Kingdom Hearts

The Manga adaptation of a wonderful Video Game falls short for what it could have become. The thing is, the Manga really isn't sure what it is or what it wants to be. Though the overall storyline for all the games are not entirely fluid, withing each game however they are. From Birth By Sleep to Dream Drop Distance the story line is convoluted; but the story line just looking at Kingdom Hearts I and Kingdom Hearts II or any other honestly knows exactly what is trying to convey.

The only thing I think that made this falter honestly was the fact that Kingdom Hearts is meant to be a game, and by ripping the RPG aspect of it to only view a jumbled up storyline doesn't do it much justice.

However the art style is fun at times and some jokes they make are quite enjoyable. Regardless it is not a bad read but it is not one I would recommend to a die hard fan of Kingdom Hearts.

Ah yes, Kingdom Hearts, one of my favorite games made into a manga. Okay, lets get started shall we?

Story: The story was the same with Sora getting a keyblade blah blah he fights heartless blah blah. The only problem I have with the story is that it was very fast paced, which took away the excitement for me. But, I'll give it a 8/10.

Art: The art was fairly good, it really showed the light in people hearts, (just a little Kingdom Hearts joke). But, the art had a childish look to it. So, I'll just give it a 9/10.

Character: The characters were just like in the game, so it's safe to say that I give it a 10/10.

Overall: Reading this really made me think back to when I played the game. I'll give it a 9/10. Just look into your heart, and read this manga, (another joke).

IMO this is a horrid manga UNLESS you've played the game... Which is like one of the best Ive ever played. All the Kingdom Hearts Manga are simply shorter versions of the games drawn and directed in as a shonen type manga... I love kingdom hearts and some of the characters, so its fun or funny to watch them do things that you'd never see in the game. It also gives good insight to their personal personality. Also serves as a good reminder of how the story went when playing the new game.
(My ratings are based off if you played and liked the game)

If you do not know by now, Kingdom Hearts is a manga that was created based on the game. As a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, the game being my favorite, I have to point out that the manga is completely terrible compared to the game. The art work, though done by Tetsuya Nomura, seems to have been drawn very lazily compared to the animations and game play presented in the game. The story essentially sticks to its original gaming routes and the characters are pretty fair. However, reading this manga is just not very enjoyable if you've already played the game. The manga is especially missing the whole concept of game-play. For example, in a boss fight, Sora would simply be whacking his Keyblade around in random directions at his enemies, whereas in the game you would need certain strategies and skills to beat your enemies. Also, this manga is read from left to right so when you read you often get confused and tend to read from right to left making things weird for yourself. Overall, your better off buying the Kingdom Hearts games to truly experience what Kingdom hearts has to offer. Game: 10/10
Manga: 5/10
Don't be mistaken SQUARE ENIX games especially this one are the greatest. But when it comes to manga, your better off watching/reading: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Pandora Hearts, 666 Satan, Kuroshitsuji, etc.

Kingdom Hearts is a true emotional game, but as a manga it lacks the experience that the game represents.

It's the first Kingdom Hearts game but in manga form, it's surprisingly good and will bring you those nostalgic feels to any KH fans (You know what I mean ;D). For people new to the series, don't read this! Play the game first because the game is a much better experience all together. Though in the manga their is different dialogue much is very similar, such as Sora's personality being spot on. If you're a fan who wants to experience the storyline without watching a play-through or play-through yourself then this is your best bet my friend.

I started reading this manga because I, like many other fans, am (im)patiently waiting for Kingdom Hearts 3. As a Kingdom Hearts fanatic, I really wanted to like this manga... but I couldn't get into it. I have completed it, but nothing really came out of it for me.

If you've been living under a rock for 15 years, Kingdom Hearts is a Square Enix game with RPG elements about a boy whose island is invaded by heartless. It's also a crossover between Final Fantasy (and as of KH3D, The World Ends With You) and Disney.

STORY: 10- Outstanding. The same as the original Kingdom Hearts 1's story, which is quite amazing.

ART: 7- Good. The art has a consistent style and doesn't change much, but it tries to fit too many events on each page.

CHARACTER: 5- Mediocre. This is part of where the manga falls short. In KH1, the characters were more lively and had more personality. Of course, they weren't perfect characters, as there are minor flaws with their development. However, in the manga, they don't have development at all.

ENJOYMENT: 3- Poor. This is probably the biggest reason why the manga stinks. Everything worked so much better in the game. Kingdom Hearts had amazing music and beautiful worlds and cutscenes, which the manga couldn't pull off.

Overall, the manga didn't have much potential anyway. However, I think that the rest of the KH mangas will be better than this one (or at least I am hoping.)

"Alright, Our next project is the Kingdom Hearts manga, now most of you should be familiar with this great game. Now how do we proceed? What parts of Kindgom Hearts made it such a great game? I have some ideas as to how we proceed.
1. For the story: We use the beginning and ending videos from each world and pretend like there's a coherant plot going when really all we're doing is rushing a plot that really shouldn't be rushed.
2. The videogame has alot of action and RPG elements in it. Let's keep the ridiculous spells like "Freeze" and "Cure" and make them say it but eliminate Sora using the Keyblade for anything other than locking a keyhole."
3. Let's use a RIDICULOUS amount of chibis, like if we have less than 10 per chapter the chapter will have to be completely redrawn.
4. Let's eliminate the single most fun world: Halloween Town, so that we can focus on other exciting worlds like.......WONDERLAND!"

That was, in my mind at least, how things went down. They probably have better reasons, such as they would need Tim Burton's permission for using Halloween Town, and they wanted to tone down the violence for a more kid-friendly audience. But there is a point to where kiddifying something robs it of all value.

