I often wish that there’d been an official orchestrated/vocal Earthbound album like the beautiful Mother 1 album:
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Mother is a child’s view of childhood.
Mother 2 is an adult’s view of childhood.
Mother 3 is an adult’s view of an adult’s view of childhood.
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well it’s probably because they are egregious
i mean i’m sure there’s a legit reason that Itoi and co. made these decisions in service of a profound goal, but i think maaaaaybe trying to justify these egregious elements of the work is a bit ignorant of the real-life people who are actually feeling cartoonized by the work and have a relationship with those elements of it that are seperate from yours.
Like, the magypsies and fassad/yakuba are not reedemable, really. It doesn’t make Mother 3 bad. it just makes it complicated, and maybe a bit mean
For sure. I’d include the Magicant theme in this as well. I don’t know what happened, but the Mother 2 Magicant theme isn’t nearly as good.
Like I said, I have no actual evidence for it so as it stands to an anglo audience it is basically indefensible, but when a thoughtful person uses such a cartoon version of a stereotype it seems a lot more immediately logical to me to try to figure out what they’re trying to turn on its head than to ever in a million years actually feel stereotyped by it – leaving open an interpretation where it could be hurtful seems like it isn’t giving the reader or the author enough credit. But I know it isn’t as raw for me, at all.
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I replayed Mother 3 last year and spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what the hell Itoi was thinking when it came to the game’s depiction of queerness. The way the game handles this is obviously not good at all, but the most charitable reading I could come up with was that queerness-as-magic was meant to be a metaphor about how queer and trans folk can see beyond the strictures of society and express identities that are outside the heteronormative rules that unfortunately shape our world.
This would tie into the main thrust of the game being Lucas’s journey to find himself, develop his identity, and reshape the world in a new and better way before the forces of authoritarian patriarchy take over.
If this really is what Itoi was going for (who the heck knows), then it’s unfortunate that he chose such an offensive and hamhanded way to show it.
I’m also mostly not really qualified to speak on this so I apologize if I’m saying anything stupid here.
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Is the “evil” in mother 3 really authoritarian or patriarchal? iirc the primary evils of the story are a) technology and b) trying to reject that technology and hide in naivety.
That’s why I love it so much, it’s as much about the loss of innocence as it is reconciling with that loss.
Well, the pigmasks are certainly coded as an authoritarian fascist military force. I’ll grant you that patriarchy doesn’t tie in as clearly, but I think it is kind of wrapped up in the way Porky musters the forces of capitalism to alienate everyone in the village from each other.
Yeah OK fair cop, it’s as much technology in itself as it is technology as a corrupting force and a means to power
I kind of read the game as less about technology and more about commodification. Porky does introduce technology to the village in the form of products like the happy box, but more importantly he introduces the concept of currency. So yeah, a means to power I suppose.
The whole thing about Porky obsessing over Earthbound at the end of the game is definitely a critique of nostalgia, but I also read it as part of the larger critique of commercialism. Porky has taken Earthbound and bottled it as a commodity. He’s not just fetishizing his memories of Earthbound, he’s selling a cheap mimic of them.
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…What if Mother 3 is actually an extremely passive aggressive swipe at Super Smash Bros??
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I still feel bad about this! My intention was we actually have very strong opinions about video games and everyone else (including each other) are wrong. So I once again apologize for inspiring bad blood and would not had done it that way had I know people or yourself would have been hurt by it.
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It’s easier to critique commercialism than nostalgia though, the former is practically self evident in every minute of our lives, the latter requires you to play through sixty hours of emulated JRPGs to really appreciate
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Porky’s presence first manifests as the pigmasks blow up the forest. Why? Honestly, no reason. Then, the pigmasks turn their attention to the animals they’ve encountered: let’s make them cooler! Stronger! “Better!” All of this is a very specifically childish indulgence of power, so while it’s true that Fassad’s influence sews materialism among the Tazmily residents and the pigmasks bring about essentially a police state, I never got the impression that some of these ills were intended to be more central than others. Elder neglect, the dehumanizing nature of wage slavery, overindulgence of nostalgia: the game has a lot to say on these subjects, but they are all just symptoms of Porky’s boredom.
