#omori critical

[woodchipp]

i fucking love good writing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[beevean]

“I love when a protagonist is a complete blank slate until you analyze the text, and then they become a reprehensible monster”

Go fuck yourself. You clearly have no sense of empathy at all whatsoever if you’re willing to demonize children. You’re confused as to why people like Omori? Here’s a hint for you: Get a soul first, you heartless, empathy-lacking fuckwit.

Reply: yes, you’re right! I lack the necessary empathy to empathize with a child who willingly let his friends believe that they failed a girl they all cared about when in reality he was the one who accidentally killed her in a fit of frustration, and then twisted their words of comfort built on a lie to feel better about himself lol. I would never have the gall to do that.

Sunny is not “a bad person” because of manslaughter. He’s bad because he’s a coward who never shows any ounce of care for his friends, shown best of all in how he left Basil (who instead is staunchly loyal to him, to the point of staging a suicide to protect him) to deal with the fallout of the truth while he gets to live far away. Even a 16 yo should know better than that… and if they don’t, the story shouldn’t put Sunny’s own conscience on a level much higher than the grief of his supposed friends. I’m not going to feel bad for the sad bean only because there’s moving music during the climax. I’ve enjoyed works who explore the terms of forgiveness in the face of bad actions with much more maturity than this game :V

[xx-panda-galaxy-xx]

I just tried to get into OMORI after seeing it around and I gotta say...the "truth" ending kinda ruined it for me.

Spoilers and themes of suicide coming up. Read at your own discretion.

Mari should have just killed herself. The game sets it's self up to be about grief and people dealing with the lost of a loved one, no matter how much the true end was forshadowed. The whole "it's about forgiving yourself even when you did something awful" this doesn't work for me because you don't even know what Sunny did until late into the game. You aren't aware he holds that guilt. The whole time you are lead to believe he was simply grieving his older sister, not wallowing in guilt for killing her on accident. It also just taints everything with Kel, Hero, and Aubrey as they don't know what Sunny and Basil did. Maybe that's the point, but idk. I am not really a fan. I feel like it would work better if they all were aware of the fact Sunny did it and him having to deal with the fall out of that.

I just think it's cliche too. I saw some on Reddit try and say that every psychological horror game has themes of grief and OMORI was different for changing the mold. Which was just... Has this person not played a psychological horror game past the five minute mark? They all have the "your the killer along" twist of some sort. It's so predictable that it's surprising when they DON'T go that route. It's not really unique in the slightest to be honest, even if handled well.

The plot of you exploring how the affects of Mari's death after her ending her own life had affected everyone is honestly a much more interesting and heartfelt plot to me. Especially as someone who has experienced grief and suicidal ideation. I was hoping to explore how someone can be blind to the love around them due to mental illness and how that decision can have unintentional consequences for the people they love, as they loved them in return. I would have loved a game about fighting your inner demons though escapism, (something I do) and getting better, as well as realizing how many people truly do love you. That you shouldn't give up for the sake of those people and yourself. Maybe even explore the fact that our past loved ones weren't perfect like we remembered them, but we still can love and cherish there memories.

I realize I am asking for a different game with that and that wasn't what the game was going for. But I can't help but feel they set it up for like that in the first place. No, having foreshadowing to the true ending doesn't change the fact that the game did deliberately set Mari's suicide as a red herring that it wanted you to believe. It's not about not having media literacy skills at that point, it was falling for what the game purposefully set up.

Btw, if you like the game, that's totally fine. It's just not my cup of tea, but I'm glad it's yours. I just wanted to talk about it.

[omorinintendoswitchedition]

Things I would change about Omori if I was in charge

I love Omori to death, one of the most life changing games ever to me. But Omocat definitely fumbled by blowing lots of the kickstarter money on merch, so here are some changes I would make if i was Omocat. (This is my personal opinion, so if you disagree, thats fine)

1. Longer game

Im the thousandth person to say this but Omocat fumbled HARD by only making this game have 3 days. Make it a whole week!!!!More content!!!!Please!!!!!

