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humornaut · 1 year

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Chef Sunny’s Kitchen: Hobbies of an Unreliable Narrator

Hey all! Just wanted to do another little post that I’ve seen toyed with but never explored to it’s fullest potential. Spoilers for Omori ahead!

So Omori as a game is no stranger to the concept of unreliable narrators, but often, I see people using that term pretty liberally to explain away situations that don’t really make all that much sense (example, I’ve seen someone say that Sunny’s fridge isn’t actually empty, he’s just refusing to see the rest of the food because he feels he doesn’t deserve it). However, if you spend any amount of time examining the game, you will find that the ways in which Sunny (and Basil) are unreliable narrators are fairly consistent.

To spend a little bit of time on Basil, there are two main reasons that he is an unreliable narrator. Firstly, he is in a massive state of denial throughout the real world sections of the game, not that that is that big of a deal, since we already know the Truth by the time he gives his account of what happened the night of the recital. However, there is another big way that Basil is an unreliable narrator.

Basil’s photo album is one of the primary ways that the player, and by extension Sunny, is familiarized (or re-familiarized) with the past. But there are several ways that Basil’s photo album can be misleading. For instance, the photo album is from Basil’s perspective, so we don’t often get views of what other characters thought about certain events. In addition, things like Sunny and Kel sneaking out to go to Hobbeez or Sunny and Aubrey talking on the swing set aren’t going to be mentioned in the photo album, since Basil would not have been present. Beyond that, unhappy memories such as the Lake Incident won’t be included. Finally, Basil is often noted for enjoying the act of keeping secrets, which is something we see highlighted in nearly every memory during Memory Lane.

To give an example of where stuff like this comes up, we should start at the Rainy Day memory, or rather, the pictures that are associated with it.

(4/29): Just KEL being KEL again... We went to HOBBEEZ, but the shop owner told KEL to leave his jacket outside since KEL was getting all his comics wet. Sorry, SHOPKEEP.

From here, we know that after the Rainy Day memory ends, the four friends head over to Hobbeez to read comics, and then Kel had to leave his jacket outside. But what we don’t see, due to Basil not talking about it in the album, is that they actually split up afterwards, with Aubrey and Kel staying at Hobbeez, and Sunny and Basil going to the secret hangout spot and hanging out at the dock.

They don’t even have the umbrellas, showing that they are intentionally in the same outfits, since they couldn't just re-use the same sprites.

Likely, Sunny and Basil split off from the group to have some kind of private conversation away from Aubrey and Kel. It could’ve been related to Sunny’s crush on Aubrey, since this would’ve been the day that Basil figured it out. Sunny clearly never talked about his crush with Mari, since Mari is shown comparing Aubrey and Kel’s friendship to her own relationship with Hero, so perhaps Sunny was feeling a little frustrated at how close Aubrey and Kel were. He does canonically just walk ahead of the group after Basil calls out his crush, after all. It doesn’t really matter what specifically they talked about, because what does matter is that this is an event that Basil purposefully left out of the photo album, so we are completely left in the dark on what actually happened in this conversation.

But I want to get on to the main thing I wanted to talk about here.

Sunny

So Sunny is such an unreliable narrator that it is sometimes painful. There are two main reasons that Sunny is an unreliable narrator:

Sunny is repressing the Truth, so things like the existence of the closet are ignored, and within Headspace, how important Basil is to Sunny specifically is being repressed until later in the game. This causes quite a few oddities. The Headspace friends (and Hero in the real world) say that Omori has a good memory, but based on things we see throughout Headspace, it seems like a lot of the things that Sunny “remembers” are actually just things about Basil. (e.g. the Headspace photo album shows that Sunny has forgotten that Aubrey’s favorite fruit is watermelon. Meanwhile the least effective smoothie is the Banana smoothie, while the most effective non-dino smoothie is the Strawberry smoothie. Basil is shown in the real world photo album to dislike a banana popsicle, and outright says that he loves strawberries during the Birthday Memory. I may do another post expanding on this concept, because I think it is incorrect to take the statement about Sunny/Omori having a good memory at face value.)

Sunny is an imperfect human that hasn’t seen his friends in nearly four years. The way that his friends are portrayed in Headspace is in many ways, an ideal, and is not representative of how they act in either the current day, or back before the incident.

