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All right, Lunies, its time for the piece de resistance, the cream of the crop, the end all-be all of creepy towns. Infamous for being one of the premier creepy Animal Crossing: New Leaf dream walking towns, its designed with every detail down to even your path from start to finish, from the villager houses to the patterns and the homes and rooms, Aika Village--or perhaps more accurately Aika's Village--is a truly unique experience in NL.
For those of you just joining the tours, please take time to check out the articles dedicated to Diablu, Sachi Panda, and Hitokui (or as I like to call them Castle in the Woods, Druggie's Paradise, and Hell on Earth).
Welcome to Aika. Kiss Luna goodbye, this is the last time you'll see something comforting. You awake in a sea of white noise, literally. Next to you is a present.
Go on. Open it. You know you wanna.
A cute little dolly. If you've never seen the item, you will soon. You'll be VERY FAMILIAR with it soon.
But besides that, take a little time to check out your surroundings. The white noise tiles are extensive here. They cover the entirety of the town square, and more. You're also surrounded by these figure statues, which are all over the town. Here, they're arranged rather nicely.
You'll notice how sparse the entire place is, including the town tree, if you noticed it at top. Its not huge, like other towns we've visited. Tree size I believe is due to play time, so its possible the entire town was constructed rather quickly, then uploaded soon after.
Most towns we've visited don't have a set home order to visit, but Aika does. In fact you can only visit the homes in the order as intended as the river cuts off the bottom half and the only access to the second part is in the upper right part of the town. But that's for later. Let's visit the first home on the map, directly above you, amid a beautiful garden of carnations: red, pink, and white. Carnations were introduced in City Folk, where red ones come from Father's Day and pinks come from Mother's Day (they're sent from your parents). By breeding them, you produce white carnations. Its useful to note this connection of a family: red (father) and pink (mother) make white (the child color). Amid the garden is an orchard of perfect peaches. This garden orchard extends across the entire top set of acres of the map. The white carnations are situated at the front of the house (though you'll find some scattered around the garden). More statues appear all over here, and a pair of villager homes.
Here's Aika. This village is unique in that all the player homes all belong to essentially the same "character", Aika. They're all named and dressed the same, with a red hat, brown hair, a Jingle Tee, red polka dot skirt, and red shoes.
Translated (the little japanese I DO know XD;;;), she says "Okaasan daisuki", which translates as "Mother, I love you." All the Aika's utter the phrase, albeit eventually not the same way.
Inside Home 1 is a cheerful scene (so to speak). The mannequin dressed as Aika obviously stands for her, and the other 2 are her parents, and they're throwing her a birthday party. There's a room in the back, but its blocked by a dresser. Take note of this for later. The home looks and feels home-y, with bright lighting and the usual implements of a kitchen. The only unsettling part is the stereo near the front, which plays Hypno K.K. (side note: the video here on youtube, links to a pic of the house, so by now, you'll associate the song with creepy towns).
Upstairs is a children's bedroom, full of toys; a nutcracker, a bear and a wobbelina (even a pacifier). A CD player plays Hypno K.K. so the unsettling music follows you even upstairs. There are 3 canvases with pictures presumably drawn by Aika: a picture of Mommy, a picture of the happy family, and a dog with a dog house. Take note of this room too, as you'll refer to it later on in town. The merry-go-round toy in the back is spinning incessantly. Dolly's here too, sitting next to them contentedly.
ORRRRRRRR IS SHE.
Moving on.
Exiting her house, follow the garden of flowers up to the upper right of the map, along the river until you get to the only bridge. The flowers eventually end and in the very corner, you might notice a lost mitten sitting alone.
You've entered the labyrinth. Here, is a maze made with not only shrubs, but its also riddled with holes you must kick in to pass through (or rebury with a shovel). Scattered in sometimes hard to see places are numerous pitfalls.
Some of the stars actually are pitfalls, and others are merely just buried items like candy or balloons. The labyrinth encompasses the entire lower right quadrant of the village, making navigation extremely tricky or tedious. There's a fortune cookie that foretells danger if you wear a mask outside--its a reference to Majora's Mask, as that fortune is the winning prize ticket for that item. Interesting.
UGH. STUPID PITFALLS.
My recommendation is to head as far left, following the river, as possible and kicking in the holes as you go to get through the hedge maze. Feel free to eat the candy and cake strewn about the maze. Keep on heading along the river til you find the next home on your make. Nearby it, if you move as far south as the cliff before the beach, you'll find a graveyard with enough graves for the villagers....
