Thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 5

A new chapter of Deltarune is here once again and, surprising no one, it's incredible.

It's still wild to remember that Toby originally wanted to release the whole rest of the game past Chapter 1 together, or even that he wanted to release 3 through 5 as one solid chunk of game, because the episodic format feels so perfect for Deltarune. It's been a joy to be able to savor the details of each new chapter, to really think about what it all means, to sit with the story and the characters and rotate them in my mind for a good long while before getting to find out what happens next, rather than having to blast through a full length RPG at launch to dodge spoilers. It's been the defining game of the last decade for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way, even if the episodic release does give some lore-brained fans time to go stir crazy and get a little too invested in their pet theories. But that's their problem, not mine.

Chapter 5 has a lot to chew on as its own standalone part of the story. So let's get chewing! Let's talk about this chapter's story developments, the new characters, where things seem to be going from here, and perhaps most important of all: what does or doesn't make a "Tumblr Sexyman"?

This post will contain extensive spoilers for Deltarune Chapters 1 through 5. If you haven't played it already, what are you waiting for? Go play it!!

Deja vu

It feels like it hasn't been that long since I last wrote a blog post defending a comedy-focused chapter of Deltarune as being a worthwhile and important part of the story that gives us more insight into the characters, even if it doesn't have "big lore reveals" or it only does so much to "move the plot forward." Because it hasn't been that long! We had the same conversations about Chapter 3 just last year.

It's funny to look back on my blog post about Chapters 3 and 4 where I felt the need to defend Chapter 3, because in the year since Chapter 3's remained so popular and beloved that you'd almost forget the more plot-driven and comparatively serious Chapter 4 even came out, let alone that it ended with us fighting a Titan. The vocal subset of the fandom calling Chapter 3 filler shut up after like a week, and then everyone moved on to loving Tenna as a character, digging into the chapter's subtext, and obsessing over the implications of the Sword Route. I strongly suspect that the response to Chapter 5 will shake out the same way.

As promised in the promotional material, Chapter 5 is one last lighthearted adventure for the Fun Gang before shit presumably hits the fan in the home stretch. The festival gives Susie and Noelle their first date, a sequence so adorable it makes my heart melt. I love them. I love them so much. Shortly afterwards, the first area of the flower-themed Dark World is a cherry blossom palette swap of the Field of Hopes and Dreams from Chapter 1, complete with a new jazz fusion cover by insaneintherainmusic (hell yeah), as Susie and Ralsei reflect on how far they've come. There are tons of throwbacks to Chapter 1 here, actually, including a riff on the iconic "create a machine to thrash your own ass" sequence where you dress up Susie. Many, many laughs are had along the way in this extra goofy chapter. But the good times cannot last, symbolized by the setting suns looming over both worlds. We can't live in our nostalgia for Chapter 1. We'll have to face reality eventually. By the end of the chapter, Susie agrees that it's time to stop screwing around and get some help.

Who knows what?

Asgore's role in the story further emphasizes this feeling that the fun times are ending. He plays along with the fantasy of this perfect Dark World just for him, but in truth he's actually just trying to investigate what happened to Dess, and stop it from ever happening again. All of this has to stop. It's time to get serious.

Speaking of which: we learn more about Asgore's role in Dess's story! Yes, Asgore speaks around the actual event, because that's what people often do when bringing up past tragedies. Haven't you ever had a conversation with a family member where they mention something like "what happened to uncle Jerry" and you both know the specific incident they're talking about? Hell, how many times have you had a conversation where someone just vaguely references things being bad for them in 2020, and you instantly know they're talking about the COVID pandemic without the need for details? This is just what people are like! But it's still clear what Asgore's talking about, and his perspective here is kind of huge for the story.

