The core appeal and selling point of theKingdom Heartsseries is the world-hopping adventure between various Disney and Pixar worlds. Throughout the series, Sora, Donald, and Goofy (and an occasional rotating cast of side characters) have visited numerous different worlds to save the day in various ways.
However, with Sora being as stylized as he is, sometimes he’ll need to transform if he doesn’t want to stick out too much. While some of these transformations make him perfectly fit in with the locals, others are less convincing. Out of all of Sora’s transformations throughout Kingdom Hearts history, which is the best at keeping our spiky-haired hero incognito?
9Halloween Town And Christmas Town
Kingdom Hearts 1 And Kingdom Hearts 2
The Nightmare Before Christmas was likely one of the toughest settings to recreate inboth Kingdom Hearts 1and 2, thanks to just how distinct the source material is, but it still somehow looks amazing in both games.
Don’t get us wrong, Sora’s gothic take on a Halloween and Christmas costume is undeniably a serve, but it doesn’t help him actually fit in. Compared to the characters who are native to the stop-motion classic. Sora’s costume is just that: a costume.
8Space Paranoids And The Grid
Kingdom Hearts 2 & Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance
Unlike the appearance of The Nightmare Before Christmas in both Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, the two takes on the Tron universefound in Kingdom Hearts2 and Dream Drop Distance are radically different. However, what unites Space Paranoids and The Grid, aside from their source material, is just how much Sora sticks out.
With Tron being a largely live-action franchise, the locals all have the uncanny appearance of real people trying to look normal in a PS2/3DS game, whereas Sora, even though he’s dressed in their style, looks just as stylized and anime-inspired as usual.
7Monstropolis
Kingdom Hearts 3
The Monsters found in the Monsters Inc. movies don’t have a cohesive design mantra to stick to, so the possibilities were endless when it came to creating a native design for Sora. What they landed on is passable, but it’s unfortunately not particularly memorable given just how far Square Enix could’ve gone with it.
It’s just a bit grey really, literally and figuratively. Sora has such a vibrant personality that the design doesn’t seem to capture, and the fact that he’s still wearing his standard jacket makes it all the more obvious that not much has changed at all. Some of Sora’s more dramatic transformations prove how far he can go, so it’s a shame that such a blank cheque like Monsters Inc. was wasted. Sure, he would fit in, but maybe more as an NPC than a playable character.
6Atlantica
Up there as one of the more uncanny transformations in Kingdom Hearts history, it’s a little jarring to see Sora change into such a basic merman form. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, and aside from his signature hairstyle, he would easily fit in as a background character in a Little Mermaid spin-off.
Where the transformation becomes less convincing is when you take in the whole Sora, Donald, and Goofy package. Sora by himself: fine. Sora with the terrifying half-duck, half-octopus Donald, and equally unnerving half-turtle, half-dog Goofy: undersea eyebrows will be raised.
5The Caribbean
Sora no doubt stood out during his first visit to the Pirates of the Caribbean universe back in Kingdom Hearts 2. Standing brightly next to the desaturated, slightly realistic characters of the Pirates of the Caribbean universe felt almost like a parody, so Square decided they wanted to put more effort into Sora fitting in for his nextvisit in Kingdom Hearts 3.
Thanks to the increased graphical capabilities of Kingdom Hearts 3, the divide between pirate Sora and the actual pirates around him is much less jarring (the same can’t be said for Donald and Goofy, unfortunately). However, if you’re familiar with the source material, then Sora will start to look out of place at maybe a second or third glance. However, in-universe, Sora is likely just seen as a particularly eccentric pirate with some questionable animal companions.
4Timeless River
Kingdom Hearts 2
A fan-favourite transformation for a reason, Sora’s brief but memorable stint in Timeless River is one of the most charming, as well as convincing. While the foundations of Sora’s design are undeniably complicated and hardly conducive to the early 20th-century style of animation, it still somehow works here.
Sora is somehow made even more expressive than usual, and it’s clear that care was put into making him look like a real part of the scenery. Compared to the more wacky designs around him, for once, Sora isn’t the one sticking out.
3Toy Box
Sometimes, the simpler transformations are the most effective, and the best example of this is Sora’s action figure form found in Toy Box. While Sora’s default design isn’t fitting for almost any Disney or Pixar property, where it would fit is as a random action figure found in Toy Story.
Sora fits right in with the other toys, and the new design works so well that he’s even mistaken for Yozora, an in-universe, but still fictional, video game character. If you squint, Sora still looks pretty much the same, but if you look closer, you’ll notice the plastic edges that sell the new design.
2Pride Lands
You would think that the Lion King universe would be one of the hardest for Sora to fit in, but his lion cub disguise works overtime to ensure that Sora looks perfectly in place in the Pride Lands.
Of course, Sora’s signature spiky hair survived the transformation, but it somehow works, making him genuinely look like a character from an (admittedly straight-to-DVD) Lion King sequel. Donald and Goofy still look a little strange in another animal hybrid form, but it’s significantly less jarring than the Atlantica alternative.
1Twilight Town - Roxas
For Sora’s most convincing transformation, it’s the one that even managed to convince himself: Roxas. When Sora is recovering from the events of Chain of Memories in Castle Oblivion, he lives out his last few days as Roxas in a simulation during his summer break in Twilight Town.
While it’s technically not Sora, it’s still definitely a disguise, and it worked so well that Roxas ended up becoming his own character, thanks to standard Kingdom Hearts shenanigans. Does this officially count as a Sora transformation? Well, if it doesn’t, it should.
