Riku (Kingdom Hearts)

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Riku
Riku, painted by Tetsuya Nomura
Game series	Kingdom Hearts series
First game	Kingdom Hearts
Character designer(s)	Tetsuya Nomura
Voice actor(s) (English)	David Gallagher
Voice actor(s) (Japanese)	Mamoru Miyano
In-Universe Information
Weapon	Keyblade
Special ability	Dark Aura
Limit	Eternal Session
Home	Destiny Islands
Age	15

Riku (リク, Riku^?) is a fictional character from the Kingdom Hearts series. He comes from Destiny Islands and is the best friend of Sora, the protagonist, and Kairi. Riku acts as an antagonist in Kingdom Hearts, under the influence of Maleficent. Later, he realizes his error and tries to atone for his deeds through Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II.

Riku is derived from the Japanese word for land (陸, riku^?), in comparison with sea (海, kai^?) and sky (空, sora^?). He is voiced by actor David Gallagher for the English versions of the Kingdom Hearts games and by Mamoru Miyano in the Japanese versions.

Contents 1 Kingdom Hearts 2 Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories 2.1 Riku Replica 2.2 Gameplay 3 Kingdom Hearts II

[edit] Kingdom Hearts

Riku is the anti-hero of the original Kingdom Hearts, and his journey mirrors Sora's in many ways. At 15 years old, Riku is a year older than Sora and Kairi, and comes across as cool, confident, and capable. His need to escape the stagnant, known world of Destiny Islands and explore the world(s) beyond drives many of his actions and choices at the start of his journey in Kingdom Hearts. Riku is the one who decides to build the raft on which he, Sora, and Kairi plan to sail away from their home at the start of the game.

However, the three main characters never get to begin that journey together. The day before they are going to leave, Riku opens the door to the heart of Destiny Islands, letting in the Heartless, which subsequently tear the world apart. When Sora finds him on that night as the Heartless are attacking the islands, Riku speaks to him as one who has already been seduced by the darkness, urging Sora to join him. It is when Sora refuses that the darkness swallows Riku and the Keyblade chooses Sora as its alternative master.

Having willingly entered and accepted the darkness, Riku ends up at Hollow Bastion, where Maleficent convinces him to work for her in exchange for helping him find his friends. After kidnapping Alice and some of the other "Princesses of Heart" for Maleficent, Maleficent finally leads Riku to the Traverse Town Reunion where he finds Sora again, along with Donald Duck and Goofy.

Since he came to her service, Maleficent has been slowly poisoning Riku's heart, trying to convince him that Sora no longer cares about him and Kairi. When Riku finds Sora in the company of new friends, he is finally convinced that her lies are true. From that point, Riku decides to search for Kairi alone, and his actions and intentions become darker and darker.

After Riku kidnaps Princess Jasmine from Agrabah for Maleficent, she reveals Kairi's location to Riku. The problem is that Kairi was attacked by the heartless when Riku opened the door to the darkness and is a mere shell without her heart, and so Riku sets about the task of reanimating her or getting her heart back.

His first attempt at accomplishing this is to kidnap Pinocchio from Monstro. Riku believes he might be able to learn how to help Kairi by studying how the puppet-boy is alive. However, Sora is also in Monstro at the same time, and he foils Riku's plans. This is the turning point in their relationship. They fight one last battle together, and Riku once more tempts Sora to join him. Sora decides that Riku is doing the wrong thing, and challenges him to a fight. Rather than fight Sora, Riku opens a portal and returns to Captain Hook's pirate ship, where he promises Kairi he will bring her back and Maleficent grants him the power to control the Heartless.

When Sora reaches Captain Hook's pirate ship in Neverland, Riku is waiting for him, taunting Sora with the fact he found Kairi first and accusing Sora of being late for lack of caring. He presents Sora with Sora's corrupted shadow before dropping him below deck and the mercy of the Heartless. When Sora battles his way to the hold to rescue Kairi, Riku escapes with her, leaving Sora to battle Anti-Sora. Using the interdimensional corridors of darkness all the way back to Hollow Bastion from the pirate ship, Riku tests the limits of his powers and nearly loses his Heart in the process.

By the time Sora arrives at Hollow Bastion, Riku has completely turned against him under Maleficent's influence once she revealed to Riku that he was the one meant to wield the Keyblade. Prior to the first confrontation with Sora, Riku was dealing with the Beast who was intent to rescue Belle. Riku seriously injured the Beast and took the Keyblade from Sora, telling him he was nothing more than an errand boy to bring him the Keyblade. He left Sora with nothing but a wooden practice sword that he had used on the Destiny Islands, as Donald and Goofy follow Riku on their orders from King Mickey to stay with the Keyblade.

