Funny / AI: The Somnium Files

Spoilers Off applies to all "Moments" pages

This is a murder mystery game.

"Humanity finally develops artificial intelligence... and this is the result."

— Date lamenting about one of the many stupid things Aiba can do in somnium^note While not about the instant to the right, it is equally applicable.

The game opens on the mutilated corpse of a woman, providing the appearance of a mostly serious detective drama. That mask slips pretty quickly and is completely gone by the time an Artificial Intelligence is dancing behind a skeleton. It only gets more irreverent from there.

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• Date's Chivalrous Pervert antics lead to many humorous moments:
  • Date's investigation partners usually crack jokes at his perverted antics, often making him flustered or going along with it.
    Aiba: Under normal circumstances I would lecture you about your awful taste, but...
    Mizuki: I heard you became a cop so you could steal underwear from the gym and not get in trouble.
  • He can use his X-Ray Vision to look at a mermaid in the Maid Cafe. The X-ray vision works realistically, so instead of seeing her nude, he just sees her skeleton. Despite this, Date still seems to find her bone structure arousing. Examining her bones enough times earns you the "Bonephilia" achievement.
  • There's a Running Gag when looking at the lanterns in the Kumakura office while Iris is present: Date will ask Iris if the lanterns remind her of anything, and Moma will bluntly give away the answer ("What, like a dick?"), much to Date's annoyance.
    • The original Japanese version of the joke revolves around the word for the lantern ("chouchin") and those for male genitalia (like "chinchin" and "chinko") which Date tries to mix up in various seemingly innocent sentences for Iris to say out loud, for example having her exclaim how scary they look ("chouchin kowai"), only for Moma to blurt out the sentences first.
  • Related is how often porn is used to help win the firefight sequences; in the majority of them, Aiba tells Date there's porn to give him super speed for a moment. No, seriously, but the kicker comes when one sequence involve Aiba telling Date to toss a porn magazine to bait some stupid goons. It works, but what makes it funny? Date cries for the magazine.
  • The first time you stop by Lemniscate and examine the receptionist, Date bluntly observes that "there's a receptionist with huge breasts sitting behind the desk." If you keep examining her...
    There's a receptionist with huge breasts sitting. → There's a receptionist with huge breasts. → Huge breasts. → Breasts... → There are huge breasts sitting behind the desk.
• The entire reveal in the early game that Boss's office is a chaotic mismash of colourful furniture, inviting you to go inspect everything for a good while.
• During Date's first interaction with Ota, after exhausting all of the initial options, a new option comes up that's simply "Punch him". Aiba has to quickly stop Date from hitting the kid.
• Aiba can project an image of herself directly into Date's brain as a form of augmented reality. The first time she does this, you get the opportunity to just freak out at her:
  Date: Whoaaa!!! W-wait... a-are you a ghost?!
  Aiba: Idiot.
  • Even better is that one of the dialogue options? Scream like a little girl. Which Date will promptly do so.
• Most of Aiba's Somnium entrances are quite ridiculous:
  • Her first one is her dancing behind a skeleton with a hip-hop beat playing as background music. It perfectly sets the mood for her behavior in many of these Somniums.
  • In Mizuki's Somnium, she lands like what she calls a "cybernetic assassin from the future", and Date tells her that if she wanted to do that, she'd have to be naked.
  • During So Seijma's, she enters driving a forklift... and then she loses control, starts spinning, and crashes it, sending her flying. Made even funnier if you have a keen eye since you can see Aiba's model is still in a sitting position as she flies out.
    • "It is time to unleash the Drift King!"
  • In Iris's first Somnium, she appears shaped like a pixelated cube, before changing into a Minecraft-esque character, since the Somnium can't handle her usual resolution.
  • In Ota's, she appears shivering due to the cold temperature in the warehouse, and starts acting like a pet wanting to be adopted.
    Aiba: Can you please take me with you? As long as I have Wi-Fi, I don't need anything else.
  • In #89's, she begins acting like a cat, complete with her scratching the carpet and meowing.
  • Later on in that same Somnium, you find a pot filled with a mysterious soup; if you choose to drink it, it will cause Aiba to faint, and when she wakes up, the follow up exchange happens.

