0:00 This trilogy of novels inspired many of the most important elements of Mother 3's story, from its characters, to its settings, to many of its underlying themes. While developing one's own original story, the important role one's influences play in that process cannot be understated. The way we see the world is shaped by the things we've experienced, and that's plain to see in the Mother series. While Mother 1 and 2 both borrowed many things that a toy clearly enjoyed, and didn't, they were a bit more surface level in their inclusion. With Mother 3 on the other hand, those inspirations run much deeper. In the game's earliest stages of development, the story underwent many different shapes and sizes, but finally started taking closer to its final form after a toy read these. The notebook, not the romance novel. The proof, and the third lie. And to help me
0:46 relay this story to you, I've brought on a very special guest. Hello everyone, this is your favorite book reader and story understander, Cybershell. And right off the bat, I'd like to let everyone know there are some extremely fricked up things that happen in these books. You see, there is no ESRB or MPAA for books. You can just put whatever the hell you want in these things and nobody's gonna stop you. And because it's a book, you know, without any pictures, they make you imagine all the crazy shit with your own imagination. Seriously though, beyond some shocking and graphic imagery, it's just an extremely dark story which touches on some very bleak themes of nihilism and death. So maybe if you're sensitive to those kinds of things, instead of reading it yourself, we should let two handsome men summarize it for you in a YouTube video. Looking into the work that influenced your favorite pieces of art can be a
1:34 really gratifying experience. I actually do feel as though I have a deeper understanding of some elements of Mother 3 after reading these books. Just knowing the contents of this book were bouncing around in a toy's head while working on the game, you can see elements of it reflected back in unexpected ways. It's a lot more than just the names of Lucas and Klaus. And it's an interesting reminder how great artists and storytellers will remix elements of their own influences to create something entirely new. So in this video, we'll be taking a look at the plot of these novels, while also interjecting with our own comparisons to Mother 3 as they come up. Oh yeah, and major spoiler warnings for both the novels and Mother 3. The first book, The Notebook, begins with the twins arriving in the small town with their mother, fleeing from the war and the carpet bombings of the big town. Mother 3 opens and primarily
2:20 takes place in and around the small agricultural village of Tazmilli. Mother 3 also happens to open with the pig masks bombing Tazmilli's surrounding areas as the inciting incident of the story. The twins, who are unnamed in this book, tell the story from a first person plural point of view, meaning it's told using pronouns like we and us instead of me and I. It's an odd quirk that makes the book feel rather unique, I'm not sure how many other novels have this structure. The actual location of the village is never explicitly told to the reader at any point in the trilogy, but I speculate it's likely Hungary, as that's where Kristoff herself is from, but aside from that, we can see another parallel to Mother 3 in this decision. Similar to how this location is never specified, neither is Mother 3's, with the story taking place on the enigmatic Nowhere Islands, purposefully ambiguous. This plays to the advantage of both
3:10 stories, I think, as the unclear nature of their literal settings gives Mother 3's story a more fantasy feel, and the notebook a more folklore one, adding to the mythos and enclosed feeling both create. Arriving on a small farm outside the village, their mother asks them to stay outside as she goes to talk to an old woman. The boys overhear an argument between them, part of it being how their mother loved her father more than her mother. The boys' mother introduces them to Grandmother, telling them that they will be staying on her farm with her until the end of the war, as she's unable to provide for them anymore. This all introduces a connection between the two stories that I find intriguing, in that they share many almost direct inverses of each other. While Mother 3 opens with a lighthearted time between the twins, their mother, and grandfather, this starts with a desolate, dreary one between the twins, their mother, and
3:58 grandmother. Towards the end of Mother 3, the protagonists head to the big city, while this one starts with them escaping it. Mother says that she'll send them money, that their belongings are in their suitcase, and she'll write them. She gives them each kisses goodbye, and with that, leaves. Grandmother laughs. Beyond small town, there's a military base and another country separated by a dusty road. Back when Mother 3 was being developed for the N64, the crossroads were a hub that separated Tasmilly from Great Scale Village, another town, which later was downsized in the GBA version and renamed Cerulean Beach in the fan translation. Grandmother's house is surrounded by a vegetable garden, stream, and forest. There's also houses for many types of farm animals, including a shed for the goats, which to me seems like a pretty direct inspiration for why the twins live
4:45 on a sheep farm with their parents. There's also a dog and cat that live on the farm, and a vineyard nearby grandmother also owns. Grandmother's house consists of a central kitchen, her bedroom, another bedroom occupied by a foreign officer, a cellar, and an attic, which the boys claim is their own, as they sawed off one of the rungs on the ladder up, which grandmother finds out about the hard way. The attic is where they hide their things, including their father's dictionary, and the very notebook they're writing in to recount this story. Grandmother is called the witch by the townspeople, who suspects she poisoned her late husband. She's a small woman who wears a black shawl and dark clothes with army shoes, which she never washes or takes off. She also has plenty of warts and wrinkles, so yeah, not exactly fighting the witch allegations either. She's a very troubled and abusive woman, not feeding and making the boys stay outside
