The Enigma That is Porky Minch (Part 1)

    Porky Minch; that one jerky kid in your neighborhood that you never really liked. At least, that's what he is at first glance, but in truth, there is so much more to Porky's character than that. He is a villain that has a much deeper story than what we usually see.

    Before we get too deep into things, I'd like to put a quick note about his name. In EarthBound, his name is  Pokey, while in Mother 2 and Mother 3 his name is Porky. This has been speculated to be due to either mistranslation or because Nintendo was afraid of copyright issues with Warner Bros. because of Porky Pig. In my opinion, I think it's the latter because I don't really think that the translators would've missed the obvious joke of naming the fat kid Porky (and his skinny brother Picky). Whatever the case, it has become clear that his official name is supposed to be Porky so that's how I'm going to refer to him.

    In order to fully understand Porky, first we must look at his life before he became an insane villain. From what we can gather, it seems that the Minch's were very rich- at least until Ness's father allegedly borrowed a ton of money from them. The Minch parents do certainly dress like they're well off, and act like it to some extent. Porky and Picky on the other hand; well, they look more ragtag.

Porky is sporting one suspender and a pretty shabby haircut

    But we can give them some slack for this, they are kids after all. Their parents don't really seem to love them very much either, and they also seem to physically harm them if they do something bad. Perhaps because of the way his parents treated him, Porky became the way he is. It is plausible, things like that do happen. 

    Yet we can't completely blame his parents, we also have to take into account other children. Porky's the kind of kid that would probably be a bully. The kind of kid who was picked on when he was younger, but now seeks to do the same to others. No one likes a bully, and no one likes Porky. He's an immature jerk.

    And then there's Ness. The good kid. The kid that always hangs out with the kids that no one likes. Everyone's friend. Porky's only friend. Ness may not be particularly fond of Porky, but he is still nice to him. Ness is about as perfect as a thirteen year old can get, and Porky is jealous. He wants what Ness has; friends, a loving family, good looks, etc. Heck, he may even admire Ness. Because of this, he pushes Ness around a lot, and yet Ness is still there for him whenever he needs him. I don't think Porky is able to completely wrap his head around this, he can't understand why Ness still wants to hang around him, he can't comprehend his acts of kindness. Part of him wants to be Ness's friend, while the other wants to crush Ness; to see the ever-so-perfect boy be torn to bits. 

     On the same strange night that Ness chose his fate, Porky also chose his own, and these two boys were led down very, very different paths. 

    At some point, Porky was contacted by Giygas, and he was given a deal; if he helped Giygas, he would be able to see Ness crushed, just like part of him had always wanted. Porky seized the chance. Perhaps he did think it over, perhaps he did feel guilt, but he chose to become Ness's enemy. Unlike most of Giygas' human minions, Porky was acting of his own accord. Giygas never brainwashed him, he chose to do what he did because he wanted to. 

    Everytime you see him on your adventure in EarthBound, he's the same; a greedy arrogant jerkface that you'd like to punch. At least until you get to the final battle. At this point, he shows his true colors. His lust for violence and chaos has gone beyond beating up kids on the playground, it's come to destroying the entire Earth. If it means he has to die so be it, just as long as everyone who hated him suffers the same fate, even if it means destroying the one person who actually cared about him. When the battle's over, he leaves. The last trace of him we see is a short note addressed to Ness.

    He then travels through time and space, gathering up groups of followers, and finally finds an impressionable place that he can take over. He's like an inter-dimensional Hitler. This place; the Nowhere Islands, is where he learns of a great power that can be used to destroy the Earth. Even though everyone now loves him, and he's reached a god-like status (both physically and in people's eyes) he still wants the world to get a taste of what they dished out to him so many years ago. It's not even the same people who were mean to him, it's their descendants. He claims he'll die of boredom otherwise.

    Something strange also, he seems to hold the chosen four in a place of honor even though they opposed him. It seems as if he secretly admired them, and now that they're not around he can show it.

    Unfortunately, he messes with the wrong family, and brings forth a new hero to oppose him. 

    I am going to make this a two-parter, so stay tuned for part two!

Logo Love

    We all know the Mother logo, you know, this one:

And that little Earth on there is basically the symbol of the Mother series (well, in Smash Bros. anyways). Back a while ago, there was a post on EarthBound Central that showed that the earth is actually based off the famous picture of the Earth, Blue Marble, upside down: http://earthboundcentral.com/2010/08/the-world-is-mother/

Although they don't match exactly (the Mother version is just a bit more simplified) they still match up pretty well. So why am I talking about this? Well, before I knew about the whole Blue Marble thing, I thought that the Earth in the logo was deliberately made to have certain things in it. What things? Well, I'll show you.

This all started when I got too close to my TV while playing Brawl and started inspecting the little logo. Firstly, I saw an M on the Earth and I was all like "Oh cool, M for Mother!" 

Looks an awful lot like an M, doesn't it? And then I saw something else, and you may have to keep an open mind for this, but I saw what looks like an alien's head, Giygas' (not his Mewtwo-like form) head to be specific. 

