The kingdom hearts series music has always built off of itself with impressive motifs but I want to point out a particular stand out one. I think “Treasured Memories” and “Friends in my Heart” make the perfect companion pieces because oh how they’re used in kh2

Treasured memories has a darker tone to it. Still beautiful and pretty but also corrupt and haunting. It plays while roxas dreams of Sora’s past memories, pointing to the truth that roxas isn’t real and soras memories are what’s important. Later in the game He and Namine

can finally reunite and that is when “Friends in my Heart plays”. The bitter tone is mostly gone in favor of a soothing hopeful melody, but the melancholy still lingers. As Namine says, “I always thought Nobodies we’re doomed to fade back into darkness..” and Roxas responds

“Yeah, but you and I didn’t.” It’s such a positive twist of such a heart wrenching story arc, punctuated by that track. It isn’t promising they can live their own lives. But it promised that in some way their existence mattered and that they can still be together.

I started this thread really to highlight how these two tracks perfectly encompass this entire arc and how they perfectly match the intro and ending of these tragic characters,and it reminded me why KH writing can be so good. Its sincere and honest but never naive in its hope.