We're back again with another halloween edition of AC Town Tours. Its like MTV's Cribs but 100% more creep and 100% less bling. At least this time. Dream walk with me, peeps.
We're heading out to the japanese town of Hitokui (cannibalism OH JOY), where you walk among some truly disturbed beings...and I don't mean the animals.
Each home in Hitokui concerns a different "story" if you will, so unlike last week's Sachi Panda, or our first tour in Diablu, you won't find really a strong thread connecting these cribs of terror, but the homes themselves all have a continuous story line within all their own rooms.
When you first wake in Hitokui, you'll not only find a MASSIVE town tree (implying a long lived town), you'll also notice its raining. By the tree, you'll find an assortment of clothing and tools, including a toy hammer and a broken umbrella. There are about 2 outfits. The first is a security or police officer's outfit, with slacks, the top and some CHP glasses and the hat. The other outfit is a bridal package: a veil and the cake dress. Guess which I chose?
No, not the clown outfit, you nuts.
I'm a june bride!
If you're wondering what kinda town you're in for, sometimes the flag will give you a fair clue....
The houses of the damned are pretty close to each other here. So I checked the home of Kodzu (a very unusual name, even by Japanese standards, I assume) first. Her home's right above town square, the top left. Her outfits a little like a nun's outfit, with a cross emblazoned on the front. But the back of it is a little unusual...it looks like a big red slash mark across her back.
"My back hurts" is a translation. NO KIDDING.
Odd wound aside, I checked into the cozy home, with its barbed wire fence and mason stone exterior. Inside the first floor is a really good interpretation of a church, with a huge organ, baptismal font/holy water font, pews, and an altar. K.K. Chorale plays in the background, which is appropriate organ music for a church. I figure dressing in the bride's outfit was a good omen. Or at least i chose the right house to visit first.
The organ actually is in front of the door to the back room, which leads to
a garden/cemetery. Nice use of the Mossy Carpet, which looks like a moss covered walkway with stones embedded within. Headstones from the Creepy Set (gifted from Jack on Halloween), white roses, candles, the headless Valiant Statue, and coffins (also from the Creepy Set) all make a perfect scene. Also, the stained glass window has been edited for the cross, which looks really nice too. Opening the coffins, of course, produces a perfect comment from your player character.
Moving along into the left hand ground floor room is an unusual bedroom. It looks like a very dilapidated room with a bed, an old tv, and a few other amenities scattered about. There's a single wreath above the door, and a doghouse that issues a dog growling when you interact with it. With poor wallpaper, dirty floor and the moldy shirt pattern mapped to the bedsheets, the table cloths and a cushion, it gives the sense of living in squalor, the radio in the back lacks music so its silent. The only sounds are the chirping bird in the cage and the endless ticking clock, in addition to the lights being off.
The right hand room is a cleverly done confessional room. On one side, there's a vase of flowers and a chair, with a partition whose picture has been mapped with a confessional screen. The other side has a desk, a candle and some letters. You can sit on either side, choosing to be the confessor or the listening priest. This is by far one of the more interesting rooms I've seen made with game assets, so I felt a lot of work went into this home, as well as the entire town.
The basement is less inviting, being the smallest size, and barely containing a washer, a tub, a shower, and a screen. The lights are, like in most of the rooms, off, so you can barely see behind, where a grate seems to be broken, opening into a scary and pitch black hole. Behind the screen?
Not surprisingly, just a bucket and an axe.
Probably not the most surprising dark secret in a church, but its also not surprising in this town.
But you think this is bad, check out the upstairs room.
The ritual room, complete with a bloodied handprint on a pentagram, and a sacrifice, namely a bird whose been decapitated. There's another in the cage, chirping about without a care in the world.... Again, probably not the most surprising dark secret you'd find in a church.
I do want to point out the amazing pattern drawing though. You'll find that Hitokui's patterns for the various crazy shit you'll see are pretty top notch and best of all, you'll find Wendell wandering about if you look, peddling the bloody cushions, guillotines, and batshit extreme ofuda wallpaper, in addition to body parts and creepy portraits.
Oh yes. You ain't nothin' yet. B-b-b-baby, you ain't seen n-n-n-nothing yet.
Let's take leave of Kodzu's house and visit the house next door, to the right and just above town square. It belongs to an eyepatch wearing chef (due to his outfit), Edogein.
....Edogein?
Edo. ...Ed....
Gein.
......
Oh fuck.
A rough translation would be "How about this delicious meat?". DA FUQ.
