Contrary to the popular conception, Disney and video game studio Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts mash-up games aren’t actually all that complicated. Strip away all the lore about hearts, keyblades, χ blades (pronounced keyblades), Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, Maleficent, Dream Drop Distances, Marks Of Mastery, characters sticking the letter X in their names in random spots, and the 14 members of Organization XIII, and the games are actualy very simple: An anime boy teams up with Goofy and Donald Duck to murder the shit out of the vast majority of Disney cinematic villains. (And also guys with names like “Xemnas” and “Xehanort” and “Xigbar”—who are all actually kind of the same person—but we digress, endlessly.)
All of which has us kind of genuinely interested to see what Disney will do, now that the company is finally turning the key on making the popular gaming franchise into a TV show. That news rolled out of the D23 celebration last night (along with some new info about Kingdom Hearts 4, which is coming in 2027, and will now feature the world of Pixar’s Coco), with the animated series being aimed at Disney+. A press release accompanying the announcement made it clear that the show will be a full reimagining of the initial story, and not a continuation of the existing one, which, thank Christ, because we were actually lying up there about it not being all that complicated. (We haven’t even gotten to the shit you only learn about by playing a Japanese cell phone game or reading untranslated strategy guides! These people are maniacal!)
The press release didn’t say anything about casting—including whether it would still star Haley Joel Osment, who’s been voicing main character Sora since back when that felt natural, and not like a weird, leftover glob of trivia—but did promise that games series creator Tetsuya Nomura would be involved in the production. (They also didn’t reveal who’d be handling the animation, which feels absolutely vital for a show like this; the single key image they sent out shows a weirdly rugged and buff Sora, but doesn’t really tell us anything about what the show will actually look like.)
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