To a certain degree, I think echoes of Mari exist in all three of the “party member” friends. While you see it in Kel most prominently, the game does seem to want you to compare Aubrey’s relationship with the Hooligans to Mari’s relationship with the group. Hero knocking out Sunny’s chores and cooking breakfast also echo Mari, though I consider this less likely to be intentional as a writing decision. What was clearly intentional, though, was Hero saving Sunny and Basil in a parallel to Mari saving Sunny, especially obvious due to Hero’s failure to do so during the original incident.
Of course in a game like this and a character like Mari, how she impacted the characters is obviously going to reflect in a lot of ways. Kel has emotionally matured in a lot of ways, but has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Aubrey during the events of the game due to their history. Aubrey, in turn, is shown to provide other lonely kids with what Mari provided her, but the perceived betrayal of her old friend group keeps her from being there for them. And while Hero appears quite a bit less than the other two, we do see him step up quite a bit in his role as the oldest in the friend group. I think all of this serves to show Sunny and the player that Mari still lives in the actions of the people that loved her.
In a very different world, in which Mari’s death had no twist, we would likely see Basil also take on some of her characteristics. His desire to take care of and protect others already seems to be rooted in his admiration for Mari, not to mention the implications of Basil’s awareness of some of Sunny’s fears that I’ve mentioned before. It should also be noted that he’s the only other one that owns a picnic basket, though one could argue this is mainly for gameplay reasons to give the player a save point before they make their decision on whether they want to Save Basil.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I put this caption together, so why not! Omori queer analysis time.
Now, most analysis of Omori subtext comes from the Headspace sections, and understandably so! Since it takes place in Sunny’s mind, nearly anything can be read into, because everything must serve some function within the world. Within Faraway Town — not so much! Sunny doesn’t seem to have much agency.
Except… That’s not exactly true, is it? There are over twenty sidequests, and therefore at least twenty ways Sunny makes a difference in Faraway Town before moving away, to lesser or greater extents. This can be seen most readily in Universally Loved runs, when he wakes up in his hospital room brimming with flowers from those he’s helped along the way:
Today I want to talk about the Picking Paint and Cooking sidequests. The detail that first brought this to my attention was the wallpaper selection.
It begins on 3 Days Left in Fix-It, where a newly-wed couple is struggling to choose a paint color for their new house, insisting the other one choose. It’s very cutesy and over-the-top, with custom animations showing them blowing kisses to each other.
Eventually, Sean & Karen ask Sunny to choose a paint swatch randomly, and he does so with his eyes closed, but ends up accidentally choosing a floral wallpaper sample instead.
When you visit them later, they actually have the wallpaper up throughout the entirety of the house, which is in the pink swatch, one of two on showcase in Fix-it. The other is… you guessed it! The wallpaper from Basil’s house.
If you go outside into the garden area directly after this, you’ll also be able to see Basil as a memory vision, as well as the flower Sean & Karen gift to Sunny should we finish this sidequest.
(Note: Despite my best efforts, I couldn't determine exactly what kind of flower this was meant to depict, if anything specific).
As you may guess, my proposal here is that even with his eyes closed, Sunny has an instinctual draw to Basil, and things Basil likes. I don’t mean this in a literal psychic sense, but in more of a symbolic way — perhaps even implying that Sunny understands his feelings better on a subconscious level, when he’s not actively looking at them.
Now this is somewhat shoddy evidence on its own, so let’s keep digging.
The reason this stuck out to me is because flowers are usually mentioned in Omori in tandem with Basil. So much so Basil & Flowers might as well be synonymous (and according to the names of the beta characters, once were!)
Obviously, Basil is associated with his flower garden in Headspace, and particularly Stranger's line comparing Sunny to white tulips on the path to Basil's house is often interpreted as having romantic undertones. There's even other official art based off of this line, where if you look very closely at the base of the tulip, it reads: "143. I love you, I love you, I love you".
