Sora



Sora (ソラ) is the hero and main protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series. Sora is voiced by Haley Joel Osment in the US versions and Miyu Irino in the Japanese versions. He is an upbeat teenager who may seem simple minded at times, but realizes the importance of his quest. He possesses a strong sense of justice and an unrelenting heart. At times, he is impulsive and quick to anger, but he is always sincere about what he says and does.

Sora is fourteen years old at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts and lives on Destiny Islands with his best friends Riku and Kairi, and others including Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka. Sora, Riku, and Kairi wish to escape from the Destiny Islands, and find out what lays beyond. On the night before they leave a huge storm comes. The storm turns out to be the Heartless destroying the heart of the world.

The Keyblade, a mystical weapon said to bring both salvation and ruin, depending on the wielder, is offered to Riku, but he gives in to the darkness and the Keyblade moves to the next person, which is Sora. Sora from there on becomes the one to wield the Keyblade and defeat the Heartless.

Sora is derived from the Japanese word for sky.

Kingdom Hearts
Sora is the main character of Kingdom Hearts . His white gloves, red shorts, and big yellow shoes are designed like the clothes that Mickey Mouse is often seen wearing. Sora was fourteen years old at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts. He lived on the destiny islands with his friends Riku, Kairi, Selphie, Tidus and Wakka. Sora and his friends wondered about the outside world, and decided to build a raft to sail to other lands. However, the day before they were set to sail, a storm ravaged the island, along with a strange dark force. His friend Riku succumbed to the force, while Sora remained stoic. Sora was swept off the island and thrown into the Corridor of darkness which ended up in a place called Traverse Town.

There he meets Donald Duck and Goofy, the respective Royal Court Magician and Captain of the Royal Guard of Disney Castle. Under orders from King Mickey, the pair were searching for two things - a mysterious 'key' and a man called Leon. As the King has disappeared in his own quest, Donald and Goofy accompanied Sora and they started searching for their respective friends. In addition to that, Sora found himself wielding the Keyblade - perhaps the mysterious key the King had asked them to find.

Sora discovered that Riku was also searching for Kairi, though neither of them could find her. Maleficent saw her chance and used her magic to poison Riku's mind against Sora, saying that befriending Donald and Goofy was a betrayal to Riku and Kairi. With this false knowledge, he set out to find Kairi on his own, as Sora travels to a huge amount of worlds - including Olympus Coliseum, Halloween Town and 100 Acre Wood - to stop the Heartless.

The Keyblade, a mystical weapon said to bring both salvation and ruin, depending on the wielder, is offered to Riku, but he gives in to the darkness and the Keyblade moves to the next person, which is Sora. Sora from there on becomes the one to wield the Keyblade and defeating Heartless and unlocking the doors between the worlds. He also discovers that the Seven Princesses of Heart were needed to unlock the door to the final world - Kingdom Hearts.

Upon reaching Hollow Bastion, Sora discovers that Riku was the actual wielder of the keyblade - it was given to Sora after Riku chose the side of darkness. Donald and Goofy are forced to abandon Sora because of the King's orders, but come back out of pure loyalty. The Keyblade was sent back to Sora because his friendship with Donald and Goofy gave strength to his heart, stronger than Riku's. Enraged, Riku fights Sora and loses.

After this, the party encountered Maleficent. She was defeated and was given the power of darkness by Riku who is now possessed by Xehanort's Heartless, who was known as Ansem.

When Kairi is revealed to be one of the Seven Princesses of Heart, Sora discovers that Riku believes that her heart had been stolen by the Heartless. Actually, Kairi's heart was within Sora, as she passed through him at the very beginning of the adventure. In order to return her heart to her and wake her up, Sora uses a dark Keyblade that Riku used to remove his heart and hers, sacrificing his humanity and becoming a Heartless himself for a short period of time. Kairi, however, uses her power to turn him back to normal.

After regrouping in Traverse Town, Kairi gave Sora her lucky charm, since he insisted that she should stay behind while he tried to get Riku back.

Sora and his friends manage to defeat Xehanort's Heartless at End of the World, the ‘heartless’ of all the worlds that fell into darkness. As Sora investigates the door to darkness, Riku and King Mickey appear on the other side of the door and together King Mickey and Sora seal it from both sides; with Sora's Keyblade from the realm of light and Mickey's Keyblade from the realm of darkness. However, Mickey and Riku are trapped behind the door, Riku’s last words before it closed being “Take care of her”, referring to Kairi.

