- And she always has her eyes closed.
- Possibly the biggest clue is within the 'Kyukyu-kun' room, here (ignore the commentary) — after entering the room, she sees a happy, smiling, phallic-looking rainbow thing rubbing the railing, looking for all the world like an unassumingly friendly creature. When Madotsuki enters the next room, she is confronted by a menacing, aggressive-looking face and immediately wakes up from the dream world. Whether it's a coincidence or has some underlying meaning has been argued about a lot. It is, however, worth noting that FACE is the one and only thing that wakes Madotsuki up that isn't caused by Madotsuki herself. It also doesn't help that the door leading to the Kyukyu-kun room looks a lot like a zipper.
- There are a few places in the game where some of the items or areas look like vaginas — bleeding orifices (like the door to the Kyukyu-kun room, which has to be knifed open, leaving a bizarrely hymeneal opening); and the tunnel into the forest has these floating, multicolored creatures that look suspiciously like uteruses...with eyes.
- Also, there are lots of hands throughout the game; the staircase to the poop-hair room is lined with them, and there's also the medamaude room where they're sticking up from the ground (and there are bodiless legs wandering around - would those fit into it all?). Unwanted touching, perhaps?
- Perhaps she's not only been raped, but is also pregnant. One room has figures full of figures with huge, bloated abdomens. Another room (the room with the pitcher NPC who spills blood from his head, and the pool of blood) features a poster on the wall of what appears to be sperm surrounding an egg.
- Before the ending, she leaves behind the effects as eggs...
- Maybe this is stretching things (but then, this is a dreamscape), but consider the NASU mini-game. In that case, "Nasu" is obviously "eggplant" (茄). Thing is, there's another Japanese word pronounced "nasu" (為す). Usually, it means such things as "to achieve", "to build up", "to change into", etc. However, there's also an archaic meaning of that word—"to have a child".
- More evidence: The place Uboa transports you to. The creature in the back palming huge bits of the landscape looks vaguely like a nightmarish, distorted incident of groping.
- Not only that, but you're shoulder-deep in thick, sticky white fluid...
- After crash-landing on Mars, Madotsuki can descend into a volcano. Inside is a boiler room, inhabited by an enormous, one-eyed, constantly crying creature◊. Given that it's phallic, it could suggest that the rape took place in the boiler room of her school—a janitor or teacher, perhaps? Under this logic, Masada, who has "sensei" in his full name, may have been a sympathetic music teacher that suspected what was going on, but was never able to prove it. In her dream, he leads her to her assailant so she can accept the trauma. Stabbing the creature changes his eye from a malicious red to a clear blue—perhaps a suggestion that her striking out against him opened his eyes to how much he hurt her. The constant weeping may suggest remorse over his actions, or it could just be...maybe it's time to stop now.
- Boiler room... dreams... Freddy...?
- Just to criticize... does Mars-san really look like a penis? Or is this just Freud being right about us gutter-minded humans?
- When inside the dream, you can still go to sleep and enter a new dream. In one area, you even have to go to bed a total of three times.
- ...Inception.
- The object that appears on the balcony at the end out of nowhere... appears out of nowhere. It couldn't fit through the front door, which is somewhat suspicious
- Seriously dude... don't. All this just raises bigger questions of this girl in an apartment no one else knows exists just has something appear on her balcony.
- Where did they come from? How did they get in? Why are they there? Who put them there? If the building is as wide as Madotsuki's room, who else could be in?
- Seriously dude... don't. All this just raises bigger questions of this girl in an apartment no one else knows exists just has something appear on her balcony.
- In a semi-hidden area, the witch power can be used to fly. Canceling it mid-air causes Madotsuki to leave the dream and fall out of bed.
- The bloodstain seen after her presumed suicide looks like a keyhole turned on its side.
- The last characters you see in the game alongside the bloodstain are dream-denizens: the onion/garlic-headed pink things.
- Not to mention that her eyes are always closed, "awake" or otherwise.
- I actually got the feeling that Mado was just troubled by a cocktail of mental illnesses. There's evidence of schizophrenia, agoraphobia, gender confusion, social anxiety, autism, psychopathy... All the big ones. Maybe the stairs were always there and she just never saw them before. I think maybe the onion bell creatures that dance around her bloodstain at the end are a representation that even in death, she would never truly escape from her torment., or that the apparitions were actually more real than previously thought.
- The REMAKE Yume Nikki: Dream Diary sorta confirmed that the suicide is a Dream Within a Dream. Possibly after that, Madotsuki, without any recollection, just walking out of a convenience store and finding the bloodstain where she would've jumped, only for her to awake back to her room.
- As an addition to both of the above theories, note the blue creatures wandering around the area after the flower corridor—one shaped like an X chromosome, one shaped like a Y chromosome, and one seemingly a mutated amalgam of the two. They could suggest gender issues in either direction.
- Way to suck the fun out of Wild Mass Guessing, guy. :(
- I'm not your guy, friend!
- I'm not your- *is crushed by a falling cow*
- This is gonna go on
- Taking into account the other stuff on this page, this really would be a wild guess.
- I'm not your guy, friend!
- Given Kyukyu-kun's rubbing gesture and dildo-like appearance, he seems more like a metaphor for masturbation than rape.
- Adding to the "latchkey" theme, the broken town might be a telling area. All those shadows living in a slum, making happy noises that don't reach their faces...and you see them in the sewers, too, mucking through the filth. To this troper, it suggests that Madotsuki lives in a bad neighborhood, and her parents are probably away a lot trying to make a living at crappy jobs—wading through shit for it. She probably hasn't really ridden her bicycle outside in a long time, maybe since she moved here, so it's precious to her in her dreams, and thus one of the few useful effects. Although, the "bad neighborhood" theory could also suggest a higher incidence of crime, and thus of rape or molestation.
- Or at the very least, a potential fear of it; maybe that's why she hasn't ridden her bike lately? ("If you go out by yourself, then... 'bad things' might happen to you," and we know that modern kids have at least vague ideas about what those 'bad things' are.) She doesn't necessarily have to have suffered rape/molestation herself, but if the area she lives in is really the 'bad part of town,' which seems likely given the above WMG, then maybe her hikkikomori nature is the natural result of becoming too scared (of rape/molestation, harassment, crime, etc.) to go outside anymore?
- And no, I don't hate Madotsuki. This is just an Alternate Character Interpretation.
- I definitely see where you're coming from, but even in her budding serial killer-ness, there could be something to sympathize with. (She is probably still just a child, after all.) Like you said, maybe she's just a shy bullied kid in her waking life, the world in her mind is her own sanctuary of control that she can retreat to, and things she does in her dreams are manifestations of repressed feelings that will never emerge as actions in her waking life. But I don't see how she could ever run out of things to dream up and control. Maybe she just "you know"'ed after realizing that her dream life was just a big lie, and her real life would always intrude at some point?
- Alternately, she's awake all the time. The dream world is her after her antipsychotics wore off, and she doesn't want to go outside and face reality. Pinching herself is actually popping an antipsychotic and running home. Going to sleep just lets her sleep through the time until the antipsychotics wear off.
- Is it wrong that I view her as even more of a sympathetic Woobie now that I've read this theory?
- ...Wait, how does Uboa represent a penis? Because it suddenly appears at random when you turn off the light? And Masada actually seems pretty androgynous ...
- Exactly. And you obviously haven't seen enough porn involving Masada.
- Does that mean that Che Guevara represents a- *shot*
- Madotsuki is in a coma, she had the hots for Masada but could not reach out to him, Monoe and Monoko are Mado's best friends but were secretly lovers, the shock of the revelation warped her sense of reality with relationships and in fact Poniko is a boy with long hair. Also, she was at the same crash as Monoko, but she survived, and so, the game begins.
- But that would mean when she stabs something...oh dear.
- She may have been losing a bit of her benevolence (Childhood innocence and all that), because in one of the areas, there is a fire, meaning she did not just use knives to kill people, but also killed them with more practical means, she also didn't seem to care about other innocents, just as long as she could stay ahead of all of them.
- She may have become very anti social, because everybody was ahead of her.
- Possibly, the effects also represent other things like emotion (Umbrella=Sadness), ways she mercilessly killed her friends (Headless=Head cut off), as well as the desire to be noticed.
- The blond hair and long hair both connect to Poniko. The Cat item (draws people to you, perhaps analogous to being just a popular person or likable in general) can also connect, but this is just speculation to me.
- The hat and scarf, Yuki-Onna, and Snow items all connect to the weather on the day that Poniko died: cold, wet, winter day. It's a good chance the car involved in the accident couldn't stop or skidded out of control when it hit Poniko. The neon and lamp items also play into this as well, with the accident happening at night, at a place where neon lights are very common.
- Given what the Stoplight does, I'd go one step further here - there was a red light, and the car should have stopped, but slid on the wet road. Perhaps they were roughhousing while crossing the street at a red light. So the Stoplight in her dreams does what the real one was supposed to do - it makes things stop, freezing them in place. But it also shows the mutilated body.
- Judging by the severed head and Medamaude items, as well as the massive amount of disembodied body parts and creatures that are just a collection of body parts in random assortments, the car hit Poniko with such a force she was decapitated and lost an arm in the process. Even the Nopperabou plays into this, with having the effect of the head detaching from the shoulders and spinning wildly.
- The triangle kerchief item is pretty obvious as far as items go: it's a Japanese symbol for ghosts. The towel (which goes over Madotsuki's head and entire body) can also be a shorthand symbol for ghosts, or could just be another sign of the weather on the day when the death happened. This could be a reference to just Poniko being dead, and therefore a ghost, or be dark foreshadowing to the end and imply that Madotsuki wishes it had been her who died.