After a solid year of jokes about Asgore driving in his car right after a beer, we learn that no, Asgore didn't kill Dess. I mean, of course he didn't. Did we really think Carol would be cool with him if he did? Come on. But even if nobody else blames him, Asgore does blame himself for Dess's disappearance, since he was police chief when it happened. Here's the kicker, though: Asgore has known about the Dark Worlds the whole game, including a Dark World that existed in the past that Ralsei somehow had no knowledge of, and he ties Dess's disappearance to that Dark World. But in his search for the truth that would prove his innocence, Asgore ended up coming off as an obsessive conspiracy theorist to his loved ones. And, yeah, he's right about the existence of the Dark Worlds, but we see how far he took it firsthand when he proclaims that he's going to kill whoever's been creating the Dark Fountains and parade their body through the streets of Hometown to clear his name. (I cannot wait to see what happens when everyone finds out Kris has been making the recent Dark Worlds.) This obsession is what divided Kris's family. Finally learning that is a big deal! And over the course of the chapter Asgore finally realizes how fall he's fallen, how wrong his behavior has been (including his unwanted affections towards Toriel), and vows to set things right.

What the other characters do or don't know about Kris is a recurring element of this chapter beyond just Asgore. I have to bring up a brief interaction with Ralsei that I believe you can miss. When Kris and Ralsei are relaxing in the hot spring together without Susie, if you choose to talk about the Fountains, he stops and thinks for a moment before saying:

"How do I... say this. I... don't think there should be more Dark Fountains, Kris. No, making them... is bad. It's very bad. The more darkness gets released, the closer... the closer the Roaring becomes. And, if it happens... I believe... it will mean... The end... of the story. But... Kris, yesterday, when you played that giant piano, your performance... it had something beyond the notes. After you left for the festival today, I tried to play that song, too, on the piano in Castle Town. But I... I couldn't do it like you. Even if we press the same keys, your fingers just know something that mine don't. You... must be really special, Kris. There's a reason why you're the hero. And that's why... I'm putting all my faith in you. That no matter what path we take to get there, that even if you do something I disagree with, all that means is that I don't understand it yet. ...Right?"

Ralsei knows! Ralsei knows Kris is the one making the Dark Fountains! But he doesn't want to confront them about it. He thinks he has no choice but to follow the prophecy, to assume Kris must have a good reason for doing so as the chosen hero, and continue playing his role as Kris's guide! But what is Kris's actual motivation, anyway? What are they and the Knight trying to do? How will Ralsei react when he finds out? How will Susie react when she finds out that she was the only one out of the loop on this? And now she has the entry code to the bunker, despite Kris's best efforts to stop her! Holy shit! These underlying tensions really seem to be reaching a boiling point as we barrel towards the story's climax.

The flowers

One of the things that surprised me the most with Chapter 5 is that Toby actually gave the Undertale loreheads WAY more than I ever thought he would. A year ago on Bluesky I dismissed the idea that Chapter 5's inevitable flower shop Dark World would give us Darkner versions of the human souls from Undertale... but lo and behold, that's exactly what Chapter 5 is all about!

Now, it would be a stretch to say that the personified flowers are literally just the fallen humans. The whole thing is that they're a strange new life form, non-sentient beings given a new level of sapience by the magic of the Dark World, neither 100% Darkner nor Lightner, and they're all acting out how they believe humans are supposed to behave with varying degrees of success. (It's probably safe to say the orange-souled human in Undertale was not actually a mouse with boxing gloves.) But still, they're obviously all riffing on what we know about the fallen humans' interests and personalities from Undertale. The purple one likes reading, the green one likes cooking, etc.

The flowers can, admittedly, be a bit much. They all have somewhat one-note personalities since they're all kind of acting out the roles they assume they're supposed to play, and because there are six of them to introduce a LOT of the chapter is dedicated to showcasing their antics. I don't blame anyone who believes that the middle of the chapter drags a bit because of this, though I still had a great time overall because 1) this chapter has an incredible gameplay gimmick, where you shift between the normal overhead view and a sidescroller view where the game literally turns into a platformer-RPG hybrid (it's so fucking good) and 2) this game is still very, very funny. The flowers get so many great gags.

But even though the flowers are mostly here for goofs, they're still important to the story. Just like how Chapter 2 used Queen to indirectly evoke Noelle's struggles with her controlling mother, and Chapter 3 evoked the sadness of the splintered Dreemurr family trough Tenna, Chapter 5 uses the flowers to evoke Asgore's alienation from his family.

