#doyoing

The Jazz-Hands half of the operation’s year has just been made or something, because they have Coco in their game.

For non-regular readers, Coco is something of a cause célèbre to them due to past events.

‘Oh, sweet little undead bunny of my heart, how I’ve missed your creepy eyeless cuteness in my game.’

Erm, okay!

For the benefit of the uninitiated, the game used to have these living statue things called Gyroids, based on Haniwa, which are Japanese terracotta burial statues introduced by decree by Emperor Sunin, Japan’s eleventh emperor (29 BCE  - 70 CE) to stop the use of sacrifices (human and animal) as wasteful and cruel.

Originally such statues were made simply to house offerings for the dead or to mark graves.

Some would arrange upon death to have their ashes put into haniwa statues (mixed into the clay, which is built up layer upon layer) so they could be given to family and friends and they would be able to act as a protector to them, or be buried in their lord or emperor’s grave so they could join them in the next life when the time came.

Similar to the Viking/Celtic obsession with skulls, some would use the haniwa made with the ashes of the dead to seek advice - which just goes to show how much human concerns are the same the whole world over.

The practice died out when Buddhism and then Shinto took over from local nature based religious practices.

There’s a game theory that Coco is one of these Haniwa come to life due to the speckles on her skin which resemble the ash dots found in the terracotta clay of later haniwa statues.

Yep, and this game is aimed at five year olds!

The following was published on January 25th 2018 by one Steven Oz (aka MXA Ghost or whatever other ‘kewl dude’ shitster name he goes under) at Gameskinny.

He is a ‘free lance journalist’ - which means he pretends to be one whilst flipping burgers or whatever but video game companies aren’t fussed who posts their free advertising press releases dressed up as ‘journalism’.

Notice the title: Is a New Animal Crossing Game on the Horizon?

What gets released today?

Yeah, just an amazing coincidence, he hadn’t already been told it but was told the title was under press embargo, it’s all above board and legit, and Rory Stewart will be a fantastic Prime Minister of Britain and not at all a creepy bastard who makes everyone’s skin crawl.