However, because Riku's heart was tainted with darkness, Sora regained the Keyblade. The true villain behind the Heartless, Xehanort's Heartless, made his presence known and took advantage of Riku's desire to get stronger, possessing Riku's body as his own. Riku battles Sora, using an artificial Keyblade, created from the hearts of six Princesses of Heart, which "unlocks" a person's heart.

After a vain attempt to fight Xehanort's Heartless, Riku's heart is sent into the realm of darkness, where he meets King Mickey. At the end of the game, Riku regains his body after Xehanort's Heartless is destroyed and assists Sora in closing the door between the realm of light and darkness. Unfortunately, Riku and King Mickey must stay behind the door in order to close it, leaving Sora with one request: "Take care of her."

[edit] Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Utilizing one of the 'corridors of darkness' (similar to the one Sora used to end up in traverse town when his islands were destroyed in Kingdom Hearts), Riku escaped the realm of darkness and appeared in the deepest basement of Castle Oblivion alone. Vexen theorized that Riku’s appearance in Castle Oblivion was because his existence resonates with that of Sora, who was at Castle Oblivion at the time.

While Sora ascended the thirteen floors of Castle Oblivion from the ground level, Riku had to move up from the twelve basement floors of the castle to ground level, eliminating Lexaeus, a member of Organization XIII on the way. Like Sora, Riku's powers were being sought by members of a mysterious organization with the darkness in his heart and manipulate him to counter Sora, who was being sought by three other members of the Organization. This proved to not be an easy task, as Riku was said to be afraid of the darkness, or rather, that allowing it into his heart would mean his corruption and downfall. In the worlds created from his memories, only the evil figures Riku had encountered appeared before him. He also met DiZ who at first disguised himself as Xehanort's Heartless presenting Riku with choices regarding the darkness.

However, each time Riku was nearly overcome with darkness, a light was always there to guide him and assure him that he was not evil, despite being dark. The light was King Mickey, who ended up helping Riku overcome his darkness. Riku realized the darkness is a part of him and his friends will not hate him for being dark, and decided to fight those who intend to use it against him, even when Naminé offered to seal the darkness from him forever. Riku and Mickey confronted the remains of Xehanort's Heartless, which lived on in Riku's heart as a corruption of the darkness within him, and defeated him.

Having come to terms with who he is, Riku turned into a being halfway between light and dark, in the "twilight". This allowed him to gain powers far beyond what he had before, which he used to overcome Xehanort's Heartless at the first basement of Castle Oblivion. Knowing that he is neither completely dark nor completely light, he and Mickey leave Castle Oblivion walking the path between, not the road to "nightfall", but the road to "dawn". Riku also knows that despite his victory, a trace of Xehanort still remains.

[edit] Riku Replica

After fighting his way through the first two memory worlds, Riku encountered Vexen. Later it is revealed that during the battle, Vexen was gathering data to make an exact replica of Riku for research purposes. To test the strength of the replica, Vexen sends him to fight the real Riku. While Riku fears his darkness, the Replica wields it freely. Despite this, Riku easily defeats his copy. After this, Larxene and Vexen decide to have Naminé erase the Replica's memories and replace them with the same false memories of Naminé that they planted in Sora. Now believing he is the original that grew up on the Destiny Islands, the Riku Replica is dispatched to fight Sora. After Sora fights the Replica for the fourth time, Sora defeats him and he tries to help. The Replica uses the opportunity to injure Sora and comes close to killing him, but Naminé "crushes his heart", erasing all his memories. However, the Riku Replica recovers and joins Sora to fight Marluxia, fighting for his memories of Naminé. Though he knows they were false, he believes them because they are the only thing he has. He stays behind to protect Naminé while Sora confronts Marluxia.

After Marluxia is defeated, the Replica leaves Sora with Naminé to seek purpose to his existence. Axel finds the wandering Replica and convinces him that he would become his own person by destroying Zexion. He proceeds to do so, gaining the deceased Organization member's power.

However, he realizes that just gaining new abilities does not change his identity. He decides to usurp the real Riku's place in existence. Traveling to the second floor basement, he finds Riku just outside the memory version of DiZ's mansion. He fights Riku one last time, but is defeated. As he lies mortally wounded and wondering where an artificial heart would go after death, Riku attempts to comfort his copy by saying "Your heart will go to the same place as mine." All the Replica replies is "How original" and vanishes with a slight smile.