- Demon, Poop Hair and Witch items are just how Madotsuki views herself now: a horrible, hateful person. A demon, a witch, just filth with a face and eyes. The knife also plays into this, but in a slightly more cruel way. It allows Madotsuki to kill in her dream world, stabbing everything she can to death. By gaining the knife, she can just call herself a murderer. Adding to this, I think Poniko is the only creature in Madotsuki's dreams that has a realistic scream when she kills her. Perhaps this is the same scream Poniko made when she had fallen into traffic.
- Um, isn't the scream Poniko makes when stabbed the same as that of every other creature in the game?
- Buyo-Buyo, Fat and Midget all involve what caused the accident in the first place. Poniko called her these things, and probably jiggled her belly a bit while making the buyo-buyo noise, probably while in the middle of a playfight.
- And here's the two big items that play the biggest part into everything. The bicycle and the stoplight:
- The hypothesis makes sense, but I think you have the wrong victim. Monoko, when shown the stoplight, grows arms in places that could imply a traumatized impression of injuries, particularly the one sticking out of her head. What if Poniko were Monoko's sister or other relative (Theme Naming, you see) and is therefore angry at Madotsuki for causing the accident, resulting in the fear that transforms her into Uboa in Madotsuki's mind? Note that this interpretation isn't entirely mine; I found the bit about Monoko and the stoplight implying an accident elsewhere (though I can't remember exactly where) and went from there.
- I think that Poniko, whether victim or just horribly shocked by the accident, was held in a special place in Madotsuki's heart. The place Poniko is found is in the most peaceful world, which can almost be described as beautiful. The sub world where she is found contains light pastel colors and is actually genuinely enjoyable to look at. The island where Poniko's house is in has a very atypical amount of symmetry in it, almost as if that place was particularly made to be a shrine to Poniko. Although there are some uncertainties of exactly who Poniko is in relation to Madotsuki. Mother? sister? relative? close friend? secret crush? not so secret crush? Whatever happened, Uboa is probably some form proof that whatever their relationship used to be, it is no more. Whether because she's six feet under, hates Madotsuki, Madotsuki hates herself too much to allow herself to see Poniko anymore, or they just plain drifted apart over time; Madotsuki clearly blames herself for the entire ordeal.
- Based on all theories under this header, I concluded that Poniko and Monoko are two dream versions of the same real-life (dead) person. Poniko is the idealized girl in Madotsuki's heart, and Monoko is the girl's corpse, a "zombie". The name "Poniko" is probably what Madotsuki used to call her, as it does not sound like a real name.
- Whoa there, remember that almost all names of the characters are fan names. Even in wild guessing they don't really have any weight.
- The Toriningen are her murderous urges. The Lunatics send her to an inescapable room—allegorical for how giving into her insanity landed her under house arrest.
- Monoko was the first of her victims—a little girl Madotsuki babysat and brutally murdered and mutilated. The fact that she's perfectly normal until Madotsuki uses the stoplight effect on her symbolizes that she was the weakest of Madotsuki's victims—she had tried to run, but all it took was for Madotsuki to say "Stop", and her fate was sealed.
- Monoe was Monoko's older sister and a former classmate of Madotsuki's. She was the only one who knew who killed her little sister, so she had to die as well. She teleports Madotsuki away because she doesn't want her killer anywhere near her.
- Masada was Madotsuki's piano teacher, who she was very close to and eventually developed a crush on. When he rejected her advances, she decided If I Can't Have You… and killed him.
- Poniko was her most recent victim, and the one Madotsuki feels most guilty over. The two were the best of friends in the past, but Poniko grew distant and started ignoring Madotsuki. At this point, Madotsuki had figured out that her victims were appearing in her dreams, and so killed Poniko in order to keep her forever.
- Uboa represents Death. He periodically appears in Poniko's place to remind Madotsuki that, although her victims may be alive and (relatively) well in this world, they're still dead at Madotsuki's hands in the real world.
- The Number World and Block World both represent prison. The Number World normally has small, one-digit numbers (years in her various sentences, perhaps?), but also a few absurdly long numbers (prisoner numbers?). The blocks, obviously, are cells/cellblocks.
- Madotsuki's killings generally happened on winter (Snow World) nights (Dark World/Candle World), and, of course, the most frequent weapon was a knife.
- The Cat effect symbolizes that all of Madotsuki's victims were close to her. A child she babysat, a classmate, a teacher, a friend. Never strangers.
- Shitai-san (the corpse you get the Stoplight effect from) might be another victim, or just a symbol of what Madotsuki did with the bodies of her victims—left them in the middle of the road in order to make it look like they had been hit by a car.
- Madotsuki's suicide is her atonement for her killings. Either that, or she wishes to "join" her victims and be with them without the guilt of being the reason for their deaths.
- For one, Madotsuki is ambidextrous, which is a sign of intelligence (she can hold the knife in both hands). She also seems clever enough to get around, figure things out and survive in a world filled with monsters even if it is just a Dream World. Next, depression/suicide is known to run highly amongst teens with high intelligence. I would take this a step further and say she might even have Asperger's Syndrome, but I'm not familiar enough with the syndrome myself to make a proper theory.
- How does naturally being able to use both hands for wielding a sign of intelligence?
- It may not be scientifically associated but it demands a lot of dexterity and bodily-kinaesthetic inteligence.
- How does naturally being able to use both hands for wielding a sign of intelligence?
Most of the gameplay consists of wandering around an unsettlingly empty dreamscape, alone and hopelessly lost, without any clearly-defined goals other than looking for "effects," whatever THOSE are; the instructions provided in the intro screen are decidedly vague and unhelpful. In addition to all the obvious womb imagery, notice that the effects appear as eggs- symbols of fertility and gestation- when dropped in the Nexus. Perhaps the effects are nothing more than decoys; they only vaguely resemble the true object of Madotsuki's wanderings, but in the end, she discovers they can never be a suitable replacement for what she ultimately longs for. After finding (and rejecting) some two dozen bogus womb-mates, she finally breaks under the sheer weight of her own loneliness and turns to the only option left to her.
The much-discussed gender ambiguity could indicate that Madotsuki's twin would have been a boy, so she feels that her "other half" is male. On the other hand, there's Poniko, who is probably the most obvious and likely candidate to fill this role. She lives alone in a shrine-like structure that Madotsuki's subconscious has clearly decided is a Very Important Place; the interior somewhat resembles Madotsuki's room, suggesting (as someone else pointed out) that Poniko and her room may have originated as an early draft of Madotsuki and hers; Poniko does not respond to Madotsuki's presence in any way (Knife and Cat notwithstanding), perhaps because unbeknownst to the latter, she's already passed away; and when Madotsuki attempts to get her sister's attention by repeatedly flicking the lights on and off, Poniko finally does respond- in a rather nightmarish and traumatizing way. Insert your own joke involving Che Guevara and dead fetuses here.
- Che Guevara is Madotsuki's miscarried twin brother.
- Here's some very compelling evidence for this theory - the Takofuusen in the White Desert resembles a twin who has TRAP Syndrome. TRAP Syndrome is where one twin (the pump twin) survives and is connected to its mother through the umbilical cord as normal, but the other twin (the acardiac twin) has its umbilical cord connected to the pump twin, and receives too much deoxygenated blood to develop a head or arms. This also provides a higher mortality rate for the pump twin. Therefore, Madotsuki and her sibling had this syndrome, and Madotsuki was the pump twin. She managed to survive, and imagined her brother or sister as Takofuusen in her dreams. Interestingly, you have the same chance of meeting Takofuusen as twins do of having TRAP Syndrome.
- The Aztec imagery in several areas of the game and the carpet of her own room. The fact these are usually the "floor" and that she touches them with her feet means she feels these are her "roots".
- The various body parts scattered throughout the game are symbol of the violence in Latin America, maybe memories, maybe her wish to be a criminal.
- The Dark World is reminiscent of her home before she moved to Japan. She had no electricity so she had trouble finding the door to the outside world, her parents too(the Pisspissini) which is why they’re fat and have poor vision/are angry. The ghost is her grandmother’s soul who forgot to leave after Dia de los Muertos and follows her in hopes of finding the exit. When she’s finally out in the Wilderness, one of the places she can access is the Barracks Settlement, which is her old town, in which she bought her Aztec carpet (one of the houses is actually a shop which leads her to the Carpet World, wrongly named “Mural World”).
- Perhaps the most obvious one is the large amount of eyes scattered in the Dream World. The author of the game may have been fluent in Engrish and known that the English word "Latina" could be not so subtly referenced to as "Retina".
She later realizes that her cryptic dreams alone won't reveal everything, and she must either somehow get out of her room and seek answers, or just kill herself and end it all. She goes "eff it" and jumps off her balcony, letting fate decide if she survives or not. Whether that was the key to her room she found and it just happens to be red, or a blood stain at the end is completely up to you.
But she's fooled herself into believing it's all just a dream, and that if she goes back to sleep, she'll wake up and her normal life will resume. She eventually finds out she can't go back to reality, and the only way to break the "cycle" is to somehow "kill" herself in the after-life. She jumps off the balcony. The blood stain is there, but the jellyfish/dream creatures appearing around it imply that she didn't escape.