Stop on into Edogein's House of Sweets! For lunch, dinner, or just cafe, you can be sure your meals will be sumptuous and delicious, and service is always with a smile. Seriously, guys. I think we know where this house is going.
The radio plays K.K. Bossa, which is pleasant digesting music.
The back room is the kitchen, where plenty of pots are a-bubblin', and various ingredients and appliances are strewn about. In this game, you can get items like butter or flour, which are key items that can only be obtained and used during Thanksgiving, where you help Franklin the turkey make dinner for the village.
Yeah, you don't try to eat him in this game. How the times have changed!
The right hand room is the restroom, with a nice clean sink, and a partition that divides the "men's" side from the "women's" side; aka, urinals on one side, and a toilet on the other.
The partition appears to have a picture of a dress or something on it...I still can't figure out what it is, but its nicely done as far as I can tell.
Weird aside: if you dream walk or visit a lot of peoples's towns, they usually put a kitchen in the left hand ground floor room, and a bathroom on the right hand (this home, however, has a kitchen in the back which is the second most likely place to have one). I wonder if its a good feng shui?
Anyway. Left hand room is really small and simple. A couch with a table and a fruit basket and chocolate fountain. Its sparsely decorated, so I wonder what its function is. Waiting room? Break room for the workers? Let's head over to the top room.
Kee-ripes. Its a total wreck, with most of the Sloppy Series (a rare series to collect as you must obtain it from neighbors who have the pieces instead of buying them from a shop), a hotplate with okonomiyaki, and K.K. Metal blasting on the stereo. A rather stark contrast to the rest of the house, but of course we got one place left to check.
I'm taking bets on who thinks its a kill floor. Any takers?
Anyone?
Yeah. I had the same feeling too.
Whelp. There you are. Edogein's basement is where he's got his meat all lined up (never mind the skeleton), chopped up, and stored in freezers or cooked up right away in bbqs, stoves, or smoking in a smoker as sausages. But I have to say...check out the cushion made to look like a mutilated torso. Gory as it is...you have to admit, its pretty well done.
Well done. Get it?
.....
No shit, right?
Oh, I'd like to point out that there's a pair of shoes over here, plus a couple of baby cradles.
K.K. Parade plays on the radio, which is a bouncy, children's show-like tune that really brings the whole room together.
Its sort of like Baby's First Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Edogein's place is a hoot. Let's check out the lower house, close to the town square. Moving down from the town tree, keeping to the right, you'll find a small forest of bamboo, and some interesting features like a japanese bell that gongs when you click it, and a zen garden.
"Who is behind you?" is a translation to her line. Its a lot like the Kagome Kagome game from Fatal Frame.
This home belongs to Sarii, who wanders about town in all black with a face mask. She doesn't seem to have an outfit that says much about the interior of her home, so we'll have to take a look inside and under the hood.
Its got an old school japanese feel, with most of the japanese set laid out and 2 crickets in cages by the door. King K.K. plays, which has an old, kagura dancing feel to it.
In the back, above the door to the back room, is a tv mounted display and paper lanterns with an odd emblem on them. The tv, because of the time the town was uploaded, plays only white noise, unless you've been there an hour and it changes to the station colors.
The back room is full of dolls in the back, and a samurai suit with a sword that floats if you click it, and offerings of fruit. There's a theremin in the back that starts wailing when you enter.
In front of the dolls are candles, some lit, some not, and the walls are patterned with shimenawa (straw rope), and bloody shide (the folded paper zigzags that sometimes accompany shimenawa).
Also, the three japanese masks you can get leer at you from the back wall. @_@ Bloody shide can never bode well....just as Kirie.
The left hand room is what looks to be a traditional japanese funeral wake, with cushions in rows, flowers (white lilies), incense and lanterns. There's also a guest book, and little round signs in the back.
What's most disturbing is the traditional portrait they usually have at a funeral, which is part of the little shrine in the back for paying respects.
A little girl with bleeding eyes and a grey kimono.
The right hand room houses a bonfire and a mannequin that is dressed in what appears to be monk's clothing. The wallpaper is covered in ofuda, which really doesn't bode well so far. Reminds me of the first episode of Yamishibai.
But the back of the room has a little offering table in front of another picture portrait. Though this one is a little different than the funeral room.
Not by much though. @_@
Upstairs is a room with a mannequin and a spinning wheel. 4 closets with 4 stacks of incense in front and another sewing machine.
I'm not sure what's going on here, but note the wallpaper is completely COVERED in ofuda here.
Maybe a spinning/sewing ritual??