5:34 at night when they don't do their chores. Nonetheless, she's hard working and maintains the farm, and the boys join in helping. Over time, the twins get used to the village and visit the town and nearby frontier, getting to know the guards. One day, however, deep in the forest, they find a dead soldier, and, as you do, steal his rifle, cartridges, and grenades, hiding them underground outside the house. Living in filth with grandmother, who cleans nothing but the silverware, and with no way to wash themselves besides getting buckets of stream water, the boys can't help but remember life with their mother, who, you know, cleaned them. Their belongings, like their clothes and sheets were taken by grandmother, which they haven't seen since, and they keep getting dirtier and more unkempt. The soles of their feet have gotten hard, immune to rocks and such. Their skin has
6:19 gotten very tan and covered in bug bites and cuts, and their hair is bleached from the sun and reaches their shoulders, and they smell like, well, you can imagine. Memories, particularly ones of family, are important to the story, and likewise also play an important role in Mother 3, especially its ending. However, while here the twins are becoming more and more detached from things, the memories are what restore Klaus's humanity in the game. It's almost like a sort of conversation between the book and the game about humanism and nihilism. The twins suffer abuse from every turn, their grandmother at home, and the townspeople as well who treat them like dirt, in an interesting contrast to the close -knit nature of the villagers of Tazmilly, and puts on display Itoi and Kristoff's contrasting views on the role of community in troubled times. While Itoi proposes it should
7:04 keep close, Kristoff poses the reality that it falls apart. Grandmother hits them with brooms, cloths, her hands, and the townspeople also just randomly beat them up too. The boys are stunted by their abandonment and abuse, and decide to take matters into their own hands to get past it. How, you ask? By hurting themselves. They start partaking in what they call exercises to numb themselves to all forms of pain. This includes beating one another with a belt, putting their hands over open flames, and cutting each other with a knife and then pouring alcohol on their wounds, all while saying, it doesn't hurt. This is only page 17, by the way. This is likely what Itoi was referring to when in an interview he said this novel reminded him of an RPG, likening their eventual tolerance to pain as being similar to the leveling up systems of
7:51 most RPGs. Other exercises they partake in includes pretending to be deaf and the other blind, extended fasting, and mutilating and killing animals, just to name a few. Beyond this, the boys then take to desensitizing themselves to emotional pain as well, constantly repeating their mother's words to them. My darlings, my loves, my joy, my adorable little babies, bringing one another to tears, and just keep saying them to each other until it eventually loses all meaning to them. We must forget these words because nobody says such words to us now and because our memory of them is too heavy a burden to bear. They do the same practice with the insults hurled at them by the townspeople, and their hearts eventually completely hardened. The two go sideways very quickly and become outright sociopaths. Page 21. I see a lot of connections here between the novel and the
8:40 game as well. The way the two numb themselves to the pain of being abandoned by their mother, and the way Lucas and Klaus in the game deal with Hinawa's death, clearly demonstrates the two authors' views on living with trauma. That not dealing with it causes the victims to become less humane, or even human in a sense. This is thematically why Klaus becomes a cyborg. He is literally no longer entirely human until the end when he confronts his deep -seated pain. Klaus's first instinct is to kill the guilty Drago, a path of violence and destruction to others and himself. Contrasting this is Lucas' approach, a path to healing through making friends and growing both mentally and physically to make one stronger. Seeing as Itoi likely saw the physical exercises as being RPG -like, these mental trials may have also served as inspiration, with characters in Mother
9:25 3 having to endure an internal sickness in order for their psychic abilities to grow. Feeling feverish, which Itoi has also compared to a menstrual cycle. After a couple weeks with Grandmother, the twins meet the orderly, the foreign soldier staying in the spare room. He's a jolly yet strange fellow, but he takes to developing a sort of kinship with them nonetheless. The boys recall a time when they were briefly separated when they were in school, to the dismay of their mother, who could see how codependent they were on each other. Their father insists they develop themselves individually however, and it's a disaster. They're separated on opposite sides of the building, and both get sick and dizzy, resulting in them being reunited once again. They get some more writing materials from the local store and begin their studies in writing. They give one another prompts to write
10:10 on, and have to agree that the final writing is, quote, good in order for it to be included in their notebook, these writings being the very ones we're reading. In order for a writing to be considered good, it must meet the one qualification, it must be true. Meaning they can't say, grandmother is like a witch, but they can say, people call grandmother a witch. Not, the orderly is nice, but the orderly gave us some blankets. So on and so forth. Here they do an interesting deconstruction of the word love though, saying it's an unreliable word that lacks precision and objectivity. To say, love walnuts, is not the same as, to love mother. That words describing feelings are often vague, and that it's better to just avoid using them all together. This focus on love is clearly a look at their psyches, the desire to detach
10:58 from it completely due to the pain of being left by their mother. But it's also interesting due to love being the central theme of the entire mother series, even prior to mother 3. It really makes it so much clearer why such a story would connect with a toy, especially seeing as the first game was a love letter to his daughter, who he was able to see much less after getting divorced. Evidently from these two works thus far though, it's clear a toy is much more optimistic than Kristoff, hence why his characters are on a road to redemption, while Kristoff's are on a downward spiral. Soon after, the boys meet their neighbor, a slightly older girl named Hairlip. She's cross -eyed, has red eyes, acne covering her arms, and black teeth. She's an odd girl who lives in a very run -down house with her mother, who's supposedly blind and deaf. Hairlip, to put it simply, is
