Correction
Game speculation is a thankless job.
Well, I suppose that's not literally true. People certainly express their appreciation. Metaphorical sorts of thanks, though, are often absent. Of monetary recompense, for example, there is as yet no sign. And the satisfaction of doing useful work… well, it's hard to come by.
As you might not know, if you found the Disorganization while exploring some labyrinthine series of tubes, we got our start doing panels at anime conventions. Our very first was a speculation panel on the Kingdom Hearts series.
I was well-prepared for this task. Ridiculously well prepared, actually, to an extent that probably says unflattering things about me personally. I pored over cutscenes and advance screenshots with the care usually given to Aramaic scrolls. I discerned secrets of the Endless and the Chasers, and brought warnings of the darkness in Sora's own heart. I knew that King Triton knew too much.
Then Angelo, in a brief and irritating flash of common sense, decided the panel should have a question-and-answer format. It sounded harmless, but of course our audience was composed entirely of people less pathetically obsessed than I. My arcane constructions of wild speculation… never came up. I related, to the geeks there assembled, the titles and platforms of the next three games. Angelo politely explained, to a disappointed young fangirl with a hitai-ate on her forehead, that there would never be a Naruto level. In short, we were asked questions so simple (by the standards of my obsessive preparation) that the answers were barely speculation at all. They were practically (shudder) news.
And then I was asked a question so simple, so obviously relevant to the interests of our audience, that of course I had not prepared for it at all. “What do you think,” she asked, “about the relationship between Axel and Roxas?”
(If you, dear reader, are not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts fandom, know that one can be sure that anyone who asks this question believes that this relationship involves, or ought to involve, gay sex.)
I am by nature a careful and tactful person, and I was reluctant to offend the sensibilities of my fans. Also, as a scientist, I am always careful to identify and compensate for any personal bias. Therefore, I forgot that I'd walked in the door willing to expound on theories much less probable than shounen-ai in a Disney game. I forgot, too, that anyone who wants to avoid offending sensibilities should never go anywhere with Angelo. I stammered out some mealy-mouthed prevarication to the effect that Axel and Roxas were at least very good friends.
Halfway through, I was interrupted from the audience, by a woman who angrily insisted that Axel and Roxas might have just been very good friends. Apparently you just can't win this game.
If I'm going to piss people off anyway, I've decided that my attempt to sit on the fence was ill-advised. Rather, I have resolved to fuck, if I may borrow a phrase, this shit.
Sorry to break it to you, loyal readers, but the guy who beat you up in seventh grade was correct: this Japanese shit is all really gay. As a culture, the Japanese - or at least, the ones that make anime and video games - are less prejudiced about homosexuality than many Americans. They're willing not only to produce outright gay romance for a niche market, but to put gay characters in more mainstream stories. America being what it is, any overt evidence of teh ghey is often lost in translation to English. (Score another one for your schoolyard nemesis, by the way: Sailor Moon was especially gay.) And of course, there is the recurring tactic of writing characters of deliberately ambiguous sexuality. Presumably, this is by way of sacrificing artistic integrity in order to encourage both sides of the inevitable shipping wars. If you have ever watched Gundam Wing and thought that the creators could not possibly be serious, you were correct. They were fucking with you.
We must have no more of these convoluted, logically tortured attempts to explain why none of the above is true. It is. Not even yaoi fangirls could make all this up. In particular, the old argument about how Kaoru and Shinji weren't technically gay because angels are genderless does not work, and if I ever hear it again, I am turning this car around, and we are all going home.
So. Will we be seeing Axel and Roxas (or Sora and Riku, or Terra and Ven) make out on screen in the next game? We certainly will not, not in either language. It's still a Disney game. Someday there will be an openly gay Disney hero, but today is not that day, nor is tomorrow. That day is coming at least ten years after the election of the first gay president. Of Iran.
Did Tesuya Nomura write the games intending that we fans so inclined would imagine his male cast tonguing each other's tonsils? He certainly did. Interested readers may perform this exercise at home: Choose Sora or Roxas, whichever you prefer. Replay the game, or consult a script, and note each on-screen display of affection for your chosen character's female love interest (Kairi or Namine, respectively.) Then go back, and do the same thing for Riku or Axel, and compare the two lists. Your results are not coincidence. Nomura is trying to have it both ways. Er, so to speak.
Are the characters “really” gay, in their creator's personal conception of them? Only Nomura himself could tell you, and if asked he would probably lie. But you may find it significant that he has gone as far as he could possibly be allowed to go with a game that also features Mickey Mouse.
There. That was exactly what most of you probably wanted to hear, O readers, despite the angry emails I'll be getting from the rest of you. In any case, it was the truth as I see it on a topic you feel is important. I could have written a rant about the mysterious link between Roxas and Ven, or presented wild hypotheses regarding the nature of the dark beach. But those can wait for another day.
Speculation is a thankless job. I knew that when I started.