[edit] Gameplay

Unlike Sora, Riku plays with a closed deck, which means that he is unable to create, arrange or rearrange his own deck. Instead, his deck changes as he proceeds deeper into Castle Oblivion.

Riku has the ability to enter "Dark Mode" when he has broken enough cards, and when he takes enough damage. He returns to normal when he is completely depleted of DP (Dark Points [DP can be raised when he levels-up]). When in Dark Mode, Riku becomes more agile; he can jump higher, evade at larger distances (even jump towards the target enemy's back), and his combos become much stronger. It is only when Riku is in Dark Mode that he can use his 3 main sleights; Dark Break, Dark Firaga (non-elemental), and Dark Aura. Advantages of his closed deck is that he can use any of the Enemy Cards he has, he can reload his deck much faster, and until twilight town, he is givin a special Enemy card unique to the world. The disadvantage is that Riku has a harder time healing during battle, as fewer cards that can heal are available. At times he also has attack cards of low value, and in some cases, very few cards as well. It is not until he reaches basement one, or Castle Oblivion, that his deck becomes something that most players would prefer, with the lowest attack card being a six (excluding zeros), and there are three zeros at the end of the deck for sleight breaking.

[edit] Kingdom Hearts II

Around a year after the events of Chain of Memories, Riku is asked by DiZ to locate and capture a member of Organization XIII, Roxas, with the belief that it will help Sora awaken from his slumber. Riku loses in his first encounter with Roxas. He realizes then that to fight in the realm of darkness he would have to immerse himself in that same darkness, which has the unexpected consequence of him taking on the appearance of Xehanort's Heartless. When Riku brings Roxas back to DiZ in Twilight Town, he was introducing himself as Ansem. This is a symbolic gesture that represents that Riku is willing to give up all that he is and become something dark, being "Ansem" in order to repent for his foolishness.

Riku agrees to help DiZ as they share a common objective: eliminate Xemnas, the Superior of Organization XIII, the Nobody of Xehanort. However, Riku wanted no part in DiZ's revenge and remained only to see Sora's restoration. After this, Riku meets up with King Mickey again and asks him not to reveal his present condition to Sora, although Riku still wishes to help with Sora’s journey. He provides Mickey with the munny pouch and a blue crystal from Roxas in the virtual Twilight Town, which the King passes on to Sora.

Riku remains in Xehanort's Heartless form for the majority of Kingdom Hearts II. In the Land of Dragons, Riku warns the Emperor of a upcoming powerful Heartless and encounters Sora, who mistakes him for a hooded Organization XIII member, resulting in a battle. At the Radiant Garden, Riku gives Sora a photo of Roxas and his friends in the virtual Twilight Town. In The World That Never Was, Riku appears cloaked before Kairi and Naminé when the two girls are confronted by Saïx. While reluctant to show his face, he allows Kairi to remove his hood. Kairi, wishing to see Riku after so long, takes everything in stride, knowing that Riku is only wearing Xehanort's Heartless appearance and is still himself at heart. Riku gives Kairi a Keyblade and the two fight off Heartless together to reach Sora. Riku and Kairi are then reunited with Sora. Sora is initially fooled by Riku's outward appearance (but nonetheless thanks him for saving Kairi) until Kairi reveals to him that it is Riku.

The energy from the explosion caused by DiZ's machine restores Riku to his "true form", revealing an older Riku still cloaked and blindfolded, which he removes to reveal a new outfit. After this, Riku becomes a selectable party member for The World That Never Was. He wields a Keyblade called "Way to Dawn". Sora and Riku’s co-op move, Eternal Session, is the most powerful team attack in Kingdom Hearts II. The final boss battles against Xemnas are fought by Riku and Sora alone. During one part of the final boss fight, Riku even takes a hit for Sora resulting in an injury that he is still reeling from after the battle, walking with a visible limp and unable to move at all without Sora's help. In the last battle against Xemnas, Riku is a playable character for a small part of the battle while Sora is trapped.

After Xemnas' defeat, he and Sora are left on a dark moonlit beach where the two discuss their thoughts and mutual respect for each other. He finds a message in a bottle written by Kairi, and gives it to Sora to read. When Sora is done reading the letter, the "door to light" opens and Riku returns home to Destiny Islands with Sora and they are reunited with all of their friends.