2. Spirit Mari’s design

She kinda looks like the stereotypical “ghost girl who was hanged”. She looks just like Sadako!!!

they look the same!!!!!!! Give her a more detailed/fancy looking dress so she stands out

3. Have Sunny look more messed up

Sunny looks very….presentable for a depressed teen boy who hasnt seen the sun in four years. like he still baths and stuff but he should look a little more messy. something more like this (credit goes to u/micheas08 on reddit)

4. More photo album photos

no way Basil has only taken like, a year’s worth of photos when he’s known his friends for (presumably) way longer than that. Have more photos!!! More pics from birthday parties, thanksgiving, halloween, fourth of july, or just have the gang messing around in the park or something. more photos!!!!

5.Develop character dynamics more

I know im always bitching about no Kel and Mari dynamic but Basil has a startling lack of dynamics with other characters aside from Sunny. What was his friendship with Mari like? What about his friendship with Kel and Hero? This could just get lumped into the “longer game” complaint but whatever

[secretomorisideblog]

Just putting this up here:

I do not like this game. I have many issues with it and will likely post about that. All of my critical posts will be tagged with #omori critical. I won't post anything outwardly mean in the main tag, but I may still post polite critique of the game. I understand this is a game well-liked by many people and a comfort game to many people so I completely understand if you want to block me. Please understand, I will block you if you get nasty with me for disliking the game. Hope you enjoy browsing my silly blog about this game that has invaded my brain

[omoris-journal]

So... I assume the whole, er, "Bossman Hero" thing didnt happen in this timeline, but do you know of him/that it could happen? If so, thoughts?

// OOC. You’ve stumped me, anon. I would love to answer this question, but I have no idea how. what makes this difficult is, Sunny dreamt about Headspace every night for about four years. We only know what happened on three of those nights. So there’s really no way to know for sure whether that’s happened in Headspace already. I personally don’t think it would’ve happened multiple times, but it could’ve. Sure, it’s exclusive to the hikikomori route (also only on switch console I think), but Sunny was living the hikikomori route for four years.

// I personally think four years was way too long of a timeframe considering how much of Headspace is explored in three days. I just can’t see those three days looping over and over. I just did the math. If Headspace reset every three days, there would be 487 loops. That just doesn’t make sense to me. And it’s implied that the previous “loops” were different, for example Basil being in the Cattail Fields Barn instead of Black Space. Now we have 487 unique loops. Yeah right. Either I’m forgetting something, or this is a giant plot hole. I vote the latter.

[beevean]

When I watched @woodchipp play the game, I could only think that the OST sounds terribly bland, with the one exception of World End's Valentine, which is a genuine bop, and By Your Side, which is very pleasant and fits Mari's image.

The rest of it? Not counting the "spoopy" tracks, it wants to be peppy and whimsical and Kirby-style, but it just doesn't stick in my head. It's a bunch of notes that resemble a melody, with some very irritating sounds. How is this meant to be a boss theme? Even Duet, the very climax of the story, doesn't really sound all that special, it's the most generic "emotional" piano/violin piece you can think of.

And then there are, of course, some of the most annoying sounds I've ever had the displeasure of listening to - Wood knows how much Lost At A Sleepover makes me want to puke, and I don't care about ~symbolism~, Just Leave Me Alone makes me bleed from the ears :P

Omori's soundtrack is one the most hit-or-miss ones I've heard in a while for a game.

On one end, there's a pretty good job at representing what vertigo from heights feels like, a flashy but still elegant sounding battle theme, and chill tracks that captures what I think being underwater feels like. But then on the opposite side, you have a track that wouldn't be as grating to listen to if it's instrument if it's chiptune instrument wasn't so high pitched, a messy clusterfuck that's one just for the sake of it, and pure audible torture.

[rewritingcanon]

my sister and i just yapped for almost three hours and we were just talking about how genuinely weird people in fandom are surrounding characters who have explicit mental illness. like they can never ever be normal. there are characters who are romanticised and glamourised for their mental illness (eren. wanda. joker. kaneki. nico. almost any danganronpa/ddlc character). characters who are consistently ridiculed for their mental illness either because it simply isn’t getting taken seriously (reiner) or because no one takes the character seriously (armin). and there are the characters that get blatantly outright DESPISED for it (basil, harry potter, korra, gale, also eren etc etc). like yes im seeing a correlation but its still so astounding how selective people are about where they draw the line with mental illness and what traits they can accept.

[somekindofsentience]

spiders, or how to fix half of omori's plot with one symbol

i think i can fix omori. well, some of it.

