Sora's heartless

[Vindication]

I was reading some Q&A topics on gamefaqs and ran into this question: What was Sora's heartless?
Most fans who have played KH1 know that he turned into a humble shadow, but another player came up with this conclusion.

In a way, Sora's current form IS his heartless. If you recall in KH1, Sora sacrificed himself, reviving Kairi, then became a shadow. After navigating through Hollow Bastion in this form, Kairi is able to revert him back into human shape, but he still has relapses every once in a while, as evidenced in KH2 when a Drive would fail.

The more he would use his Drive forms, the higher the probability would be that the next time he attempted a Drive, he would fail and turn into Shadow Sora until his Drive meter was empty.

The exception to this is the Final Drive form, which would reset the counter back to 0. This implies that there is an ever-teetering balance between the Nobody (Roxas) and the Heartless (Sora) inside of him. Sora repeatedly realizes that he needs Kairi and Riku to help him keep this balance in check.

The crappy reprise of FF7: Advent Children in KH2 in which Cloud defeats the "Sephiroth inside him" (if you choose to fight Sephiroth yourself) serves as a reminder to Sora that he, too, must learn to fight the darkness inside him. This is one of the reasons that he's so set on finding Riku, the person who taught him how to fight, throughout the game. His hope is that Riku can help him find the strength to keep this darkness at bay.
(Sephiroth: "He'll never let go of the darkness."
Tifa: "He doesn't have to. He just needs someone to surround him with light. The darkness will be there, Sephiroth. But in a place you can't reach!")

Towards the end of the game, when Riku and Sora are sitting on the beach in the World of Darkness, Riku nearly convinces him to give in and surrender to the darkness. ("If this world is made up of light and darkness... we'll be the darkness.") At that moment, an unknown power (presumably Kingdom Hearts itself) pulls Sora and Riku out of the WoD, and reunites them with Kairi in the World of Light; Destiny Islands.

The stories of KH1 and 2 have two very different themes; but they follow Sora's age and maturity level.
KH1: Shadows wouldn't be able to exist at all if it weren't for light; therefore, no matter how powerful the shadows get, if you keep searching for the light, they don't stand a chance.
KH2: Light and darkness are just two opposing powers, not necessarily good and evil. As long as you're strong enough to keep the light inside, the shadows can be a powerful ally.

Anyway, to conclude and answer your question, Sora doesn't have a heartless, he IS a heartless. He just managed to get his heart back. Upon rejoining with Roxas near the end of KH2, Sora became complete again, and, thanks to the keyblade, has control over his heartless and nobody.

From: Dynmitrave2

His theory makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm still wondering if any of you would feel the same way. I was really interested when he brought up the forms from KH2. It makes sense to me since the ability of using 2 keyblades was introduced by Roxas, who returned to Sora.

[destinykh]

True, Sora had no body and soul from the end of KH1 all the way to KH2. He was a free floating heart, much like Xehanort's Heartless was, but given human form because of Kairi. He is not a Heartless in the strictest sense because he is not darkness incarnate like Pureblood Heartless, nor a heart enveloped by darkness like Emblems, he is just that, a human-form heart.

I do like the idea of Riku and Kairi being the balance of light and darkness within him.

[Smile]

Only there isn't much balance since Kairi's pure light while Riku is both :\ I guess that's part of why Sora brings in his own Darkness? Or is that just an indication the two are unrelated 8D

[joeybe HNIC]

Pretty much, after he heartless sora was purified by kairi's light, he was a walking, taking, keyblading heart.

Until he merged back with his body&soul, Roxas.

[Soughtdragon]

This is very interesting and definitely makes you think. It would have been a much darker game(obviously) if Sora hadn't been saved by the light in his heart,(spurred by Kairi and probably Kingdom Hearts out of self-preservation) which was there, just unrealized or unrecognized in the moment.

Another representation of Riku and Kairi as Sora's darkness and light is shown through the Oblivion and Oathkeeper keyblades. Sora receives the oathkeeper from Kairi and the oblivion in the same place he defeated Riku and became a heartless. It will be interesting to see how these relationships are further portrayed.

Sora being the heartless would make sense in the special way he was made so to speak as well as Roxas and the way he was created. Namine and Roxas both being "special" nobodies. Sora when on the beach even mentions that the darkness has gotten to him too. Who knows what Sora is feeling internally, and how unsure he might be of the darkness burgeoning in his heart. What if he too is worried about the darkness inside him, but has never been able to properly express it in words due to the fact that he's always trying to hide his sadness and worries from Donald and Goofy who are the ones that are around him most of the time throughout the games. They always seem to remind him that he should never frown or be unhappy around them, that he should smile.

hmm...we'll just have to see how this all unfolds.

[RoxasAi]

Originally Posted by Soughtdragon

This is very interesting and definitely makes you think. It would have been a much darker game(obviously) if Sora hadn't been saved by the light in his heart,(spurred by Kairi and probably Kingdom Hearts out of self-preservation) which was there, just unrealized or unrecognized in the moment.

