Kanemaki and Amano faithfully retell the Chain of Memories storyline, too bad most people either played it or can’t jump into it.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tomoco Kanemaki
Art: Shiro Amano
What They Say:
Sora, Donald, and Goofy have defeated Ansem and restored the world. But beyond the dark door – a door that had to be closed – Riku and King Mickey remain. And so the trio sets off again on a journey to find Riku and the king. As they progress through Castle Oblivion and encounter agents from the mysterious Organization XIII along the way, Sora and his friends begin to lose their memories. What does it mean to hold something dear? And in the end, what path will Sora choose?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Video games have long had many adaptations based upon their property. We have seen video game adaptations for movies, TV series and even comics. Another area that the adaptations take on are novelizations. This is the case for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Tomoco Kanemaki with Shiro Amano work together to create this adaption of Chain of Memories and it, for better and worst, retains most of aspects of the video game.
The story breaks out into two parts, just like the video game: Sora’s Story and Riku’s Reverse Rebirth story. In Sora’s story, he finds himself dragged into Castle Oblivion with Goofy and Donald. Except, him as well as the other people he meets have lost his memories. It’s up to him to find out the mystery of Castle Oblivion and what triggered people’s memory loss, and corruption. For Riku, stuck in Castle Oblivion’s basement levels, he must fight his way up the basement while combating the darkness in his heart. In both series, they try to figure out who are the people that are following them, such as the mysterious Axel.
The artwork for this novelization is okay. You can tell who are your favorite characters, and get a sense of dared details that you normally give from the videogame. However, it does take a little bit more liberties inset character design for instance making Sora and Riku look more appealing for children. Gratefully, it shows some of the action scenes that are important to the story including a couple of near prep action seats. One thing that I would have liked to see is Axle’s first appearance to Sora with the “Got it memorized” line depicted.
Kanemaki does well to capture the story in the writing. The fighting scenes convey the action and battle scenes in the video game well. It also captures the pacing of the series with the sequencing and writing that delivers the point of the series without much writer’s deviation that could occur in novelization. This style leads to people getting a full sense of Kingdom Hearts from the highs of the stories, to the driving narrative of the characters. We even get the sense of humor that’s presented throughout the whole Kingdom Hearts series. It’s well written enough that you can get a grasp of Chain of Memories’ story without having to play it. However, with that said, it doesn’t cover the other major aspect of Chain of Memories’ well, the battle card system.
One of the bigger hindrances of the novelization doesn’t necessarily cover the author but just the mechanism. The battle mechanism for Chain of Memories is a card-base system. Essentially this card-based system has a number on top of the card that you use. This card allows you to either A) summon people B) Do normal strike attack C) Heal and use Magic. This turns to work out well except as you go want through the battle your card starts complete from the stack so everything time you reload your deck, you’re prone to attacks. In certain cases, certain cards can be removed after one use thus making your deck during fighting have one less card comes into the stack. In the case of Riku, he cannot use C and thus has a more aggressive and attack based story line. While the story does do attempts to dictate it, it’s more of a visual and playing experience to understand. For those that have played the game, the mechanism isn’t as fun as it sounds, and this novel doesn’t do anything to make the mechanism seem more fun even when it’s written down. In this case for the novelization, the book meet us halfway and in the process, generally hurts everyone’s appreciation for the story and the battle mechanism.
For those that have played Kingdom Hearts, they will realize that the story is typical Kingdom Hearts style. Down to the bone. The dialogue matches closely to what the characters says, and rhyme and timing from the novelization matches the same flow as the video game. This scenario makes sense because this is the adaptation of the video game and one would expect it to do so. However, for those would not into Kingdom Heats don’t necessarily understand all the aspects, of this adaptation may not be the best place to start. It makes a significant amount of assumptions that one would need to have read at least a Wikipedia article to understand. For instance, it assumes that you know what the story to Kingdom Hearts is, including the characters and their quirks. It also assumes that you beat the game and know each character through. While Chain of Memories tries delivering certain aspects of the first game with a twist, said twist isn’t appreciated without knowing the original story. Thus, it will make for rough reading for new readers. They will wonder what or how said event happened or how an assumption worked without having the background knowledge.
In Summary:
Kanemaki and Amano did their best to work with the material they got for Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. For the most part it passes, but with the understanding that it is not for everyone. This series still asks for a significant investment to appreciate the story it tells. This scenario may turn off certain readers away from this novelization as they may not have the time to do so. With that said for those that are fans, this novelization isn’t an essential, but it is a good way to collect more Kingdom Hearts stuff. To all those who otherwise may not actually played a game but still just want appreciate the story and are willing to make the investment, this novel will provide good enough.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date:September 22nd, 2015
MSRP: $19.99