Most obviously, the flowers are supposed to be this new perfect loving family for Asgore, but he ignores them because he's more concerned with his investigation into who made the Dark Worlds to prove his own innocence, just like what happened with his actual family. There's also this whole silly segment with Yellow, the cowboy who represents the Justice soul (and who looks a lot like Woody from Toy Story, yes get your Friend Inside Me jokes out now). Yellow confronts the party after they trample his boyfriend Blue's garden, and to get out of this a panicked Susie tells Yellow that actually he trampled the garden himself. Poor dopey Yellow immediately believes this and goes off to comically punish himself by blowing himself the fuck up. Along the way to stop him the party gathers evidence for various other crimes, all of which you have to use in an Ace Attorney-style boss battle where you figure out which of the six flowers committed which crimes and prove Yellow's innocence. This is all hilarious, and an excuse for Kris, Susie, and Ralsei to cosplay as Ace Attorney characters (Edgeworth and Francisca for Kris, Gumshoe for Susie, and Trucy and Maya for Ralsei), but it's also a farcical parallel to the way Asgore blames himself for Dess's disappearance and punishes himself for it even though he's obviously not to blame.

Then there's also the secret boss, Pink, who it turns out isn't actually a flower at all, because she's literally just Mad Mew Mew. So glad to have her back, especially since she was previously exclusive to the Switch port of Undertale. This is much more than fanservice or an extended anime joke, though, as over the course of Pink's boss fight you'll learn all about the clash between her body, a Darkner based on a Mew Mew figure that Alphys gave Asgore, and her soul, who is of course the Mad Dummy ghost and therefore a Lightner. There's always been some trans subtext with Mad Mew Mew, which Deltarune doubles down on in this story about self-acceptance and creating your ideal self and learning to love your body and whatnot, but there are also parallels you can draw with the clashing objectives of Kris and the player soul. It may not be a big reveal about FRIEND or an Asgore hype moment or whatever people expected out of the last Shadow Crystal boss, but Pink's still obviously used to explore some important themes in the story. All of this, the adorable sprite work, her multiple incredible gameplay gimmicks, and the surprise appearance of Hatsune Miku on Pink's banger of a boss theme make her very easy to love.

As is so often the case in Deltarune, even when the fans broadly figure out what's going to happen, the actual execution tends to catch us completely off guard, often in a very funny way. Everyone assumed the antagonist of Chapter 3 would be a TV-headed game show host in a suit, but no one could have seen it coming that Tenna would be represented as a 16-bit prerendered 3D sprite with mocap animations. And, likewise, while fans predicted the flowers in Asgore's shop would be personified in this chapter, nothing could have possibly prepared us for the main antagonist, the leader of the flowers: Flowery.

I fucking love Flowery

If you haven't played Chapter 5 and know nothing about it, describing Flowery will make it sound like I'm playing a prank on you. This is one of several reasons why I love him.

Upon entering the Dark World, you'll soon be greeted by a brief FMV anime cutscene courtesy of Studio Khara (yes, Hideaki Anno's studio founded to make Rebuild of Evangelion! what the fuck!!) introducing a blonde anime twink named Flowery. Not Flowey. Flowery. He's the personification of the same golden flower that would become Flowey in Undertale, but obviously Flowey doesn't exist in this universe because Asriel is still alive and well, and so Flowery is just some other guy without all that psychological torment. He claims to be Asgore's college roommate and best friend, and he's perfect in every way to a borderline obnoxious degree. Ralsei immediately hates him. This town ain't big enough for two perfect sweetie pie Dark World chaperone characters with weird parallels to Asriel. This is hilarious to me, and also to Susie, who's never seen Ralsei so mad.

The outlandish introduction instantly made me fall in love with this character, and I only loved him more the more I played. There are so many good gags with him. The various ways he'll appear out of nowhere. The key item he gives you that's just an anime pinup of him bathing while fully clothed. But here's the creative decision that completely sells him for me: he's voice acted. (I assume it's Toby doing the voice, as usual, since no voice actor is credited.) But Flowery doesn't have full voice acting. Rather, he's like a character from a game that has partial voice acting, where it'll play a canned voice clip that doesn't quite match the actual line being said, in this case playing up that juxtaposition for comic effect. And the shit that comes out of Flowery's mouth is so goddamn funny. Flowery's voice lines are a maximum threat echolalia cognitohazard to those exposed to him, with gems including but not limited to:

• Flowery!
• Your dad's my best friend!
• Heh, it's my jarona!
• Suckle it up!
• Hey guys, I think I found a glue!
• Here I come San Frandisco!
• Mostlys!
• Mysterious wind!
• What a predictable creature!
• Sustingus!
• They're eating my flesh!

