I’ve been a Kingdom Hearts fan for as long as I can remember, and most people know from the giant crown and heart tattoo that I have on my left arm. This obsession started in third grade, when I walked into GameStop and impulsively picked up the game. Seeing the cover art and the Disney characters intrigued me enough to make it the first game I played on my PlayStation 2.
I’m 24 now, and I had no idea that one purchase would propel me into a lifelong journey in which this game would become one of the most important series to me. I fell in love with the combat, the beautiful soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura, the characters, and the story that pulled me into this complex world of lore.
Beyond all of those things, the Kingdom Hearts series taught me some of the most valuable lessons about friendship. Especially as I grew up and moved into my twenties.
The Trios That Made Fans Believe in Friendship Forever
At the core of Kingdom Hearts is the idea that your friends are your power. You see that immediately with Sora, Riku, and Kairi on Destiny Islands, despite not knowing exactly how they met or how long they’ve been friends. No matter what happens, those three will always try to find their way back to each other.
When darkness tears their lives apart, Sora is forced into an entirely new journey that separates him from the people he loves. He continues to push on and spends the entire journey trying to reunite with his original friends. In the process, he meets Donald and Goofy to form a new trio of his own.
That continues throughout the game and across all the different worlds he visits, whether it’s Peter Pan, Hercules, or Aladdin. Regardless of where he goes, friendship is the force that carries him through the difficulties of this unexpected journey.
The series constantly revisits this idea of unbreakable trios beyond Sora, Donald, and Goofy. There’s Roxas, Axel, and Xion sharing sea salt ice cream on the top of Twilight Town’s clock tower after a long day of work in Organization XIII. And there’s even Aqua, Terra, and Ventus in Birth by Sleep. Who push each other to become Keyblade Masters and go to extraordinary lengths to protect one another.
All of these bonds feel unconditional and rightfully intense. When you’re a kid seeing these friendships in the game, you naturally start to assume that friendship should always work that way. You assume the friendships that you build in school, through sports, and even through work, will stay that solid forever. But once your twenties arrive, there is a harsh reality that has to be accepted.
Everyone was a Stranger to You Once
To be honest, the friendships in Kingdom Hearts still always felt realistic to me. The game does a great job of illustrating that friendship is built on small moments rather than just one grand gesture.
Something as simple as Roxas, Axel, and Xion sharing ice cream after work is a great example of small moments that build friendship over time. The same thing goes for real life, whether you grab drinks with a coworker after a shift and rant about work. Or when you have those late-night car conversations with a friend that make you go to bed way later than you expected. Those repeated moments are what bring people close, and Kingdom Hearts shows us that almost effortlessly.
At one time, all of our close friends were initially just strangers who might have had something in common. Those friendships may be short-lived or last many years; regardless, it still hurts when you lose that bond.
Sora’s journey shows that there are people out there you can meet and form meaningful connections with. Sora knew zilch about the other worlds beyond Destiny Islands. He probably thought it was going to be him, Riku, and Kairi on their small island forever. But he was thrown into many unfamiliar settings and built real connections with people that he never expected to meet. Every time you return to a world in the game, those bonds with each character continue to deepen.
After playing these games at least 20 times in total, I realized something that can help us all as we navigate friendship in adulthood. Not every connection is meant to last forever. But the only way to find them is to keep trying and be open to new ones, regardless of how things may turn out.
Accepting That Not Every Friendship Stays
Now, I don’t want this to turn into some kind of lament about friendships that didn’t survive. But from my personal experiences with losing and gaining friends, I often think of the joy of those friendships represented in Kingdom Hearts. Some friendships are just not meant to be permanent, and that’s not necessarily a failure. People change over time, and sometimes we fall out of contact. Our twenties are often some of the loneliest times of our lives. Our frontal lobes are developing, and we often stop relating to each other the way that we once did.
The connection and the memories were real when they existed, and it doesn’t have to last forever to have mattered.
Social media even makes this stranger than it used to be. Despite drifting away from people, you can still see them on your Instagram feed every day, just a DM away. With how convenient it is to connect with people, the lack of contact can sometimes feel more deliberate. After coping with this personally, I’ve learned to accept it. And to spend time reinvesting in the people who show up for me.
As I’ve grown older, my own ideas about the paopu fruit in Kingdom Hearts have certainly changed. The legend on Destiny Island says that if two people share that star-shaped fruit, their destinies will become intertwined forever. When I think about the paopu fruit now, I believe it represents the bonds of people who continue to show up in your life. Rather than the idea of unrealistic people who will always be around and do anything for you, the paopu fruit represents those friends who genuinely want to be in your life.
Whether you have one person or many, those connections are part of something bigger that makes every day worth living.
Each of us has to assert what we deserve in our friendships and what we’re willing to accept. Kingdom Hearts taught me to fight for the people who would do the same for you, and not every friendship in real life will be worth fighting for. But you can pick yourself up and focus on reinvesting in the true friends who add depth to your life.
