#theme analysis

For example, the description of the Play Dead gesture, one of the first new DLC gestures you get right after entering the zoo, reads:

"Death is not the end of Life. Life and Death are but two sides of a coin."

I've already talked about how central the theme of death and rebirth is to both Lies of P and the original novel of Pinocchio in a pre-DLC hypothesis, so to see Overture build onto it further is very nice.

A little later, in the greenhouse, we face Markiona, the "Puppeteer of Death". Her boss theme is titled "Marionette's Requiem", a requiem being both a Catholic mass for the dead and a type of music meant to accompany it.

However, even before fighting Markiona, we already encounter the theme of death right at the entrance of the greenhouse – in the shape of a rafflesia flower, to be exact:

In my Let's Play, I immediately went "Oh! Isn't this the flower that smells of rotten flesh?" upon seeing it.

And then, some time later, it hit me: This flower literally reeks of decay. And given that it's placed rather prominently in the entrance area of the greenhouse, I wouldn't be surprised if this detail was intentional.

Speaking of the greenhouse, one of the first things about it that immediately stood out to me was the music – namely that it sounded very familiar:

Thanks to the movie Amadeus, I recognized it as a piece by Mozart. One of my stream viewers helpfully provided that the song was, in fact, Eine kleine Nachtmusik* (English: "A little night music"):

*EDIT: Little fun fact on the side I forgot to mention: Although Eine kleine Nachtmusik is one of the most famous pieces of classical music, it didn't become widely known until long after Mozart's death. (He originally wrote it in 1787, the same year his father died and when he composed the opera Don Giovanni.)

But that's not the only piece by Mozart included in the game: Not too long after, you hear notes of the Lacrimosa during the cutscene in the zoo cave:

Once again, I recognized the melody, though this time, I didn't know it was by Mozart (funny how you can immediately recognize Mozart's pieces even when you don't know they're by him xD). I knew it from Anno 1503 (aka 1503 A.D.: The New World), one of my favorite games from my childhood:

LoP Overture version:

The original by Mozart:

The Lacrimosa itself has an interesting history: It's part of Mozart's Requiem, the dead mass that Mozart allegedly felt he was "writing for himself". The Lacrimosa is actually the last music Mozart ever composed, as his Requiem forever remained unfinished due to the composer's untimely death at 35 years of age. During the composition, Mozart suddenly fell very ill, dying from mysterious causes at the beginning of winter, on December 5th, in 1791.

And let me just say: The inclusion of this piece in this cutscene is pretty dang heavy.

At first, I actually thought the "sculpture" was supposed to depict the circumstances of Carlo's death, and that the Lacrimosa was essentially playing for him:

However, that was when I still thought the Reddened Tailcoat belonged to Carlo; in hindsight, the description makes it way more likely it belonged to Romeo.

Still, all the hands and arms do feel kind of reminiscent of the Anguished Guardian of the Ruins, and we do know Carlo was invited to the excavation gathering in the ruins. So, who knows – perhaps there is a connection between Carlo's death and the sculpture, and the person standing in the middle is actually meant to be Simon (though I have to say he looks weird without his beard and hair; maybe it was impossible to model with wax, though :P).

Thus, the sculpture would essentially be Arlecchino referencing the death of Lea's first apprentice while taunting her with the impending death of her second. (Also, normally, I'd ask how Arlecchino can even be aware of the circumstances of Carlo's death, but as I already touched upon in my Overture story review/analysis, Arlecchino doesn't make sense in the DLC anyway, so 🤷)

Anyway, no matter if the Lacrimosa is playing for Carlo, Romeo, or Lea, it's a very fitting choice of music.

Last but not least, I'd like to talk a little bit about the contrasting symbolic colors of the DLC and main game: What runs through Overture like a common thread from the very beginning is the color red, with Lea as the red-haired Stalker, all the carnage and blood at the zoo, and Arlecchino, the "Blood Artist". Meanwhile, in the main game, blue is the dominant color, with Sophia, the "Blue Fairy", and Ergo, the "blue blood".

