Omocat’s Comforting Fantasies

When you had been on Tumblr within the mid-2010s, you most likely noticed this comedian:

Omocat’s Fairly Boy hits just about each Tumblr candy spot there may be: 1) cute, 2) manga, 3) violence, 4) homosexual. It is the story of an unnamed Jock who bullies the titular Fairly Boy after which, slowly, falls in love with him. The story climaxes when Jock saves Fairly Boy from homophobic violence, symbolically overcoming his personal bigotry. The 2 dwell fortunately ever after: they get married, undertake a baby, and dwell their lives peacefully till Fairly Boy, nonetheless fairly as ever, passes away with a smile on his face.

Fairly Boy is all the time smiling. Fairly Boy is forgiving. Fairly Boy is good. Fairly Boy’s magnificence does the speaking for him, implying his advantage with out detailing it – it means we will see Fairly Boy studying an express BL manga with out ascribing to him the impurity of sexual ideas. We all know nothing about Fairly Boy besides that he’s fairly, that he’s a boy, and that he’s homosexual. He’s the clean canvas onto which Jock’s character arc is projected.

I don’t imply this as a destructive per se. Fairly Boy is a brief comedian, so there isn’t numerous area to attract out a posh narrative. Its storytelling is visually economical and emotionally interesting. The web page on which Fairly Boy gazes at Jock taking part in soccer, and Jock blushes as he realizes he’s being watched, is what falling in love appears like – a pointy, distilled second of thrilling visibility.

In different phrases, Fairly Boy is a triumph of aesthetics over character and plot. Its story is acquainted and its characters are predictable, however its execution is interesting. Its sudden shocks of violence and sexuality lend it a frivolously transgressive edge, nevertheless it’s extra curious about offering consolation fairly than psychological depth.

Virtually every part I’ve mentioned to this point may describe Omori, Omocat’s 2021 RPG.

Not by way of plot, thoughts you – Omori isn’t curious about romantic love. As an alternative, the sport makes an attempt to inform a posh story about psychological well being. You’ll break up your time in Omori between Sunny’s imagined world – a unusual, frivolously sinister land known as Headspace – and his real-world residence in Faraway City. Every morning, you’ll get up in Sunny’s mattress. Every evening, you’ll shut your eyes and dream of Headspace.

A two-worlds gimmick is a basic gaming trope, and Omori’s use of it’s sensible. Headspace and Faraway City resemble one another sufficient that the variations really feel significant. You’ll discover that Sunny seems in Headspace as an impassive baby named Omori, and that each one of Sunny’s associates and acquaintances in Headspace have older counterparts in Faraway City too. All of them, that’s, apart from one: Sunny’s older sister, Mari.

In Headspace, you’ll discover Mari stationed on picnic blankets all through the world, appearing as the sport’s save level. She is all the time sort, all the time is aware of the appropriate factor to say, and is all the time geared up with scrumptious snacks. Her shallow characterization and welcoming presence make her Omori’s closest analogue to Fairly Boy, with one main distinction: Mari is useless.

Within the recreation’s first half, we’re informed that Mari died by suicide. As Sunny reconnects along with his previous good friend group in Faraway City, you see that her sudden passing splintered their relationships, leaving them with lingering trauma and grief. This felt actual and sensitively rendered, and Sunny’s consequent retreat into Headspace made sense. Characters in Headspace are one-dimensional by design; we don’t see them as they’re, however as Sunny needs them to be, primarily based on his idealized reminiscences. Whereas Headspace will be grotesque, it doesn’t problem Sunny’s notion of himself.

That is expressed by Headspace’s concentrate on RPG gameplay. The standard explore-battle-explore rhythm of those sequences feels hypnotic and soothing. As in any RPG, the repetitive act of grinding and experience-gaining is a playable metaphor for the social gathering’s rising reference to one another. However these are usually not actual characters, nor are they actually expressions of Sunny’s character. They’re figments of his creativeness, created particularly to consolation him. We combine ourselves with the side of Sunny’s thoughts that exists to coddle and reassure, to guard him from his uncomfortable emotions.