Years back we had a discussion about Fassad on the Gamer’s Quarter. I don’t remember what I wrote, but I think I tried to argue that Fassad was in the running for the most tragic character in the game. I can’t blame anyone for finding fault with basically every aspect of that story, though. Does Japanese also have a term roughly synonymous with “pixie” which is also a derogatory slur against those who do not adhere to heteronormative standards of masculinity?
My entire Japanese Popular Culture experience treats trans/crossdressing/homosexuality as a punchline in itself. That these things exist are incredibly funny. Like isn’t it hilarious some people would present as the opposite sex???
It isn’t malicious. I don’t think a lot of Japanese even have an opinion outside of it as a punchline. They don’t talk about and it doesn’t really exist outside of the joke that it exists.
Like the three super famous lgbtq talento are never addressed in their identity though their sexuality is always always a surface level joke.
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the main reason magypsies are irredeemable for me is that they arent just magical transvestites, theyre magical transvestites who must die for the plot to work. also one of them is implied to be a child molester (but we’re supposed to like them anyway). It’s Bad.
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This is kind of a lame post, but these are the thoughts I had when I played Earthbound recently.
For me (and maybe just for me), Earthbound is “about” Rock Culture, circa 1970. I’m not just talking about the John Lennon song “Mother,” which was released in 1970, but things like Murakami’s Hear the Wind Sing, the Beach Boys album Sunflower, Loaded, the first two RC Succession albums, and the first Modern Lovers album, which was actually recorded circa 1972 but released much later. Itoi was like 22 in 1970, so I’m sure he considers himself part of that generation. (Coincidentally, that’s how old I was the last time I played the game.)
Some of the music of that time (and the Murakami novel) seems to mourn the end of an era, not only in a cultural sense but at a personal level. I think Jonathan Richman’s music is the best example of this. There’s loads of songs on that first album that kind of deal with childhood and what it means to grow up, and the “Old World” vs. the “Modern World” (those are song titles), and in the end how both of those transitions are kind of the same thing. And of course, the song “Mother,” and the accompanying album, which I think is in part about a man moving on from his childhood.
I would even argue that Ness is a young man, portrayed as a boy for symbolic reasons–I’ve always felt that the way he gets homesick for his mom feels like a young adult kind of homesickness, if that makes any sense. But I might just feel that way because I’m a young adult now–maybe when I’m an old man, I’ll feel like Ness is an old man, and I’ll edit this post.
I think the basic framework of the plot is the story of that generation. It’s the story of a boy from a sleepy town, who leaves home and meets a girl, experiences the sights and sounds of the world, has an encounter with Eastern culture, has life-changing experiences in his own head, and conquers True Fear, all with the help of music. (Maybe it’s worth mentioning in this paragraph that one of the default character name sets in Japanese is John, Yoko, Paul, George & Ringo.) The specific plot beats are relevant to that culture as well. I think the 1950’s America stuff is in there because that’s what those kids grew up in. (“I see a 50’s apartment house/bleak in the morning sun.”) Happy Happy Village is definitely a new age, post-hippie thing, and nothing defines the end of the rock counterculture like “new age cult.” A lot of the setpieces feel like they could have belonged in a novel written during that era.
Another paragraph that I’m going to just randomly stick in here: the psychedelic elements in the game are just right for 1970. They just aren’t as big a deal to the game as people make them out to be. They feel like a backdrop, like an accepted component of a cool & balanced lifestyle at that time. Sometimes you might put a phaser on one particular guitar track but you’re not like, making hours of meandering acid freakout stuff circa 1967.
anyway listen to this stuff if you haven’t heard it before while you read my post thanks
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Did I actually say “meaningless”? Damn. Nonsensical and whatever else I could’ve called it aren’t as much of a cheap stab.
It’ll take a bit for me to collect my personal thoughts and experiences with Earthbound. An on the spot birthday gift I “politely begged” my mother to buy me, giant box w/guide, on a trip to Kmart. My friends thought it looked dumb.
There’s a lot already said here, I’ll try and give my own take away from its absurd trip. In contrast to M3 I just wanted to smear it silly.
Yes! I don’t know if you can fully assess any of the creative decisions in the Mother series until you’ve listened to Revolution 9 on repeat for like 4 hours while the Blues Brothers movie plays silently somewhere in the distance
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