SoRiku

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Pairing
Pairing: Sora/Riku
Alternative name(s): SoRiku, RiSo
Gender category: Slash, M/M
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Canonical?:
Prevalence: Very Popular
Archives:
Other:
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Sora/Riku, widely known as Soriku, is the slash pairing of Sora and Riku from the Disney/Square Enix video game franchise Kingdom Hearts and its related media.

Canon

Sora and Riku are best friends who grew up together on the Destiny Islands. The two have had a friendly rivalry since childhood in which they competed in races and sword fights to prove their physical strength and skill. Over the course of the first game, Riku becomes increasingly antagonistic toward Sora as Maleficent and Xehanort’s Heartless prey on his jealousy and fear that Sora has abandoned him in order to manipulate him into turning against his best friend.

He comes to his senses at the end of the game, but fears being rejected by Sora due to his past actions, and hides from Sora out of shame as a result. Despite Riku’s fears, Sora never holds his behavior against him, and instead spends the next two games searching for Riku because he refuses to return home without him. Following their reunion near the end of Kingdom Hearts II (2005), the two reconcile and resume the close camaraderie they had as children.

After the events of the first game, Riku has consistently been motivated by a desire to protect Sora. He unleashes his inner darkness and traps himself in the body of Xehanort’s Heartless in order to wake him up from his coma in 358/2 Days (2009), jumps in front of an attack from Xemnas during the final boss fight of Kingdom Hearts II, instinctively dives into Sora’s dreams in order to protect him from Xehanort’s machinations in Dream Drop Distance (2012), and (temporarily) sacrifices himself to shield Sora from a Demon Tide in Kingdom Hearts III (2019).

In Kingdom Hearts III and the short story collection Kingdom Hearts: Character Files (2020), Sora is shown to be confused about what romantic love is despite also being able to recognize when canon het pairings like Belle/Beast are in love with each other. Meanwhile, multiple games in the series have drawn parallels between his bond with Riku and canon Disney couples such as Hercules/Meg, Belle/Beast, Aladdin/Jasmine, and Mulan/Shang.

Following Sora's disappearance at the end of Kingdom Hearts III, the game's DLC sets up Riku and his connection to Sora's dreams as the key to finding him. Melody of Memory (2020) then ends with Riku travelling to the realm of Quadratum alone to rescue him.

Word of God

Series director and creator Tetsuya Nomura has yet to say anything one way or another regarding canon romance for Sora, but has made at least two comments denying interpretations of Riku having romantic feelings for a female character. In an interview from the first game’s Ultimania supplemental book, he states that Riku’s desire to save Kairi in the first game after the loss of her heart was driven by guilt over his own actions more than any feelings for Kairi herself. And in the Ultimania for Kingdom Hearts III, Nomura states that the scene during the ending where Riku arrives to pick up Namine represents Riku fulfilling his Replica’s last wishes and was not an indication of romance between Riku and Namine.

Fandom

For most of the series thus far, Soriku has been one of the most popular slash pairings in the fandom, as well as one of the most popular pairings overall. The appeal of the pairing is watching the two reconcile and rekindle the close bond they had before Riku’s fall to darkness at the start of the original game, and seeing them continue to grow closer as the series progresses.

Many fans write lengthy posts on LiveJournal and Tumblr (or lengthy threads on Twitter) discussing textual support for the two having mutual romantic feelings for each other in canon, focusing on how their bond is typically the underlying force that motivates Sora’s journeys in one form or another throughout most games in the series.

Other topics discussed in meta posts have included:

  • The parallels that Sora and Riku's bond has with canon Disney romances and the potential implications for the future of the series.
  • Riku’s struggle to accept his own inner darkness potentially being an allegory for the experiences of LGBTQ teens overcoming the self-hate they’ve internalized because of their sexual orientation while learning to accept and embrace that part of themselves.
  • How Sora’s ignorance on the subject of romantic love despite being surrounded by canon straight couples resonates with the experiences of many LGBTQ fans who did not recognize their orientation until they were adults due to the heteronormativity of the environments they grew up in [1][2].
  • How the terminology used to refer to their bond in the original Japanese scripts over the course of the series imply Sora and Riku have romantic feelings for each other.

Some of fans’ favorite moments include their reunion at The World That Never Was in Kingdom Hearts II, their heart-to-heart in the Realm of Darkness at the end of the same game, Riku becoming Sora’s Dream Eater in Dream Drop Distance, and Riku’s temporary sacrifice for Sora at the Keyblade Graveyard in Kingdom Hearts III.

In Dream Drop Distance, a Reality Shift move unlocked later in the game depicts Sora and Riku wielding two multi-colored keyblades with a stained glass motif that combine into a single blade that the two wield in sync with each other. Official sources refer to it only as the Combined Keyblade, however SoRiku shippers took to calling it the Gayblade.