Blood in general is very central to Lies of P: The English letter "P", in fact, sounds very similar to the Korean word for "blood", so "Lies of P" would actually translate to "Lies of Blood", and a more literal translation of "P-Organ" would be "blood engine".

And personally, I like to view the changing of colors, from red to blue, as yet another symbol of transition: from DLC to main game, from past to present, from old life to new life.

I had this little epiphany about just how omnipresent this theme is and I gotta fucking BLABBER at you about this shit.

Okay so let's start with Last Specter which is especially full of this.

Misthallery is absolutely filled with canals and trees and animals everywhere. In MM the shop game says they literally have their own apple species, and the profiles say that toppy is a very clean type of mouse you can only find there. Misthallery as a town very much IS nature. Also the golden garden is there. The place is literally rife with all that good nature associated shit. So then obviously the specter itself that is destroying the town is an excavation machine that is fucking everything up. The meddling of people and their man made contraptions is what is placing the town into ruin. Not just with the specter, but also with the factory. Everything about the place gives nothing but BAD VIBES, and that's not just because descole has made it his new base of operations, but because the factory itself was already polluting the air and the water of the town way beforehand. And hell, this even applies to the mist! the mist, the thing that consistently signifies bad shit is about to happen, is ALSO MAN MADE MIST. BY DESCOLE. It is then so natural, to me, that the town would be saved by loosha, an animal, and by the breaking of the dam. Letting the water flow freely is what ends up DEFEATING THE GIGANTIC MECHA. AND THEN ENDS UP BEING THE KEY TO PARADISE. This theme is EVERYWHEEEEREEEEE in last specter.

But it's also important in other parts of the series. Hold on let me ramble about all of them.

Curious Village also has this in a way.

Though it's slightly more complicated.

Don paolo and his bullshit is very OBVIOUSLY condemned for. all of that, but by no means are machines the big enemy of the game. Especially seeing as literally all of the st. mystere citizens ARE machines, in a way. But what Augustus Reinhold does by making them is definitely not painted in an all that good light, either. It only seems to hurt both him, Flora, and even Dahlia herself, who is now stuck with immensely confusing memories. Most of all I think it takes a toll on poor Bruno, who has to keep everything up and running. St Mystere isn't seen as BAD, but the fact that it's such an isolated place full of robots does come at a COST, at every turn. It's ultimately still framed as something not too great in the end. There's an air of tragedy about the entire thing, and Flora getting away from it is seen as the better option by the narrative.

Then we have diabolical box, where it's not so obvious at first but becomes a lot more obvious near the end.

Firstly we have dropstone as the certified good example to compare to later, and of course dropstone is a bit of a farming town. Wouldn't ya know it. There's like. a FUCKTON of cows and there's that bird the old lady wants you to help and there's fishes near the anderson mansion—

Animals generally tend to be a good sign in these games. But oh boy will I come back to that later.

Then, there's Folsense.

now folsense doesn't SEEM too bad at first glance when you don't know about the gas. But it very much is. I'm pretty sure there's even a line in there about animals not going near Herzen Castle? But I could be wrong. Anyway Duke herzen literally EXPLOITED NATURE SO BAD by making the miners keep digging, that it FUCKED UP HIS ENTIRE TOWN FOR LIKE. 50 YEARS AND PROBABLY KILLED HIM. All of the machinery you see in that game is around the gigantic crater of the castle, and everything in the mine. Both of the place where people FUCKED UP the hardest. Diabolical box does not think machinery is cool either.

Then FINALLY I can get to unwound future, which takes this to the fucking MAX in EVERY SINGLE ASPECT. Wayyyy more than you'd think. It's EVERYWHERE in this game, and that's only logical because of. The moral of it. Firstly, the time machine.

Irrevocably a bad thing. The entire time, something that needs to be stopped.