As the worlds begin to restore themselves, Kairi and Sora are separated. Sora promises to return to her as soon as he finds Riku and the doorway to light.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
After being separated from his friends, Sora wandered down on a long, meandering path with Donald and Goofy searching for way to find Riku and Mickey, encountering Pluto on the way. When they reach a crossroad and call it a night, a mysterious man in a long black hooded cloak appears and informed Sora that "ahead lies something you need, but to claim it, you must lose something dear." The man disappears and only one path remains. The trio follows the path which leads them to a mysterious castle known as Castle Oblivion. They enter the castle hoping to pick up some clues as to the whereabouts of their friends only to discover as they ascend the floors of the fortress, they begin to lose memories and become more and more uncertain of themselves.

Little do they know, their memories are being manipulated by a mysterious organization that seeks to capture and manipulate Sora. To do this, they use Naminé, a young witch who can rearrange the chains of memories and create new links. In order to make Sora forget Kairi, Naminé begins to replace his memories of her with herself. Meanwhile, a conflict between the Organization's members leads to several encounters between Sora and Riku, whose memories of Kairi also have been replaced with ones containing Naminé.

The trio's uncertainty builds to a point where they end up in Twilight Town, a place that Sora is fairly certain that he has never been in, thus should not exist in his memory. Organization member IV, Vexen, reveals that it is a place that exists on the other side of Sora's heart, but is eliminated by Axel, another member of the Organization, before he can explain anything.

Axel ends up betraying Marluxia, the lord of Castle Oblivion, revealing that Marluxia and Larxene, the newest members of their group, intended to use Sora to overthrow the Organization. Axel manipulated Naminé into doing what she believes was right. She revealed to Sora that she never existed in his memory and that she has been replacing the person most important to him. Riku appears to them again and is defeated by Sora. When Sora tries to help the injured Riku, he attacks Sora. Naminé uses her power to break Riku's memory, and it causes him to collapse. Larxene comes forth to eliminate Sora and Riku, who is revealed to actually be a Riku Replica, created by Vexen.

Sora defeats Larxene and forgives a regretful Naminé for her actions. She promises to restore the memories of the trio once they reach the 13th Floor of Castle Oblivion, where Marluxia is waiting for them. Axel attempts to destroy Marluxia himself but when Marluxia uses Naminé as a human shield. Sora steps in and defeats Axel. Once Marluxia is defeated, Naminé asks that they step into machines that will rearrange their memories back to the way they were at the cost of breaking the links she created. She also informs him that the process will take some time, during which Sora, Donald, and Goofy will sleep as their memories are slowly restored. While they know that they will forget Naminé, Sora promises her that while she is forgotten, she will remain in his heart, never lost.

Kingdom Hearts II
One year after the events of Chain of Memories, Sora, Donald and Goofy awake in Twilight Town with their memories restored, although they cannot remember what happened in Castle Oblivion. Continuing their journey to find Riku and King Mickey, they set out traveling across new worlds, meeting old friends and enemies from the original Kingdom Hearts game, battling the Heartless and a new threat, the remaining members of the Organization they encountered in Chain of Memories.

Soon after exploring Twilight Town, Sora and company head off to the Tower and Sora obtains new attire—on the advice of master sorcerer Yen Sid—from Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. In a nod to their film, the three fairies at first all want Sora's new outfit to be their respective color, until finally Sora convinces them to stop fooling around. The new outfit enables Sora to transform into new forms and attain special powers for each of them. The source of the clothing's magic is linked to Sora's heart, which is connected to everyone Sora had befriended including Donald and Goofy. Sora was referred to as the "key that connects everything" by Yen Sid which is how Naminé's memory manipulation works.

Throughout the game, Sora expresses his determination to bring Riku back home with him to Destiny Islands, where Kairi is patiently waiting for them. The quest gets more complicated when Kairi herself is kidnapped by Axel. Pete (who works for the resurrected Maleficent) and Organization XIII are causing trouble in the other worlds, and King Mickey refuses to give information regarding Riku. Sora must also discover why some of the members of Organization XIII address him as Roxas even after he clearly states his name is Sora. Also throughout the game Sora becomes rather intrigued and interested in the romances between some of his friends, such as Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner; hinting(unconfirmed) romantic feelings for Kairi, which Donald and Goofy smugly joke about (especially Donald, whom says "I know who you're thinking about!"). Kairi is also hinted to have similar feelings for Sora.

Eventually, Sora, with the help of the Twilight Town kids (three friends of Roxas in DiZ's simulated Twilight Town) and Axel, manages to find the route to "The World That Never Was": the stronghold of the Organization, where a copy of Kingdom Hearts, created by gathering many hearts from the heartless, resides. Soon after entering the world however, in the area of Memory Skyscraper, Sora's group is ambushed by Nobodies and Sora is forced into a showdown with an Organization member, who turns out to be Roxas (disguised in his former Organization XIII cloak) on a platform of Dive to the Heart, finally awakening after witnessing Axel's death through Sora. Afterwards, Sora, Donald, Goofy and King Mickey storm the castle in search of their friends. There, Sora finds Kairi and Riku (having Xehanort's appearance) and the mysteries of Roxas' identity and King Mickey's secrets are finally solved. Riku's appearance then reverts to the way it should and he and the others attempt to stop Xemnas, the leader of the Organization. After they seemingly defeat Xemnas, Roxas emerges from Sora's body to speak with Namine before she fuses with Kairi to complete herself, while Roxas returns to Sora's body.