    Aiba: Thank you for the delicious soup.
    Date: What kind of soup was it.
    Aiba: Elephant.
    Date: What did you say?
    *Beat*
    Aiba: Elephant.

    • What makes it even funnier it's Aiba's silly smile all throughout that exchange.◊
  • There are two times when you can make Aiba talk to some bones. Each time she attempts conversation with them, she gets upset about them ignoring her.
    • The first is in the tutorial Somnium where she talks to a skeleton. When it inevitably doesn't respond, she gets angry and insults its mother by saying she's a stupid bony girl.
      Aiba: Hey, don't ignore me! Stupid... bony man. Your mother is a stupid bony girl. Bony, bony, bony!
      [...]
      Date: Are you finished?
      Aiba: My disappointment is immeasurable.
    • The second is in #89's Somnium when she talks to a skull. Leading her to declare that it deserves retaliation before angrily poking at it, leading to the page quote above.
• A lot of interactions with Mama, since she's either making innuendos about men or cracking jokes at the expense of Date (who's sometimes with Iris or Mizuki in Marble). Examining the tap in the bar leads to this exchange:

  Mama: Hey, Date. You hear the one about the drunk ballerina?

  Mama: She quit the ballet because she was always more interested in tap.

  • Date can also mistake her for the fridge, or:
    Date: Iris, let me introduce you to Mama's little sister...
    Mama: That's a fridge! Hmph!
• Pretty much any interaction with Kagami. It's hilarious seeing the poor guy get more and more irritated simply by forgetting his name.
• Moma, in spite of being a yakuza boss, is a constant source of this, especially when Iris is involved.
  • The very first time you meet him on the left path, he just gives a look that screams "What. The. Fuck." when Date comes in and just throws his henchmen across the room without trying.
  • When Date needs to get some information about Renju's whereabouts, Moma tells him that he would tell him if he can shake hands with Iris, which leads to the following exchange:
    Date: Iris, can you do me a favor?
    Iris: A favor?
    Date: He, uh, wants to see your boobs.
    Moma: What the fuck, dude?! I didn't say that!
  • Later on, Moma asks to see her panties; this time, Date just tells Iris the truth, but she doesn't believe him and hits him instead, while Moma denies what he originally asked.
  • And lastly, during the epilogue, Moma wants to motorboat Iris. Date tells him to close his eyes... and then switches Iris with Moma's fat lackey. Moma can't tell the difference. It's also a blatant reference to the "Puff-Puff" gag from Dragon Quest which always involves a similar bait-and-switch scenario, and in Japanese Moma even asks for "puff-puff" by name.
• Meta example: The A-Set twitter has been active since the game's release, and posted this picture. The very next day, the voice actors for Iris, Mizuki and Ota replicated it.
• Iris's Somnium is presented as her hosting a Let's Play of her favorite video game, ShovelForge, with her usually bubbly attitude fully intact and lots of Narrating the Obvious. If you run counter to her instructions and deny the existence of Naixatloz, she'll puzzledly remark on the game glitching up on her and even suggest her "audience" take a break to use the bathroom while experiencing Loads and Loads of Loading.
• Date needs some help, so he calls on Moma... but Aiba sends a NILE message to Ota and Mizuki to help. The whole setup before the rescue is quite surreal.
  • Aiba's reasoning for calling them is to make good on his promise to ask them to help Iris.
    Aiba: Besides, Mizuki can be very helpful.
    Date: And Ota?
    Aiba: Perhaps he can be used as a shield.
    Date: That's cruel, even for me.
  • Moma accurately describes that their assistance as "[Date's] sixth-grade roommate and a NEET who's trying to get his light novel published." He is understandably not filled with confidence. In return, they say that Moma is an old man and doesn't look too useful either.
    • When Ota, of all people, calls Moma short and scrawny, his defense for it is one that Aiba calls fallacious.
      Moma: Shut up, I'm not short. The Earth is just big.
