Sora

Sora is the main protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series. He is a playable character in Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, and Kingdom Hearts III. In Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, he is only playable in Mission Mode. In Kingdom Hearts coded, a virtual version of him is the protagonist.

He lives on the Destiny Islands with his best friends Riku and Kairi, and all three of them dream of venturing from Destiny Islands to find out what lies beyond. His home was consumed by darkness, sending him on a journey to many worlds across the Realm of Light. An upbeat youth, he travels with his new friends Goofy and Donald Duck in search of his missing friends, and uses his newly acquired weapon, the Keyblade, to put an end to the threats that destroyed his world.

Sora is the original persona of his own Heartless and Roxas, the source of Xion's memories, the bearer of Ventus's heart and the physical template of Vanitas.

Role in the series

Personality
Sora has a typical brave and heroic personality, meaning he'll willingly risk his life for people he doesn't even know yet, as shown when he tries to save Ansem the Wise from the explosion, to no avail. He's extremely loyal to his friends, and has been shown to be extremely forgiving to Riku, even forgiving him for the times he has tried to kill him, and very protective of Kairi.

Sora is highly optimistic person, choosing to think positively throughout his journeys. He is an upbeat and brash person, and although he is simple minded at times, he has a strong sense of justice. He is also very soft spoken and sensitive as over time, he had grown to care deeply about all of his friends and desires to maintain a strong relationship with all of them even when some of them act in a bad manner towards him. Sora has matured over a year's time, for instance, when battling enemies in the game, he seems to have a more serious expression on his face. Sora is more confident than before and takes charge of his group. He is also quite caring and reassuring to his other-world friends such as when Beast quits after Xaldin steals his rose. Sora reassured him that they would get it back.

Sora seems to have a remarkable capacity to forgive, even to his sworn enemies; when Maleficent loses control of the Heartless to Organization XIII and is overwhelmed by Dusks in order to allow Sora's group to escape, Sora is clearly concerned for her and is only stopped from helping her by being restrained by Donald.

Another prominent example is when he forgives Naminé for rewriting the majority of his memories, despite the severity of her doings. More examples would be when he shows gratefulness towards Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, despite all the harm he had caused, for saving Kairi's life, unaware that he is actually a disguised Riku, and when he forgives Axel for kidnapping Kairi and even remains by his side as he fades from existence. Sora quickly forgave Neku who was going to hand him over to Young Xehanort as part of their agreement.

Sora seems to have a strong impact on those around him. When Ansem the Wise said a nobody can not have feelings, Roxas cannot hate Sora. Riku stated that if Roxas had met Sora, maybe it would be different. He has strongly impacted the lifes of even his enemies. After Axel had an encounter with Sora, there was a difference in him. Axel seemed to have had gained the ability to feel emotions again after he met Sora. His love is what restored him to being whole again without having to kill Roxas, according to Ansem The Wise. Sora seems to make a new attachment with everyone and sees the good before the bad in them. Sora's bright personality cheers everyone up even in the worst of times. Even Master Xehanort himself, upon hearing the reasons of Sora's disapproval of his goals to create a better world, couldn't help but admire the boy's similarity to his old friend Master Eraqus and praised him for his magnificent performance.

In Kingdom Hearts he puts Kairi above all his other friends; his main quest in both games is finding her and ensuring her safety, even clashing with Riku over her rescue when he believes Riku's method of helping her is incorrect. This causes Sora's relationship with Riku to be heavily strained as this strain is apparent when Riku confiscates Sora's Keyblade in Hallow Bastion, calls him " The Delivery Boy" and tells him to "go play hero" with a wooden sword, which upsets Sora and makes him lose his will to rescue Kairi until he sees Beast's ambition to rescue Belle. He does still care about Riku and values Riku as a friend, trying to help him see the error of his ways; but Riku's plunge into darkness makes him more concerned with Kairi, as he knows she is still on the side of light.

Sora continues to show this in Chain of Memories, when he gets frustrated by and yells at Donald and Goofy for not helping him find Naminé (who was Kairi in Sora's heart) fast enough. His obsession with finding her causes him to throw his two allies aside, which causes his relationship with them to be strained and is again the main reason for his conflict with Riku (even if it turns out that this is not the real Riku in the end). By the end of the game, however, Sora seems to have recognized his mistakes and begins to value all of his friends equally.

This is proven in Kingdom Hearts II, as he puts all his friends on an equal level, despite no longer remembering the events in Castle Oblivion. A prominent example of this is when Goofy is apparently fatally injured after getting hit in the head by a rock during the Battle of Hollow Bastion; Sora is clearly traumatized by Goofy's apparent death, and utters, "This is not happening. It can't be happening. It can't". It is shown that, by Kingdom Hearts II, Sora views all friends equally, no longer holding Kairi above the others. This can be seen when he hesitates to locate Kairi, and instead chooses to help Leon and the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee, against King Mickey's wishes. Additionally, he refuses to return to Destiny Islands and rejoin Kairi without finding Riku first.

