Chain of Memories, Warning Tediousness Ahead

...you will be manipulated into obsessing over Kingdom Hearts just like everyone else! (I know, I know. Another one bites the dust. But you can watch the gameboy advanced game as a movie and it only takes three hours! Three hours, might I add, of not having to write exposition.)

As diversions go, Chain of Memories was pretty entertaining. XD but you sort of have to care about the issues, or it just becomes tedious. Since I happen to care about memory I lot, I liked it. The story is divided between Sora and Riku: Sora is looking for Riku, but the further into Castle Oblivion he goes the more he forgets what he's looking for; meanwhile, Riku must struggle with his inner darkness.

I described the plot to my mother as a "movie" and she immediately asked whether I really meant to say "anime". ^^; it is an anime-ish plot. But structured progressive memory loss (and with it, loss or corruption of purpose) isn't a phenomenon confined to anime. Did anyone else see Neverending Story II? The main character in that movie is sucked into the Neverland world because he's trying to escape from his fear of the high-dive (LAME). He is given a quest and also, an object that allows him to wish for things -- spray cans, swords, whatever he thinks will be useful -- but in return, he loses one memory every time he makes a wish. Eventually he forgets why he's even on this quest in the first place, and then the evil woman who gave him the object...but anyway, Sora's story is like that. He's tricked into entering the castle and lied to to keep him there, and as he progresses his real memories are replaced with fake ones that draw him deeper into the castle, until he's forgotten nearly everything except for the fake memories. It is really arresting because you know what's going on, but Sora doesn't.

What kept me amused, though ('cause I'm not fooling myself thinking this stuff is deep or anything: it was about as deep as Riku's half of the story, which bored me silly what with all of the "you belong to the darkness" "no, the light will never abandon you!" "no, darkness!" "no, light!" talk (ALTHOUGH OMG THE ENDING, that is so cool, I want to be Sora so I can have a pet Riku of my very own!)) was thinking about all this memory stuff in a larger context. Although I have blocked out most of that class on modern intellectualism that nearly killed my soul, I do remember that towards the end there was a section on memory, which the professor claimed was one of the "dominating forces of current intellectual discourse". As I matter of fact, I still have about half of the reading we were assigned that day:

Patrick H. Hutton - The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis
Pierre Nora - Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire
Kerwin Klein - On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse

This one has no bearing on KH, but is referred to by the other three and was also assigned that day: Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. (Actually, I saved most of the reading for that class to my webspace if you want to take a look. Distributing it like this is illegal, but whatever!)

( Summary of articles, for those who are interested )

...what I learned from all this is that squishy is too an academic word.

To get somewhat back on track, memory is a Big Thing, and it is particularly big in Japan, where is currently being expressed as a desire to face up to Japan's WWII atrocities, or at least to consider how fifty years of whitewashed textbooks may have harmed the national character. (So my professor said, anyway. I will note that our Japanese exchange student wrote her final paper on memory and WWII (I wrote mine on Intellectual Identity Crises, OH GOD IT WAS AWFUL.))

The best way to express how Kingdom Hearts figures in all this is with screenshots.



( SPOILERS for Chain of Memories (Sora's story) )

( SPOILERS for Riku's story )

( Not-really spoilers for something with Axel )

Hmm, I appear to have spent many hours on this post. OH WELL, IT'S EASIER THAN WRITING ANYWAY. Note to all, I played about halfway through the first Kingdom Hearts and I haven't played the second at all, but I've been willingly spoiled to hell and back so I don't mind spoilers in comments. Overall I feel that the game is a lot of pretentious nonsense, but it's topical, and certainly TRIES to be more than what you'd expect from a title like this.

EDIT EDIT EDIT Fic rec:
Imaginary Friends by rabbitprint. Axel and Roxas pre-Chain of Memories. Gen. I dunno, sometimes you just want to read something where the characters are together, but not in that way.