11:46 strange. She does things like stealing from grandmother's garden, sucking milk directly out of a cow's udder, and things with the farm dog that are better left unsaid. They take to helping her and her mother by defending Hairlip from bullies, bringing them food, and blackmailing the town's local priest into giving them money. They also have a soldier living in the woods who deserted his post. They help quite a few people, but because those they help, according to them, absolutely need what they do for them. One day they follow grandmother in secret, seeing she's visiting and tending her husband's grave. On the grave, they see the cross above it says two Christian names. Their names. Yeah, up to this point, the twins' names actually haven't been revealed to the reader yet, as up to this point, everything's been told in first -ish person. We
12:35 did this, and we did that. There are also many other children from an array of places living in small town. Many also orphaned and brought there to wait out the war. It sort of reminds me of the whole white ship part of Mother 3's story, being sent off to escape the apocalypse, but it continues to follow them all the same. It gets colder as winter approaches, and the boys are running low on usable clothes, and holes have worn in their shoes. The postman comes by and hands off a package and some money to grandmother. The boys spy on her to find out the packages have been containing clothes for them sent by their mother, but grandmother's been selling them off. They take them back and make it clear to the postman by basically threatening to kill him in the snow, to deliver the packages to them from now on. A friendly shopkeeper also gives the boys some nice rubber boots
13:20 to work in for free, just out of the kindness of his heart. I think this could possibly be something he toysaw in the story as being RPG -like, as the clothes and boots, despite being gifted by well -meaning people, are talked about in a very detached way, non -emotional. There's no, we feel cold, or we can't bear it. They only want them for the sake of doing their work, purely utilitarian. In a similar vein to the role equipment plays in these games. Just for getting the job done, there's no visible aesthetics on the characters, so who cares what they look like? Crocodile hat? Sure, whatever. Also very much worth mentioning, around this time in the novel, an old castle is mentioned as being in the town, which outright seems to be the influence on Castle Oso, the abandoned castle in Mother 3 just outside the village. The priest they're blackmailing with information you'd rather not know gets a new housekeeper
14:09 after the previous one passes away. This one is the previous one's daughter, a young beautiful blonde woman. When she sees the dirty state the boys are in, she takes them in to give them a bath, to trim their nails and hair, as well as do other things to them, and we'll leave it at that. Not much later, the priest attempts to introduce them to the bible, but the twins inform them they've already memorized several sections of it when teaching themselves to read and write during their exercises. They also inform him they do not follow the Ten Commandments, ironically telling him the truth by doing this. Something about this kind of reminds me of the sort of selective memory the villagers of Tazmilli have about the past world, but that's about as much as I can connect it. They express wanting to know more about history and geography, and the priest promises to bring them other books to read. The orderly introduces the little heathens to his officer, who takes a real liking to the boys'
14:57 outlook and work ethic. He teaches them his native language, as well as lets them utilize his temporary home whenever they like. This leads to a pretty gross relationship between them that we're not going to go into too much detail about, we'll just stop at it's wildly inappropriate. The boys start to play a harmonica in local pubs to earn some money, and eventually go on to perform short plays for the patrons, one being a scene in which a rich man turns away a poor man who works for him after asking for food, criticizing the lower classes for wasting all their money on food, and then proceeding to sit down for dinner and opening his prayer with, I give thanks to thee, Lord Jesus, for all thy blessings. Air raids start to threaten small town, and a herd of malnourished and injured people is marched through the town by soldiers. The parish tells the boys to forget what they saw, which speaks to the greater themes of trying to bury the horrors of war and trauma by
15:44 just pretending that they never happened, and also informs the dual nature of how Lucas and Klaus of the game cope with the death and war they've been forced to witness. One day during breakfast, a policeman shows up at grandmother's house. Though grandmother initially thinks he's shown up to accuse her of poisoning her husband, he's actually there for something regarding the twins. The police search the house, and then take the boys to the nearby forest, where they'd found the corpse of the soldier before. The corpse is now gone, and they're questioned if they've ever been there before, which they deny. The policeman suspects they stole the dead soldier's rifle and grenades, which they again deny. They're taken into the policeman's office, and he interrogates them about their relationship with the priest and his housekeeper. The boys say they have a good relationship, but the officer doesn't believe them. It turns out that morning, when the housekeeper went to light the
16:32 fire, the stove blew up and the explosion hit her in the face, landing her in the hospital. It was found an explosive from an enemy rifle had been hidden within the firewood, and it was correctly assumed that it was the two of them. The boys play coy, however, angering the officer and leading them to a very violent beating, resulting in them losing consciousness. They're thrown into a small prison and told they'll be kept there until they confess. Before they can, however, the foreign officer and orderly come to their aid and have them set free. Upon finding out the boys are loved by the officer, the policeman profusely apologizes and is flanked before being sent off. Back home, they recover as grandmother somewhat takes care of them. She asks if they did it, which they still deny. She responds with, I wonder why you wanted to