The effects represent different facets of her personality. The knife is found in a dark world because she rarely or never showed that side of herself in life. Ditto for the kerchief found in the ghost world - the resulting effect is rather stereotypically feminine, as are the long hair effects, also found in dark places.
She can't go through the apartment door because that route leads back to life, and that way's closed to her. However, in her dreams she does pass through that door, as everything on the other side stands for a portion of her former reality. In the end she realizes and accepts that it's behind her. She must move on, and so the stairs appear on the balcony to let her pass beyond in the only way she can. The blood smear at the very end stands for Madotsuki's acceptance of her own death.
- But she doesn't have a toilet in there!!
- Well, she can go in the morning then...
- Naaah, this game and her dreams are way too shady for that.
- To support this theory, the Toriningen (Exuse the spelling), are other inmates at the asylum. Some are actively insane, thus the Toringen that chase Madotsuki. Others are capable of going insane if provoked, thus why a calm Toriningen can be stabbed, and will go insane. Poniko is a nurse. She seemingly cannot hurt Mado, but suddenly, out of nowhere, the doctor comes, and the nurse goes away. Uboa is the doctor. When the doctor comes, he comes from nowhere (Thus Uboa's event being random, and coming from nowhere). It makes the world seems dark to Mado (Thus the lights needing to be off for Uboa to appear). The doctor has to touch Mado, and this makes her upset, and feel trapped (Thus when you touch Uboa, he sends you somewhere you can't get out of). The doctor may have to touch Mado in ways she feels is bad, and "wrong" (Thus the touching monster in the background, who appears to be squeezing breasts...). The doctor may also need to take blood samples from Mado, and needles could possibly scare her, or make him seem like a bloodthirsty animal in her warped mind (Thus the blood on the touching monster). Mado knows she can't get away from the doctor (Which is why you cannot get away from Uboa's trap). Mado may feel that the way the doctor has to touch her is "inappropriate" and is afraid that he will rape her (Possibly the touching monster again, and the white fluid, that could be sperm/semen). The white of Uboa's area represents the white walls of the doctors office and his clothes. Mado knows that she cannot escape, but she tries to when he touches her (Thus Uboa's changing, possibly annoyed expression when you touch him). The doctor is interested in Mado's mental issues, but otherwise does not force anything questions on her, unless she provoke it (Thus Uboa coming towards her when you use the Cat effect, when he doesn't move on his own). The whole game is her halluciation, as stated above. When you drop the effects as eggs, this is her trying to control her own insanity to be able to leave. When she jumps off her balcony in the end as said above, this is her getting out of the asylum, and it feels like a leap to her. The bloodstain at the end, however, shows that she was not ready to leave, that she was still insane, and the jellyfish represent that her insanity was still there when they let her go.
- At first I thought so too, but then I realized she's no thicker than the protagonists of the other games in the "series". The vomit thing still makes sense, though. Maybe she had one in the past.
- That's because many of the fangame characters are edited from the Madotsuki sprite.
- Her computer was taken by her parents after her addiction started effecting her health.
- The Nexus is her aware self.
- The Snow World is her cold self.
- The Number World is her smarter self. It could also be her innocent self, believing there were no problems if she knew a lot. (She didn't know about the dangers of pedophiles at the time, which is why it is near Kyuu Kyuu-kun and FACE)
- The Neon World is her playful, childish self.
- The Shield-Folk world is her odd self.
- The Candle World is her insecure self, because of the bully Toriningen, and someone who is also short like her(Midget), but is much faster and more talented than her. It could also be her religious self.
- The Eyeball World is her feeling like she is being watched and expected to be perfect.
- The Graffiti World is her perverted self, which is why there is a men's bathroom there.
- The Dark World is her lonely self, because she can't find any friends there.
- The Puddle World is another part of her insecure, self-conscious self.
- The Block World is her "normal" self.
- The Mural world is her killer self, full of pictures of everyone she has killed.
- The Forest World is her drug-addict self, which is why she see's cat hallucinations there.
- The Balcony is the place where she remembers everything she has done, which is why She kills herself.
She is still inside her hospital room throughout the whole game, which is why she cannot go out of it. Her eyes are always shut because she sees no reason to open them when she cannot see anything. The video game she is playing is actually much more complicated, but because she can only hear sounds it appears to be a very simple (and very depressing) video game that she cannot play because she can no longer see. This is a huge blow to her, as she loves playing video games as can be seen when she dreams of being inside of one.
She was raped, got pregnant, is an Angsty Surviving Twin, killed her friend Poniko, wasn't invited to a party, all of the above. At the beginning of the game, as she sleeps, all her bad memories come back and try to kill her in her dreams. Unable to face it anymore, she kills herself at the end.
However, because the disease is in her mind, she still sees the monsters in her dreams, as well as warped versions of places she used to visit. sometimes she rememembers her friends and family as they were, before the disease warped them in her perspective (eg, Poniko/Uboa) Eventually, she can't take it and offs herself, running away from her tortured mind.
- The save files are .lsd files.
Openly admitting this theory came about as a result of severe sleep deprivation and overactive imagination, but hear me out anyway.
Our story starts off with Madotsuki, an average japanese college student visiting her transfer student bestie Poniko in preparation for a halloween costume party. Now, both Madotsuki and Poniko have something odd about them. Namely, Madotsuki is a nymphomaniac who doesn't know it yet, and has lived her life with an odd feeling of something missing. Meanwhile, Poniko is a hermaphrodite. So while they're prepping, Poniko ends up asking Madotsuki if she could try something lewd. Madotsuki complies, follows Poniko's requests to strip and lie down on her bed, after which Poniko has sex with Madotsuki. At this point, something clicks in Madotsuki's head, and she realizes this is what she's been missing. She and Poniko start regularly having sex from there on, keeping Madotsuki's nymphomania in check in the process.
Until Poniko moves out to visit her parents back in America. Deprived of her main source of sex, Madotsuki holds back her own lust for as long as possible. But when Poniko doesn't return within the week, she ends up starting to look to others for sex, except most are either not interested or too shifty for Madotsuki to even consider them. Eventually she's brought nearly to her limit and ends up befriending Kyukyu-kun, leading him to some secluded area and attempts to have sex with him. Now, here's where things go wrong - Kyukyu-kyn is gay, or at least so firmly in the closet about bisexuality that having sex with a woman feels wrong to him. Despite his protests, Madotsuki persists in trying to get into his pants, up to and including cutting the button on her and his pants to prevent him from trying to lift them up. A little later, Kyukyu-kun explodes at Madotsuki, about how she can't be the real Madotsuki and yells some paranoid theory about castrating rapists or something. This ends up shocking Madotsuki straight. Her trying to have sex hurt people, so she reasons Sex Is Evil and she needs to stop. Redoubling her efforts, she tries to stay celibate until Poniko returns.
Some time later, Madotsuki meets Monoko and Monoe. Monoko's as much of a pervert as Madotsuki used to be, and is really excited over meeting a real live nymphomaniac. She thinks nothing of how Madotsuki seems oddly quiet about sex, chalking it up to Monoe's presence. Now, Monoko's a bit of a handsy girl, with a fixation on groping. So, at one point when Monoe falls a bit behind for some reason, Monoko decides to try groping Madotsuki. Who now believes she should avoid sex at all costs. So while she does enjoy it and the groping did go a ways towards keeping her nymphomania in check, she does not approve and throws Monoko off. Right in the path of a speeding sports car. In panic and desperately trying to help her new friend, she doesn't notice Monoe filming the event. Monoe, in turn, was paranoid and a bit of a mean soul, always ready to record blackmail material. Seeing Madotsuki throw her sister in the way of oncoming traffic would be a good way of getting material for a court trial. After this, she runs off and posts the material on the internet to gather hype. However, observant viewers note Monoko started it and some others note how Monoe wasn't in the frame at all. Madotsuki and Monoko gain immense amounts of support from Monoe's viewers, who demonize Monoe instead. With this, Monoe goes into hiding until the debacle blows over.
After Monoko's handed over to paramedics, Madotsuki continues elsewhere. She's hurt people trying to get sex, she's hurt people trying to avoid sex, what is she supposed to do anymore? In confusion, she seeks help from a teacher who played stand-in for her sex-ed teacher at the time. A certain German musician called Masada-sensei. The two start meeting regularly, Masada tries to teach her how moderation and consent are important, up until Mars-san, Masada's gay lover, busts in and breaks down in tears because he thinks Masada's replaced him with Madotsuki. Madotsuki wanders off apologetically and leaves Masada to console his lover. Now, she's more confused than ever. Seeking sex hurts people, avoiding sex hurts people, seeking advice hurts people. Eventually, she turns to lucid dreaming to help her puzzle out what's going down.
Cue Yume Nikki. Poniko's Poniko, Uboa is just Poniko wearing a costume, and the gooey realm Uboa throws you to is a memory of Madotsuki's first time twisted through her belief of sex being evil. Kyukyu-Kun, a rainbow penis, is accessed by cutting down what looks like a zipper, complete with blood (maybe she botched cutting her own jeans and gave herself a shallow cut?) and trying to go further shows us FACE, Kyukyu-kun's face when he exploded at Madotsuki. Monoko has a lot of hands, signifying both how she looked after getting run over and her grope-happiness, with the leaking eye maybe refering to eightball fractures. Monoe looks smugly at Madotsuki and disappears, signifying how Madotsuki didn't see her after the incident with Monoko. Masada-sensei lives in a calm and serene environment, with a piano and googly eyes, signifying his foreigner status and how his words could put Madotsuki at ease. He runs away from the knife, maybe because she heard him be worried about a nymphomaniac castrating rapist, and told Madotsuki as much. The spaceship crashing after you sleep in his bed is refering to Mars-san's outburst. This also handily explains what Toriningen are - people Madotsuki doesn't understand. First anti-sex prudes, and later sex-obsessed nymphos, ironically.You could also link the glitch in Mother World to this and any other theory about Madotsuki puzzling something out as her realizing her mind's wandering to video games and her forcibly crashing her train of thought to get back on topic.
