Throughout 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts, Riku struggles with the darkness inside himself and learns to accept thaꦏt darkness as part of who he is. While it’s veiled under the guise of darkness versus light, which is core to the series’ themes, it’s a very real journey of self-acceptance and one thඣat can easily be viewed as an allegory for Riku accepting that he is gay.
At the beginning of the first Kingdom Hearts game, Riku teases Sora about the romantic legend of sharing the paopu fruit 👍with another person, and says that he knows Sora “wants to try it,” though he doesn’t say who with. Just under the surface, he may ♎be asking, “Who do you want to try it with? Me or Kairi?”.
Riku then challenges Sora to a race — the winner of which will get to share tᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhe paopu with Kairi. Riku is under the impression that Sora likes Kairi in a romantic sense, and jokes with him about it as friends do.
After hearing about the legend, Sora draws a picture of Kairi being fed a paopu fruit, which Kairi completes by drawing Sora on൲ the other side. This drawing is inside the Secret Place, a location that Riku and Sora discovered when they were young children. Kairi even suggests to Sora that they leave 𝔉the islands alone, without Riku at all.
Not long after this, Riku opens the door in the Secret Place, releasing the Heartless onto Destiny Islands. The game never explicitly tells you why Riku opens the door — he’s eager to leave on the raft just like Sora and Kairi — but, if he overheard their conversation on the dock and saw the dr💜awing, that would give him enough reason to change their plans.
Amidst the chaos of the Heartless ravaging Destiny Islands, Sora finds Riku, who encourages Sora to join him in leaving the islands using the darkness. Sora 🍸tells him they have to find Kairi first, and Riku quickly brushes him off, saying she’ll come with them — despite her being nowhere to be seen.
The lead-up to the opening of the door is Riku tentatively broaching the subject of his feelings with Sora, and subtly trying t🌸o pull answers out of him. Sora doesn’t seem to be sure how he feels himself, but when you fa🉐ctor in the drawing and Kairi’s comment, Riku has his answer.
He reacts hast🦹ily and pulls one last desperate attempt to leave the islands with Sora by his side, and those emotions are what lead him to be vulnerable to the darkness in the first place.
Riku’s fear of being replaced is an undercurrent thro💧ughout the rest of the game. When the two meet again in Traverse Town, Riku wants the pair of them to find Kairi together, but when he sees that Sora has new friends — Donald and Goofy — he feels that same sense of rejection all over again. It’s these emotions that Maleficent, and the darkness, prey on and use to ma📖nipulate him.
By the end of the game, Riku feels remorse for what he’s done — his feelings led to jealousy, and that jealousy made him act on the side of darkness. In Chain of Memories: Reverse/Rebirth, 𝔉we see Riku reflect on his past actions and how he handled both his emotions and his darkness.
After making his way throug♈h Castle Oblivion, Naminé gives Riku the option of putting “a tight lock on [his] heart” to keep his darkness at bay. It would allow him to forget about the darkness and what it made him feel. However, Riku decides he doesn’t need that — he’ll face it head-on.
When you question your sexuality or gender at a young age, it’s almost instinctual to, as Naminé puts it, put a tight lock on your heart and seal those feelings away. If you can’t feel them, they don’t exist. But to be true to yourself and your identity, yoꦦu have to look them right in the eye — just like Riku does with his choice.
When asked if he’ll walk the path of light or darkness, Riku says neither. He’ll take “the road to dawn”. Could there be a more blatant metaphor for choosing to rejectꦛ heterosexuality?
As the series progresses, Riku learns to handle and appreciate his darkness, understanding it’s a part of 🌱him and his power. Rather than compeജting to be a part of Sora’s life, and letting that jealousy fuel his darkness, Riku dedicates himself to protecting Sora. He even goes so far as to instinctively become Sora’s Dream Eater in Dream Drop Distance to save Sora’s heart from falling into darkness.
By the time we reach 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts 3, Riku has looked deep inside himself, seen his darkness, his feelings for Sora, and decided that they’re good.
In a rather telling conversation with Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, Riku reflects on the last time he was there. He was scared, but now, his 🌄&l🌳dquo;doubts and fears” are gone. He knows it’s not adrenaline, nor is it darkness. It’s different, but he’s not sure why.
Mickey tells him, “Sometimes you care so much for somebody that other feelings disappear. And then, there’s noꦏ room for fear or doubt.”
Before this, Riku’s feelings for Sora were almost completely swallowed by his j𝓡ealousy and fear of rejection, as well as his fear of those feelings i🅘n general. Now he’s faced those fears and accepted those feelings, what’s left is the strength they give him.
In the Keyblade Graveyard, that strength is put to the test. When everyone is swallowed by the swarm of Heartless, and there’s just Riku and Sora left, Riku steadies his resol🔥ve and sacrifices himself to protect Sora. He cares so much for him, there’s no room for fear or doubt.
With Sora now lost in Quadratum for Kingdom Hearts 4, Riku appears to be the key to finding him. The Fairy Godmother tells himꦗ as much when she asks him about his dreams, which just so happen to be about Sora. There’s no other way to put it — Riku is following his dreams to find Sora.
This barely scratches the surface of all the narrative threads that hint at Riku being gay — the YouTube theories on the topic aren’t six hours long for nothing. Even if all the metaphors happen to be one big coincidence, reading Riku𝔉 as gay only amplifies his character and his story, especially for those who relate to it.