This will be an attempt to prove that a key symbol related to Mari is a spider/bug, and how making this more obvious to the player would have fixed half the narrative.

Mari is closely associated with bugs and spiders in several scenes, but I believe the photos in the real world and Headspace demonstrate this most explicitly.

This photo is one of few direct redraws from the real world in Headspace, and it identifies Mari as a character unafraid, even fascinated, by bugs, which is one of very few character traits she's actually given. This is repeated multiple times as we explore Headspace, where Mari comforts Sunny and Hero about their fear of spiders, takes the group bug-hunting in the real world, and previously put bugs in Hero's desk. It's notable that the reframing of this photo specifically puts a spider in Omori's hand, further linking the girl to bugs in his mind.

Within Headspace, spiders are shown to be far more present than the other two phobias present. We see it in Daddy Long Legs, the ominous nature of Pyrefly forest, the Spider Area, the references to the creatures from Hero, Mari and Basil, and much more - it's clear that the creators wanted this symbol to be present, but overwhelmed it with subtlety, making it impossible to actually understand, and leaving it in the dust in favour of following other threads. The narrative fails to distinguish the Arachnophobia boss, and loses its the relationship between Mari and spiders/bugs.

There are several benefits to making this metaphor more deliberate to the player, by enhancing the relationship through jumpscares, making it important to the Truth/Final Boss segments, or even just distinguishing Arachnophobia from the other bosses. I've decided to organise them into a list since there's so many.

Cohesive narrative interactions between the Phobias and the recital day: I'm always talking about how the juxtaposition between these two events is so subtle that people miss the point. Singling out the importance of Arachnophobia would highlight these two events and bring them to the forefront, making the Final Duet more cohesive.

The Phobia bosses become relevant: If the game is able to properly integrate Arachnophobia into the truth segment, this provides so much more purpose to the Phobia bosses, who often feel like just game mechanics to teach you how fighting against hallucinations functions.

Intriguing moral exploration: I think the idea of the subtlety of conveying Mari as a bug portrays her insignificance - Sunny was able to just kill her, as though she were just a spider to be swatted. It furthers an interesting understanding of morality in the text, talking about the prioritisation of life, leaving more of an impact on the audience. Are humans really as fickle as that?

Hero's character: Connecting Mari to a spider not only allows for more theory and AU creation, but actually mimics Hero's actions in the real world. Only two characters are afraid of spiders - and only those two characters have not visited Mari's grave since it was dug, which mirrors (but fails to highlight) Sunny and Hero's character arcs. In a similar way, Mari and Basil's love for bugs could also mirror some sort of decline.

The relevance of Daddy Long Legs and spider-related Black Space areas: Spiders are regularly referenced in Headspace and Black Space, with a whole room of Black Space surrounding them, but there's never any lucid reason why they're so prominent compared to the other phobias. Making a clear connection to the truth would clear up this confusion.

Basil's Something and Headspace Basil's dialogue: Basil's Something is deliberately abstract, but it is never defined further than its presentation. Not only would it properly link the Spider Area to the reality of the truth, but it would potentially connect Basil's Something to it, too.

Just plain easy to add: Much of Omori's story, characterisation and pacing is very difficult to improve without hours of effort. Being able to cohesively connect elements of the narrative with one symbol is much more realistic.

song i listened to while writing this:

this song is literally the reason i came to this realisation, the themes of environmental preservation were essential dskjhjdsgdjhsgjhkdg shout out to me rediscovering this after years and years

[tumyfart65]

[caffeiiine]

i love medias taht affect me to no end so much so that there’s no real way to get the pre-media ‘me’ back

[woodchipp]

very good game

[beevean]

Honestly all the Omori talk makes me feel bad for Basil in the sense that he is a character who is loyal and worries about his friends to the point of committing horrible actions that eat him up inside for them like covering up a murder, yet said friends either dont give the most minimum shit abt him and his feelings or straight up use him as a punchbag. Even if woobified by the writing, he seems like a more interesting chara than the protag by accident

@woodchipp and I compared him to N!Hector, because while he is morally questionable and no doubt he should have suffered the consequences of his actions (bro really came up with a multi-step plan to pretend a girl hanged herself, at 12, that's sick when you think about it), he becomes automatically the most tragic character of the story because he gets beaten to near death, both metaphorically and literally. (and that's when the story doesn't forget about him lmao, because he's actually missing for a good 80% of the plot)

His logic is twisted in an intriguing way. He's so loyal to Sunny that he straight up cannot imagine that he could do a bad thing such as push Mari down the stairs. He's so in denial that not only he came up with that plan, but he also hallucinates Something, the real culprit, the real entity who pushed Mari, because Sunny is a good person and Sunny would never do anything bad! It's a very sad form of denial.