As another theory suggests, Monoko’s deformed figure might actually represent how her arms were injured and her brain was squished out of her skull after a car accident (the bigger 5 armed picture added only to be creepy/further confuse the players). Poniko is actually Madotsuki’s mother and therefore the one driving the car the day of the accident, she crashed against a car with a family in it. The parents died (as evidenced by one of the rooms in Dave Spector’s tunnel, in which flying heads appear at the end of the room, one belonging to a man, and another to a woman) and so did Monoko (maybe in the frontseat being carried by a parent?). Madotsuki and Monoe were the only survivors of the accident (her face being represented as comprehensive in this case, and wanting to distance herself from Madotsuki, who reminds her of the incident).Poniko’s room, hidden deep in what most consider one of the few heart-warming areas of the game may support this theory. Poniko’s room may be Madotsuki’s room, her “home”, in which she wishes to see her mom so she could speak to her once more, but she knows that, being dead, this will never happen, which is why Poniko ignores her. It may also be what her mom’s room looked like and after which Madotsuki modeled her own, which may say that Poniko was a single mother. Just like the 1/3600 chance of meeting Takofuusen, the 1/64 chance of meeting Uboa is representative of a 1:64 scale for miniatures, often used for vehicule miniatures such as cars. Uboa may be Poniko’s disfigured face, and the area it sends Madotsuki to may be her father, who raped her before (leading to a divorce) or after the incident, or her new adoptive parent.
- The accident may in fact be a trainwreck, as shown in the Mars-san’s room, and the family may be a family Madotsuki met/was traveling with.
- Seccom-Masada-sensei may in turn be Madotsuki’s adoptive parent. After the trainwreck, he took pity on her and took her to live with him (making Monoe jealous). Masada-sensei might not be so innocent and protective, for instance, he locks Madotsuki in his spaceship and she’s not able to escape unless she wakes up. He may be in fact the one who raped her, referenced to as an accident (crash) after she went to sleep. Or he may have actually been a positive, protective figure of Madotsuki (protecting her from her more disturbing dream world) and had sex with her after she made advances (went to HIS bed). Either way, he felt bad after this, feeling he’s further ruined her life and bringing him back the memory of the train wreck.
- Madotsuki and Poniko were actually in love, but Poniko was from a very religious background that condemned homosexuality as a sin. She decided to 'repent her sins' by becoming a nun. Madotsuki turning off the lights, having to approach Uboa herself and going into the nightmare realm is representative of one night when instead of accepting her advances Poniko blew up with the talk about how they're both going to hell for being this way. Her speech shook Madotsuki so much her fragile psyche imagined herself in hell where all the groping and phallic and semen imagery is her punishment: eternal conversion therapy.
- I couldn't help but 'shop that after seeing this WMG and laughing a lot.
- Uboa is also the killer from the Scream movies and the first Scary Movie.
- Maybe she's just a very emo Shy Guy?
- Does this mean that Che Guevara is...oh never mind.
- Yes, yes it does◊ (for once. Che Guevara does look more like Masada than Uboa, in this troper's opinion).
- Masada is the real-life photograph Che. Uboa is the stylised pop-art version.
- Yes, yes it does◊ (for once. Che Guevara does look more like Masada than Uboa, in this troper's opinion).
- Uboa and Masada are the same. They "both" raped Madotsuki.
- Alternately, Uboa is Poniko wearing a costume.
- Can connect to the 'was raped' theory, touch the hips, get transported into the horrible grope-background, sticky-white-fluid land.
- Monoko is (Or represents) one of her first friends. She was killed in front of Madotsuki's eyes when they were playing near a traffic light, and she got hit by a truck. Being young, Madotsuki didn't really understand what she saw, hence why Monoko is represented as a mutated girl, rather than a mangled corpse. Madotsuki feels guilty over this, and blames herself a fair bit.
- When you check Monoko, the game cuts to a detailed version of her rotating and zooming in and out while playing that oddly catchy rhythm. This is probably an indication that the event left a very large impact on Madotsuki when she saw what happened. It left a very large impact on Monoko too!
- Monoe was another friend of hers who drifted away. Either she moved, or simply made other friends, hence why she fades away.
- Masada was her music teacher with a lazy eye. while all the other students mocked him, she enjoyed him and his classes. Perhaps she learned to really harness her imagination with him, telling her about various books that really opened her eyes. Presumably, he got transferred to another school.
- Any explanation for why he runs from you if you have the knife, then?
- The original teacher was always quite shy, and a bit nervous and cowardly. Perhaps he wasn't transferred as much as quit after being threatened by a student in an act that stuck in Madotsuki's mind.
- Any explanation for why he runs from you if you have the knife, then?
- Toriningen are how Madotsuki saw other girls. Being short for her age, she saw them all as tall, and bizarre looking with their makeup and weird hairstyles, clucking away about things she didn't understand. Either they ignored her (And had fun without her, hence the Toriningen picnic she can't get to) or they mocked and bullied her, hence the psycho Toriningen.
- What about the friendly Toriningen in the Numbers World?
- Those fit under 'ignoring her.' Those Toriningen don't actually help her, they just leave her alone. it's not like every girl in school picked on Madotsuki. Hence why some are just weird looking, while some are malicious. As for the Toriningen in the department store who changes your menu, I'd say that represents one time when she recognized a girl that picked on her at school working at a store she was shopping at with her parents one day. The dissonance between this girl she thought was nasty, and seeing them be a polite server, made her confused.
- This theory would indicate that Madotsuki had bigger problems than just being lonely or emotionally repressed; it's likely that the horrific death of her friend stunted her maturity as well as her ability to relate normally to others. Being 'confused' by one's school facade vs. their job facade is something that would happen to a young child; in order for one of Madotsuki's classmates to be working at a store, they'd have to be at least in junior high, more likely in high school— Long after Madotsuki should be able to comprehend such things without such confusion. We might be surprised that the bitchy girl at school could seem so polite and friendly at work, but we'd accept it without more than a second thought.
- What about the friendly Toriningen in the Numbers World?
- Now, the big one. Poniko was the last friend Madotsuki had. Poniko seemed to be a kindred spirit, somebody who didn't talk much and didn't have any friends. Indeed, it wasn't much of a friendship, as Madotsuki simply hung around Poniko, but Poniko mostly took advantage of, if not completely ignoring, her. Still, Madotsuki, emotionally repressed as she was, thought it was a friendship.
- This all changed after months, or years, of this supposed friendship. What happened? Poniko raped, or tried to rape, Madotsuki. This is where Uboa comes in, representing how that girl Madotsuki thought she knew very well became a monster. Madotsuki tried to defend herself, and ended up grabbing a knife, killing Poniko. Utterly horrified at having who she thought was a friend attack her, yet also killing her, sent her over the edge, and she became a shut-in.
- Or maybe Madotsuki got too close or clingy and Poniko (perhaps callously) told her to back off. Madotsuki, already sensitive from loneliness, takes this the worst way. After all, Uboa will transport Madotsuki if she just runs into Uboa: the knife isn't required.
- That works quite well, actually. I suppose I was just trying to find a reason for the knife and all the supposed sexual imagery. But just being told to eff off by one you thought was a friend would be devastating to somebody as screwed up as Madotsuki. (As one Troper above said, who says she's completely innocent amid all this? The gal's messed up.)
- This all changed after months, or years, of this supposed friendship. What happened? Poniko raped, or tried to rape, Madotsuki. This is where Uboa comes in, representing how that girl Madotsuki thought she knew very well became a monster. Madotsuki tried to defend herself, and ended up grabbing a knife, killing Poniko. Utterly horrified at having who she thought was a friend attack her, yet also killing her, sent her over the edge, and she became a shut-in.
- My joke is slowly ascending to meme-status. Wow.
- And his baby son was sent to Earth Kal-El style and now resides in a puddle near the Witch effect tree, and only comes out once in a while.
- His skin color. Little sunlight reaches through Mar's dust-filled atmosphere, explaining Masada's extremely pale skin. In Earth's areas with little sunlight, the residents generally need to have lightly-pigmented skin in order to absorb enough Vitamin D.
- His clothing. Mars is a cold planet compared to Earth. Masada's bodysuit is black because black is the color that absorbs the most wavelengths of electromagnetic radition (aka sunlight). The more electromagnetic radiation an object absorbs, the warmer it gets since the energy from electromagnetic radiation turns into thermal energy. And Masada is wearing a black bodysuit of all things since it keeps in the most body heat. Similarly on Earth, humans wear tight black wetsuits to keep warm when diving in cold water.
- His hair color. As explained in the previous example, darker colors absorb more sunlight, leading to more thermal energy. Because Mars is so cold, dark-pigmented hair was the preferred evolutionary trait for Martians in attempt to stay warmer.
- His eyes. Mars frequently has dust storms. Creatures on Earth who live in areas with lots of dust storms (such as deserts) have evolved adaptations to protect their eyes. While not exactly hollow a la Cesare, Masada's weird eyes with exotropia and grey sclerae are just what Martians' evolutionary adaptation to Mars's dust storms look like.
