A/N: Finally got this on my blog. I kept forgetting to post it on here! This is my theme essay. I wrote it about this wonderful video game called Earthbound and its theme of childhood innocence! I hope you like it.
Many stories, both age-old and modern, show the theme of childhood is innocence. Earthbound is not an exception to this. Earthbound is about an adolescent named Ness. Ness must team up with new found friends to stop Giygas, the "embodiment of evil". Along the way Ness must stop at eight "Your Sanctuary" locations. Throughout the game Ness experiences flashbacks at these locations that are essential to the theme of the game.
These sanctuaries are reached by fighting through a dungeon and defeating the sanctuary guardian. Once Ness and his friends have reached the sanctuary they are healed of any harm these foes may have caused them. Ness will have a flashback of his childhood shortly after. The eight sanctuaries represent the theme of the game. What is essentially happening at these locations is that Ness' childhood is healing and purifying him and his friends. After reaching the final "Your Sanctuary" location, Ness is sent to yet another location in which the theme is very prominent, Magicant.
Magicant is a world within Ness' mind. It contains his memories and thoughts. Here Ness will talk to friends from his childhood, his family, even himself but in a much younger form. Ness will talk to his next door neighbor, Porky, here. Porky, throughout the course of Earthbound has turned into the villain, a spoiled child with no mercy. This is not the case in Magicant, though. Here Porky apologizes to Ness, wanting to make amends. He apologizes for all the trouble he has caused Ness in his journey and says he wants to be friends again. This is showing that Ness' mind wants to help Porky. Ness wants Porky to be good again. Porky was a part of Ness' childhood, now altered. Ness wants to fix this broken part of his past. Ness also encounters a younger version of himself here. The younger Ness gives him a baseball hat, a defense item within the game. This item is used to protect against Giygas, "the embodiment of evil" or what he really represents, corruption of childhood.
Shigesato Itoi, the creator of Earthbound, was once at a movie theater. He was still a fairly young boy, around the age of seven. Itoi walked into the wrong theater in search of his mother and saw something that traumatized him. On the screen, there was a lady being raped. This is what Itoi thought, at least. The film he walked in on, "The Military Police Man and the Dismembered Beauty." is an old Japanese mystery film, and does not include and scenes as the one described by Itoi. Itoi’s young mind processed it as such. Still, this changed Itoi completely, and such at a young age. His trauma was the inspiration for the final battle of Earthbound, The battle against Giygas.
The last battle Ness and his friends will fight is against Giygas, or so they’ve been told. Ness and his friends did not know Porky would be alongside Giygas as well. Porky is a child who has lost his innocence and is fighting for evil. He is fighting for his own selfish reasons now. Giygas, representing the corruption in Itoi's childhood is also there to fight. So virtually, this final battle is a battle against the distortion of Ness' childhood. The only way to win this battle is to do something many may consider childish. There is an option available in every battle to pray. It is essentially useless until this fight. Praying is the only way to defeat Giygas. Doing something so many label as childish saves Ness, his friends, and the world they live in. The innocence of childhood saves the world.
All of these events show just how prominent and important the theme of childhood is to the game of Earthbound. The sanctuaries show how the past can heal. Magicant shows Ness’ yearning for his childhood, and how it helps him. The battle against Giygas and Porky shows just how powerful childish innocence is. The game practically revolves around the theme. Shigesato Itoi truly believed that childhood is innocence, and it definitely shows in the game of Earthbound.
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