17:19 kill her? You had your reasons, I suppose. Not long after, another man comes to the house and pleads with grandmother to hide a young girl until the pending end of the war, saying she could be passed off as the boy's cousin. He tries to make it worth her while by giving her the girl's family jewelry, which she begrudgingly accepts. The twins are told to treat her as their cousin, which she is also referred to as. The girl is about five years older than them with reddish hair. I know this is a reach, but I think it's possible she was somewhat of an inspiration for Kumatora, who is similarly tomboyish with vaguely red hair and older than Klaus and Lucas. Kumatora also drops a pendant when she's first seen and it's her lone useful body equipped for a long time, sort of like how she comes into this family with nothing but jewelry. Cousin more or less goes off
18:07 on her own and doesn't interact much with the boys, running around with a group of other troubled teenagers. While they're out in the garden, an army jeep pulls up in front of their house. Out of the jeep comes their mother and a foreign officer. Their mother is carrying a baby and tells them it's their new sister. She asks the boys to come with her, but they refuse. They say they want to stay at grandmother's house, and grandmother also says she won't give the boys up. When their mother tells the officer to go take them by force, they scurry up into the attic and hide. They say, we like it here, mother. You go. We're quite happy at grandmother's. They can hear cannon fire and gunshots in the distance. The officer tries to bring their mother back to the car, but she pushes away and refuses to leave without her sons. So he goes back and starts the engine in the jeep. At that exact moment, there's a large explosion in the garden which kills their
18:55 mother and sister. The jeep speeds off and the boys come out to see the dead bodies laying in the crater. Their grandmother tells them to fetch a spade and fill in the hole, and they do so. When their cousin returns home later and asks if anything happened, they simply say, yes, a shell made a hole in the garden. Again, it's like an inverse of Mother 3 where Klaus and Lucas lose their mother near the start of the game and are emotionally devastated by it. This happens at the end of the novel, and the twins are eerily unaffected by it. It seems as if they've hardened their emotions to such an extent that seeing the death of their own mother was just another day to them. They then bury the remains of their mother and sister in the flower bed outside the house. After the attacks, the foreign military occupies the village and small town's economy quickly devolves solely into a
19:41 bartering system. This is another way Mother 3's story seems to be inverse of that of the novel, as military occupation of Tasmily led to a more rigid, structured economy. Here, and much more realistically, it all falls apart into a loose trading form. Though similarities can be seen in how the destruction of the previous culture is shared, as buildings are vandalized and destroyed by the military, as the pigmasks completely recreate Tasmily in their own image. As they are invaded, Cousin is taken away to a reception center in Big Town. This raiding by the military, called the Liberators, also results in the death of Harelip, whose fate is horrifying. To the point we can't even touch on in this video. If you really want to know, check the book out on the internet archive and read it for yourself. When the boys go back to check
20:28 on their situation, Harelip's mother is revealed to not actually be blind or deaf, and is just waiting to die. The twins ask if that's really what she wants, and she responds by saying if they really wanted to do something for her, they should set the house on fire and let her die. They agree and slit her throat with a razor, killing her. They then set the house on fire, with gasoline they siphoned from a nearby military vehicle. The so -called Liberators more or less forcibly take Grandmother's vineyard from her, though they offer to give her electricity. She lets the boys settle the final negotiations, getting a bathroom and radio as well. Very similar to how the modern way of life is forced upon the people of Tasmily, including those in power threatening and using force to get others to comply. Towards the end of the
21:14 novel, the boy's father shows up at the house looking for their mother. He tells them that he's been a prisoner of war and is looking for his old wife. Grandmother tells them that she's dead and points to the flower bed in the garden they planted over her grave. He says that he wants to see her. Grandmother tells him not to disturb the dead, but he insists and says she needs to be buried in a cemetery. After demolishing the flower garden and digging it up, he uncovers the two skeletons. When he asks about the baby skeleton, the boys tell him it's their little sister. Grandmother says to come inside and wash up and that she warned him about leaving the dead in peace. Father doesn't answer. He stares at the skeletons. His face is covered with sweat, tears, and rain. He then climbs out of the hole and leaves without saying a word. In a rather morbid display, the boys collect
22:00 the skeletons and store them in the attic and spend months smoothing and polishing the bones before using thin wire to reconstruct them. Then there is a time skip of several years. At this point, grandmother has died and the boys are still living in her house. Their father comes back. It's the first time they've seen him since that night. He explains that he wants to cross the frontier. They tell him it's not possible, but father says he doesn't care. He'd prefer to risk death than to live in this country any longer. They explain the most perilous part of the crossing is the minefield. They estimate there's about a one in seven chance of making it through. Their father agrees to these terms, and on the day of the crossing they wait for the search patrol to pass by, then send their father across. They wait, then hear an explosion.