However, there is one last way that Sunny is an unreliable narrator, and that’s the simple fact that Sunny hates himself.

See, Sunny hates himself on a subconscious level throughout the game. Due to this, many of the things that Sunny does for others or himself were cast away, as they were just no longer important in the face of what he did. Even if he does remember that he did things for his friends growing up, they are never brought up because he no longer sees those things that he did as important. Within Sunny’s mind, the fact that he would listen to Basil talk about anything and everything is repressed until the player enters Blackspace, when Stranger uses that information to guilt Sunny for leaving the real Basil behind. The fact that he did this for Aubrey as well is something that is kept away from the player until he’s having a version of his friends remind him of their bonds shortly before entering a battle within his own mind to keep from losing the will to live in the battle against Omori.

Due to a mixture of all these reasons, Sunny’s relationships with each of his friends can often seem one-sided, especially when it comes to Basil, since so much more of him is being repressed than the others. You will often see the idea floated around that Basil’s liking of Sunny was one-sided, and that Sunny actually considered Kel his best friend, but this simply isn’t the case, it’s just that Basil kept a photo album and Sunny is actively trying to forget everything related to the Truth.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’d like to expand on a topic that I briefly mentioned in my previous post: Sunny has a small cooking hobby.

It wouldn’t be surprising for someone like Sunny to have an interest in cooking and preparing food. After all, two of the people that he looks up to the most are Mari and Hero, and both of their food preparation abilities are put on a pedestal within Headspace. Also within Headspace is an extremely wide range of food. A notable exclusion from the Snack list is steak, Sunny’s favorite food (according to his mom). Within the Foe Facts! journal, we can see that Sunny knows nutritional information for cilantro (this is attributed to Kel in the journal, but remember, this is Sunny’s mind, so Sunny would have to know it), and we can also see information about ginger and celery. According to the Headspace description for chocolate, we know that Sunny knows the difference between baking chocolate and regular chocolate. Sunny also has a concept of vegan food, and seems to be preoccupied with what can be considered vegan when it comes to several of the different Bunnies that appear within Orange Oasis.

Bread and toast are also given a large importance within Headspace, which likely stems from the summer before the photo album, when Hero and Mari were working at the bakery. He knows about different types of bread, has a technique called “Bread Slice” in Headspace, and is at least somewhat familiar with the process for making bread, as seen in the area where the Bread Twins are located.

In order to get any deeper into this analysis and talk more about why this information is somewhat hidden from the player, we need to get into just who it is Sunny cooks for.

The table that Basil and Sunny always sit at is one of the most adorable easily-missed details in the game, in my opinion, but I personally find that it connects to Sunny’s cooking interest quite well. After all, there would be no other reason for them to have this table in here if it was just for eating and homework and playing, as there is a full table in just the other room. The fact that this table is seen in a version of the house seemingly taken shortly before the incident is also relevant, because Mari and Hero would have been much more busy and likely wouldn’t be cooking or setting up picnics as much.

I’d like to put forward the idea that many of Sunny’s culinary escapades, outside of the group cooking situations that are mentioned by Hero, were shared specifically with Basil. This is because there are two primary food items that are associated with Sunny’s abilities.

Tofu

Tofu appears a whole lot in Headspace. It is loved by the Sprout Moles, and it is the cheapest food item, since you can get it for a single clam. The description for it calls it “Soft cardboard, basically.”

In the 2018 demo of the game, Basil’s grandmother directly states that tofu is Basil’s favorite food. Since this does not appear in the final game, I would like to point out that Basil’s fridge in Faraway is still the only fridge that has tofu in it, so it can still be assumed that this is intended to be the case.

During the Hikokomori route, there are two books that Sunny is shown to own that are relevant to this analysis. The first is one entitled “The Food Pyramid”, which is just another piece of evidence of Sunny’s cooking interest, and the second, “The Benefits of Tofu”. Sunny having this second book is very interesting, as he himself is shown to dislike tofu greatly. The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that Sunny specifically learned how to prepare tofu for Basil’s benefit.