Still don't see it? Here: 

I admit that it might just be me seeing this, but for some reason it reminds me of Giygas. Let's compare:

Hmm, it actually looks more plausible than I thought it would side-by-side. Juxtaposing these pictures made me wonder; is the some insane weird chance that maybe that little "face" in the logo inspired Giygas' design? Probably not, but hey, this isn't Over Analyzations of EarthBound for nothing.

Family Trees

    All three of the Mother games star different protagonists, so you may be wondering "are these people related?" Well, it's more likely than you think!

  

Let's start with a pretty well known theory. In the first two games in the series, the main characters, Ninten and Ness, both look pretty similar. They also both have fathers who aren't really around and are only reachable by phone. Because Mother happens before EarthBound, you may think that Ninten is Ness's father. It all fits together pretty well; Ninten's girlfriend, Ana, even bears a strong resemblance to Ness's mother. On top of that, Loid is a pretty close match to Jeff's father, Dr. Andonuts. In Mother 3, Dr. Andonuts even appears in a trashcan much like Loid did in Mother. Unfortunately, although everything fits together rather perfectly, there's one major flaw in this theory; the dates of the two games. You see, Mother takes place in the 1980's, 1988 specifically. EarthBound takes place in the '90's. It would be pretty impossible for the characters from Mother to have grown up and have thirteen-year-old kids by that time. Well, who knows, maybe there was some crazy time warp or something. Of course, we can always guess that Ninten and Ness are cousins or something. 

(family resemblance?)

   And then there's Lucas and Claus. Evidence from the game (both used and unused) suggests that They are descendants of Ness since (spoiler alert!) Mother 3 takes place a very long time after EarthBound. The most compelling piece of evidence is Lucas's Franklin Badge which very well could be the same one that Ness owned. This would mean that they are related to Ness from Flint's side of the family since he was the one who gave the Franklin Badge to Lucas.

  

    And because I look way too far into these kinds of things, have you noticed that both Poo and Kumatora are royalty and know PK Starstorm? Maybe Kumatora is a descendant of Poo or maybe I'm just crazy, who knows.

   Makes you kind of look at things a bit differently, huh?

    

A Warm Welcome and a Tale of Giygas

    I can already tell this is going to be one of those things that people will stumble upon from random Google searches. Well, this blog is basically what the title says. Without further ado, let us jump right in. This article that you're about to read is one that I wrote quite a while ago, so it may have a few mistakes (or a lot). Tomorrow I shall have a freshly written article posted, but for now I'll just post this old thing. It's basically looking at the life of Giygas and it doesn't mention the Giygas theory at all, but I do want to go over that in the future despite the fact it's a pretty touchy subject. Well, here it is.

    Giygas' story begins in the early 1900's when a couple disappeared from their home in rural America. These people were George and Maria. Now, George and Maria didn't just completely disappear out of the blue, they were abducted by aliens. These aliens took George and Maria back to their planet and gave them an alien infant, Giygas, to raise. Why did they abduct them to raise Giygas? I don't know. Perhaps humans are the best caretakers. I also wonder if Giygas was an important alien, perhaps heir to the throne or something of that sort... Well ignoring a couple gaping holes in that plot summary, let's continue. 

                                                 ( Here's the story from Earth Bound Zero)

    These aliens had special psychic abilities, or PSI, and George began to study this power. Of course the aliens didn't know what he was doing and he didn't have their permission so if they found out, he would be in big trouble. Well, George somehow manages to escape back to Earth, leaving his wife and baby Giygas back on the planet. Somehow the aliens found out what George had been doing, and they were mad. They didn't want humans to discover this immense power, who knows what would happen. 

    

    Giygas was raised by Maria, and once he was fully grown, the other aliens gave him a very important task: to destroy the Earth so that they never discover the psychic power. Of course, Earth is where Maria is from, and Giygas, being raised by Maria, has human emotions. How could he destroy his beloved mother's home planet? She would never forgive him for that. 

   

     Before Giygas left on his important mission (of which Maria knew nothing about) he somehow managed to take a song that Maria used to sing to him when he was a child, and break it into eight pieces which then were scattered about the Earth. Why did he do this? Well, he did have human emotions and we can guess that because of this, that song held some memories for him, memories which he could no longer bear, seeing as he was about to betray Maria, the only person he cared about. 

    

    Somewhere around this time, he comes upon a strange object called the Apple of Enlightenment. What is the Apple of Enlightenment? No one really knows for sure, but we do know that it predicts the future. The Apple of Enlightenment tells him that sometime in the future he will be defeated by a boy named Ness. Giygas now knows he must destroy the Earth quickly, before he is defeated. 

    

    On Earth, 80 years have passed. George is long gone, but he has a grandson named Ninten. When Giygas begins to send out his alien army to attack Earth, Ninten stumbles upon a journal that George wrote about the alien's pschic powers. He then sets out to try to put a stop to Giygas.

    

    Here's where I get kind of confused because some of the Human characters already have psychic powers. Presumably, these are not the same as the alien's psychic powers, but they may be. I'm guessing that only the humans who already posess psychic powers would be able to harness the alien psychic power, but I may be wrong. 

