Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Okay, first and foremost, this is my 1st review so I'm pretty new at this. :/ (Onto business...)

The Goods:

The Kingdom Hearts series in itself is a fabulous game series. Many elements in each of the game forms together to give a generally satisfied level of entertainment to it's players. Likewise, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories took some of the main elements from the original game and blended it into a more comedic version of the game, while keeping most of the general idea in place. Readers from the previous kingdom hearts series will understand the flow of the story given they understand the general concepts of the kingdom hearts universe and the plot thus far. The characters in the manga version are, in particular, the ones who really stand out for the comedy in this series. Players from the original game will notice how some of the characters personalities or actions will reflect the same in the original game but with a funnier twist to it. (Like Axel would be reading a book or Organization members would be forced to do chores, that kind of soft sense humor which ties into the main story one way or another :l) The art is decent as it captures the primary features of the original characters, settings, objects, and the like.

The Bads:

IT IS SHORT! Ok, sure the two volumes can probably add up to the 4 from the 1st 4 volumes if u stacked them next to each other. But lets face it, summing up a 30-40 hour game into about 500 pages is like eating the bread off a deluxe sandwich: you miss some of the best parts. Since the manga is short and tends to put 85-90% of the focus on the story, it's greatly takes away one of the best things from the original game: combat. In the game, it might take you hours to beat a boss, constantly attacking or using powerful spells. In the manga, throwing water pretty much solves the problem. (On a brighter note, Donald and Goofy actually does something (: )

Overall: Criteria 1: Do you like Kingdom Hearts? (Yes) Continue to #2 (No) Suggest reading something else. Criteria 2: Story or Gameplay: (Story or Even) 70% says you will enjoy it. (Gameplay only) 70% says you won't enjoy it.

Story
The story actually followed pretty close to the game, with some extra stuff added which was cool. I liked the story in this one a lot. I never beat the game, and I got to see the ending of the game through this manga. There were a lot of funny parts too.

Art
Very nice. The characters are drawn really well and they all look like themselves. The Disney characters were drawn spot on!

Character
They were all in character, though some of them you didn't see much in the game, the mangaka added more to their personality, which was great.

Enjoyment
I really enjoyed this manga. I read it twice and I let my friend read it too and she liked it as much as I did. I can't wait to read Kingdom Hearts 2!

My review of this manga is based on disapointment. I love kingdom hearts, and i was excited when I saw the chain of memories manga, keep in mind i didnt read the first kingdom hearts manga. The manga remained truthful to the story, which I liked, however kingdom hearts is not a story that can be done in two volumes, at times I felt that the story rushed just to get to the next part, skipping over details. The art was the best thing about this manga. It was hard for me to enjoy the story because it was like Kingdom hearts was turned into a slapstick comedy, dont get me wrong, some of it was funny, but at some points it was neither needed nor necesary, I felt that serious characters were mutilated, sometimes it worked ( Vexen ) sometimes it didnt ( Larxene ), but this is just my opinion. Some fights were WAY too short and like I mentioned before , it felt like the story was rushed. Overall, i felt that this manga mutilated the story and characters of Kingdom Hearts and it was rushed, however the art is great and if you are a kingdom hearts fan by all means check the manga out, but dont expect amazing things from it.

This manga wasn't too great. Aside from the fact that they included disney characters in the plot, the story seems to be fine- until the only character's motive is to be a "hero" and then it's just the classic - "hero beats bad guy and saves the day" story. Everything was classic - including the monsters and villians - who have no motive, except the general "rule the world" motive (and what not.) - it wasn't anything too special.

Now, before I say anything else, let me mention that I've only read volume 2 of Chain of Memories, so my review is based solely on that manga.

The story was, as far as I can tell, true to the game. Keep in mind that CoM and 358/2 were almost bridge games to cover the events between 1 and 2, so sensibly the manga take the skinny of the story line and put it on paper. You're not going to get every little cutscene and boss battle mentioned in the story. That's just the way it works. The restricted space within which Square had to reiterate the tale was put to good use, in my opinion.

The art was fantastic, in my opinion. In terms of style, it errs a little more to the shounen side, which works well for fight scenes and in keeping with the overall feel of the game. Still, adequate detail was kept in place to ensure each character was kept very unique.

As for the characters themselves, I feel like they were all kept very true to who they were outlined to be in the games. The typical manga humor was thrown in, but in my opinion nothing vital to the character traits was changed at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the manga and look forward to getting my hands on all of the KH volumes that Tokyo Pop publishes.