22:53 It's revealed they actually do know one way to cross the frontier safely, by getting someone else to go first. The twins are embarking on their final and most intense exercise as a test of fortitude, by separating from each other. One of them crosses the border into the other country, by following in their father's footsteps and going over his dead body, and the other stays and returns to their grandmother's house. Part 2 opens with the remaining twin returning to grandmother's house, and it is revealed that the twin that stayed is Lucas. The border patrol approaches with the body of his father, though Lucas denies being able to identify him. Lucas continues his life as before, taking care of grandmother's farm and livestock. Lucas keeps on with his life as
23:38 he wanders small town streets and more time passes. In the time since his brother left, Lucas becomes much softer, closer to the Lucas of mother three's personality, much more mellow. From here, love and separation become much more prominent themes in the story. Though interestingly, in contrast with mother three, bereavement, despite being very present, is not yet. Having lost his mother, father, sister, grandmother, and even his brother to an extent, Lucas seems little affected now. During this time, Lucas continues to maintain him in his brother's notebook. And don't worry, the skeletons of his deceased mother and sister are still hanging up there in the attic. Lucas begins slipping with his farm chores, missing deadlines to sell vegetables, as he's began to space out occasionally. He meets a young girl named
24:24 Agnes, who is sent to tell Lucas he's been called by the priest. Lucas has been bringing food to the priest, as donations to the church since the war has ended don't even make enough to maintain the building. He apologizes to the pastor for forgetting to bring him food, as he hasn't done so in months, though the priests insist it's not Lucas' fault nor duty. Lucas confesses he's been having trouble keeping himself grounded recently, spacing out, not being able to keep down food, and sleeping in his attic, which the priest attributes to his excessive solitude. The priest teaches Lucas to play chess, and they start to eat together and play the game every evening. Overall, Lucas seems to start recovering, sleeping in his bed again, eating meals, and remembering market days. He also continues to walk the streets at night, and resumes playing the harmonica in the local pubs. He continues to buy stationary tools to maintain the notebook, basically being
25:14 the sole customer of the store by this point. The shopkeeper, Victor, tells Lucas of a time before the war, when travel between countries was much more free, though now identification cards are needed to go everywhere. Here, Victor mentions the train station people would travel to and from on, which I could see as the inspiration for the large role the railroad tracks and train play in the Nowhere Islands geography in the latter half of the game. This incentivizes Lucas to get one of his own, now 15 years old, having never gotten one due to faking disability as a child with his brother to avoid having to go to school. Lucas being 15 now is interesting, as pre -time skip Lucas and Klaus are likely 10 years old, and 13 after it in the final game, as 12 to 13 is about the age of the other mother protagonists. However, when the game was in development for the Nintendo 64, a much
26:03 longer time skip was originally intended. Their ages were confirmed to be 7 pre -time skip, and were seemingly around 17 after, and due to how grown up Lucas becomes from here on out in the novel, this may have been a reason as to why a much longer time skip was initially conceived for Mother 3's story, one to closer match the larger passage of time felt here, as how Taz Millie Changes was a large focus for a toy earlier in development. Lucas goes to acquire an ID card, seeing a man Victor said to, named Peter, at the Revolutionary Party's building. Peter, a young man high up in the party, helps Lucas fill out his card, and also attempts to court him, though he apologizes and they agree to keep the interaction a secret. The end of the year rolls around and Lucas comes across a young woman and her crying child out in the cold on a bridge he built. Lucas
26:49 takes the two inside his house, and the woman reveals she was intending on drowning her baby, but couldn't bring herself to do so. Lucas graciously offers to do it himself, but she declines the offer. She introduces herself as Yasmin. She explains her father is in prison and her aunt disapproves of her, leading to her current attempt to get away from it all, but Lucas persuades her to live with him until she finds her footing in life, and doesn't care about the possible social ramifications. She takes up housework to compensate for his generosity, and explains her child, Matthias, who's a hunchback with a weak leg, has his deformity due to her wearing a corset while she was pregnant. She did so to hide it, as the child was conceived by… her father. It's honestly almost comedic how many taboos these novels touch on. It's like a Mad Lib for a South Park joke or something. Lucas takes the two of them
27:37 in and begins an informal relationship with Yasmin. It's possible Matthias may have been a partial inspiration for Duster's handicap, as Eto 'i wanted to have representation for disabled people in the game. He figured there are people like that in the real world, so they would be part of the world of Mother 3 as well. Either way, both characters walk with the pronounced limp. Lucas also adopts a black sheepdog, who may have been the inspiration for Boney as well. I mean, even if they aren't the same breed, he does literally herd the family's sheep, so they are both sheepdogs. Actually, what breed is Boney anyways? I always thought he was just a chocolate lab, but I guess technically he's just some kind of Nowhere Islands breed. Apparently he was a beagle in an earlier iteration too. Look, I'm gonna be honest, with how much horrifically fucked up shit has happened in these novels, as soon as they introduced a dog, I
28:24 was like, oh god, here we go. But luckily, if you're feeling anxious, I can confirm nothing bad happens to the dog. Eto 'i also happens to be a huge dog person. He even launched an Instagram for dogs in Japan. Anyways, it's around this time in the novel that money becomes a much more pronounced part of Lucas and the other's lives. Again, similar to how DP becomes a mechanic in Mother 3 after the time skip. Lucas begins a relationship with the town's librarian Clara, who is mourning the loss of her husband. Lucas tells her he knows the pain of bereavement as well. He explains to her the separation of him and his brother, which at this point, his name is finally revealed to be Klaus. By this point, Lucas is now 19 years old, meaning Matthias is now 4. As Matthias grows more and more attached to him, Lucas is spending more time with Clara than them. Lucas becomes infatuated with