And indeed, despite tofu healing the least amount of health and costing the least amount of clams, it is still the most clam efficient way of acquiring better snacks in Headspace, as 10 can be traded in Orange Oasis for a random other snack. I like to imagine that this references Sunny trading tofu with Basil for other foods, with the time commitment involved in the exchange referencing the fact that Sunny could’ve just learned how to make the other foods, but he is going out of his way to make something Basil likes, for his benefit.

Pictured: a normal amount of things about tofu for someone that doesn’t like tofu themselves to know

However, the other food that we know about Sunny’s proficiency with is far more interesting...

Strawberry Cake

So this is something that I’ve seen brought up a lot recently, the fact that Sunny knows step-by-step instructions on how to prepare a strawberry cake within Headspace implying he was involved with the preparation of Basil’s birthday cake in the real world, as it is the only time one is seen in the real world, but I think this idea deserves to be examined a little bit further.

First: Sunny knows how to make a strawberry cake, one way or the other.

Second: Sunny is not given credit for making Basil’s strawberry cake during the Birthday memory.

So, here’s what we know:

Hero is given credit for making the cake by Aubrey. However, Hero never actually responds to either Aubrey or Basil’s compliments during the memory.

Aubrey did not help with the cake, otherwise she wouldn’t have given credit to Hero specifically. In addition, we can assume Kel did not help, by virtue of him allowing Aubrey to not compliment him as well. Aubrey also likely does not believe that Mari was involved, because Aubrey would’ve complimented Mari if she knew.

Not everyone would’ve been at Basil’s house while the cake was being made, as this party was a surprise party being held at Basil’s house, so a few members of the group were likely on distraction duty.

Mari teases Sunny for being “camera shy” and tells him that he will get used to it soon enough. Indeed this does seem to be the case, as it doesn’t take long at all for Basil to take a picture of Sunny once he gets his camera back.

“Hehe...” indeed, Mari.

Finally, I would like to point out that just like the visions for the Rainy Day memory, there is a vision for this memory. In Faraway Park, you can find Hero and Kel playing, while wearing their outfits from the Birthday memory, implying that Hero and Kel were not spending their time before the party making a birthday cake.

There are two adorable conclusions that can be drawn then, from Sunny knowing how to make a strawberry cake. I’ll let you take your pick.

Sunny himself made Basil’s cake, either with instruction from Hero or on his own, then was too shy to take credit for it, or even appear on camera with it, with Hero and Mari covering for him and Hero staying silent as he is complimented by Aubrey and Basil. Aubrey is either also covering for Sunny, or is just mistakenly assuming that Hero made it. Sunny may have even told Basil that he made it later, because the photo album says “My friends surprised me with a strawberry cake”, rather than Hero.

Sunny, after seeing how happy the cake made Basil, decided to learn how to make a strawberry cake later.

Either way, Basil’s smile from that day is certainly something that stuck with Sunny, considering Basil’s birthday is covered in Memory Lane, and his own isn’t.

Sunny even has knowledge that Basil doesn’t really like sweets that much, as seen through what Mari says in Orange Oasis. This is something that Sunny only seemed to do for Basil. Sunny’s favorite food is steak, and his way of preparing that is to put it in the microwave. I would like to point out that most people would learn how to cook their own favorite foods first. You don’t have to see it this way, but you could read clear romantic undertones to this behavior. Sunny and Basil’s table in the kitchen is right next to the counter where Mari and Hero like to do their homework. Sunny also looks up to Hero a great deal, and if you interact with the stove in Sunny’s kitchen, he specifically makes a big deal about how Hero is always trying to cook for Mari but makes too much and the rest of the friends get the leftovers. Not to mention that the unknown ingredients involved with the Hero’s Kitchen area of Black Space 2 are linked to Basil in the game’s data, and the sprites are all tofu sprites.

To loop back around to the central point here, due to Basil’s love of keeping secrets, Sunny’s little hobby would not have been recorded within the photo album, because this was just for Basil. Sunny, in the modern day, doesn’t think about the fact that he did this for Basil, because to do that would be for Sunny to value what he brought forward to their friendship, and he can’t do that if he hates himself. And remembering how close he is to Basil at all would be to allow himself to feel guilty for leaving him alone to deal with the fallout of Mari’s death. Sunny and Basil are two unreliable little gremlins, so you need to look a little closer to see how their friendship went both ways, but I promise you, the game does give you a lot to work with if you just look for it.

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