Whereas this dynamic lends the sport’s horror sequences a jarring edge, it additionally implies that its scarier moments register because the exception, as an alternative of the norm. You’ll spend far more time in Omori combating turnip-shaped enemies and pursuing sidequests than you’ll uncovering the mysteries of Sunny’s psyche or reeling from its scares. The sport’s cozy RPG programs pressure noticeably in opposition to the urgency required of horror.

However for many of the recreation, I didn’t thoughts. When the sport looks like it’s about Sunny’s grief and anger in direction of Mari, it feels just like the time spent in his thoughts is warranted. He must make peace with these emotions to return to the world, however that course of can be uncomfortable and time-consuming; it is sensible that he would dawdle inside his personal fantasies. However then the sport throws in its remaining plot twist and the entire expertise falls aside.

You see, Mari didn’t truly die from suicide. As an alternative, Sunny by chance killed her by pushing her down the steps within the warmth of an argument. Basil, who witnessed the incident, got here up with the thought to stage the demise as a suicide by hanging her physique from a tree in Sunny’s yard. Sunny’s withdrawal from his associates wasn’t simply due to his grief, however due to his guilt.

This twist not solely strains credulity, nevertheless it fully reframes the remainder of the sport. We’re now not taking part in as a lonely boy who needs to reconnect along with his associates as a result of he misses them, however as a lonely boy whose need to rekindle his friendships comes from an excessive want for redemption and salvation. It makes our actions within the recreation really feel extremely egocentric.

To make this twist workable, Omori manipulates our notion of Sunny with ruthless effectivity. We spend many of the recreation because the impassive, childlike persona Omori, who exists inside an imagined world that was particularly created to guard Sunny from the reality, and whose youth makes the scarier components of the sport really feel extra harmful.

The horror segments are cordoned off from the RPG segments. When the sport needs to scare us, it takes management away from us, as if the horror is an exterior presence fairly than an intrinsic a part of Sunny’s every day expertise. And in contrast to many video games that discover related psychological themes, like Silent Hill 2 or Signalis, Omori is an accessible and simply performed expertise. It would not categorical its battle by gameplay programs, however by imagery and aesthetics. These strategies protect Sunny’s sense of innocence and victimhood. So once we develop connected to Sunny, it’s not regardless of the tragedy in his previous. It’s as a result of the sport is mendacity to us about who he’s and what he is completed.

And by spending time with Sunny’s associates through the real-world segments in Faraway City, we’re in flip mendacity to them. After the ultimate boss battle, if we’ve achieved the True ending of the sport, Sunny wakes up and faces his associates, saying “I’ve to let you know one thing.” Earlier than we will see their reactions, the sport cuts to credit, soundtracked by an upbeat chiptune monitor. The precise reality and its repercussions do not matter; the one factor that issues is our means to talk it as if confession and forgiveness are the identical issues.

That’s to not say that these emotionally discordant notes don’t have any worth, simply that the sport solely appears partially conscious of its personal contradictions. There’s a way that Sunny’s struggling cancels out the harm that his actions brought on, and that by accepting his previous, he frees himself from his struggling and guilt.

The sport has labored so laborious to infantilize Sunny that there’s no area to meaningfully reckon with how his actions have affected the opposite folks in his life – actually, as the sport cuts to credit earlier than we will see his associates’ responses. By extension, we’re robbed of significant role-playing alternatives. We will’t play as a model of Sunny who makes an attempt to have interaction along with his previous actually as he strikes ahead, nor can we think about a distinct model of Sunny who’s been warped by his actions. Sunny’s previous is introduced as one thing that passively occurred to him fairly than a sequence of occasions during which his selections mattered.

In its approach, it is a comforting fantasy. It releases Sunny from the burdens of guilt and disgrace, as a result of throughout the ethical schematic of the sport, he is already skilled sufficient ache – much like Fairly Boy, during which Jock’s determination to place himself in danger cancels out his homophobia. It’s not that Sunny’s determination to face the reality is a nasty one, and it’s not that he ought to dwell in disgrace for the remainder of his life, it’s that forgiveness is one thing given as a present, not one thing we will earn by struggling sufficient.

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