29:12 jealousy towards the man Clara is seeing, and threatens to kill him one night. Lucas is brought into the police station for this, but the man decides not to press charges. The priest informs Lucas he'll be leaving small town to retire to a monastery, which when he tells Matthias and Yasmin brings his neglect of them to his attention, as it becomes clear they are under the impression he no longer cares about them. Yasmin's jealousy of Lucas' fondness for Clara eventually leads to her leaving Matthias with Lucas as she goes to Big Town by herself, sort of like how Lucas' close ones end up also leaving the village for a big city. Lucas continues to devote his time to Clara, who's fallen sick, but is doing better splitting it between her and Matthias. Matthias is torn up inside, not believing Lucas could truly love someone like him. Lucas reassures him, and Matthias asks what happened to his mother and brother. Something interesting
30:02 about this moment is how Lucas explains to him where dead people go. He says the dead, quote, are everywhere and nowhere, which could be interpreted as an inspiration to an extent for how a toy visualizes the afterlife, if that's what it even is, during the true ending of the game. Lucas tells him about the fate of his mother and sister as well as Klaus, and Matthias responds by saying he knows their skeletons are in the attic, and that he's seen them. He also asks Lucas about his notebooks, but Lucas forbids him from reading them. It's here where the differences between the appearances of Klaus and Lucas are explained, with Klaus revealed to have blonde hair and blue eyes, where Lucas has brown hair and gray eyes. This continues to support the view of the game being a sort of reverse narrative, as Lucas there is notably the one with blonde hair. We're also introduced to the character of Samuel, the
30:51 brother of Agnes, a small timid blonde boy who reminds Lucas of his brother. He's also about the same age as Lucas at the beginning of Mother 3. Victor has now sold off the stationery shop to Lucas and moved away, with Lucas himself now running it and him and Matthias living in the apartment directly above. Matthias invites young Samuel and Agnes, who's now 18, over for dinner, only to regret it when they actually accept and come over that evening. There's an inconsistency here in how Lucas is described. When jealously describing Samuel, he says Lucas's hair is like his, blonde. This is confusing to say the least. There seems to be a lot of back and forth on whether Lucas and Klaus are fraternal or identical. Just wanted to note it. Matthias is convinced Lucas loves the two of them over him due to
31:38 his condition. Lucas is eventually able to get him to join them for dinner, and afterwards Matthias insists Lucas walks them home as a show of good manners. Lucas does so and presumably goes off to play the harmonica in the bars, as he doesn't get back until around 3 in the morning. The insomniac that lives across the street from them tells Lucas from his window he saw Matthias burning something several hours ago and hadn't heard from him again since. Lucas goes upstairs and finds nothing but some ripped notebook paper and Matthias' bed empty. He looks behind the red curtain where he stores his mother and sister. He sees the skeletons, as well as Matthias, hanging there with them.
32:30 Peter and the insomniac assist in taking care of the funeral matters. Lucas himself plants the cross, indicating the child lived for seven years and four months. Lucas writes in the notebook, everything is fine with Matthias. He is always first at school, and he doesn't have nightmares anymore. Peter and the insomniac, named Michael, do what they can to console him. Lucas sleeps on Matthias' grave every night. This is the novel's first explicit depiction of bereavement, which plays a significant role in the story of the game counterpart. It also greatly contrasts with the ending of the previous novel, where he loses his mother, sister, and father, yet felt completely removed.
33:30 Klaus returns on the train and begins his search for Lucas. While looking, Klaus is taken aback by how much small town has changed since he left. The vineyard, grandmother's grave and house, all gone. Klaus is now 50 years old. He goes to the bookshop, now being looked after by Peter, and is informed a previous owner, Victor, has since died. Klaus introduces himself to Peter as Lucas' brother, which greatly surprises Peter, as he didn't even believe he really existed. He asks Peter where he can find Lucas, and Peter tells him he's unsure. Peter accuses Klaus of play -acting and believes he's really Lucas in disguise. Klaus denies the accusation, and Peter apologizes. He explains Lucas' relationship with Matthias to Klaus, and that after his death, Lucas disappeared when he
34:16 was around 30 years old, possibly having left the country. Peter again is put off by Klaus' striking resemblance to Lucas, and says he always thought the play on words of their names was stupid. It's not explicitly said, but this play on words he's referring to is that the names are anagrams for each other, meaning the letters in their names can be rearranged to spell the others. While in Mother 3 this is used again to communicate the different ways in which the two approach things in their lives, here it serves a different purpose we'll get to soon. Peter gives Klaus the notebooks left with him after all this time. Klaus takes and reads them, then returns to Peter, inquiring about what happened after Matthias' death. Peter explains Lucas continued business in the shop as usual, but stopped speaking and eating, and slept on Matthias' grave until he left, entrusting the store to Peter until Klaus returned. Klaus declines the store as
35:06 he can't own it since he's a foreigner on a visa for 30 days. It turns out Clara is now living with Peter in her old age, and she mistakes Klaus for her late husband. He also encounters the insomniac Michael, both of whom he identifies without ever meeting them before. Peter shows him that in a secret room he still keeps the skeletons of Klaus's mother and sister, as well as a third one. He explains two years after the burial, Lucas dug up Matthias' remains and kept them with the others. Klaus asks to stay the night there. The novel ends with a postscript in the form of a police report for the embassy of D to bring Klaus back to their country. It describes how Klaus stayed in a small town, now called K, long after his visa expired and was arrested. While being interrogated he insisted on having been born in the country and been a resident of the village as