But even within the main cast's dialogue, flowers are mentioned about 50 times, with 65% of these mentions being spoken by or related to Basil in some way. Many of Mari’s are about the flower puzzle sidequest – which is arguably also related to Basil, as it is initiated by a character named Daisy, and the only Headspace sidequest you can activate while Basil is in your party (not my original observation: read more about that here!)
The majority of Hero’s mentions are about buying flowers for his mother in the main plot. Disregarding these exceptions, it brings the Basil-flower correlation up to 95%!
Sean & Karen then invite us to their housewarming party. They explain they have recently moved in together, but that both of them are from Faraway Town.
We know this to be true, because this pair actually has Headspace counterparts, implying Sunny would have known them from years before.
Enter: Shawn & Ren!
Similar to Daisy, you can find these two at the playground, and they’re some of the only Headspace NPCs you can interact with while Basil is still in your party.
Throughout the game, they are always found next to each other, and they are even some of the only characters in the game to have a shared dialogue box. It’s not just Shawn and Ren, it’s Shawn and Ren.
Clearly, these two have always been close enough in real life for Sunny to make this observation and consider them a matching pair, even though they’re only now moving in together nearly four years later. In my interpretation, I consider them childhood sweethearts.
Coincidentally, they also give Omori the Observe skill. This skill is granted after laying down to stargaze with them. Recently, an acquaintance of mine mentioned they thought these two had similarities to the legend of Tanabata, or Star Festival. The story of Tanabata is about a pair of star-crossed lovers — a Weaver Princess and a Cow Herder.
Ren doesn’t seem to have much in common physically with the Weaver Princess, other than wearing a Japanese-inspired outfit similar to Mari’s, but Shawn distinctly has horns and ears attached to the sides of his head. While the wiki lists these as goat features, I think they’re much more reminiscent of a cow, with horns that grow out in a crescent shape rather than curving straight up and back.
There’s not much else to go off of, but considering Omori notably uses other Japanese folklore as inspiration for Headspace characters, it’s also not an impossible stretch. We don’t know why Shawn and Ren might have been considered star-crossed (or perhaps that’s a romantic daydream Sunny came up with himself!), but there are very notable reasons Sunny & Basil might be, including being the same sex in a small town in the 1990’s, and the complexities of their history together.
Shawn & Ren can also be found in the lobby area of the Last Resort. They’re noticeably on screen during the sequence in which Aubrey and Kel create the Bad Drawing of Basil in an attempt to continue the search for him.
That’s the last of Shawn & Ren’s appearances in the final release of Omori, but it’s also worth noting that these characters existed even in the early concept art of Headspace:
This shows to me that they have significance beyond the "random NPC made to fill out Headspace". In the 2018 Demo, there also existed sprites of Shawn & Ren that didn’t make it into the final game:
Notably, they’re depicted holding a jump rope between them. Presumably, this was removed to censor certain allusions to The Truth too early, similar to the Noose Room being removed, or the first half of Basil’s VHS tape, etc. The jump rope here is purple, like all of the jump ropes in the final game, probably to not stick out against the Headspace landscape. However, the jump rope in early Omori art was bright red:
We know that Sunny & Basil are described as being “tied together by a string of fate”. Of course, the true “string”, or I should say “rope”, that ties them together is The Truth, as they are the only two who know, and are irreparably changed because of it.
The “red string of fate” comes from Chinese mythology and typically describes soulmates. I’m certainly not the first to make the connection between the jump rope and the red string of fate, as lots of popular fanart can attest to.
But wait — are they star-crossed lovers then, or are they soulmates? Aren’t these two concepts opposites? One describes a couple who is destined to be true to each other for eternity, and one describes a couple whose future together has been impeded by the stars themselves.
Well, I submit my theory: Sunny & Basil are star-crossed soulmates. They can’t exist without each other, because they’re the only two in the world who truly understand each other, but they can’t exist together, because of the traumatic and delicate nature of their history.
Finally, we come back to Faraway Town and the second sidequest involving Sean & Karen. We show up to their homecoming party a little earlier than invited on One Day Left, and now we have Hero and Aubrey tagging along. (I definitely recommend this sidequest if you haven’t done it yourself already, as it is very heartfelt!)
