Pure Heart

“Hey look, your pure heart thing got broken. Looks like pure hearts can't handle the end of the world. Heh. What the hey, I'll swipe it just for kicks.”

—Mr. L, Super Paper Mario

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Count Bleck surrounded by all eight Pure Hearts.

The Pure Hearts are eight sacred hearts created by the Tribe of Ancients to save the world from the Chaos Heart. The Pure Hearts seem to be Super Paper Mario's equivalent of Paper Mario's Star Spirits, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's Crystal Stars, or Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2's Grand Stars. Mario gets one of these from Merlon before the player even controls him in the beginning of the game and must find the other seven of these throughout his adventure to form the Purity Heart. The Pure Hearts are collected in the order of the colours of the rainbow and create doors of their colour when placed in a Heart Pillar, with the exception of the final, white Pure Heart (which is formed when all the colors of the rainbow are mixed together), which causes the large black door to Castle Bleck to appear.

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A Pure Heart given to Mario by Merlon.

The Pure Hearts are great treasures created by the Ancients. They supposedly hold great power. The source of power in these Pure Hearts are the power of love itself (parent, smitten, etc.). The Ancients researched love, believing it to be the universe's only salvation. They created the Pure Hearts as the embodiment of love. Hopefully, their combined brilliance would negate the destruction of the Chaos Heart, a feat which it ended up successfully performing. Mario and his team of heroes must find all of the Pure Hearts to destroy the Chaos Heart. In the end the hearts defeat Count Bleck (maybe), Dimentio and The Void.
Here are all eight locations of the Pure Hearts:

1. Red: Kept by Merlon in Flipside and given to Mario when he begins his journey.
2. Orange: Guarded by Fracktail deep within the Yold Ruins in Lineland but the dragon went out of control. The Pure Heart was given to Mario by Merlumina. It seems to represent love.
3. Yellow: Kept by Merlee in Gloam Valley. It may be a symbol of faith.
4. Green: Emerged in the Bitlands's Fort Francis after Mario rescues Tippi. The heart was gained by trust.
5. Blue: Hidden by the ancient Squirpians in the Whoa Zone somewhere in Outer Space. The party fought Luigi who is Mr L.
6. Indigo: Kept by the Floro Sapiens in the Land of the Cragnons.
7. Purple: Kept by King Sammer in Sammer's Kingdom. It was severely weakened by The Void, to the point of being destroyed, but is later repowered by Queen Jaydes.
8. White: Personified as a Nimbi named Luvbi. Her foster parents are Grambi of the Overthere and Queen Jaydes of the Underwhere. After the Battle against Bonechill the heart was restored to its true form.

All Pure Hearts are drawn by their own power toward those strong with love, likely due to their aforementioned love-powered creation. It is also interesting to note that Pure Hearts may be sapient, as the Luvbi character spoken of above actually managed to remember being a Pure Heart when her true being as a Pure Heart was revealed to her after a prolonged amount of time in which she thought she was born a Nimbi.