35:54 a child with his brother Lucas. The police confirm neither a Klaus nor Lucas has ever lived there at any point. The police confiscated and went through the notebooks. Klaus claimed to have only added the final chapter, though the police note the entirety of the writings are in the same handwriting throughout, as well as the manuscripts showed no signs of age, evidently having been written in one sequence no longer than six months. It's also determined that they must be a work of fiction, as the supposed people described within them have been concluded to have never existed in the town of K, with the exception of his supposed grandmother, who they suspect was entrusted with him during the latter part of the war. The third and final entry of the trilogy begins with Klaus in prison. While the last novel was told in third person, this one assumes first person through Klaus's perspective. Klaus
36:44 has a limp, as pointed out by someone who's come to visit him, which he reveals is from the aftermath of an accident he experienced as a child. He's waiting until the day his inquiry ends, spending much time playing chess with a policeman. It's detailed that about a year ago Klaus was told by his doctor he doesn't have much time left to live, due to his excessive smoking and drinking, and likely has cardiac angina, which results from the heart not receiving enough blood. He later has a dream of walking the streets of K that involves seeing a puma in many of the town's buildings on fire. He sees a child who tells him not to fear the puma, as it doesn't eat meat, only souls. Comforting! The child says there's an old man waiting for Klaus who's sitting on a bench in Central Square. Klaus arrives there to see his brother. reminisces about when they were young and climbs to a
37:32 high place. Klaus begs him to come down, so he does, by jumping off and crashing to the ground. Lucas feels his brother's old head and wakes up in tears. He smokes a cigarette. He admits he's greatly afraid of dying, but won't go to a hospital. This is because he spent a great deal of his childhood in one during the war. He was delivered to the hospital in a coma when he was only four years old. He lived there and in a rehabilitation center over the course of five years, and went to school while there. During this time, he worked on his limp and had crutches, but eventually graduated to a cane. He also bullied the other children, offering to read the illiterate ones their letters from their parents, only to lie, saying they said they didn't want them or love them anymore. This stemmed from his own insecurity that his own parents felt this way about him. The bullying eventually
38:21 evolved into all -out physical altercations, all this mixed with air raids and great fears of even surviving. This all, evidently, didn't help with his deteriorating psyche. Eventually a close and caring nurse, a very close nurse, takes him away from the center and brings him to a small town, where he's placed under the guardianship of an old woman, who assumes the role of his grandmother. Klaus, now 50 but before his arrest, waits at the train station to return to the town he spent much of his youth in. As he waits, he takes in how much it's changed, from a once naturalistic place to more industrial. He's heading to what he considers his hometown because he doesn't want to die here. He hates what it's become and has nobody to be here for anymore. The tutor he had when he was young, Peter, has died,
39:06 and his old mistress, Clara, committed suicide. He rides the train and arrives back in the town of K. He spends a while walking around, observing how much it too has changed over time. The train station is the same, but it's cleaner and it has flowers. But now there's buses, a factory, and unfortunately it seems to greatly resemble the town he just left. The passage of time and its effects are a central theme of Mother 3. As said before, Itoy wanted great emphasis placed on what it does to Tazmilly, though in the game that reflection is thrust onto the player to do, as the protagonists rarely speak, while here it's all for the character Soli to have to deal with. Klaus stays at the town's new hotel, and has a flashback to when he was a boy. Three Border Patrol men came to his supposed grandmother's house after she passed away. When he's not able to prove his relationship to her,
39:55 and tells them he was brought there from a rehabilitation center, the government claims ownership of the property and telling him he'll be taken away to another home for children where he can study. He resists though, as grandmother told him not to cooperate with such people, as he'll take everything she left him, that being some jewelry, and him as well. While the adults try to find a way to force him off the property, Klaus stays at the house. A man arrives at the station later, who Klaus lets stay with him. Klaus cooks him an omelette, and the man offers him a ton of money to help him cross the border, which Klaus agrees to, but he's not interested in the money. He wants to cross too. Back in the almost present, Klaus dreams of fishing with his brother, and that his
40:40 brother has a happy family life, but not even his imaginary version of him can keep up the charade. He tells Klaus he needs to reunite with their parents, and attempts to force him to reconcile with them. Klaus resists his brother, and smashes an ashtray over his head, killing him. He accepts he's crafted a delusion around his entire life, but also decides to keep living it out, as he has nothing else to grasp onto. Klaus spends his days aimlessly wandering around the town and its outskirts, and is offered a permanent place to stay above the booksellers. He takes it, and continues to renew his visa to stay there. Months later, past when his visa has completely expired, he celebrates his birthday in a local bar, playing his old harmonica. An old man sits with him and says he remembers him. And his brother. Another man says
41:27 his brother lives in the forest, a loon that lives off the land. Klaus has an outburst, denying it, which calls the attention of the police, leading to his arrest and imprisonment. In the past, the man makes a run for the border, but is blown up by a landmine. Klaus then makes his attempt, and succeeds, sneaking past the guards observing the body. He camps out on the other side of the border, and is caught the next morning by guards. He's taken into the village on the opposite side, where he's fed and clothed. He's then taken to be given an identification card. He lies that the man who died was his father, and that he's now an orphan. He fills out ID paperwork, and is told he has to stay in the village until it's approved or rejected. On the paper are three lies. One, he didn't cross with his father. Two, he's not eighteen. And three, his name is not Klaus.
