Saturday, July 5, 2014

Shachipanda: Episode 2?

Update: One of my favorite authors offered translations of the dialogue, which I've included below with links to the tweets.

My preliminary thoughts are that this is an indication that the current is the final state of Shachipanda. I'm still incredibly curious about that t-shirt and what the date is, as well as just generally hoping someone who is more narratively inclined wants to put this together in a way that is satisfying both to the current design and in terms of the previous, but the big hole is now filled, and I am pretty incredibly happy about that.



Above is the minimap for the town of Shachipanda, one of the more famous of the (non-Aika) nightmare suites available in Animal Crossing: New Leaf through the Dream Suite. I'm back into New Leaf for the first time in over half a year, and I wanted to revisit some of these "Horror Towns." I did get to go to the original Shachipanda, but I didn't take any screengrabs of it; there are plenty of annotated walkthroughs available.

The short version of the previous Shachipanda is that there is a man, whose identifying dress you wear, who runs some sort of antique shop that's a front for a drug operation. He murdered a girl and her mother, and was possibly the husband/father of them. Another girl, dressed as a rabbit, fell or was pushed off a cliff, and died. Her ghost in the initial town says that her little sister was angry; the other dead girl is the owner of the final house and it seems to be some sort of composite of her memories. There is also a wanted poster of the man, and some police tape around his house.

The current version of Shachipanda seems to be a continuation of this story, although, without knowing Japanese, I can't really piece it together completely.








1




Plugged into Google Translate, this gives "I wondering I must observe the rules"

"Follow the rules while you wander"



Main


Basement


2nd Floor




2

The second house is the house of the murderer from the previous; much of it is the same, except that now he has bedhead and a halo.



Google Translate again: "You're going to have no hesitation."

"You didn't hesitate at all, did you?"

Main




Back Room




Basement





The following, is, as far as I can tell, the only change from the previous version of this room (aside from the placement in the houses); the shirt that's hanging, rather than being bloody, has what looks like some sort of date pattern on it. I couldn't find this pattern anywhere else, though it looks to say 2014 / 30, which, given that the previous town had the date of the girl's murder marked in 2013, seems to be some sort of continuity.



2nd Floor

This is the biggest departure from the previous iteration of the town; where this area used to be closed off (with police tape) and include only the wetsuit and a trash can, it now has some more stuff and is accessible.


The words on this pattern are, as best I can figure, "Yamii's Garden;" Yamii being the name of the owner of the next house.



3


Last Google Translate: "And to dream and probably even a nice dream."

"Nice dream, wasn't it? Because it was a dream!"

Main Room





Back Room




Right Room





Left Room



Basement

These pictures aren't going to do them justice at all, but the basement is maybe the single best laid-out room I've ever seen in Animal Crossing; it is some sort of café/sushi bar run by anatomical models.






2nd Floor

This area is too, as it somehow wraps together the titular panda and the voyeurist themes of the previous town.





Other Stuff

Replacement for the wanted poster.


Various





The cleaned up scene of the rabbit's death, with the death- & drug-dealer's ghost.