Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Sora (Japanese: ソラ?) is the protagonist of Square Enix's best-selling Kingdom Hearts series. Introduced in the series' first game in 2002, Sora is a cheerful teenager who originates from Destiny Islands and has been best friends with Riku and Kairi since early childhood. When they plan to go on a journey to see other worlds, they are separated by creatures known as Heartless. Fighting them, Sora obtains a weapon called the Keyblade which makes Donald Duck and Goofy recruit him in their journey across various worlds to aid King Mickey while Sora searches for his friends who were sucked in by the darkness. In the meantime, the trio protect the worlds they visit from various villains. Sora has also made supporting appearances in a few games from the series, and reprised his role in manga and novel adaptations of the games.

Sora's original design was created by Kingdom Hearts series director and character designer Tetsuya Nomura during a discussion between Disney and Square about who should be main character of the series. Wanting it to be an original character, Nomura made various sketches of him until it met the approval of Disney. Nomura came to regard Sora as his favorite character from all the ones he has designed, and wanted to emphasize the importance of him despite being an ordinary boy. Throughout the series, Sora has been voiced by Haley Joel Osment in the English version and Miyu Irino in the Japanese version. As a child, Sora was voiced by Takuto Yoshinaga and Luke Manriquez in Japanese and English, respectively. Sora's character has received mainly positive critical response due to his interactions and development across the series and has also appeared in various popularity polls from video game characters.