Kirby is a young Star Warrior legendary enough to have earned the title "Kirby of the Stars"—though that's ironic, since he's technically a failed creation of Nightmare. Nobody really knows how he ended up in the starship that crash-landed on Pop Star, but the best guess is that his ship's monster-detection system picked up on Dedede's creatures and woke him up roughly 200 years ahead of schedule. This early awakening explains why he's still basically a baby.
Being a baby doesn't stop him from fighting hard for his friends. In battle, he's surprisingly skilled, though he definitely needs backup sometimes. Outside of combat, he's like any other kid—loves to play, loves to sleep, and has an appetite that seems borderline impossible. He gets fascinated by random everyday stuff and has a genuinely kind heart. He'll help people out of nowhere, and he's even shown a softer, almost maternal side occasionally.
As for talking: Kirby mostly just says "poyo," which he delivers with enough variation and expression that Meta Knight and Kine seem to understand him just fine. Everyone else has to read his body language and tone. He occasionally switches to actual words—"suika" (watermelon) is a favorite—or mimics things people say around him. He also loves announcing his copy abilities and attack names out loud. The English dub cuts a lot of this out, but Kirby keeps his original Japanese voice, making him basically the only character who does that (it's a Pikachu situation).
Here's the thing though: Kirby actually understands language perfectly well. He just doesn't feel like speaking most of the time, even though he's capable of it. Meta Knight confirmed that Kirby was supposed to sleep for those full 200 years—waking up early left him underdeveloped and without proper training. Creator Masahiro Sakurai made a deliberate choice to keep Kirby nonverbal because characters who don't talk tend to come across as more likable and easier for people to connect with.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