- His tall and thin stature. Mars has approximately 40% the gravity that Earth does. On voyages to space, astronauts' spines lengthen due to the lack of Earth-like gravity to compact the spinal columns to their regular size. Because Mars has less gravity than Earth, Masada and other Martians can grow to be taller and thinner than Earthlings.
- His blood?? As mentioned earlier, Mars is extremely cold. How can one so skinny like Masada live on Mars and not immediately freeze to death? Well, Martian blood has antifreeze-like proteins to prevent freezing. Many creatures on Earth that live in areas with Arctic climates such as fish and insects have antifreeze proteins in their blood to prevent them from freezing.
So that's my theory with the supporting details. Feel free to edit this if my science behind this does not contain good enough research.
- Kamakurako sleeps in an igloo, which is a snowy place, Mafurako is dressed for snowy weather, and Madotsuki can be dressed for snowy weather after finding the hat-and-scarf effect, and can use Yuki-onna for snowy weather as well.
With the exploration and the fact that different people think differently, Madotsuki can truly become "your character".
- And note that the TV in her (real-world) room never shows anything but a test pattern—as if there was no signal on air at all. Perhaps the game takes place After the End, where most of Earth has been destroyed by some terrible cataclysm, and Madotsuki does not want to live in a barren, barely inhabited world. She does not leave her room because of what's beyond the door — the horribly charred corpses of her family, a horde of zombies, etc. Notice also the rather barren-looking view from her balcony.
- And the fact that there is no building behind her balcony? The entire building- some kind of tower if the view is to be believed- is no wider than her room. That's just wrong.
- That makes me realize something: Perhaps she doesn't want to leave her room because if she did she would plummet to her doom. The reason she jumped off the balcony is that she thought she was still dreaming.
- And the fact that there is no building behind her balcony? The entire building- some kind of tower if the view is to be believed- is no wider than her room. That's just wrong.
- This video seems to agree with you.
- There are a pair of 'indoor' slippers waiting outside on the balcony, so maybe Mado just doesn't bother with custom - she is a bit weird, after all. The currency in the game is yen, and there are strong elements of Japanese culture all over her dreams, so she's obviously associated with Japan. I don't think Mado herself is Japanese though, given that she has brown hair and looks much pinker than Monoko, Monoe and Seccom-Masada. Maybe she's a white person living in Japan? I hear Russians are quite common in Hokkaido.
- I think the subway world is the subway system- note the vague people that do some sort of dance in the background while you walk- and that the numbers world is her opinion of computers or mathematics- but yeah, this works pretty well...
- This one is a bit out there, but notice the sound Uboa makes. Maybe she went to the last World Cup and got mixed up in a crowd. Uboa's face would have been someone's painted-up face while the sound it makes would be the ever-present (at the time) vuvuzuelas.
- It's like the opposite of a Crapsaccharine World.
- Uboa's a girl?
- There's a good chance, so this troper thought it made sense that Poniko would turn into/be replaced by another female while writing the original.
...No, wait! Come back! I swear it gets better!Alright, so she (he? For the sake of argument, we'll stick with she) is going through life as usual (y'know, the whole "not gonna go outside" thing, the dreaming, bemoaning her terrible life) when she comes to the conclusion that the only way to "fix" everything is to go back in time and alter her future by both killing her rapist and acting as a new friend for herself so younger Madotsuki won't be so depressingly lonely. She realizes, however, that she probably cannot allow her younger self to know who she is, she decides to disguise herself as an attractive young blonde woman under the name "Poniko", believing that if she disguises herself as someone she would find attractive (yes, she's a lesbian), she'd be more likely to form a friendship with her.
She goes back in time to her old school, only to see herself from a year or so (perhaps a few months) ago socializing with Monoe and her younger sister Monoko, two girls she suddenly remembers from her childhood. Recalling the tragic chain of events leading up Monoko's death at the hands of a speeding driver, causing Monoe to run away, never being found, Madotsuki (A.K.A. "Poniko") rushes over and introduces herself to the trio, hoping to befriend them all and hopefully prevent Monoko from getting killed. They all become close friends, hanging out all the time and sharing some of their best moments together. They even enroll in a piano class together, the four of them becoming very fond of their teacher, a sentimental young man named Komuro "Michael" (as his pale skin, hair and ability to moonwalk flawlessly reminded many of Michael Jackson) Sakamoto Dada Sensei, often called Masada-Sensei. He cared for the girls as if he was their older brother, becoming an honorary fifth member of their "clique". Other than the girls, his biggest pleasure (not like that you pervs D:<) in life was the piano. That and drugs, of course. One day, he crashed, leading to him getting fired, causing him to fall into a deep depression. He withdrew himself, shutting himself in his house and locking out all outside life. Madotsuki and "Poniko", wanting to cheer up their friend and teacher, tried to go to his place and do something for him. Unfortunely, they ended up getting lost in a dark forest near his house, where they encountered and seemingly friendly man offering them colorful candy if they let him "rub" them. After their refusual, he turned violent (as indicated by the menacing and somewhat phallic expression on his face), attacking and raping Madotsuki. "Poniko" tried helping before the man pulled out a knife and slashed at her, creating a deep wound on her abdomen (which she covered up with heavy turtleneck sweaters from that day forth). Madotsuki managed to yell out "Run Poniko, save yourself!" before the man slit her throat and left her in the forest to die.
Frantic, "Poniko" found the man's car, with the key still in the ignition, and drove off, going as fast as possible, eventually losing him but driving on out of fear and guilt. Accidentally running a red light, she doesn't notice Monoe and Monoko speaking with Masada-Sensei and his gay lover, the girls (and his lover) somehow having managed to get Masada out of his house. Poniko plows through Monoko and Masada's lover, freaking out Monoe and Masada-Sensei. Jumping out of the car, "Poniko" notices the body, taking in the bones sticking out of Monoko's arms, the pool of blood and brain matter around her head, the trail of drool hanging out of her mouth and the single tear gliding down her pale face. Looking to her friends, her heart sinks as Monoe's ever-present smile fades as she runs off (disappears). Masada locks himself up in his house once more, the once tenacious, outgoing man becoming silent and gloomy. "Poniko", now harboring an intense hatred for herself, goes home and kills herself.Madotsuki, barely alive, manages to go home and treat her wounds, healing completely but still emotionally and mentally disturbed from both the even and the news of Monoko's death, Monoe's disappearance and Masada's self-induced seclusion. She decides to go to "Poniko's" house for support. Noticing how, for whatever reason, "Poniko's" house looked especially peaceful that day, Mado enters using the key she had made, only to discover her friend half dead on the floor, smiling intently at Mado, who responds by recoiling in terror. "Poniko", who had failed in killing herself... somehow... shuffles over to Madotsuki and begins babbling incoherently about Cuban revolutionaries before confessing her love to Madotsuki and asking her to "join her", saying it will "ease the pain". Madotsuki admits to loving "Poniko" back, but states that she is confused as to what joining her would entail. Without warning, "Poniko" attacks Mado, who manages to escape the other girl's violence before watching her fall to the floor and die, her blood and vomit contrasting with the upbeat, girly interior of her home. The sun sets, giving the scene an eerie quality that sends Mado running home, where she pulls a Masada-Sensei and locks herself in her room, never leaving. After a while, she begins having odd dreams representing the events of her life, before finally choosing to end it all by jumping off of the balcony to commit suicide. Unfortunately for her, she finds out that she was still dreaming (although the events prior, as in Monoko's death and it's causes were real) and decides to take action, going back in time both to clear her mind (and dreams) and to right the wrongs caused by the well meaning "Poniko", all while dressed as her so it as if she is correcting her own wrongs.
- This theory ties in with many other aspects of the game, but I can't list them all here (too lazy, not enough space), so feel free to PM me for the rest if you feel like it. Also, sorry if it's too... well, stupid.
- It should be noted that some projects do use such low version numbering whether or not it's representative of the game being done or not.
Madotsuki was already an abused, isolated child. Being raped by Poniko, who she thought was her friend was the straw that broke the camel's back. She shut it all out with simple videogames. She came across NASU one day. Suddenly, Madotsuki's mind became infected, and she passed out. When she woke up, she wanted to go downstairs, but a feeling of dread at the thought washed over her, and she couldn't bring herself to leave her room. She decided to go back to sleep, thinking that she'd just woken up too early. She was greeted by a distorted, abstract nightmare of her own life. She wakes up again, and plays NASU one more time to calm down. She loses, because you suck at NASU.
She still can't force herself to leave her room out of fear of something she can't name, and keeps sleeping, hoping that she'll feel better. She eventually realizes this is pointless, and her crazy nightmares aren't helping. She decides to end it all and jumps off her balcony, killing herself. The jellyfish symbolize how NASU will always exist in the Yume Nikki world, destroying the minds of gamers everywhere.
Maybe Yume Nikki is also a cursed videogame and anyone who finds every secret, every detail and has won NASU at least 3 consecutive times is doomed. D:
Madotsuki's room represents humanity's selfish nature. Nothing matters outside of our own little world, and we refuse to care about things not affecting us. The Dream world shows this, in that barely anyone interacts with each other unless provoked.
She couldn't get the story published, as she is a kid, so she made use of RPG Maker and released a game adaption for free. This also explains the gameplay. Kikiyama/Madotsuki probably isn't interested in making an RPG, she just wants the story made public. Yes, Kikiyama is a girl.