The basement's bog standard for SUPER CREEPY, where a hinamatsuri stand (a set of dolls that are traditionally for a girl for Girls' Day, and each doll represents a member of old japanese court). Bloody handprints on the wall, and a well.
Here's an alternate view. Something weird's going on in Sarii's place.
I checked out a couple neighbors in Hitokui, and they're actually kinda fitting. There's a Coco here, whose a bunny made in the image of a Gyroid, or haniwa doll (haniwa dolls are traditionally found in places where people have been buried as funerary items by the way....). Of course, Lucky's in this town, and he's gotta bit red on him. Cobb is a pig who's wearing a rather telling shirt pattern and has pretty weird furniture; he has the look of a mad scientist, which plays into our last house.
Speaking of, it belongs to Mayor Zora, whose got a rather unusual house plan too. Nearby are a path with blood platters on it, an oil rig, and even a signboard you can stick your face through with a bloody guillotine. The ambient light in some of the rooms, red, shows through the windows of the castle of freaks.
No. Seriously.
Here's the mayor now, with bandages all over his head, and a bloody coat. Set up like a sumptuous castle-hostpital, the front room is a reception area with opulent furniture, decadent decoration and a check in with an eye-patch wearing nurse in the back. K.K. Waltz plays in the room.
Does he have some kind, warm words for the wear traveller, who's come in from the rain?
"Nigasanai...hihi...hihihi..." Roughly I think that translates out to "You will not escape/get away, hee hee...heeheehee."
WELL THEN.
The left hand room is the clinic, as it were. There's bloody bandages in the back, but other than that, the rest of the room is full of partition screens and hospital beds and IV drip stands.
There's a TV (white noise of colors, depending on the time you enter), and the ever present sound of rain (which you can hear in almost all rooms of a home when its raining).
The back room is the lab, where it looks like a doctor's office, complete with a computer, examination equipment and medicine. But in the back, you'll notice things like weird machines and a metroid in a bottle. Pondering plays in the background, which sounds a little unsettling.
There's an EKG graph on one LED display and japanese characters on another. A cushion has been mapped with a pattern that makes it look like a bag of donor blood. But check out THIS little nightmare in the very corner (you'll have to turn the camera to see it).
Mother of God what the hell is that mutated thing down there. >_> I used to think the visible man (the anatomy model with its guts in plain sight) was creepy in the game, but this takes the cake. Looks like Doc Zora's got some pet projects going on in his clinic.
The right hand room houses his little "pets". Now, players of Animal Crossing will find that after years of playing, you end up recognizing the myriad of life from fish to bugs in real life...though to fit in the game, sometimes sizes are shifted to be smaller or bigger for sight ease. That said, HOLY MOTHER OF COD, oarfish are monsters. AND THAT CRAB, HOLY SHIT. With all the barrels of unlabeled evil, there's an implication Doc's got a menagerie of freaks to experiment on.
Upstairs we get a lil inkling of that. In a children's room that's make Damien go into a fit of giggles, the upstairs room is paved in red on red on red. Bloody bear shirt, bloody walls, bloody child print on the bed, the list goes on in the world's creepiest nursery. Hypno K.K., now going down as K.K.'s most unsettling song, plays as you explore the room, and maybe find an axe or a blood pack. If you think this room was weird, you gotta head downstairs to--what else?--the basement.
For a change of pace, no its not a kill floor. What it looks to be is actually a prison. Cast in sickly pink light, the back half of the room is rendered inaccessible by way of pillars. Bones are scattered in and around both halves, and you;re flanked by bat-winged Valiant Statues. But why the division? What can possibly need to be on the other side of thick pillars?
A mutant werewolf girl perhaps? Though she has a somewhat nice accommodations, it doesn't change the fact she's imprisoned on the other side. She has food, some paints and a doll cradle to amuse herself with as well as a bath made of a Merlion and a trough; K.K. Lullaby plays in the background, which is known for being calming, until the end, where the notes reverse themselves creepily. Maybe she's an experiment of Doc Zora's, or maybe she's there to be cared for until he finds a cure, even if he has to mutilate and experiment on every living thing he comes across, either way, the basement room's a pretty pink prison.
Itching to check out Zora's Clinic, have a bite at Chef Edogein's, take in the traditional customs at Sarii's or pay your respects at Kodzu's Church? Give Luna the dream code below and whisk yourself away to a rather unsettling dream walk. You'll thank me.
Don't forget your umbrella!
Dio (10/28/13)
Animal Crossing, characters, images and game belong to Nintendo. Screencapped by me.