You can also just see it in the environment of Future London. It's supposed to be a Very Shit and Bad Place, and they show this by having rusty gears and pipes and whatnot literally EVERYWHERE.

Secondly, remember that thing I said about the animals being a good thing?

Yeah, now think about beasly, and the parrot, and number 3. Think about WHY they included that. Those characters are meant to drive home just how BAD this is, not just because animal experimentation is unethical, but because it's a corruption of something the narrative considers as GOOD. their inclusion actually matters!

Do I even have to MENTION eternal diva?

a guy literally tries to brainwash people with an evil machine that has his daughter's consciousness. And then another guy tries to use another big ass robot to forcibly tear nature apart for his own goals instead of doing it the natural way (by singing/playing music. A thing that is very inherent to human nature that we have been doing for decades, and a thing that anyone with functioning vocal chords has the capacity of doing. Machinery LITERALLY ALMOST DESTROYS THE CITY OF HARMONY.

Anyway so far (surprisingly) there isn't. A lot? Of this theme in Miracle Mask? Not that I remember, at least, and definitely not enough to really talk about.

So we get to my favorite part of this: TARGENT.

Targent is fucking FULLLLL of this imagery.

From their home base filled with light pollution and dirty streets and scryscrapers, to their big hulking massive airship that clanks and clunks all over the place with how HEAVY it is.

That's also a theme I keep noticing, especially in the music. It's HEAVY machinery that is evil. Little helpful trinkets or something like the relatively compact size of the bostonius (WHICH IS A ZEPPELIN IN THE BEGINNING BY THE WAY. IT WORKS WITH NATURE (AIR) TO MOVE ITSELF FORWARDS. THIS IS WHY IT IS FRIENDLY) are fine by narrative rules.

Because there IS non-evil machinery, and literally all of it is always something that works WITH or coexists with the nature around it instead of corrupting it.

The bad thing is always machinery taking the PLACE of some natural process, not it existing at all.

Also the wolves. I forgot to mention the wolves from eternal diva. Animal corruption theme yet again

This is also why finding all the azran eggs always has to do with working WITH the locals and befriending them / the creatures that live there. (except for maybe hoogland but in hoogland the wishes do not need to be respected because guess what. The locals were entirely wrong about what the natural order was. And the actual bad thing happening was a MACHINE that had gone crazy.)

Layton and co. respect the wishes of the people and the natural order, and they're always rewarded with the egg. Targent keeps failing because they keep trying to FORCE IT. They try to use machinery as a shortcut.

Which is what I think it's ultimately about. It makes me think of the moral of mob psycho a little: the series condemns trying to use machinery as a tool to CHEAT rather than just help.

(Yeah this is pretty ironic for Level 5 and their current fondness for AI.)

That's why the Azran fall off, because they get LAZY and try to screw over new beings in order to profit off of their labor. They start CHEATING.

From this viewpoint it makes a WHOLE LOT more sense to me why Hershel tells Aurora 'No thank you' when all that azran knowledge is at his disposal. Because it wouldn't be right.

It would be cheating, in the same way the machinery is cheating.

And puzzles are no fun if you can cheat your way to the answer.

THAT is what makes a whole lot of sudden sense to me now, why specifically THESE games have THIS theme.

BECAUSE IT WORKS MASTERFULLY WITH THE MESSAGE. Of COURSE the game series all about encouraging you to solve puzzles with your own two brains would value putting thought and effort into what you do. Of COURSE the villains are people who take the easy way out by trying to circumvent having to find a solution for themselves!

That's why they always make layton do all their dirty work!! That's why the games specifically always reveal the supernatural power to be a FAKE!!!

Because THERE IS NO SHORTCUT. You will have to put in the effort to tackle problems yourself, and maybe ask for help if you can't. But there is no way to easily 'fix' everything for yourself without screwing over a hundred other people in the process.

A solution that creates more problems than it solves isn't a real solution.

And that's exactly how Layton goes about it: finding a solution that doesn't just work for him, but that works for everyone. Because those are the solutions that tend to STICK.