On the other hand, Sora shows little tolerance for cowardice and selfishness, criticizing both Hades and Iago for being cowardly and selfish, though ultimately forgiving the latter when he proved genuinely sorry for his actions. However, Sora did show some degree of selfishness himself as evident in the first game mostly due to his youth. For example, he made it his primary objective to find Kairi in the first game and put others under lesser value but this changed over time. Sora has become less selfish and more mature over time.

Like most children his age, Sora shows a highly competitive streak, as he often competes with Riku over numerous things. When he asks to fight Hercules alone in the Hercules Cup, Donald calls him a show-off, and Goofy says in Chain of Memories, "Whenever there's a contest, you're always rarin' to sign up". He doesn't like to be called a kid, but prefers to be called Sora.

Though he is far from stupid, Sora has often seen to be highly gullible and oblivious to what should be obvious. For example, he fell for Mulan's attempt at passing for a man; proceeding this, Mushu stated that Sora "could fall for anything". Ironically, he doesn't let his enemies fool him as easily. An example would be when he didn't fall for Xemnas's attempt to play on Sora's sympathetic side, which was far more convincing than Mulan's attempt to appear as a man.

Sora is often quick to anger whenever he's confused, and is quite childish and silly at times. He can also be seen as quite impulsive, as he tends to jump into things without thinking them through beforehand. While simple-minded and naive at times, he has a strong sense of justice, like when he proves Alice's innocence by finding pieces of evidence around Wonderland.

Sora also shows somewhat of an admiration of sea pirates during their first visit to Port Royal, wherein he is excited to meet Captain Jack Sparrow and even states that he hopes that they would be able to "take a pirate ship out for a spin" (though he tells Donald and Goofy that he was merely joking about it). Of course, he likely gets over this after Captain Barbossa double-crosses them.

Strangely enough, he doesn't show this admiration for Captain Hook or his pirate ship, probably due to the fact that Hook was holding both Kairi and Wendy captive on the ship. He was also eager to meet Santa Claus during their first visit to Halloween Town in Kingdom Hearts II (and he also shows lots of disappointment when Santa told him about the time he announced to everybody that he did not believe in Santa Claus, apparently at the urging of Riku). He also shows an interest of being king when he went to the Pride Lands, showing dismay when he was told that he didn't have the right qualities, and when he was leaving Pride Rock with Nala.

Also, Sora does not seem to have experience with computers, as evidenced in the episodes in Radiant Garden and Space Paranoids—he hits the computer keyboard hard while in Radiant Garden, and whilst he was in Space Paranoids, he did not understand a single word Tron said, as it all appeared to be tech jargon. However, he does at least seem to know how to use a computer, but with very little skill, as a journal page of the story calls him "hardly computer-savvy", this is shown more when he hits the keyboard with his fists, expecting it to do what he wants. This is most likely because he lived on Destiny Islands all his life and probably didn't have access to computers there.

On occasion in Kingdom Hearts II, Sora seems to unintentionally show somewhat of a disrespect towards people of higher authority than himself upon meeting them. For example, when meeting Yen Sid, Donald and Goofy respectfully bow to him, while Sora greets him by simply saying, "Hey there!". Goofy is clearly shocked by this, and Donald shouts at him to show some respect. When meeting Queen Minnie, Sora simply asks, "Where's the King?". This leads to Donald grabbing him by the ear and asking Minnie to excuse him.

When Sora and King Mickey were disputing about Ansem's identity, Sora, thinking that he has forgotten who Ansem is, drags King Mickey by the arm in order to show him the portrait of Xehanort in Ansem's study. However, when meeting Princess Jasmine again in Kingdom Hearts II, he actually does bow to her, along with Donald and Goofy. He, Donald, and Goofy also bow in respect to Simba as the new king during their second visit to the Pride Lands.

Sora is extremely kind hearted. His kindness is noted by many characters in the series, and some see it as a weakness of his, as it will sometimes allow villains and evil doers to easily take advantage of him. As DiZ told Roxas, "Perhaps you should share some of that hatred with Sora. He's far too nice for his own good."

However his personality may have been affected by Ventus' Heart of pure light being inside his Heart for most of his life. For most of the time their Hearts were connected Sora was an upbeat person, always looking on the bright side of things. An example of this is when Yen Sid reminded him of how he failed to get his Mark of Mastery, nearly becoming a vessel of Xehanort in the process, to which Sora responds "happens all the time". However when Ventus left Sora's Heart his personality noticeably changed. He suddenly treated things more seriously, even breaking down crying when he believed they had lost. When Xemnas was defeated he claimed that it was okay for him to be lonely as "Pain is being human" and he scolded Xehanort, saying his plans would never work because he was never fit to rule as "A real leader knows that destiny is beyond his control and excepts that".