As of 2022, the ship has is currently the most tagged pairing on AO3 in the Kingdom Hearts archive, with 3,704 works tagged as of 16 December 2022[3].

For most of the series’ run, many fans - including Soriku shippers - have been of the opinion that even if SoRiku is endgame, any attempts by the series’ developers to make it canon will be vetoed by The Powers That Be - particularly executives at Disney. Despite this, many Soriku shippers make and enjoy fan works and analyze the story through that lens regardless.

By the late 2010s and early 2020s, the canon confirmation of openly LGBTQ characters and relationships in Disney Channel shows like Andi Mack and The Owl House, along with growing public acceptance of queer people in both the United States and Japan, has given some Soriku shippers hope that the pairing could potentially become canon if the developers push for it hard enough. In 2019, many Soriku shippers who believe that the developers plan to make the ship canon began using the hashtag #SorikuEndgameActually on posts and tweets about the pairing.

SoRiku fans and SoKai (Sora/Kairi) fans have clashed in the infamous, long-running SoKai vs SoRiku ship war, a dispute over which of the two most popular Sora ships is better-developed and more supported by canon.

The Necklace Theory

The Necklace Theory is a fan theory popular among SoRiku shippers in the late 2010s and early 2020s which posits that Sora’s crown necklace that he wears in every game was a gift from Riku during their childhoods, and that Sora had forgotten this long before the start of KH1. The theory speculates that Riku gave the necklace to Sora during the meteor shower that occurred the night of Kairi’s arrival on Destiny Islands when Sora was five, and that this was the basis for the fake memory of a promise to protect Namine that was implanted into both Sora and the Riku Replica during Chain of Memories.

The Necklace Theory has been the subject of numerous fanworks since at least 2018, ranging from depictions of the event itself to speculation on the circumstances of Sora remembering the promise, as well as compilations of evidence for the theory in canon.

Theme Songs

Many Soriku shippers interpret the theme songs of the games as being about Sora and Riku’s relationship, based on an interview in the Kingdom Hearts 2 Ultimania where series creator Tetsuya Nomura stated that the KH2 theme song was specifically written about Sora and Riku’s reunion, and was also conceived as a sequel to the KH1 theme song. Due to a number of lyrics referencing aspects of Riku's character arc, the songs are commonly viewed as being written from the perspective of Riku expressing his feelings to Sora.

Common Tropes & Themes

KH FANFIC STEREOTYPES (2016) by alltheickyjobs, displaying some Sora-specific fan fiction cliches that were especially common in the 2006-2010 era of SoRiku fandom
KH FANFIC STEREOTYPES (2016) by alltheickyjobs, displaying some Riku-specific fan fiction stereotypes that were especially common in the 2006-2010 era of SoRiku fandom
  • Due to the characters canonically being teenagers throughout the course of the series (Riku is is 15 in the first game and 17 in Melody of Memory), High School and College AUs are a common setting in fanworks.
  • Fanfics set in a Royalty AU in which one character is a prince or king and the other is their personal knight are popular, with Riku being most commonly placed in the role of the knight after Dream Drop Distance reveals that he instinctively became a guardian entity of Sora's dreams at the beginning of the game.
  • As a result of a popular theory among Soriku shippers following the release of Kingdom Hearts III's Re:Mind DLC that Sora appears to be missing key memories of Riku, fics in which either Sora or Riku has Amnesia when they reunite after Sora's disappearance have become more prominent.
  • Because of Sora’s canon love of pirates and his ability to magically transform into a merman in Atlantica, it’s common for Alternate Universe fics to depict one or both characters as a merman or pirate.
  • After Dream Drop Distance revealed that the series' recurring musical theme "Dearly Beloved" exists in canon as the sound of Sora and Riku's hearts being in tune with each other, many writers will attempt to reference or include the song in fanfiction centered around the pairing.

Events

Fanworks

Fanfic

Fanart

Fanvids

Zines

Meta & Other Fanworks

Archives and Communities

Other Fannish Resources

  • hourly soriku, a bot account on Twitter that posts hourly tweets featuring quotes from the novels, games, and other official material pertaining to Sora and Riku's relationship.
  • Soriku Daily, a bot account that posts daily tweets of official content about the characters and their relationship, ranging from quotes and screenshots to official artwork and merchandise.
    • Daily soriku: a tumblr blog created by the same users in the wake of Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and the subsequent exodus from the platform.
  • soriku time, a bot account that posts screenshots from the games and quotes from the official novels focused on Sora and Riku's relationship.

References

  1. ^ A tweet by a Soriku shipper quote retweeting another shipper's tweet with a comment about how most of the other shippers in their circle are fellow LGBTQ people who did not figure out their queerness until they were older
  2. ^ The original tweet that the previous source was commenting on. The replies to the original tweet are filled with other Soriku shippers sharing their experiences and how not all LGBTQ people figure out their identities as teenagers
  3. ^ AO3's Riku/Sora tag
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