Poor little Ollie isn’t your typical JRPG hero. He doesn’t have spiky hair or carry a sword that’s bigger than he is. He doesn’t brood in the way popularised to stereotype by Cloud or Kaim, nor is he at the opposite end of the spectrum with the relentless and irksome positivity of Serah. He’s not an amnesiac or an elite warrior; he is simply a normal young boy who, because of certain events, wants to do good things for those in need around him.
Oliver’s desire to do right has come at a cost, though. At fault for his mother’s untimely death, he is obviously and understandably distraught, spiralling into three days of wallowing and self-pity. Eventually his tears spring a surprise, breathing life into his cherished cuddly toy who reveals himself as Drippy, a noble fairy from the realm of Ni No Kuni.
Drippy explains that Ni No Kuni is in desperate trouble, the victim of a terror known as Shadar. He requires Oliver, one of pure heart, to help him save his world. Ollie is initially uncertain, but when offered the slightest hope that his aid may save his mother, it’s then he agrees to go on the uncertain journey.
Ollie wants more than anything to return to his old life.
Although it can be easily lost in the game’s innocent and charming setup, what Ollie is doing is blocking out reality in favour of a fantasy world, one that’s a more attractive proposition than his own. In Ollie’s case, what’s particularly interesting is that his fantasy world not only absolves him of any culpability relating to his mother’s death (as Drippy explains to him, it was Shadar’s fault, after all), but it’s also a world in which he believes he can actually save her from death.
Simply put, he has control of his life and a purpose in Ni No Kuni. Without Ni No Kuni, he has nothing; he is alone.
It’s a scenario that’s seems so sad, yet this form of escapism is something that I can absolutely relate to through my own past experiences with depression. I won’t bore you with the finer details, but every time I put a disc in my console throughout my twenties, I was doing exactly what Ollie was; escaping to a place where my problems couldn’t hurt me.
Bad day at work? Rapture offered the intrigue to make me forget. Didn’t feel capable of going outside and facing the world? I delved into the Capital Wasteland instead… or the Ishimura… or Liberty City… or Hyrule... anywhere I could escape my brain. These were all worlds in which I felt I had more control than the real one and they were a massive comfort to me at the worst of times. Game worlds were always my go-to release from the bad times, just as they’re the chosen release of countless others like me.
Like many of those who turn to games as an escape, though, Ollie’s never actually free of his guilt or of his relationship with the real world. The faces he knows from his quaint hometown appear regularly in Ni No Kuni as very different characters (a factor described by Drippy as linked souls), and in a handful of instances, his sadness still gets the better of him externally. Even Drippy is a gift from his mother, his accent and mannerisms all come from her interactions with Ollie.
If you're going to escape to a fantasy world, you could do a whole lot worse...
Despite this, Ollie manages to forget his loss through his escapism, or at least comes to terms with it for a while. In between the reminders, his mourning is replaced by a resolve to help everyone he meets. It might be that he feels that in some way, by doing good in either world, he’s making amends for the events that led to his mother’s demise (at least making progress towards that goal). I like to think, however, that he simply understands. He understands their pain because of his loss and wants to help it stop. Helping people becomes his new coping mechanism in spite of his goal to save his mother, and he revels in it.
In most cases in gameplay, this process simply means locating someone struggling to find the very elements of a person that real-life depression can cripple, such as enthusiasm, courage or kindness, borrowing a sliver from someone who has too much and topping up the sufferer’s heart. The message is simple but effective, and plainly clear from the first moment you undertake this little chain of events. It gets a little more tactile the further you delve, though…
A bit later into the game and Ollie is trying to gain the help of a once great sage. The sage, Rasheed, initially refuses, too worried about his daughter shutting herself off from her loved ones. Ollie travels back to the real world to locate her linked soul, only to find Myrtle, a reclusive young girl who believes she is too sick to leave the confines of her bedroom. Using his magic to break into her house and speak to her, Ollie can sense from her a real fear of her father. A neighbour will shortly confirm your suspicion. Her father, Rusty, has become abusive to both her and his wife.
Myrtle's soul mate Esther joins Ollie on his adventure. It's a soul thing.
After hotfooting it to the father’s garage, Ollie witnesses the abuse first hand. As Rusty works frantically on a car, his wife lovingly brings him a meal, which he hits out of her hands aggressively. Ollie is the only one in the town not to turn a blind eye and confronts the angry father.
It turns out that the man isn’t merely broken-hearted like many others you’ve already helped at this early stage, but a demon labelled as a “Nightmare” has also attached itself to his heart, controlling him, causing him to become a monster terrorising his own family. Ollie must battle the Nightmare to save the man.
In this sense, he literally helps Rusty fight his demons.
This realisation of what the game was tackling hit me like a ton of bricks at this point. As with real depression (and other ailments which can be related, like alcohol or drug addiction, which is my interpretation of how Rusty’s broken heart evolved), you can’t always find the answers yourself; often sufferers require a push from someone, even anyone, to seek the help that is really closer than they realise. For this man, Ollie was the catalyst for his recovery as he was brave enough to speak up, just as my own friends were for me.
I love it when video games can manage to connect at an unexpectedly emotional level, and in Ni No Kuni’s case, I certainly wasn’t expecting it to resonate with me this much prior to starting. Indeed, many reviews hint that it hits all the right emotional high-notes through excellent writing, pacing and character growth, yet it’s the game’s indirect commentary on coping with depression that managed to strike a particular chord. These are just a handful of early examples too; the mending of broken hearts remains a constant theme throughout.
At the centre of it all is the bond that I felt with Ollie in particular, a young man that I had initially thought I’d dislike, but instead grew to look up to and admire. We shared something in common, he and I, and although my own depression wasn’t related to a loss, I fully understood him in his strongest and weakest moments. I found common ground in the ways in which we both chose to cope with our own sadness, our acceptance, and our recovery.
It hits me now that, despite dealing with the morose subjects of loss and depression, Level 5 and Studio Ghibli have avoided the tired genre tropes of the internally angry, disengaged loner and created a protagonist that deals with his anguish in far more human and relatable ways. Because of this, Ni Ni Kuni might well be one of the most important and relevant JRPGs in more than a decade.
Andy Corrigan is a freelance games journalist based in Australia. You can follow him on IGN here, and if you're interested in finding out a little more about how gaming helped Andy deal with depression, check this feature out.
Source : ign[dot]com
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