Kingdom Hearts Volume 3 Review

Please note this review contains spoilers for Kingdom Hearts Volume 3!

Kingdom Hearts was a 2002 video game that quickly became a classic and has since spawned a sprawling franchise that’s equal parts epic and confusing with all the entries included. This manga adaptation by Shiro Amano began in 2003 and was initially localised and released in the west in 2005, before seeing a re-release this year in 2025, courtesy of Turnabout and Panini Manga.

This third volume of the manga covers Sora, Donald, and Goofy’s adventures to new worlds as they visit the Disney Universe versions of Hercules, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, and Peter Pan, based off their 1997, 1940, 1989, and 1953 animated adaptations.

Volume 3 picks up right where the second left off as the heroic trio find themselves at odds in the Olympic Coliseum, facing off against the three-headed defender of the Underworld, Cerberus, as unleashed by Hades, and with the help of Hercules manage to defeat the monstrous foe, and prove their worth as fighters in the process, all whilst locating and sealing another Keyhole. Cloud even acknowledges their achievement and gifts Sora with a Gummi Crystal.

Before being able to figure out quite why, their voyage is interrupted as the Gummi Ship is swallowed whole, and by none other than Monstro, the giant Sperm Whale from the world and story of Disney’s Pinocchio, following the latter part of that tale, wherein Pinocchio and his father/maker Geppetto get swallowed up and have to form an escape plan. Naturally the Heartless are also here and kidnap the wooden boy, with Riku also involved as he and Sora have another confrontation, with the former now more convinced that only he can save Kairi, with Maleficent’s influence taking further hold. Naturally, the Heartless are defeated and Monstro ejects the Gummi Ship nostril-first into the depths, where another familiar Disney world dwells in Atlantica.

From here we get a truncated version of The Little Mermaid of sorts, with Princess Ariel coming under attack from the Heartless, and her overprotective father King Triton forbidding her from venturing out again, mistrusting our heroes and destroying her collection of objects from the surface – the subject of her desires to venture to land. Not only that but Ariel’s desires become the target for manipulating by the cunning Great Witch of the Sea, Ursula, stealing King Triton’s Trident to try and make her dreams come true. Much like the game, our heroes take chase and Ursula becomes a monstrous Kraken-like being, though soon gets vanquished (with less button-mashing in this adaptation!) with Ariel and her father reconciling their differences, and another Keyhole is then sealed to bring peace to Atlantica. Whilst it might seem like a small summary, the manga continues at pace, and as I recall this was a relatively short world in the game as well.

The following chapter slows down the action in favour of the trio and us as readers being imparted with more information on Ansem the Wise, whose notes have been gradually assembled throughout the journey. We learn that he discovered the Heartless one day and opted to study their existence, inventing a machine which could create Artificial Heartless beings in the process. This method, of creating a heart from nothing is tethered to Maleficent’s actions so far, exploiting the device to kidnap princesses from faraway worlds and take them to Hollow Bastion where Maleficent resides. Naturally, just as details are getting juicy, the Gummi Ship is rammed by a large pirate ship, where Riku and Sora are once again reunited, but this time Riku has allied himself with the foppish yet threatening Captain Hook within the Disney imagining of Neverland.

Once again, Sora is unable to free a comatose Kairi from Riku’s grip, and the trio are imprisoned beneath the deck by the Heartless working with Hook and Smee, his hopeless boatswain. Here they meet Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, who are trying to save Wendy, their friend (or rival in the latter’s case) who has also been taken by the Heartless. Peter Pan, a magical boy, is able to fly and tries to gift our heroes with the same abilities (leading to a humorous splat at Donald’s expense). In the process of trying to free Wendy, Tinkerbell gets imprisoned and Sora confronts a shadowy doppelganger, as Hook makes a heroic exit (ergo: he runs like the wind, pursued by the very same ticking Crocodile that took his hand).

With a little help our heroes are finally able to use their newly gifted flying abilities and face off against the remaining Heartless and with victory at hand, discover yet another keyhole within the iconic Clock Tower from the Disney feature, as Volume 3 concludes with Peter Pan hoping his new friends will visit Neverland again one day.

This third volume once again retells the story of the video game and its respective forays into iconic Disney worlds at a pace, and whilst some arcs fare better than others this time around (the Neverland segment could have especially done with an extra chapter) I still found this to overall be a fun read, and getting more details and reasonings behind the Heartless and their existence within this universe has been solidly retold thus far.

Translation for Kingdom Hearts Volume 3 has been carried out by Alethea and Athena Nibley and it is solid here. The volume also includes some nice extras like several colour pages and some mini comedy-focused comics aka “Kingdom Bites”. It is also worth mentioning that this manga reads front-to-back like a typical western comic/graphic novel as opposed to back-to-front like a typical manga is presented. Volume 4 is due out in April.

Overall, Kingdom Hearts Volume 3 simultaneously feels like the strongest and weakest volume so far, pacing itself a tad too quickly in specific arcs but also retaining personal reader interest through lore and world building as the origins of the Heartless, as well as Maleficent’s plans are fleshed out and expanded. I look forward to the next volume to hopefully showcase this further!

Our review copy from Panini was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).