I can't believe I never picked up on this before. in the one and only sighting of sora's bedroom, right before his mom calls him down to dinner, we see that there's clothes all over sora's floor and they just look like normal clothes. no final fantasy zippercore shit, just regular clothes for a regular boy
it's funny how different everything on the destiny islands feels when you see it as an adult. when I first played KH1, I literally would've been younger than sora. 11 or so I'd guess? to me, sora and his friends were cool teenager adventurers exploring a desert island. you really take it all completely at face value, and I never quite understood it in retrospect either when you see the main island in KH2
watching these same cutscenes again though, it's so much clearer what was really happening: these are just a bunch of kids playing pretend on a little island. they run around with toy swords! they race on an obstacle course they built! they draw pictures on the walls of a cave and call it "the secret place"! they talk about going away on a grand adventure, and build a rickety wooden raft with a sail... when they already have solidly built wooden boats that they use to get to and from the island. and when they're on that island, they're wearing their cool adventurer outfits
I've talked about this before on sounds about light (subtle KH podcast plug) but I love how much the characters have been recontextualized by experiencing the games again as an adult. why did riku suddenly decide he wanted to leave? was it because of some innate tendency toward darkness in his heart? maybe, but also he was a fifteen year old boy playing with toy swords on a little island their parents let them play on after school. he was growing out of it, and his friends weren't ready to let it go!
(DEEP LORE NOTE: I THINK THERE'S ABSOLUTELY SOMETHING HERE WITH THE IDEA OF CHILDREN HAVING INNATELY PURE HEARTS OF LIGHT AND RIKU GETTING TO AN AGE WHERE DARKNESS STARTS TO AFFECT HIM IN A WAY THAT IT DOESN'T AFFECT HIS FRIENDS BUT WE DON'T NEED TO GET INTO FORETELLERS STUFF IN THIS POST LMAO)
anyway I love kingdom hearts. I love it more now than I did as a kid. it's aged like a fine wine that I wouldn't have been old enough to drink when it was first given to me and now I am old enough but I don't drink so this was a bad analogy. post over