In the cooking portion, the four of them all divvy up tasks like they presumably used to when they were friends — except one of the group is missing. Well… two actually. And seeing them all back together like this, Basil’s absence is even more apparent:
Later in the evening, we return for the party, and Karen welcomes us in:
It’s a housewarming party, so her dialogue requesting we “make ourselves at home” only makes sense here… but there’s someone else who has said this to us before...
In fact, there's someone else who is repeatedly associated with the word “home” in Omori...
The last one even explicitly refers to Basil’s “flowers back at home”, bringing us full circle.
Sean & Karen bought a house together, but until they added the final, floral touch (with Sunny’s help!), it wasn’t a home.
Sunny’s home is wherever Basil is.
In conclusion: Sunny choosing floral wallpaper is an intentional thematic choice, and Sean & Karen’s relationship not only embodies the typical childhood sweethearts love story to contrast Sunny & Basil’s more complex relationship, but also represents the overwhelming affection for Basil that Sunny doesn’t know how to express or even acknowledge.
And also they definitely move in together post-canon.
( visuals from the omori wiki, dialogue dump, & the omori let's play by reallyqueerchristmas )
I love this analysis! The floral wallpaper prevalence in the real world has always been one of my favorite topics of discussion.
In the interest of completion I would like to note that the floral wallpaper is used a couple of other places as well, most notably Sunny's house (only the stairs and piano room from my knowledge):
I think the similar wallpaper between Sunny and Basil's houses was intentional, because of Home and all that, but the wallpaper also exists in Hero and Kel's house, The Maverick's house, and Charlene's house:
Each of these houses are interesting for a few reasons. They all are the same layout as Sunny's house, of course, with some minor alterations. The Maverick's house also has some significance due to the religious vibe of the place, and the curtain that is somewhat reminiscent of the one in Sunny's piano room covering where the exit to the backyard would be.
Kel himself serves as a foil to Sunny in a lot of ways: Still has an older sibling, parents are still together (and frankly are the opposite of Sunny's parents, from what we see of them), now has a younger sibling, has seemingly been able to move on from Mari's death, Hector is still around where Mewo isn't. (though frankly, if they weren't gonna put the floral wallpaper anywhere in Aubrey's house, I think they shouldn't have included it with Kel's)
Of these three, I do find Charlene's the most interesting. First, the kitchen has a table reminiscent of the one Basil and Sunny always sit at.
Charlene herself has a lot of similarities to Basil. "Yellow Bun Granny" is actually her mother, not grandmother, but it is still a similar situation. She also gives you a flower clip in the real world. Tucker, Charlene's brother, lives in the room that is analogous to the close in Sunny's house, and I actually see him as a warning almost of what could happen to Sunny if he continues on his current path.
One thing that is notable about each of the houses with the floral wallpaper is that they all have a different shade/color! However, Sean and Karen's house actually ends up bucking this trend; their floral wallpaper appears to be the exact shade of wallpaper used in Sunny's house.
That's not to discredit anything in this analysis! Just the opposite, in fact. Take a close look at Sean and Karen's house and you'll notice that it very much seems to be a synthesis of Sunny and Basil's! It's the only one-story house other than Basil's with the floral design. Sunny's house before Memory Lane actually has the same flower Sean and Karen give you in it! Not to mention the reuse of the balloons and party favors and strawberry cake from Basil's birthday party!
I think all of this is really just intended to feed into the larger imagery of "Home" in OMORI and the importance of Basil within how Sunny conceives of it. Honestly, if Basil and Sunny were to move in together, I'd imagine it'd be into a house that looks a lot like Sean and Karen's.
flustered sunny blushing because basil is hugging and kissing him on the cheek. normal normla anortml. nortmal abouyt them. ahgem. sunmy nblushing and being embarsesd! ayeah. senmd post.
I had a dream last night where there was a continuation of Omori where Omori and Stranger could wander Headspace after the good ending. Stranger, however, looked different when he entered Headspace. This is my recreation of his design.
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