Kingdom Hearts
The origination of the Kingdom Hearts franchise name arose through both a combination of IP licensing issues and a nod towards the lore of the game itself. In an E3 2013 interview with Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura, he stated that initially he wanted to find a title that fit the Disney aesthetic, similar to the types of words used in Disney theme parks. The word Kingdom came to mind, and in the interview Nomura says, “I couldn’t get the IP of ‘Kingdom.’ So, we thought about ‘Heart’ as a core part of the story, and we combined them together.”
In Kingdom Hearts mythology, a heart, body, and soul are the three components that make up a being. Exactly what constitutes a heart is researched in the Ansem Reports collected by the player in Kingdom Hearts I and II. What is gathered is that a heart contains both lightness and darkness. Like a spectrum, beings can rest on a scale ranging from the seven maidens of pure-light with no darkness in their hearts, to the shadow-consumed Heartless that engage with protagonist Sora as the enemies of the game. The largest heart of all is that of the Kingdom Hearts, full of wisdom and power it stands as the physical representation for the game’s title.
Luckily, the name of this series didn’t just stick to Kingdom as Nomura originally intended. By adding Hearts to the title, it gives the franchise more depth in its meaning. In the true spirit of Disney meets Final Fantasy, the whimsical nature of the word Kingdom combines with the complex lore known to the Final Fantasy franchise in Hearts to formulate a title that is as meaningful as it is catchy.