Story: If you watch the beginning and end of the cutscenes of the world you'll understand EVERYTHING that goes on in this manga. To me there was nothing in here that I couldn't see or extrapolate from a cutscene, except for a couple bits that were put in for failed humor. The Fourth Wall is broken once...and it's horribly done. I was disapointed with the story, they chose to make this 4 volumes worth, but in total it's about 500-600 pages long. They don't spend alot of time on each world, which is a real gip. If they had fleshed out the storyline, made it 5 proper volumes with 1000 pages...then things would be ALOT different.

Art: Chibis......INCREDIBLY annoying Chibis are EVERYWHERE. I have nothing against that form of expression but the sheer amount of them and the other childish forms of expression in this manga are really annoying. They eliminate all depth from the manga, and scenes where feeling can be shared and character developed they choose to use for a chibi shot. The backrounds in most cases are ok. There was never a single time the art struck me as great, it was just "ok." The adaption of Disney characters is quite astonishingly good. Some feel alot like disney characters, but most of the princesses feel incredibly comfortable in their manga role. I for one found Malificent to be quite hot....in a creepy way.

Character: There is no character development in this manga. In the game, most of the character development is DURING the action of the worlds or between them, and since the story essentially takes the beginning and end of each world it skips out on any development that could take place.

Enjoyment: I was so disappointed by this manga...but then again I was expecting something great...this is Kingdom Hearts after all. The format is also flipped...so it read Left to Right instead of the more amazing way of Right to Left. It came in a box-set though...so at least that made me a little happy.

I'm a huge fan of Kingdom Hearts, as many of you who will be reading this review (i presume). I read the manga for some time and at that moment i thought: "I should write a review on this!" ... but i never had the courage; until now. I made it short, so here it goes:

Kingdom Hearts, the manga, is a disappointment to all hardcore and "softcore" fans of the series. The story is confusing and hard to follow. The dialog fails and the art is not that astonishing.

Like in the game, you follow the story and adventures of Sora, a young boy that holds an incredible power and his two companions Donald and Goofy.With his keyblade, Sora and co. travel from world to world killing heartless and closing "doors".
The story is much the same as that from the game, disregarding just some places such as the Halloween Town, preferring others that can be seen as less interesting (like the "little mermaid")

As for the structure and overall story, i have a great critic i would like to present to you. And this is: the development of the story.
While reading the book, you'll find yourself jumping from world to world, from scene to scene, never really understanding what's going on.The story simply develops never explaining what really is happening, leaving you to discover it for yourself.If you played the game, you will not have many problems knowing whats happening, but if you never played game or even heard of it you'll have a though time following the story.

Besides this major fluke, the dialogs (Tokyopop version) are very poor, leaving few interest in keep reading the book to the end. Regarding the art, there are some cute images but in general they're not surprising.


As for my conclusion:
If you're a hardcore fan of the series, and you played all the games, you'll enjoy reading the book. You'll definitely rouse some great memories, you'll remember some exciting parts of the game and maybe, you will even have your own time of nostalgia. But if you never played the game and you just picked this manga randomly, or you just heard of it from a friend, or any other reason; read it at you own risk.

First I'd like to say, I only gave story an 8 because it's the same story as the game series which is amazing. As for the rest, my upcoming critiques apply to pretty much all of the Kingdom Hearts manga adaptations and I will be using this review for all of them. The art isn't that bad, I just wish that Tetsuya Nomura himself could've done it. His concept art for all of his games is so beautiful, and it would make my life if he did the artwork for a manga. Nomura would've made the manga an overall 9 for me. It's my favorite game series and the way Shiro Amano compresses epic battles such as the fight between Axel and Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 2 to around 5 pages is just disgraceful to the series. As is the way he writes lines for Sora and others that they never said, creating corny garbage. In Chain of Memories Sora walks up to the door to face Marluxia, upon reaching it he says, "Open Sesame!" if that is not the corniest line in KH history I don't know what is... Shiro Amano also fails to implement Sora's most powerful skills and abilities such as Ars Arcanum, Sonic Blade, and Ragnarok. He doesn't even really need to give a detailed explanation or anything. Sora develops these powers by fighting with the Keyblade until it evolves further and further giving him more and more strengths. The amount of power Amano gives the Keyblade underpowers it far too much. The only reason I keep reading the Kingdom Hearts manga series is because I am such a big fan, I just hope they will make a few of the fights as epic as they are in the games and maybe give Sora some of the awesome power he obtains throughout the story. I mean, he even removed drive forms from the movie!! Sora roughly possesses half of his true power in this crap excuse for a series. Amano's failure to accurately show the character development, the greatness of battles, strength of the characters, and the emotion of the characters is a detriment that truly undermines the series. In short, Kingdom Hearts deserves a better manga.

Well being a extreme Kingdom Hearts fan of course I had to read the manga. For those of you who don't know Kingdom Hearts is a manga based on the Video game so of course I'm going to compare it to the game. It's starts off in Destiny Islands where Sora, Riku and Kairi are attempting to escape their island by building a raft. Of course the night before they leave there's a big storm, (who didn't see that coming?) and next thing you know everyone's seperated and Sora has a giant key which can some how defeat the shadowy bug like Heartless.
I thought the manga did a good job of covering what happens in the game, of course its not as fun as acutally beating up the Heartless yourself but thats kinda of hard to do when your reading a book. I thought the story was a little too rushed and there wasn't as much character developement as in the game, but once again I can't help but love the combination of Final Fantasy and Disney. I think this manga is good if you like either or the two or you like the game. I think if you don't know anything about Kingdom Hearts you might get a little confused, but I can't tell you for sure as I already knew all of the story when I read this. If you're a die hard fan you might be a little disappointed but they can't do everything exactly like they did in the game so just enjoy what you've got!