As the game goes on, she finds the other avatars and Effects and realizes just what's happening. The final piece she realizes is that she doesn't exist, and that by collecting the 24 Effects and putting them out of reach of the avatars she has stalled the nightmare indefinately. In order to break it, she realizes, the illusion of the girl Madotsuki is the only avatar that can erase itself in an unplanned way.
At the end of the game, Shitai wakes up and forgives her.
The bicycle are our material desires, the flute our want to have some kind of talent, the hat and scarf, long hair and blonde hair are our superficial wants, however, fat, midget and poo hair are the things we don't like about our aspect, same as frog, the witch is how we feel of our attitude (And how we feel better if we throw away our caring and just fly). Knife effect is our inner desires, our darkest wishes, or simply the hate we have to society. Stoplight, ghost or nopperabu are our fears of dying in any way.
The NPCs also support this: Poniko is our ideal as a person, the perfect being we want to be, however we are unable to fully reach out to it, thus we start hating it, becoming slowly corrupted, thus Uboa. Monoko is what we fear of us happening, the fear of accident, death or phisical pain. Masada is the people who accept theirselves and all their defects (Thus the googly eyes), they seem far away from us, but they live happy, peacefully. Toriningen are the people who judge us, some of them silently and other's more aggresively. Zones like the refugee camp, FACE, and etc. are representation of common social fears: The fear of being poor, the fear of growing up, the fear of being abused in any way, etc.
In the end, when we collect all the effects and drop them in the entrance (The connection between unconscious and conscious) we are allowed to go further. In other words, when we drop our insecurities and the desires they create and accept ourselves, Madotsuki, the representation of our insecurity, dies, fades away. It's represented as commiting suicide because Madotsuki is part of us, and we kill her, she kills herself. The bloodstain is shaped as a keyhole to give a message to the person who finally killed Madotsuki, they are free, free from judgement and free to embrace themselves without fear or without feeling guilty
- Kikiyama is still alive, he responds to E-Mails (if I'd get a cent every time I read that...).
- Maybe I'm the weird one, but aren't most people's dreams less like a surrealistic adventure through an abstract horrorscape, and more like a screwed-up, nonsensical version of their waking lives?
- I'm working on my own game now that's inspired by dreams, and from this I've also come to the conclusion that Yume Nikki is a literal dream diary - or the adaptation of one. Yes, dreams more resemble a nonsensical version of life than an abstract horrorscape, but the other thing that needs to be taken in mind is that dreams are sequential "narratives", while games are not. I bet it's in the process of adapating it into an open-ended game that the decision was made to focus on surreal imagry over narrative elements. I wouldn't say that means the game lacks hidden symbolism though - the entire surrealist genre is based on Freudian psychology and specifically the fact that real dreams DO have hidden symbolism. It just wouldn't be intentional symbolism.
- Madotsuki can control the dream world only through the effects, and only she can speak to certain people who can also use those effects. By doing so, she can use the effects as well; in this way she is an "Uber" in the sense that she can easily shift to be anything she wants to be in the dream world. Others, such as the Toriningen, do not have this privilege, and that makes some of them very angry - they send Madotsuki to the inescapable areas out of jealousy over her ability to do so much more in the dream world than they can. Some, however, are friendly and fine with it until you try to harm them, in which case they rightfully become angry and imprison Madotsuki. Madotsuki spends so much time in this dream world she forgets what reality is, so when she wakes up she decides to "wake up" by killing herself, as she would in the dream world. It... doesn't work.
- Monoko can control the dream world as well, but her avatar in the dream realm is a monstrous, mutated being with multiple arms. She can change how things look at will, but not her appearance, and tends to hang out in the White Desert because that is the only place she looks like a 'normal' person and others don't freak out over her... unusual appearance. She is somewhat ashamed of how she looks in the dream, you see. However, when Madotsuki uses the stoplight effect on her and gets close to her, Monoko's camouflage fails and when Madotsuki approaches her, she becomes angry and jumps and spins around to show her displeasure at being 'found out' in her avatar's true form.
- Monoe is the sister of Monoko, and her ability in the dream realm is to make things appear or disappear at will. She can also do so to herself. In fact, she likes to play "keep-away" with other dreamers this way. So, when Madotsuki approaches her, Monoe smirks (or smiles, your choice) and fades out, then moves elsewhere and fades back in. In this way she and Madotsuki are actually playing a game, which ends only when one or the other becomes bored with the game - usually Madotsuki first.
- Masada can control sound and music in the dream realm, and also has an interest in astronomy, thus he pilots a spaceship with a keyboard in it. He is a nice man and often brings other dreamers on trips with him into Dream Outer Space, but he has a terrible phobia of knives which carries over from the real world to the dream realm. This is why he will react favorably to Madotsuki until she wields a knife, in which case he backs away fearfully. While other dreamers do this (because they don't want to die and thus wake up), Masada is actually scared of the knife itself. Upon the ship "crashing", Masada is gone. This is because he has died in the dream and gone back to the real world, hence he is not there. Upon returning to dream he will have to re-imagine his space ship, since there is no permanence of objects in dream due to its ephemeral state.
- Now the big one - Poniko/Uboa. Poniko is actually a normal girl like Madotsuki, but she has an... interesting ability - she can teleport herself, others, and objects elsewhere in dream. However, she can only do this by shifting to her alternate dream form - the distorted, frightening looking Uboa. Poniko likes to play tricks on others by shifting into Uboa and spooking people, or sneaking up on them and transporting them elsewhere. It helps that as Uboa, she can also emit a deafening, scary noise if she chooses (one that sounds an awful lot like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" and naturally spooks people), which scares people more, and which Poniko finds hilarious. In the case of Madotsuki and the lightswitch, however, the case is simple - Poniko is annoyed with Madotsuki for turning the lights on and off. You see, she was in the middle of doing something and needed the lights on at the time, and the flickering of the lights doesn't help. So Poniko becomes angry and turns into Uboa to spook Madotsuki and teach her a lesson. She also mentally manipulates the lock on the door to spook her more. However, she does nothing unless Madotsuki touches her, because... well, Nothing Is Scarier. If Madotsuki touches Poniko when she is Uboa, Poniko becomes even more upset and transports Madotsuki to a spooky world she can't leave without waking up, hence the upset-looking face Uboa has when you touch it.
- Various other characters appear differently, such as the weird monsters with the nubs you hit to make them vomit blood, or the Octopus balloon thing in the White Desert. This is simply how various people manifest in the dream world.
- Anyone else feeling like making a RP forum out of this?
- Poniko was originally supposed to be the guardian/protector of this world, but she was cursed, so now if her light switch is flipped, it may unleash...something that will destroy all of the dream world, with the White Desert being the last place to be destroyed. If this disaster happens, Poniko will transform herself into a portal (Uboa) to evacuate everyone to the safest place possible, an alarm sounding as she transforms, sacrificing her life in the process. It's pretty much all she can do now that she's been cursed. She still tries her hardest to protect the dream world, believing it's the purpose her creator intended for her.
- The dream world can only be entered and left by few, but the Effects can be successfully used by even fewer. Only the creator of the dream world can use them without going completely insane. It's a shame Mars-san and Kyuu-kyuu-kun didn't know this. Mars-san attempted to use the Cat effect, which resulted in him cursing Poniko. After this happened, Poniko sent Masada to go and kill him. However, the spaceship crashed, resulting in Mars-san simply being stuck there, crying. It's Madotsuki's choice whether to kill him or not. Kyuu-kyuu-kun attempted to use the Knife effect, but he is still alive. He just learned what happened to his brother, and ran underground to avoid hurting anyone. He rubs the poll to tell Madotsuki to leave, hence why he rubs faster or slower depending on whether Madotsuki uses the Cat or Knife effects. With the Cat effect, he rubs slower, because he was reminded of his brother, which made him sad. With the Knife effect, he rubs faster, as he sees the same effect he tried to use, and now wants Madotsuki to stop using it.
- Monoe is a bit of a secret keeper, hence her ability to teleport away when she wishes. She resides deep within the White Desert, as some kind of revered figure or ruler. She is one of the only people who knows the nature of the effects, and knows who is the one person who can safely use them. Of course, everyone finds it odd that Madotsuki can use the effects, considering the only people who have used them in the past have gone insane and most have died. Monoe, however, knows something nobody else does, which is that Madotsuki is a reincarnation of the original creator of the dream world. She tells Madotsuki this near the end of the game, and then teleports away.
- Monoko is Monoe's sister, and was involved in a traffic accident, along with Shitai-san. Luckily, Monoko survived, albeit with horrible mutilations and injuries. She attempted to cure them by using healing magic, but it didn't fully work, meaning that if Monoko were to see something related to the crash, her injuries would reappear.
- Now, the big one. Madotsuki was the original creator of the dream world reincarnated, and thus could use the effects. She had always liked to explore the dream world, not knowing that she created it. As she traveled through it more, she unraveled the story of the world, and learned from Monoe that she was the reincarnated creator of this world. Madotsuki felt she needed to recreate the dream world with the effects trapped in the Nexus only accessible by the next reincarnations, so she flipped the light switch, paying no mind to Poniko's warnings. After the dream world was completely destroyed, she sealed all of the effects in the Nexus and ran to the real world, to jump off the balcony and recreate the world.
There's a lot more to this theory, but this is simply the most important stuff. If you'd like any more details, feel free to ask me. I'd be happy to provide them.
The dreamers can meet up with each other if they have the same interests, and therefore, the same dream worlds. However, some dreamers can wander through their dreams and find doorways to different dream worlds. As a result, some unfortunate misfits manage to wander into Madotsuki's realms.
