The Sexual Awakening of Ness in EarthBound

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

The Sexual Awakening of Ness in EarthBound

Games that have a story open to interpretation can be intriguing. Is there a hidden meaning in Earthbound? Nintendo, you sly dog!

Read Full Article

 

[LenticularHomicide]

claps slowly

Next, do one about how Mario and Luigi obviously take it up the bum. From each other.

Captcha: forget this
If only I could.

 

[LenticularHomicide]

claps slowly

Next, do one about how Mario and Luigi obviously take it up the bum. From each other.

Zero Punctuation, the Webcomics episode. He had already done that joke and needs no more explanation.

I know; it was an oblique reference to that episode.

 

[Kuredan]

Oh Yahtzee you so crazy!! I can't tell if you're on drugs or off them... great work in any case. So good in fact, I may never play Earthbound again >.<

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I did have plans to play earthbound, however, what has been read cannot be unread without some form of self inflicted brain damage. Now the playthrough will be tainted with these thoughts!
Is the paraphrasing rape scene detail true then?

 

[Under_your_bed]

Wow, this sounds like something Freud would write. While particularly high on coke.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Jeff also uses "bottle rockets"

 

[Frozengale]

That is an interesting take on the game. Pretty sure Shigesato Itoi would be okay with that interpretation though.

I'd like to see if you come away with the same kind of interpretation for Mother 3. There is actually a scene in it where Lucas may in fact get raped by the Magypsies, a race of hermaphrodites with mystical powers.

 

[EbonBehelit]

Is the paraphrasing rape scene detail true then?

I believe so. Not only that, but the final area leading to the climactic battle with Giygas can be construed as resembling a vagina/uterus - complete with cervix.

.....and people have been able to outline the shape of a fetus in his tesselated form - which is a bit vague but still bloody creepy.

 

[Neverhoodian]

You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a coming-of-age story about a boy defeating Cthulu is just a coming-of-age story about a boy defeating Cthulu. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

I did have plans to play earthbound, however, what has been read cannot be unread without some form of self inflicted brain damage. Now the playthrough will be tainted with these thoughts!
Is the paraphrasing rape scene detail true then?

Kind of. Shigasato Itoi actually witnessed a murder scene from The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty as a child, but he remembered it as a rape scene. In any cause, it was a traumatizing incident and became a major inspiration for Giygas.

 

[Zombie Badger]

Wasn't Giygas a fetus, or am I remembering it wrong? That would make it even more Giger-ey to be honest.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

I liked the story, convincing!

And then I LOL-ed: "In next week's lesson, we discuss how much the Death Star looks like a tit."

 

[Zacharious-khan]

jim's movie defense force on mall rats and now this? it seems like the escapist is having an odd week

 

[Wolf Hagen]

Why is everyone banging on this worn out thing of Gygas beeing a metaphor for "fetus abortion and such a thing". >.<
Just let it go. It's a (un)dead horse by now.

Seriously folks, it doesn't make you look insightfull, but just parotting what every other person had been parotting that thing for the last decades.

Even Yathzee didn't go down that road, while going all Freud on the game.

And for those who know the game, a fetus would be rather abstract, since he had a body before (in mother 1). The thing him beeing in the Devil machine, would prolly easier a stand in for transhumanism, since they even stated, that he needs it (a prosthetic or vessel) to keep his powers in check, not to overwhelm anything (trancending into a higher, bodyless beeing, kinde the very idea of evil himself) that could not be brought down by force (wich one would defenatly use on a fetus in the parroted metaphor), but by joy, love and compassion and caring (those who finished it know what I mean).

If anything, the entire thing behind Gygas would be a REVERSE Fetus, since he left all of his old live and body behind him (the thing that made him vurnerable, his bond to his mother through her lullaby) into becoming a powerful idea the Idea of overwhelming evil (with Pokey as a stand in for corruption).

 

[LenticularHomicide]

Is the paraphrasing rape scene detail true then?

Nope, that anecdote isn't true.

Rather, it wasn't a rape scene.

It was a murder scene, which the young Itoi mistook for a rape scene. (To be fair, the scene was of a woman being laid down in hay (no, not that way, you perv) and strangled, so...)

Anyway, completely different.

From Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EarthBound]:

The final battle dialogue with Giygas was based on Itoi's recollections of a traumatic scene from the Shintoho film The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenpei_to_barabara_shibijin] that he had accidentally seen in his childhood.

If you click through to the movie's page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenpei_to_barabara_shibijin], you see this:

The film is perhaps well-known because one of its association with the SNES game Earthbound. Its creator, Shegesato Itoi, mistook a murder scene for a rape scene, inspiring the eerie presence of the game.

And finally, a quick Google unearths this [http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/01/the-scene-that-inspired-giygas/]: an EarthBound fansite that has excerpted the scene in question, and put it on Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g75RSbIc5FM] for posterity.

 

[PhiMed]

a baseball bat. That long, curved, flesh-colored object best known for firing little white spheroids into the waiting grasp of a leathery mitt.

Damn it, I spit my coffee on my keyboard.

Well-analyzed and hilarious.

 

[Evonisia]

As insightful as this was (and how wonderful it was), I'm not going to be able to get that out of my head when I eventually get a Wii U and start playing EarthBound. Thanks, Yahtzee.

There I was thinking that the final boss fight from Silent Hill 3 symbolising rape was weird.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Wasn't Giygas a fetus, or am I remembering it wrong? That would make it even more Giger-ey to be honest.

Nah, that's just some insane fan theory.

Except... it sort of has water?

In the first game, he was called Gigue or something (pronounced googly or something like that; this is nodded to in Earthbound) and he is a fully formed alien, after the main character because he got the love and care that Google never got from his adoptive parents, who are the protagonist's grandparents. Freud freud freud, anticlimactic but still emotional boss later, and he's dead. Except not.

But in Earthbound, the main characters go back in time to fight Gigyas before he gains power and kill him, thus causing a time paradox that erases Ness's existence (if he is the first game's protagonist's son, like he's implied to be) and thus the defeating of Giddy or whatever.

I don't know, Itoi has sometimes said yes, sometimes said no. Sometimes said, he is, but he retains the knowledge from the first game, making him an insane, violent infant of sorts without any sense of restraint...

Really, it just muddles the whole thing up more when you consider the multiple Word of God(s).

 

[Roofstone]

That fucked with my head..

A interesting and entertaining read in the slow summer weeks.