Aika appears in front of home 2. Its a small little cottage, and she repeats her other phrase "Okaasan daisuki". But what's interesting to note is that she has mixed her hiragana and katakana in her sentence. Its beginning to change. In addition, her name also has changed a little: the characters in her name appear in different sizes than it was in the first home/PC, perhaps playing with capitalization (though I wasn't aware you could in this game with the katakana/hiragana).
Home 2 is my favorite. Its built like a maze, not unlike the one you had to go through to get here. The room is pitch black, save for the numerous exit signs on the walls, and the LED signs scattered all around the room. You can't walk through the room normally, because you're blocked by cushions that have been reupholstered in black to make them nearly invisible in the dark room. There are pink stool chairs all around the room and in the back is a room that's your goal to get to.
What you need to do to get to the back is sit in the chairs and rotate yourself until you can hop off, find a clear path to walk and hop into another chair. Its an ingenious room made with game assets, which is something I haven't seen before in all my years of playing Animal Crossing. You move in a zig zag sort of path, but I won't get too much more specific because its really fun to navigate through the maze. Moonlight pours in through the windows, which gives this room a nice touch. Also what I loved about this home was that it plays K.K. Synth, which is a really good new song in NL.
The back room is an eerie sight.
Numerous toys are all facing the back wall, turned away from you in a pitch dark room. Dolly's in the row closest to you. What reason do these toys have to face away from the wall??
How about a pair of creepy, staring eyes?
Upstairs is an interesting sight. 2 statues (Michaelangelo's David and a fake long-haired Venus de Milo), a perfect apple and a small bobblehead of a a white snake amid a flowery field and a clear blue sky. K.K. Chorale plays in the background. Its a pretty obvious Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden reference, down to the snake. Its one of the more obvious allusions, while the other symbolism can sometimes be more oblique.
Downstairs is a rather interesting affair. Dolly's got a doll banquet, with a table brimming with foods, and festive wall paper. In the back is a radio that plays K.K. Ragtime, and a huge cake. It looks to be a celebration of somesort, which will seem even more sinister as we go on. This home here is different from the first home (and the last, but more on that later); it concerns the toys and the doll more than anything else. The maze almost prevents you from getting to the staring room, so perhaps its a way for the dolls to hide from something.
Exit this home and make your way to the left, as you pass through the beginnings of a wasteland full of half grown bamboo, weeds, dead trees, rotten turnips and more fountains. Keep towards the coastline cliff and you'll find the third home. There's a definite division between the rotten turnip "forest" and the barren wasteland. Also note the fact that the town was uploaded in the fall: the grasses are turned brown. That's just an example of how much thought went into the town to make it look the way it does.
This home is much more dilapidated from the outside with rusting corrugated aluminum and a rather rustic looking outside fence. This home has only one side of the home expanded, as you can see on the right. Sometimes you'll find this house's Aika inside, which can be troublesome (you'll see why in a second). The lights are on, and its surrounded by weeds.
Her name has changed a little again (only the ka is "capitalized", rather than just the "i" from before). Her speak is corrupted now, though you can make out her message barely: "O,;kaSAn dadadadadadadadadada". You can take that as if her breakdown is coming apart even more so. It actually sounds in-game as "okasn daaaaaaaaaa". Her home is a daunting, and probably the more disturbing yet oblique home on the map.
Good LORD. >__>
Dolly's got her axe, and she's amid a rather well-made bookcase maze. There's a persistent squeaking noise as well as an eerie wailing, which by now, you should know as the theremin item. The squeaking is actually made from a water bird item in the upper left corner of the room. There are 2 portraits on the back wall, amid discarded things like beehives and easter eggs on the floor. The one by the water bird in the upper left is a picture of Aika and her mommy, where her mother appears to be showering her with affection. The other portrait is a picture of the happy family (mom, dad, and Aika). The wallpaper and floor is an eerie patter of red circles and black dots.
This room is very cleverly made since even with the highest camera angle, its hard to see everything. However, as you can see, it really only has space for a single player, so if Aika appears within the room (randomly, the game can spawn a PC inside their home, but it does it only when you first log into the town through dream walking; if a character appears inside, they will remain there for the entire stay), you can get stuck and not be able to proceed. Luckily, by exiting and reentering a room, the PC can move a little, so you can swapn her in a different place to hopefully get to the other rooms.
Its not a hard maze to navigate, with only the right hand room to find and the back room. Let's check the back room first. Its littered with paper, and the only 2 pieces of furniture are pedestals with glass that display a book with a clover (what a lucky clover will look like when you use it as a furniture item inside a home) and Katie's sketchbook, which is part of her Traveling Kitten scenario (where you must take her to another friend's town; a day later, you will receive a gift and she spawns in their town 3 days later so your friend can take her elsewhere).