Plus, all of the dreamers can use Effects. Some of the distorted characters in the game are actually dreamers using effects. Monoko's hidden form is actually an effect, which Madotsuki's stoplight accidently triggers. This troper personally believes that this effect is an advanced form of the weird hand teleporting thingy effect that allows her to travel to multiple dream worlds.
And I agree, someone should make a roleplay or a fanfic on this.
- In a certain area of the game we can find Madotsuki sleeping inside a wooden cabinet. Just as Cesare does◊.
- Yume Nikki's White Desert area looks awfully similar to the bizarre scenery◊ found in Caligari.
- Like Cesare, Madotsuki knifes people in her sleep because the person remotely controlling her gets sick amusement from it. That person? The player.
- By causing instrumentality
- Does this mean that Che Guevara is the Devil's Machine? Also, how is Uboa an eyeball with Ness's face on it?
- It actually makes a bit too much sense. Madotsuki is perfect Haibane material: not only did she die when she was young and, as you see above, rife with mental issues, she even commits suicide!
- Does this mean that Che Guevara is Nyarlathotep?
- Monoko could be how she eventually sees Mikuru. A girl with a twisted, unnatural body, as opposed to the Moe light she used to be seen in.
- Shitai is, of course, Kyon. Dead body with scraggly brown hair, found in a saddening area, etc.
- Monoe is Yuki. Distant, seemingly benign, etc.
- Itsuki is Masada. H-He just is.
- And finally, Poniko/Uboa is/are Ryoko. Seemingly innocent, but with a definite "evil" side to them. The place Uboa sends you to is sort of Haruhi re-imagining what happened that day, and the dark "world" Ryoko drove her into.
- * snrk* ...I'm a horrible person for laughing at thatnote . But it would fit with the rest of the WMGs that don't involve Poniko being Che Guevara in disguise.
- Even better, at around 1:09 in that video, a creature that looks exactly like a winged version of the things in the sky on the road through the forest pops up.
- Yesss I was waiting for someone to mention this.
- Wut? I just saw Inception, and I swear, I was JUST about to post this. Thanks for making me feel even more inadequate, tvtropes! But it's ok, because no theory can top this....
- Ness is able to communicate telepathically.
- There are obvious shoutouts to EarthBound in Yume Nikki
- Assuming Madotsuki was raped (as there appears to be quite a bit of evidence suggesting that), and assuming some EarthBound WMGs are valid (Itoi himself said the final scene is open for any interpretation), Madotsuki was calling out to Ness telepathically, causing the final battle in EarthBound to take the form it did.
- This brings another WMG to mind...
- This kind of backs up an earlier WMG about Poniko being the one who raped Madotsuki. Bear with this scenario for a minute...
- Madotsuki and Poniko have been friends for a while... Madotsuki would always stay the night with Poniko... Until one night, when the lights went out, Poniko locked the door and became a monster in Madotsuki's eyes... trapping her... hence the realm Madotsuki is teleported to if you touch Uboa.
- Uboa is how Madotsuki remembers the rape, and Giygas is how Madotsuki's vision came across to Ness.
- Corollary: Matdotsuki is the assassin who killed the notorious Templar Che Guevara.
- Then what's with the pool of blood at the end?
Poniko, like Madotsuki, kept a dream diary, which is the only reason she doesn't appear to be from the White Desert. However, Poniko also ripped up her dream diary before killing herself, creating a side effect in which she transforms against her own will from a pretty young blond to Uboa, who may belong in the White Desert, judging by its color scheme. On the other hand, Madotsuki keeps her diary til the very end. Monoko is horribly disfigured because she purposely killed herself too many times in her dreams instead of pinching herself. Monoe is her sister, but was smart enough to just pinch herself each time, so she only got a slightly creepy face. Masada-sensei stared too long at FACE without blinking, so it ruined the look of his eyes in the dream. Dave Spector is just a celebrity that was there because everyone wanted him to be.When Madotsuki kills herself, she becomes a part of the dream, and travels into Meiko, Rin and Len's (who are all hikkikomoris) minds with the rest of the characters.
Meiko is a violent girl who couldn't trust herself not to attack someone over the slightest thing, so she locks herself in her room and refuses to leave.
Kaito is a successful teen artist, but at his latest concert, two fans had attacked eachother over who loves him more. He blames himself and refuses to leave his room, let alone go out in public or even speak.
Miku is a girl who gets pushed about and baselessly flirted with because she's young-looking and short for her age. She loses control and kills a male who mocked her flat chest. After she sees what she's done, she can no longer bring herself to be among other humans.
Rin and Len are 10-year old siblings who are so close they share a bed (It's up to you whether or not this implies certain things). They shut out the rest of the world in return for their own intimacy.
Meiko kills everything in her dreams, as she either thinks they are threats to her, or she believes them to be twisted creations and she wants to eleminate them from her mind. She fails to kill some, however, and is teleported somewhere she can't escape without pinching herself and starting all over again.
Kaito wants to sing again, but is afraid to do it in the real world. His dream has a village full of people who have never heard music (apart from ah nata nee ah nata nee centimeter, of course). He unintentionally hypnotizes them with his singing voice. Like what happened in the real world, two of his fans go insane, but one of them accidentally shoots Kaito, waking him up immediately. He also has to start all over again.
As soon as Miku enters her dream world, she is hailed as a goddess and a queen. She starts her own country. She lives so happily in this dream that she refuses to wake up. But she is unable to forget what she had done in the real world, sees Uboa the moment she turns the light off in her royal chambers, then she wakes up crying and screaming. She still returns to her dream, but this happens over and over.
Rin and Len share their dreams. They explore strange, but positive worlds accessed through doors, similar to Madotsuki. They also keep a dream diary. They soon receive an invitation to the castle from the queen. They have no real desire to see her, but they go looking for the castle door nonetheless. They get distracted along the way and see a new, different door. They walk through it unknowingly, but the door slams behind them, trapping them in their dream wold as they're forced to explore Madotsuki's diary, AKA "Alice's Wonderland" unless they both wake up and kill themselves, then become part of the dream, like Madotsuki.
Masada is the second ALICE. His spaceship took him to many different worlds, spreading his enchanting piano music. One particular song, however ("Anata ni, anata ni, Sentimental" which means "Sentimental for you", translated) drove people mad. Instead of being shot and killed, he was stabbed numerous times, which explains how he runs whenever Mado brandishes a knife.
Poniko is the third ALICE. All the creatures in the land loved her very much, and even built her a little house and made her the Queen Of The Dreamland. Everything went well at first, but she slowly became more and more paranoid of these monsters. She realized that if they felt like rebelling, they could eat her, transport her to an inescapable place, or worse (remember, it's Yume Nikki, the videogame that WILL make you shit yourself in fear). Little by little, she starts to think that being as fearful and sinister as them will integrate her for good. When she sees Madotsuki, she assumes her to be normal, but how would you react if some random girl holding a knife turned your lights on and off? She thinks Madotsuki has come to kill her after conducting in some kind of light-on light-off ritual. She turns into Uboa, and transports Mado away. She will forever rule Dreamland as its queen.
Monoko and Monoe are the fourth ALICE. Together, they explore the Dreamland. They unknowingly stumble into Poniko's castle, and as luck would have it, the moment they turned off the light, Uboa greeted them. Instead of both being trapped in an inescapable place, they were each seperated, Monoe cast underground and Monoko thrown into the White Desert. Monoko goes mad from the vastness of the desert, and hallucinates her body changing to something monstrous when something she only sees in the real world, a stoplight is shown to her. Monoe feels empty without her sister and wants to disappear, so, she does just that. As the story tells, they are never woken from their deep dreaming, forever they wander in search of eachother in the Dreamland. Neither of them want anything to do with Madotsuki.
Madotsuki is the fifth and final ALICE. Unlike the other dream victims, and very lucky for her, Mado can switch between waking up and dreaming freely. However, to her own chagrin, her dreams drive her insane. In her confusion and fear, she jumps off her own balcony. What she doesn't know, however, is that she was only dreaming of her bedroom, which is why there is suddenly a stepstone. She goes through the "afterlife" of her own dreams, while in real life she is thought to be suffering from a coma. The jellyfish around the bloodstain represent that she's dead, but only "dream dead".
Lucky Star is what Konata's life would be like if she got her wish. Everyone just being crazy and silly, having fun and goofing around. Nobody bullying her for her interests, and she even has friends. In the final episode of Lucky Star, heck, even the OP, Konata is in the school cheerleading squad, which means she finally gets into the toriningen party!Remember this is all just her wish, and Yume Nikki is still the harsh reality, though.
Poor Tara is left to her dreams, and is forced to re-enact every scene in My Immortal, along with things that make as much sense as her grammar and spelling, but with no dialogue, explanation or "sex" so it's not even funny anymore. She realizes how awful the THING she released onto the internet is, and is really very sorry. She contemplates deleting it off her FF account if she ever gets her computer back, but realizes that even if she deletes it, people will keep on finding copy-pasted versions and reading it.
She then sees that there is another way. Her eyes beckon to the balcony door..
Also, for the "Madotsuki is Kikiyama and the game is an adapted horror book by a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant and/or seriously creepy little girl" theory, maybe Kikiyama landed a job at Asmik Ace when she grew up? The person who wrote the dream diary the game was based on WAS a woman. Or perhaps an older female relative got a hold of Kikiyama's/Madotsuki's older diary from before she had the "isolated til I'm done with the story" idea?