42:17 He's accepted to stay in the country, and is shown around by a man named Peter. He's taken to a youth house, where he continues his writing. Peter asks if he's maintaining journals. He responds that he's not, that they're only filled with lies. In the actual present now, Klaus is taken to the embassy from the prison, and is kept in basically a luxury suite. His heart continues to grow weaker. A cardiologist comes to give him a checkup, and, to his dismay, tells him he's doing very well and has many years left ahead of him. He's brought back to the embassy building, where a smiling man delivers him the news that they've tracked down his long lost twin brother. A Klaus with a K. He gives him his address and phone number, and tells him he lives in this very town. They offer to bring him
43:04 to his home, and he accepts. The Klaus with a K is one of the country's most renowned poets, and writes under the pen name Klaus Lucas. A private man, he goes out to the public rarely. He arrives at the poet's house, seeing many children's toys and playthings outside in the yard. He rings the doorbell, and an older man answers. He doesn't believe Klaus's claims. But after confessing to actually being Lucas, he lets him in and brings him into a room with a woman. They're both quite confused, and Lucas says he wants to see Klaus. They tell him he never left. They tell him they've forgotten about him, and don't want their lives upset by this now. The old woman says he has no proof of being Lucas, and he darts to a bedroom, and sees a young boy in bed. The young boy cries, and the woman comforts him. Father pushes him outside, and he slips in the snow,
43:53 falling down and losing consciousness. He wakes up in his embassy room. After experiencing such a strange and frightening dream, he decides to call his brother on the phone. Klaus picks up. Hello? This is Lucas. I'd like to speak to my brother, Klaus. There's some sort of mistake. I have no brother. Yes, you do. A twin brother named Lucas. My brother died a long time ago. No. I'm not dead. I'm alive, Klaus. And I'd like to see you again. Where are you? Where have you been? I've lived abroad for a long time. I'm here right now in the capital at the embassy of D. I don't think you're my brother. I see no one and
44:42 don't want to be disturbed. Five minutes, Klaus. I'm asking you for five minutes. I'm leaving the country in two days, and I'm not coming back. Come tomorrow, but not before eight in the evening. Thank you. I'll be at our house. I mean, I'll be at your house at 8 .30. So, what happened? Well, at this point in the story, it's finally explained what the truth actually is. At four years old, the twins' parents had a fight one night. This was due to their father, a soldier, having an affair and expecting a child from the ordeal. They listened to it on the staircase, as their mother pulls a gun on their father, then shoots and kills him. She keeps shooting him, and a
45:30 bullet instead ricochets and grazes Lucas' spine, leaving him somewhat paralyzed. He's sent away to a hospital to recover, and their mother is institutionalized. Klaus is sent to live with a young woman named Antonia, who is actually his father's mistress, and her young daughter, Sarah. He and his half -sister start developing deep feelings for each other, because we couldn't get through this without at least one more taboo being involved. This obviously complicates things, as Klaus discovers the truth about his foster mom and realizes she's inadvertently caused the whole tragic situation. It's been reported that the hospital Lucas was at has been bombed, leading to them thinking he's died, when really he had just been taken to a center in the town of Kay. Antonia finds this out, and they travel to the town of Kay to find him. They arrive at the center, but no one is able to tell him where Lucas ended up, as he's been secretly swept away
46:18 to his foster grandmothers. The trail ends. Klaus and his foster family often see Antonia's parents. Her father is a priest in the town of Kay. Klaus plays chess with him, and even one day sees a scruffy boy wandering the streets with a harmonica. His mother is eventually released from the institution, and Klaus goes back to live with her. His mother is obsessed with the belief Lucas will one day return. So she keeps buying toys for her supposedly dead child, and wears excessive makeup to maintain the illusion she'll look exactly the same as the last time they were together. This all leaves Klaus neglected. He drops out of school and takes up a job at a news press and starts to write poetry. One day his half -sister visits him at the press, now 18, and wants to rekindle their relationship, but he shrugs her off and never sees her again. Decades later, his boss discovers his poems and thinks they're
47:07 fantastic. He wants to publish them, and Klaus agrees under the condition he can go under a pen name. He adopts the name Klaus Lukas. They make him some decent money, and he's able to support himself and his mother. never stops waiting for Lukas, and Klaus continues writing for many years, all of this while Lukas remained in the other country. And as much as I'd like to say his mother's obsession with Lukas parallels Flint's searching for Klaus, this is purely coincidental, as Flint's demotion from mainstay party member to supporting cast member was a change made late in development, possibly even during the last few months, as can be seen from how much of the game's data is organized around Flint's unused sprites, and Itoy even saying it was a rewrite made after a conversation he had with a staff member on the project. Klaus invites
47:53 Lukas over the next evening, knowing their mother will be asleep. He doesn't want her to know. Lukas arrives and he takes him into another room. They have drinks. Klaus doesn't want to believe Lukas, but his knowledge of their house and childhood is too close to deny. Lukas shows him his ID card and explains the inconsistencies. Klaus points out their physical differences, as him and Lukas were identical twins, but Lukas reminds him of his illness as a child. The two also realize they'd been living right near one another the last several months, and although don't come to an agreement on their connection, amicably say their goodbyes, and Lukas leaves Klaus his manuscript to finish. Two days later, a man from the embassy arrives at Klaus's house to inform him that his brother Lukas committed suicide by throwing himself under a train. He left behind
48:39 a postcard which read, I would like to be buried next to our parents, and even though he still publicly refuses to acknowledge the man as his brother, he honors this request and has him buried next to their father. Klaus visits the grave at the cemetery every day and thinks to himself that all four of them will be reunited again soon, and that once his mother dies there will be no reason for him to go on living. The book ends with him thinking, the train is a good idea. Obviously, there's a parallel between the suicide at the end of the book and Klaus committing suicide at the end of Mother 3. Furthermore, the recontextualization of the first two books as mostly fiction isn't entirely unlike the way your notions of Tazmilly Village are revealed to be fiction by leader towards the end of chapter 8. While many are familiar with how Atoy took the twins' names of the novel and repurpose
49:26 them to tell his own story, it can be seen the connections between the two actually run much deeper. Not much in art is truly original. It's all about channeling the things one loves and turning them into something new by channeling it through their own unique perspective. I hope this was interesting and would like to give a huge thanks to Cybershell for being part of this video. If you'd like to check out his channel, the link's right here and in the description. Thanks for having me. Hopefully this video will get people to consider checking out some of the inspirations behind their own favorite pieces of media. And if not, well, at least we got to tell you about this really messed up book.
