The Pursuit of Happy-Ness

Somehow on my first playthrough, I completely skipped the Liliputt steps sanctuary and it was the last one I got, somehow it never occurred to me that I missed a sanctuary until I got the eighth one.

Fuck this

I think that Mushroomization is really cruel because not only does it reverse your controls, it turns them 90 degrees, which is IMPOSSIBLE to get used to.

They weren't based off the kkk, it was that weird japanese cult that released a deadly gas in a train station.

* drives into threed * you're blue now, that's the attack

We are still waiting for the Blues Brothers analysis

Your videos make me appreciate Earthbound even more than I originally did!

There is also a group caled Aleph that could refrence more to Happy-Happyism.

It could be implied the money was given by the people that kidnapped Paula as Everdread may have been the owner of the cabin and, giving the money was to relieve his concence of what he did.

I FUCKING HATE ORANGE KID
apple kid the goat

Happyness

Happypaula

Happyjeff

Happypoo

Happy Happy is just the Sarin gas attack cult from japan

I don't think Everdred is directly connected to Paula's kidnapping. It's entirely possible that he led Pokey and the masked boy to kidnap and hand her over to the cult. When talking to the boy in the white mask in Happy-Happy Village, he explicitly mentions that he and Pokey kidnapped her to use as a sacrifice. Regardless, love your videos! I've never seen someone engage with EarthBound and the MOTHER trilogy as a whole in a such a unique, personalized way!

I think it's also worth noting the influence of Aum Shinrikyo, a prominent cult in Japan during the early 90s. They too were obsessed about their leader and their ideology, and Aum also turned out to be violent with the infamous Sarin attacks!

kid cudi reference

And in an undertale fangame, you get to put those cultists in their grave

the whole connection between the enemies having blue skin and the blue happy happyist cult was NEVER something i put together and it feels like my third eye opened for a bit

The random hallway with coil snakes actually is for teaching players about killing weak enemies immediately on the world map

As a quick correction to this video, Paula being a human sacrifice was actually just speculation and probably not true. If you talk to one of the people in Happy Happy village they say that Paula was kidnapped so she could become the priestess for their cult. So it’s more likely that they were planning to use the Mani Mani Statue’s power to perform some sort of brainwashing or hypnosis on Paula, recruiting her to Giygas’s side and turning her against Ness.

30 years, and I’ve never gotten the Punk Sure joke until someone else said it out loud

<One must imagine Ness happy>

Don't forget the serpent told eve that if she ate the fruit she would die. The serpent told her the truth, but she still took it.

Is it me, or is the traveling keyboardist with the Runaway 5 actually Paul Shafer, associated with Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers, and Dave Letterman?

Since when did Hippie care about hygiene?

Canonically, the egg seller in Burglin is called Eggman.

The big mole is why you level up and buy the TREX bat alonr with Jeff BEFORE going to save them in Threed

35min : did you know that the creature from the vegetable soup reference is from another fun movie like the blues brothers. It’s from the france movie “la soupe aux choux” aka “the cabbage soup” with Louis de Funes

The weak snake enemy is actually explained in game by a nearby mole. It’s not only to show how much stronger you have become since the beginning, but it also serves to explain the game mechanics of an instant win against a much weaker foe

One of my favorite things about this video is how you spend the entire video explaining what you believe Blue's symbolism is, and then you just wordlessly show Ness and Paula entering Threed. It creates this very natural "Oh. Oh /shit/" reaction and acts as a good idea of how bad things could get (and tbf, before Giygas' forces invade near endgame, threed is basically the worst thing Ness and Co witness)

Something worth noting is that the mushroom picker in the valley also will pay you if you have a mushroom on your head.
So even if the player doesn't find or use the Healer in the hospital, it does give them a clear way to fix the problem before being forced to go through the next dungeon

I accidentally Killed the Mondo mole before freeing Paula 💀

A few things to point out.

The Happy Happy-ists most likely reference the Aum Shinrikyo cult and the Happy Science movement, both of which were formed in the years prior to Mother 2's development. I'd say the vaguely KKK-like appearance of the HH cult is a coincidence.

And in the Japanese version, Paula was not going to be sacrificed. A villager states that Carpainter was going to use her as the "goddess of Happy Happy-ism."

And when you talk to Paula before fighting Carpainter, she said something different. In Mother 2 she says if Ness hadn't come she, "would've started crying." So the localizers gave her a bit of an attitude. The shack was also owned by Everdread, so he was involved in her kidnapping to some degree. And the manga explained that the shack she was locked up in had something that prevented her from using her powers.

I always named the dog "myself" so that the mom could say. "I'm giving myself a bath."

The simple things.

this is an amazing series, thanks a lot for this :)

happy ness, monkey ness, are ther any other nesses i should know about???

Don’t know if some ones already posted this but your interpretation of ness wearing blue also fits with how in magicant ness has to defeat the mani statue which could represent the the evil within himself

What this place is, it is a money grab you know eggs turn into chickens and escargo express free eggs
money money