Sora and Riku are separated from King Mickey, Goofy, Kairi and Donald. They fight Xemnas again on their own and defeat him, though they remain stranded in the dark side of The World That Never Was with Riku slightly injured. As Sora and Riku share their thoughts about their adventure and friendship, they come to the conclusion that "if worlds were made of light and darkness, [they'll] be the darkness" since the light realm is safe. As they listen to the waves, a bottle containing Kairi’s letter washes onto the shore. The door to light appears, and both Sora and Riku use it to return to their home world: Destiny Islands.

Having brought Riku back home and reunited at last with all his friends in one piece, Sora returns Kairi's lucky charm with Kairi saying "You're home." During the credits, Sora is walking around in the Secret Place. He smiles while looking at all the pictures he and Kairi had drawn over the years. He glances down at the picture of Kairi and himself. He sees that Kairi drew the other half of a paopu fruit, and smiles to himself.

At the end of the credits, another FMV shows Sora asking Riku what he thinks the door to light was. Riku replies that it was Sora's heart, "it's always closer than you think". Kairi runs up to them and give them a bottle she found, containing a letter from King Mickey. The trio reads the letter, its contents a mystery to the player.

Kingdom Hearts coded
Sora has been seen in screenshots of Kingdom Hearts coded. He was seen in gameplay jumping on red and black blocks with King Mickey. He is also seen in an alley with Pluto in Traverse Town. It has been reported that Sora in this game is a data version, and that the actual character does not appear.

Personality
Sora has a typical brave and heroic personality, meaning he'll willingly risk his life for people he doesn't even know. He's extremely loyal to his friends, and has shown to be extremely forgiving to Riku (even forgiving Riku for the times he's tried to kill him). Sora has on multiple accessions displayed obvious romantic feelings for Kairi (of which many of the other characters are well aware of). He constantly "thinks positive" and is therefore highly optimistic.

Sora has shown a large amount of gullibility. For example, he fell for Mulan's (extremely poor) attempt at passing for a man. Ironically, he doesn't let his enemies fool as easily, since he didn't fall for Xemnas's (much for convincing) attempt to play on Sora's sympathetic side. Despite Sora's good nature, he appears to sometimes hold grudges, since he seemed to go after Xemnas merely out of spite for him. Sora is also often quick to anger whenever he's confused.

Powers and Abilities
Sora appears to be a natural swordsman, most likely from all his training against his friends on Destiny Islands. His skill with the Keyblade increased greatly over his journey, and he has become a master with the weapon. Sora's skill is so great that he has even be able to go head-to-head other legendary swordsmen such as Cloud, Leon, and even Sephiroth (although in their encounter in the second game Sephiroth seems uninjured after the battle, even though he supposedly lost and admits that Sora is "very skilled"). He becomes even more skilled after learning various techniques such as Ars Arcanum and Ragnarok. He also became skilled with various magic spells after training with Merlin. In Kingdom Hearts II, his basic combo is much stronger and he gains the Drive ability after obtaining new clothes, which give him even more mastery over his strengths. However, some aspects of Sora's abilities are ambiguous because of the reaction commands in Kingdom Hearts II. The most notable of these is during one of the reaction commands he cuts through a large building, yet in both games it takes him several hits just to break a wooden barrel. Again, this is probably due to the developers making the reaction commands epic for most of them.

However, Sora is almost completely helpless without his keyblade. Even Shadow Heartless take a huge number of hits for him kill without it, and that's just when he had gotten stronger by the time he reached Hollow Bastion. When he first met them on Destiny Islands, he couldn't even damage them without his keyblade.

Sora appears to (storyline wise) grow stronger during Kingdom Hearts 2, since Xemnas attacks do considerable less damage to him then do in Kingdom Hearts Final Mix.

World transformations
When Sora enters certain worlds in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, his appearance changes to make him able to travel in that particular land. These include: a merman in Atlantica, a vampire of sorts in Halloween Town, a lion cub in Pride Land, and an old fashioned cartoon character in Timeless River.

Other Transformations

 * In Hollow Bastion during Kingdom Hearts, Sora is turned into a Shadow after giving up his heart to free Kairi from her comatose state. While in this form, Sora is unable to do anything except jump and move around.  Luckily, there are no enemy encounters while he is in this state.  Sora is returned to normal upon arriving in the Entrance Hall.
 * Gamblers and Luxord have attacks that change Sora into either a die or a card. Sora can still attack in both forms, but cannot jump and has very limited speed.