Another representation of Riku and Kairi as Sora's darkness and light is shown through the Oblivion and Oathkeeper keyblades. Sora receives the oathkeeper from Kairi and the oblivion in the same place he defeated Riku and became a heartless. It will be interesting to see how these relationships are further portrayed.

Sora being the heartless would make sense in the special way he was made so to speak as well as Roxas and the way he was created. Namine and Roxas both being "special" nobodies. Sora when on the beach even mentions that the darkness has gotten to him too. Who knows what Sora is feeling internally, and how unsure he might be of the darkness burgeoning in his heart. What if he too is worried about the darkness inside him, but has never been able to properly express it in words due to the fact that he's always trying to hide his sadness and worries from Donald and Goofy who are the ones that are around him most of the time throughout the games. They always seem to remind him that he should never frown or be unhappy around them, that he should smile.

hmm...we'll just have to see how this all unfolds.

LOl took the words right out my mouth....I agree

you know Sora and the King are the ones that seem to have the purest of hearts next to the POH, the only time we ever seen them lose it is when Sora in CO and the King when he though goofy was dead. But other then that we haven't seen them fight their inner darkness, it be nice to see them deal what was going on inside.

[Smile]

Sora? Pure of Heart? Where the hell did you pull that one out from? They have Darkness and Light like everyone else. And with how Kairi acts sometimes the only Purity she has is that she lacks Darkness, hardly a pure and noble character :\

Sora post KH1 is rather a messed up Sora. I fail to see why people would compare him to a PoH. True, he turned into a Shadow in KH1, but... Anti Form. I see him more as a NeoShadow by the time of KH2.

[Nirv]

As much as I love Sora, his naivety can't really be called purity, he was quite happy to do Yensid's bidding and defeat the organisation without even knowing much about them or their goals, pretty naive not that pure.

[Smile]

Uh, excuse me? The Organization members he ran into put Hollow Bastion at risk, threatened to turn Beast into a Heartless and take control of his Nobody, and stole the Olympus Stone. They went also to terrorize Port Royal and put the known universe at risk.
He didn't need Yen Sid to tell him they needed to be brought down - or rather, it's not like he saw that Yen Sid's words were unjust. Yen Sid called it just the way he saw it - which is just the way the Organization is.

[Nirv]

Not at the time he was explaining it to Sora he mentioned nothing like that, just that they needed to be stopped, he attempted no explanation at why the organisation were doing what they were doing or even tried to understand their desire for a heart, despite this Sora just said ok and did what he was told. Yes Yensid was right they did need to be stopped but Sora agreed to his request far too easily without all of the information.

[Smile]

How about because Yen Sid was someone trust worthy, and the need to have the Org stopped came from Mickey through Yen Sid? :\ you make it sound like someone came up to Sora in the middle of the street and told him "look, kid, here's a lolipop, stop these shoddy characters for me, alright?"
Yen Sid was The King's Mentor and Master. He's someone Donald and Goofy trust without reason for doubt, and he said that The King himself went off to stop the Organization.
I fail to see why Sora'd need any more reasoning aside from Yen Sid's word, especially seeing how even if he didn't trust Yen Sid and the King, he trusted Donald and Goofy - and they trusted The King and Yen Sid.

[Nirv]

Originally Posted by Smile

I fail to see why Sora'd need any more reasoning aside from Yen Sid's word, especially seeing how even if he didn't trust Yen Sid and the King, he trusted Donald and Goofy - and they trusted The King and Yen Sid.

Ah, I never thought of it like that really which is embarrassing because it's not even that complex a thought process, still on the whole between the games I think people think Sora is more pure then he is due to the fact he is quite naive about some things.

[destinykh]

Ah, I never thought of it like that really which is embarrassing because it's not even that complex a thought process, still on the whole between the games I think people think Sora is more pure then he is due to the fact he is quite naive about some things.

Actually, I believe people think he is 'pure' because in their eyes, they see him as a cliche type of hero, and who could really blame them? Despite being the main character with the most screentime, Sora never had the type of character development Riku and Axel received. Much of his character arc is mainly centred on saving the world without complaint nor conflict within himself. This is not really true, as he has really subtle conflict, but all of these can be easily missed, especially in the context of KH2, when he was significantly dumbed down. People think he's pure because he rarely broke down and wasn't constantly emo like Roxas and Riku. However, that's part of his character. As an optimist, he would bottle up his doubts and negative emotions and hide them from his friends, and thus we don't really get to know the conflicts within him. Sora is just as much as a 'real' and conflicted character as Riku, but people fail to notice because it's subtle.

[Smile]

You'd think that with Anti Form, people'd get that he's not as pure and untouched as they tend to think :\

[Nirv]

Then again he only created a shadow in KH