LSD came out before Yume Nikki.
IT ALL MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE. Here, have some explanations with visuals:
- Another version of Madotsuki's outfit; Madotsuki first meeting Kyube,Madotsuki and her fellow Magical Girls; Poniko going Witch, alternate rendition of Madotsuki facing Uboa - notice Poniko's empty body being held within it; the first time Madostuki got sucked into a Witch-Realm after witnessing a Witchkissed friend stab themselves; Madotsuki finally turning into a witch; and Madotsuki's witch form (Danbooru links, may contain NSFW ads).
- The fate of her friends? Monoko died a horrible death being mutilated by a Witch (hence her odd misshapen appearance when you use the Stoplight on her), Monoe couldn't take it and faded away after smashing her Soul Gem before she could suffer Terminal Corruption, and Poniko became the Witch Uboa (Which particularly traumatised Madotsuki since it happened during a sleepover) - I like the implication that she was having a sleepover with Poniko to try and keep her friend's spirits up, but Poniko's trauma was too great and she became Uboa right in front of poor Madotsuki in spite of an attempt to mercy-kill her by stabbing.
- While everyone assumes that Monoko's deformities are indicating that she died, in this case she may have become a Witch as well, and her growing multiple arms represents her transformation. Stoplight!Monoko may even be the witch Patricia, though that's a bit of a stretch. Also being killed and witching aren't mutually exclusive, unless the Soul Gem breaks. Monoko could have also been horrendously injured and then witched as a result of it; witching out by running out of magic while regenerating from horrific mutilation is a pretty grim fate.
- Alternatively, Poniko's Witch form is the bleeding multi-armed monster in the background of the area Uboa takes you to. Uboa is its familiar. Witches tend to be more complex-looking then their familiars, after all.
- In Madoka Magica, one of the Witches Fought was H.N. Elly, the Hikkikomori/Box Witch◊. One of her primary Motifs was Flying Wings and some Checkered patterns. Guess the Yume Nikki character who is a Hikkikomori and has checkered patterns and flying as motifs normally associated with her◊. And don't the bluish things in this picture◊ of Elly's barrier look an awful lot like Mars-san?
- There's lots of symbolism behind Madotsuki's powers in-dream, such as that decapitation one being the time she lost her own head but somehow survived because her Soul Gem was intact. The Crashing event in the Famicom World could have been an combination of the times her old RPG cartridges glitched and the time she got stuck inside a Witch's maze after getting separated from her friends, only escaping once they beat the Witch. The Toringen? They were beefed-up Familiars that managed to survive her knife attacks, and their attempts to kill/imprison her traumatized her badly.
- Alternatively, all the the powers/eggs that Madotsuki collects within her dreams could represent all of the Soul Gems of fallen Magical Girls that Mado wished to revive, whether those girls be fallen due to being killed by a witch or becoming a witch. The appearances and abilities the eggs/effects/soul gems bestow Madotsuki represent the traits and abilities of the Magical Girls who originally owned them. Soul Gems are egg-shaped by default, are they not?
- Mars-San is a Witch and Masada is its familiars. The Spaceship and Mars areas are Mars' barrier. Masada's duty as Mars' familiar is to take Magical Girls and other victims deeper into the barrier to Mars itself. They do this by trapping them within the spaceship until it lands in the planet; notice in the game that you can't leave the spaceship once you enter Masada's piano room unless you pinch yourself awake or sleep in the bed. Additionally, there are multiple Masada-familiars that pilot the "spaceship"; again, this is apparent in-game from Masada always appearing to respawn in front of the piano whenever you exit and reenter the room after killing him. Furthermore, befitting the creepy Puella Magi series, the Masada familiars look neither Bishounen nor Moe as commonly depicted by the Yume Nikki fanart community; they actually look nightmarish like this. And concerning Mars-San, the Magical Girl who became Mars was really interested in astronomy and science fiction, explaining Mars' space travel-themed Witch realm. And once Madotsuki encountered and started attacking Mars, she gained the realization that Witches were more than simple Eldritch Abominations. Even as Madotsuki attacked it, Mars wouldn't fight back and continued to weep quietly to itself...
- So when Madotsuki finally acquired all the powers, she realised her own Gem was fading and tried to off herself before she became a Witch. Unfortunately, given the Familiars that surround her broken body in the ending, she may have become a Grief Seed before landing. ~the Ace Of Scarabs
- Someone should make a fanfic or animation out of this.
- And the whole game is exploring her Cosmosphere.
- The intense, protracted isolation (and whatever trauma you think is appropriate) she's experienced has led her to develop an unusually bizarre Reality Marble, without her being aware of it. She probably thinks she's dreaming or crazy.
- If it's a doomed timeline, she's just waiting for the bitter end and is testing if being asleep with a dead dreamself still collapses her into the alpha timeline. She decides not to do this and after emptying her dream inventory suicides to ensure the more reliable method of permanently entering the dreambubbles by being dead befalls her instead.
- If it's a null session of any kind, Madotsuki considers everything done or victory impossible and just goes home, possibly deciding to die when she realizes one of her coplayers or something else might initiate a Scratch soon or cause another session-destroying event and she greatly prefers the dreambubbles she was wandering to nonexistence.
- Her room was actually designed to be on a tower above/below the majority of her house or was reconstructed that way via Sburb (note the repeating air conditioner thingy on the balcony, a possible sign that the structure section was copied), but she's locked the door to prevent underlings from getting in and decides to just not bother with going outside besides the balcony, which is why she refuses to leave the area in the waking world.
- All the weird stuff is actually memories, altered by the use of the hypothetical stabilization device or simply altered by another cause like other dreamers' memories shifting together from offscreen. She either did not contact anyone for the majority of her life or doesn't want to be near anyone and no-one wants to be near her and the horrorterrors are willing to respect that, which is why there is a relative lack of other people. The people she does run into like the NPCs are either former coplayers, aliens from other sessions with similar enough memories to count as an intersection and completely alien enough to not qualify under Madotsuki's keep-people-away desire, or dreambubble constructs that aren't truly people.
- The effects are either outfit shifting triggered by memory triggers that you get the effects from or her sylladex (complete with knife for her strife specibus) that she remembers stuff is in.
- Poniko is/was her guardian and Uboa is her (weirdly-shaped) sprite, hiding in the entryway of the denizen palace because Madotsuki doesn't want to directly connect those areas. After the days and nights pre-sburb, Poniko dies and is replaced by Uboa (combination prototyping of a nun and a heavy metal album or several different objects and Che Guevara or pretty much anything, hence why Uboa could be...pretty much anything).
The various protagonists are test subjects for Kyubey’s experiment. The Incubators sought to create an "unborn" witch in an attempt to cheat Madoka's Law of Cycles, and capture her in order to reinstate the witch system. However, they needed to make damn well sure they knew what they were doing before carrying out thier incredibly risky plan, as one mistake would mean the end for Kyubey (as ended up happening). So, they kidnapped a bunch of Hikikomoris, knowing that nobody would notice if they disappeared, to “practice” making the Isolation Field.
This explains a lot of the strange phenomena surrounding the games. The bizzare dream worlds are the girls’ unconscious witch barriers, similar to Homura's. The reason most of the creatures/NPCs don't attack them is because they are their familiars. The chasers, which do attack, could perhaps be a "glitch" that Kyubey eventually ironed out. The reason why the protagonists have similar names (Madotsuki, Urostuki, Toritsuki) is that they are not the girls’ true names, but thier “codenames”. Also, the reason they can't escape their rooms is because those too are just another part of the dream: the girls are really in the Incubator home world (or wherever Rebellion takes place). In addition, Elly/Kirsten could have been what Madotsuki became in the original timelines, but with the witch system gone, the timeline changed and whatever made her go witch didn't happen. As for the manga and Mars-san, given how it speaks like a computer, it likely is a "computer" Kyubey made to run the dream worlds.
So, to sum it up: Kyubey kidnaps multiple lonely asocial girls, including one dying of a disease, and traps them in Psychological Torment Zones, and slowly turns them into killers, in order to conduct thier experiment multiple times until they get it perfect, so they can then capture Homura and then lay out thier trap for Madoka, all to reinstate the witch system and make the human race suffer once again, supposedly all for the greater good but really just to satisfy their hunger for energy. Proving once and for all that Bunnycat's a DICK.
They all committed murders in the past, using the weapon effects they wield in their respective games, and were taken to be test subjects. Their rooms were either made to look like thier homes or are just random rooms made to look nice, or perhaps Dreamsend Inc. was forced to move to an apartment building for whatever reason. (It’s never said if the rooms are thier homes.) They may have stopped doing announcements after noting the negative effect they had on Russell. The reason the protagonists can’t escape their rooms is that the door is locked, and if they somehow leave they will be caught by Dreamsend employees and sent back. The reason that the protagonists aren’t seen injecting themselves is because, after Russell's suicide at the end of End Roll, the staff decided to have workers manually insert the drug into the sleeping patients so as to prevent the syringe from being used as a suicide weapon (of course, that didn't stop Madotsuki).
Uboa looking kinda sus: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/548019131/
For those that do not know, The higher beings is a group of powerful characters with a aztech appearance, specially similar to the Aztec Rave Monkey. These beings not only can move between dimensions, but they are also very curious.
So what if they decided to contact Madotsuki, but her brain couldn't process it, and gave her some deep problems?Maybe all of the Aztec and Mesoamerican was how her brain tried to interpret these beings, and in the end of the game, she's so haunted by them to a point that's unbearable and suicides.