Quite possibly the world's only
First Person Groomer,
Bonsai Barber puts you in the role of a barber in a village in which most of the residents are anthropomorphic plants. Each day, five people will come in for haircuts, and you must trim, comb, and paint their foliage into all manner of strange shapes, from sailboats to fried eggs. As if that wasn't strange enough, you have to contend with sudden blackouts, swarms of bees, thunderstorms
inside your shop, and other strange happenings. Normal barbers don't go through all this!
Bonsai Barber provides examples of:
- 100% Completion: More difficult than it seems—since you have to five-star every style at least once, five-star every customer at least once, win the fete, and get all the Guide Dang It! photography awards.
- Anti Poop-Socking: You can only cut five customers per real-world day. You're free to trim Prunella the Practice Plant as often as you like, though.
- Anime Leaves
- Blackout Basement: Playing at night occasionally leads to all the lights being out. You have to cut with only a flashlight available to you.
- Cartoon Creature: Most of the plants are easily recognizable, except for Catnip. She's a pink, fuzzy... thing. With bright red leaves.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: It's a pretty good toss-up between Maizy and Catnip. Maizy, however, could be thought of as The Ditz as well.
- First-Person Snapshooter: You get awards for taking specific pictures, like getting a picture of a firefly in a blackout.
- Funny Plant
- Furry Confusion: While most of your customers are anthropomorphic plants, you have an ordinary potted plant on your desk. Huh.
- Gravity Screw: Strawbinski gives you an optional device which allows you to cut people's leaves upside-down.
- Guide Dang It!: Finding the special Golden Tools, which make it literally impossible to mess up a haircut—they'll only cut/paint/regrow precisely where they need to. You're more likely to stumble into the solution by accident.
- Infinity Plus One Scissors: It's possible to temporarily power up your tools into Golden Tools, which will always give you a perfect cut/painting. Of course, their totally brokenness is why it's only a temporary power-up.
- Insistent Terminology: Charlotte is a shallot, not an onion, dear. (Actually, according to the Bumper Book of Barber Business, she really is just a plain old onion, but she won't hear of it.)
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mr. Stickle claims to be a hard man to please. He's actually one of the easiest customers to five-star due to his nice, thick leaves. To his credit, he tries his darnedest to not sound sincere when he compliments you.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: If you paint Beaky with your paintbrush, she sings snippets of famous children's songs, like "Old Macdonald" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." She has one for each color.
- Single-Minded Twins: The Cherry Twins, who go so far as to have a single haircut between the two of them.
- Stealth Pun: Most of the characters have ordinary green leaves. Of the ones who don't, Catnip is obviously not of this garden and Charles B. Foster is all-over unique, but why does Reg Wedge—a normal carrot—have bright orange leaves? He's a carrot top.
- Tsundere: The Cherry Twins are acting like this at first.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Charlotte the starlet.