But then you ask yourself, what exactly did Sunny do to earn such trust?

I guess being the pet of the gang was enough to convince Basil that his bestie would never do anything wrong.

And then you add all the stuff that we mentioned in that long post, such as Basil being a victim of unfair bullying by Aubrey (who blames him for ruining their photos, while it was Sunny when possessed by his depression - yes really), nearly drowning because Aubrey pushed him into the lake (neither she nor Kel cared enough to rescue him), the gang not bothering to check on him while he was visiting his grandma in intensive care (instead having a nice picnic near Mari's grave), the gang forcibly having a sleepover in his house while he was locked in the bathroom grieving for his grandma, Sunny leaving him alone while he was having a breakdown (you cannot comfort Basil, but you can run circles around him), you player having the choice to leave him to kill himself...

Yes, Basil is technically a criminal, but much like N!Hector, the things the plot puts him through far outweigh his crime. And I guess that in this comparison, Sunny is N!Isaac, who is a terrible person who has hurt many people but we're supposed to root for him because he found Enlightenment or some shit :)

[prodigal-explorer]

I disagree with the idea that basil is unforgivable because the entire point of Omori is forgiveness and grief.

To say that basil is irredeemable is to go against the theme of the game

homie...

hate to break it to you but actually the point of the game being forgiveness and grief doesn't mean that every character should be forgiven. everybody has different standards and morals and values when it comes to forgiveness. some people are able to forgive basil and others aren't, but the people who are able to forgive aren't inherently better or more "right" than the people who cannot. to say that the message of omori is "you should always forgive people no matter what they do to you" is brain-dead.

just because sunny and basil smiled at each other doesn't mean that all that damage was reversed, or that true forgiveness even happened.

the point of omori is not forgiving others.

it's forgiving YOURSELF.

that's why aubrey, kel, and hero's explicit reactions to the truth weren't shown in the game. because it's not supposed to be canon that they forgave sunny and basil. and the lesson is NOT that kel, aubrey, and hero SHOULD forgive sunny and basil.

it's easy for sunny and basil to forgive each other because they both royally fucked up each other and their friends.

what's not easy is kel, hero, and aubrey forgiving them because unlike sunny and basil, they had ZERO CHOICE in the matter when it came to the presentation of mari's death. they spent four years living a lie.

hero blamed himself, believing that he was a horrible boyfriend who caused mari's death by not being there for her and he was extremely depressed for years, which caused him to lose motivation for his number one favorite thing to do:

cook. as a result of hero's depression, kel was pushed aside and ignored by his parents, becoming something like a glass child to them, which led to him viewing himself as less important or worthy of love/attention than hero.

and don't even get me started on aubrey. the whole town turned against her, and nobody cared about her. not even her friends. the only person in the world who truly understood her was mari, and seeing her hung was the worst possible thing to happen to aubrey, a mentally ill little girl who already believed she was bad for everyone who cared about her.

if basil had JUST TOLD THE TRUTH. all of his friends' lives would have been infinitely better.

and i don't mean to like rag on basil without addressing sunny, but i never see sunny stans acting this idiotic and "holier-than-thou". now since you're so up in my business, i will explain myself more.

the biggest unforgiveable thing isn't even basil hanging mari. it's basil blatantly lying, and staying silent for four years, pretending to be innocent, painting himself as some victim, when really, the whole time, he was the reason why everything crumbled and destroyed itself.

it would be fucking stupid to walk out of playing that game saying, "well, aubrey, kel, and hero need to forgive basil for what he did because forgiveness is important."

that's easy for BASIL LOVERS to say because BASIL WAS NOT THE VICTIM IN THE SITUATION. HE WAS THE PERPETRATOR.

and furthermore, the game emphasizes self-forgiveness way more than forgiving others.

things only started to get better for basil and sunny when they started to forgive themselves. sunny's hallucinations were a manifestation of his shame and guilt. and shame and guilt are a result of being unable to forgive yourself. what the other characters did to support sunny was helpful, but it didn't solve the root of the problem. the only thing that really made something go away, the only thing that really brought color back to sunny's world was him letting go of that shame and guilt and allowing himself to keep going forward.

THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE GAME IS THIS: you cannot control how others react/respond to your bad actions. you cannot expect forgiveness out of anyone, and sometimes, you SHOULDNT. but the one thing you can control when you fuck up is how you pick yourself up and dust yourself off. how YOU move on from what you did so that you can grow and become a better person in the future.

and to me, that is a way more relevant, impactful, and TRUE message than the stupid, idiotic, honestly super problematic idea that "we should forgive and forget when people hurt us because they feel guilty". that's not being a good person. that's being spineless and devoid of values. just because i personally have experiences, traumas, and values that make me unable to truly forgive basil doesn't make me a bad person or someone who failed to understand the game's message. so before you come up in my ask box and attempt to shame me and accuse me of not understanding the game, brush up on it yourself, buddy.

[bestfictionaldivorce]

THE ROSTER FOR THE MAIN BRACKET

Asgore and Toriel

Jevil and Spamton

Queen and Spade King

Spaceboy and Sweetheart

Elias Bochard and Peter Lucas(44)

Alador and Odiala Blight(27)

Tom Nook and Redd(17)

Dj Octavio and Captain Craig Cuttlefish(16)

Grunkle Stan and Eda Clawthorn(13)

Stanley and The Narrator(11)

Loquatius Seelie and Laerryn Coramar-Seelie(10)

Maxie and Archie(9)

Kristoph Gavin and Phoenix Wright(9) 

Splinter and Baron Draxum(8)

The Doctor and The Master(8)

Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Charlene(6)

Xehanort and Eraqus(6)

Professor X and Magneto(6)

Gojo Satoru and Suguru Geto(6)

Squidward Tentacles and Sqilliam Fancyson(6)

Leshy and P03(5)

Sada and Turo(5)

Isa/Saix and Lea/Axel(5)

Castiel and Dean Winchester(5)

Optimus Prime and Megatron(5)

Grace and Trip(4)

Dazai Yukichi and Nakahara Chuuya(4)

Jack Harkness and John Hart(4)

Jevil and Seam(4)

Zhongli and Venti(4)

The Alpha Couple(4)

Agent Curt Mega and Agent Owen Carvour

(The little number at the end is how many votes each one got)

[clegfly]

I’m a major sucker for swap AUs when they’re done right, but one of my biggest pet peeves about them other than the horrendous mischaracterisation is headspace.

the idea of exploring another character’s headspace seems really interesting and fun at first, but when you really think about it, it’s not really in character for anybody else than sunny.

He’s established in canon to always be lost in his own worlds and imagination, so of course something like headspace would be totally in character for a coping mechanism for him. But it doesn’t really work with anyone else, and that’s the problem.

Most people don’t even get too creative with their alternate headspaces as well, which I personally think would be the appeal of giving one to another character in the first place. Like, none of the other characters except maybe Kel would really have headspace’s narrative play out like a video game. That’s a sunny thing, because he’s shown to like video games. For someone like Mari in the OMARI AU, there’s no way she’d have a video game like world in her head. You could get away with comics or something since she’s shown in canon to be interested in that type of media, but there’s no evidence of her having any attachment to games.

So my proposal, and how I’m probably going to approach headspace from now on in any further aus, is to explore it from SUNNY’s perspective. It stays in character and gives a lot of room for character exploration as well. Like, take it from a “hikikel” (I think that’s what that au type is called?) perspective, just as an example. Now we’re no longer exploring headspace from the perspective of someone who did the crime but of someone unrelated. As well as that we’re seeing it from the perspective of a sunny after hero’s death. How would he take it? What choices would he make in his headspace to honour hero’s memory? Thought it was fun and now boom I’ve been distracted all weekend trying to think of things for this. I came up with about doing this the other day and was very happy about it SO I’m putting it on tumblr in case anyone else would like to do that lol anyways I’ll probably be back with new stuff for this au so yeah fun time