2014 release of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX, Square Enix released a video titled Inside the Kingdom, With Heart. The video captured the feelings of Kingdom Hearts KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 4 fans from around the world (most of them young adults who had first played the games as children) as they expressed why they love the series and what it means to them. With comments such as “It’s the story that I needed to hear,” the video was a clear demonstration that the series is more than just a mode of entertainment; it connects with millions of fans on a personal level (Inside the Kingdom, With Heart, 2014). As relates to Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm model, this raises two main questions: Q1: How does the series manage to combine classic Disney and Final Fantasy, two fairly different story types, into a narrative that is coherent? Q2: Why does the Kingdom Hearts series resonate with the audience, in terms of “good reasons” as Fisher defines them? This paper seeks to demonstrate that Kingdom Hearts’ popularity is due to its ability to seamlessly weave together the stories of Disney and Final Fantasy in addition to its appeal to universal ideals and experiences. Media Background Kingdom Hearts is a video game franchise first introduced in 2002. The series is a collaboration between the video game company Square Enix and entertainment company Disney. It is created and directed by Tetsuya Nomura, the famed character designer for the Final Fantasy series. Since that time, there have been a total of two main titles in the series, with a third in development, as well as six spinoff games that serve to link the stories of the main titles together. The games have also been adapted into a manga series by artist Shiro Amano. Within the franchise’s 14 year history, every game has been remade and rereleased at least once, and the series has sold over 20 million copies (“Best-selling video game franchises,” 2015). The mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained X alone has over 1 million downloads on the Google Play KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 5 store. Popular not only in the United States and Japan, the series maintains a large global fan base. Video games are defined by their game type (how the game is played) and game genre (the narrative content of the game) (Grace, 2005). Role-playing games (RPGs) let the player become immersed in the character’s situation, and gameplay is driven by storytelling (Grace, 2005). A game’s genre will affect the narrative structure and story elements. Thus, Kingdom Hearts, a fantasy RPG, can be expected to attempt to immerse the player in the personal story of the protagonist and adhere to common elements of the fantasy narrative. As one can imagine, a game based on popular Disney titles was bound to attract cultural attention. People across the world have grown up watching Disney films, and they are often the versions that we tend to think of when calling to mind classic stories. Even adults feel a certain nostalgia for and connection with Disney stories, which can be reflected in the games’ popularity with audiences older than children. Indeed, when examining the social media presence of Kingdom Hearts fans, most of the fan base seems to be concentrated in older teens or young adults — people who began playing the games as young children and remained fans even as they grew up. When asked why they are loyal to the series, fans will commonly state how they identify with the characters and emotionally connect with the story. This seems to suggest that the narrative elements of the fantasy RPG and the inclusion of Disney stories create a system of values that resonate with the audience. This prompts one to ask what factors lead to a sense of identification between the players and the game. Along the way, the protagonists of the series also meet characters from Square Enix’s Final Fantasy and The World Ends With You video games. These characters mostly inhabit the KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 6 non-Disney worlds unique to Kingdom Hearts, although characters such as Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII will occasionally show up in a Disney world. While much of the series’ appeal is due to the ability to adventure in a Disney-based universe, the inclusion of Final Fantasy also creates a large draw to the games. The Final Fantasy series, which includes over 60 main or spinoff games, three feature length movies (including the internationally award-winning Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children), and countless other adaptions, is one of the most iconic and successful game RPGs in history, ranking in the top-ten best-selling franchises in the world (“Complete game list,” 2013; “Best-selling video game franchises,” 2015). Therefore, the Kingdom Hearts series has two large fan bases to draw from: those who enjoy Disney stories and those who love the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy, however, does not necessarily fit within the definition of what one would typically define as a Disney story, as the stories are often darker and more mature than what one would find in a classic Disney film. Yet the fans still accept the combination of the two. Additionally, the injection of the Kingdom Hearts narrative into the Disney stories leads to a disruption of their original plots, oftentimes with elements that were never present in the world of the story. This prompts the question of how Disney stories are able to maintain their wholeness in spite of interruptions from such different stories. Theoretical Foundation The narrative paradigm model proposed by Walter Fisher asserts that people are essentially storytellers. This theory states that most human communication, with the exception of phatic communication, such as greetings, can be viewed as a narrative (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015). According to Fisher (1989), the narrative paradigm becomes relevant when viewing human communication that deals with transferring the meanings of beliefs, attitudes, or KINGDOM HEARTS AND THE NARRATIVE PARADIGM 7 actions (p. 57). The genre of communication does not matter, all that is required is the invitation of the audience to believe or act on the message (Fisher, 1989, p. 56).
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