    

    Well, somewhere along the line, Giygas kidnaps some humans, probably doing experiments on them. He doesn't really do much rather than sit in his base on Earth and command his armies. As all this is going down, he has no idea that Ninten and his friend are tracking down all eight pieces of the melody for somebody named Queen Mary who lives in a strange world called Magicant (may or may not go over this later, basically Queen Mary is Maria's spirit.) Well, Ninten and his buds finally reach where Giygas is, and temporarily defeat him by singing the eight melodies to him. I say temporarily because he isn't really defeated, he just couldn't attack because he was overwhelmed with memories of Maria. 

                                                             (Mewtwo? Is that you?)

   

     After this all seems safe once more. Giygas seems to be defeated and the world is at peace once more... until about 10 years later. Remember when I told you the Apple of Enlightenment said he would be defeated by a boy named Ness? Yeah, Ninten didn't really defeat him, only Ness can. Well now we're in the 1990's and the Earth is being plagued by alien attacks once more. Ness gets woken up one night by a meteorite crashing to Earth. In this meteorite is a bee, no ordinary bee, it's actually an alien. This alien-bee tells Ness that he is from 10 years in the future where Giygas has taken over Earth and all is misery, but there is a legend of three boys and one girl who could defeat Giygas. One of these boys is, of course, Ness. 

   

     So Ness eventually meets the other heroes and they set off to defeat Giygas after doing a couple other things first.... but where is Giygas? With the help of a scientist, they had managed to track down his whereabouts, but there's nothing here. That's because Giygas is actually attacking from the past. You see, after he was defeated by Ninten, he came up with the brilliant idea to destroy the Earth in the future so that Ness would never have a chance to defeat him. Unfortunately for him, that scientist helps them time-travel to where Giygas is. 

   

    Now this place is extremely unnerving in the past. It's completely white, misty, and empty, oh is it ever empty. When you get to this place, the Cave of the Past, you feel so... alone. It's a really weird thing how alone it makes you feel, something I have never experienced in any other game. Back to the story. Ness and his friends finally reach Giygas' lair, a place even more unnerving than the Cave of the Past, and rightfully so, for it is home to one of the most disturbing things I have had the pleasure of viewing. Giygas' Lair is strange, the floor seems to be made of pulsating intestines, and at the end of that disturbing pathway lies a machine that also seems to be made out of some internal material. 

                                                                   (The Cave of the Past)

 

(Giygas' Lair, and that jerk, Pokey)  

    It is here where Ness sees someone he didn't expect to see; his obnoxious next-door neighbor, Pokey. Now I'm not really going to say much about Pokey at this moment, remember this is about Giygas, but I will be going over Pokey at some point. So Pokey tells them that he has been helping Giygas for a while, helping plant his evil influence throughout the world, causing more trouble for our heroes than there would have been originally. He also tells them that Giygas gained so much evil power that it basically obliterated his mind which means that Giygas cannot think anymore, he has no idea what he is doing, an "almighty idiot" as Pokey puts it. This evil power also basically tore Giygas from his body, causing him to become an incomprehensible form, one that is so powerful, his very being there is tearing the very fabric of time and space. 

                                                                 (Seriously, what am I even looking at here?)

   

     Giygas is being kept safe in that machine, nothing more than a weapon for Pokey now, a once intelligent and perhaps noble being now reduced to being controlled by a mere child. After battling Ness for a while, Pokey decides to turn off the rightfully named "Devil's Machine" and show the chosen four what true fear looks like, and now we get our first glimpse of Giygas himself. 

    

    Trying to wrap your mind around Giygas will confuse you and probably give you a headache. He seems to be a dimension in and of itself. He is nothing but a mass of black with a red swirl that seems to make a face. Although he is quite simple in appearance, he is still quite bone chilling, and that along with the insanely freaky music is enough nightmare fuel for the rest of your life. 

    

    As Pokey said, his mind is basically mush. When he talks to you during the battle, what he says is strange and twisted, it almost makes you sorry for him. The human emotions he once had seem  to come out as he calls Ness his friend and says that it hurts... he also says he's happy.. why? He's facing his doom, but he has no idea what's going on, he doesn't know he's attacking. Unfortunately, though you may feel sorry for him, he must be killed or his just being there will unravell the fabric of time and space. 

    

    He dies in a strange way, he's much to powerful to be killed with physical and psychic attacks, but he is killed with nothing more than a few simple prayers. One of the party members, Paula, has the ability to pray, which causes other people of the Earth to suddenly pray. The final prayer has the player themself pray, defeating Giygas. In a way it's kind of tragic the way he dies, the only alien who had human emotions was killed by human emotions. 

    

    All is right in the world now right? Giygas is actually defeated and now the world is at peace. Unfortunately, this is not true, although troubles may be over for Ness and his friends, a new villain rises out of the ashes of the old... Pokey.

    

     Thus ends my overly-long tale of Giygas, although this is not the end of my over-analyzations of EarthBound characters, more will be coming in the future.