Its hard to make out the meaning here, but its up to interpretation. Let's check the righthand room.
Its a single piano in a dilapidated room, with 8 eggs in front. The meaning here is just as hard to decipher. Do the eggs represent the villagers? What does the piano mean?
In any case, let's check the upstairs room first.
Its a room full of images drawn by Aika. From the table cloths on the tables, to the cushions on the sofa, the bedsheets and signs....if it can be reupholstered to be mapped by a pattern, its there. Most of the images are of Aika's mommy, but there are a few mapped with her happy family drawing. There's a sliding puzzle in the back that starts out jumbled and must be interacted with to complete the picture.
They're heeeeerrrreeee.....
The room is obviously an attachment to the family (especially mother), but the doll appears here too, staring at a tv that will white noise if you turn it on. The doll is obviously up to something.
The basement level certainly has something to see. An abandoned room with furniture that makes it look like a study, a bed with an outline of a body and dolly sitting next to the bed ominously with a cradle nearby. The only sounds are the bird in the birdcage, the fire crackling in the fireplace and the very faint sounds of the ocean (as the home is close to the beach). There's a huge portrait of mother in the back and an organ.
This room, like the others in this home, is hard to understand, but you can surmise perhaps that the outline is the body of Aika, spirited away (kamikakushi) by the doll.
One must wonder about the parents too, since so much focus is put on the family, especially the mother. She appears in even the town flag. Has the doll done something to the parents? Or someone else? The mystery deepens.
Follow the trail of trash and dead trees and weeds up from the third home, past a neighbor's house, until you get to the final Aika and her home. There are stumps, dead young trees chopped down and other detritus. nearly every square is covered by something. The home you find appears as the first one, an identical home to the one you see when you first entered.
Locate the last Aika, where she could either be outside, or inside. This trip, she was inside, so let's try looking for her.
You'll find the place in complete disarray, while the furniture is mostly the same, everything is trashed. There's garbage everywhere and Hypno K.K. continues to play disturbingly. Here is where I found Aika, though normally you find her outside.
Her name appears all with large characters and the only one left is the one for "O" in "okaasan". There's nothing intelligible anymore, so her breakdown is complete. She was standing in the back, but before we head there, let's check the upper room, which used to be her bedroom.
Comparing to her original room, the canvases are now defaced, with black marks over the doghouse with the dog, mother, and Aika herself now removed from the happy family. The merry-go-round is no longer moving, but the most telling change is the axe in front of dolly.
Did our Doll...do something rash?
HELLO DOLLY.
A little joke for you Louis Armstrong fans.
The back room is now accessible because the chest is moved over enough to fit through.
The back room has Aika and her doll behind fences now, watched by numerous busts. The white noise pattern is here, and its a rather disorientating. There's an axe by Dolly now, implying that our doll has done something, perhaps to Mother, or perhaps to Aika herself. What is obvious is that now Aika and her doll are together. Forever.
Extra Stuff in Aika
The Beachside Headstone:
That's the path you follow along to the inevitable end, but there are a few extra things you should also go out looking for. When you first enter the town, instead of heading to the house, go all the way up and all the way to the left to the cliffside. You'll find a small beach that's inaccessible unless you have a wetsuit. Looking below is a grave (in a different color than the other ones) with roses and offerings of candy. The star on the sand imply the burial spot. Whose grave it is is the mystery. It could be Aika's or it could be her mother's. Without being able to go there (there is no wetsuit available), you'll probably never know. There's also dead plants and rotting turnips nearby on the part of the beach that is accessible.
The Suicide Shoes:
Along the shore, you'll eventually find a pair of shoes by the ocean. Called the Suicide Shoes, its known that people remove their shoes and move to the ocean when committing suicide by sea drowning. As the shoes are red, they might belong to Aika. She appears to be the only one in the town who wears shoes (the parent mannequins don't wear clothing).
Lost and Found:
The police station has a collection of beehives in the lost and found, which also looks pretty disturbing.
Villager's Houses:
A collection of images of villager houses. Most of them have dolls, though some have more than one.
The left one in the bottom row is the best because they're all facing in. @_@
There's only a single home that lacks a doll, and that's Octavian's home, which might mean he's moved in before he was able to obtain one (either through mailing or Re-Tail).
Think you got what it takes to figure out Aika's story? Check out one of the best NL dream walking towns ever created by using this town code.
Hopefully you've all enjoyed this year's Halloween countdown! From all of us here at Random Lunacy, have a happy halloween!
Dio
(10/31/13)
Game, images, and characters belong to Nintendo. Screencapped by me.
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