    • When Moma retorts by noting that Ota is also short (shorter than Moma, in fact), Ota claims that he isn't even in his final form and that his joints will unfold to get three times bigger.
      Moma: Liar!
  • After more bickering, Date shuts them up to get them back on track and get things done by pointing out their one common thread: their love of A-Set. After doing the A-Set chant with each other, they finally get along long enough to save Iris.
    Aiba: It seems they've already become good friends. Iris has extraordinary power...
• Examining the pond in So Sejima's yard often has Date exclaim that he's just seen some mythical creature, among them a kappa and a merman, only for Aiba to reply that since So is so rich, it's no surprise that he has his own creature. Continuing to examine the pond will have the creature in question (unseen to the player) say something, leaving Date utterly bewildered.
• In the flashback where Date decides to train Mizuki in self-defense, he asks Mizuki to throw a punch in order to assess her strength. When she does as he said, that punch is powerful enough to create a shockwave that kicks up the dirt surrounding her. Date goes Blank White Eyes and subsequently orders her not to hit her "master".
• A later flashback shows Mizuki effortlessly destroying multiple training dummies before knocking down a tall tree on the grounds of Ikume Shrine. After hearing the priest's angry shout, Date tells Mizuki to run for it with his "master" accent.
• After finding Mizuki Bound and Gagged in a hollow speaker in his apartment, Date proceeds to remove the tape from her mouth, leading to Mizuki complaining that he was doing it too forcefully. Date decides to put the tape back on to shut her up while he undoes her restraints.
  • Despite the seriousness of the situation, examining some of the blatantly incorrect locations when searching for her yields some hilarious reactions:
    *examine Date's computer*
    Date: Maybe she's been turned into quantum data and uploaded into the computer!
    Aiba: Are you joking around at a time like this?!
    *examine Adorabbit*
    Date: Mizuki... No... To think that you've been turned into this...
    Aiba: If you don't stop fooling around I will kick your brain's ass!
• During Hitomi's Somnium, choosing to shout down a hole will have Aiba screaming: "Date likes Hitomi!" Even funnier, that's what you need to do to progress.
• While the events in the buildup to the true end are serious, examining the torso when meeting Saito (in #89's body) leads him asking the mannequin for help. Considering the deadly situation he's in, it's remarkable that Date can still crack a joke:
  Date: Hey, how about a little help here?
  Saito: What... are you doing?
• In the epilogue:
  • Mizuki and Date got into a fight over the former making omelets over-easy. After spending some time using Iris as the intermediary, they finally decide to make up and Mizuki demands various things from Date, including... a new iron pipe.
  • The first thing Date and Iris see upon entering the Kumakura office is Moma wailing uncontrollably in joy, revealing that he had been praying for many days straight when Iris was undergoing surgery and thanking God for helping Iris recover.
  • Date and Iris go into Boss's office, and examining the Happy Birthday sign leads to this exchange:
    Iris: Is it your birthday?
    Date: No, that's been in here forever.
    Boss: Every day is like my birthday!
    Iris: Wow, then you must be really old!
    *Beat*, Date and Boss respond with "..."
    Boss: I'm gonna take that down.
• The entirety of the Dance Party Ending, set to Invincible Rainbow Arrow. Every surviving character gets to take part in it, with Date/Falco even participating, albeit reluctantly. It ends with an offscreen commotion about how hard everyone practiced, with an interrupted Hand Wave as to why everyone can see Aiba's human form (sadly, you can't hear why over the conversation).
• Little less funny once you know the details, but Aiba's constant concerns about adjusting Date's medication. Especially when he keeps talking to his own picture from Aiba popping out and looking at him.
  Date: Oh hi, I'm Date. That's your name, too? Wow, what a coincidence.
  Aiba: Okay, I think I need to adjust your medication.