Seriously, he has so many of these. Ralsei very pointedly tells you that you can disable Flowery's voice in the options menu, but I would never. I'm going to be quoting this guy's line reads the rest of my life. Though there is apparently some funny exclusive dialogue if you do turn voice clips off, including a moment where Flowery still uses one anyway just to be rebellious.

There's something fascinating about Flowery's vibe. It's so distinct, but also kind of hard for me to describe. On the surface he's obviously supposed to evoke the perfect pretty boy who's the primary romance option in a dating sim, but in execution he has so much more than that going on. He's like a character from a Japanese PS1 game with a wonky English localization and endearingly earnest amateur voice acting that people have been lovingly quoting for decades, which the low audio quality of his voice samples contributes to. Actually, Flowery's bizarre, intentionally grammatically incorrect turns of phrase that immediately stick in your brain are probably closer to the way Homestar Runner characters talk. But he also does a lot of fighting game poses, most notably doing one of Jotaro's poses from Capcom's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future all the damn time. When contrasted with his preppy clothes, this makes him feel kind of like when a visual novel gets a fighting game spinoff, or perhaps when a non-fighting game character gets adapted for MUGEN by drawing over some other character's sprites. The wiki specifically suspects he's a reference to the MUGEN version of Ronald McDonald, which is exactly the kind of YouTube Poop-ass inspiration I would expect Toby to take when there's literally an "all toasters toast toast" joke near the start of the chapter.

While I loved him from the start, in the immediate aftermath of the chapter's release, the fandom seems to be divided on Flowery. Many seem to be reflexively annoyed by his generic anime twink design and the fact that he's a Tumblr Sexyman. I have to push back on that a bit.

For one, it's very funny that the UTDR fandom, of all fandoms, would take issue with the inclusion of a supposed Tumblr Sexyman-type character, as if Toby didn't make several of the most inescapably popular Tumblr Sexymen of the last decade. Tenna, Spamton, Mettaton, fucking Sans, famously the top Tumblr Sexyman according to that poll he won over Reigen from Mob Psycho 100 on the day the Queen died in 2022. This ain't our first rodeo. But I also don't think Flowery fits the bill. This may be one of the hottest takes I've ever posted, but I do not believe Flowery counts as a Tumblr Sexyman.

What makes a Tumblr Sexyman, anyway? The term has been watered down to the point of uselessness and applied to basically any male character popular amongst fandom types. But to me the true, pure strain, classical Sexymen tend to be villainous, or at least characters with a dark side, and have a dapper, theatrical style. Patient zero was, after all, the Once-ler from Illumination's The Lorax. Lots of suits and top hats. It helps if they have a villain song, especially if it's swing or big band. Bonus points if they're British, or if they at least have a mid-Atlantic accent or talk like an old timey showman. Oftentimes they'll be grinning tricksters who hide their true intent or abilities. Loki, Bill Cipher, Alastor, Caine, etc. all fit some amount of these descriptors. Hannibal Lecter's a good example on the somewhat more grounded end of the spectrum. Sans isn't dapper at all, but he's absolutely a grinning trickster with a mysterious dark side and hidden powers. They're also frequently (if not exclusively) characters who aren't "attractive" in a traditional sense, oftentimes lacking humanoid features altogether. Characters who people not immersed in this type of fandom culture would be surprised to hear are widely lusted after. In Toby's own words after Sans won that poll against Reigen: "Being unattractive is one of the key tenets of becoming a popular guy on Tumblr." Obviously, none of this applies to Flowery.

(There have also been trends favoring men who are offputting but kind of pathetic and can be described as a poor little meow meow, like Jimmy McGill, or even men who are slovenly and unkempt like Grunkle Stan or Peter B. Parker. I would posit that these are distant enough from the classical Tumblr Sexyman villains as to be a separate trend that just happen to overlap sometimes in cases, like Spamton, who lives in a dumpster and gets treated as a poor little meow meow but is also a grinning trickster villain in a suit with mysterious hidden powers. Obviously none of this applies to Flowery either, since he's perfect and clean-cut and confident.)

What Flowery does closely resemble, and seems to actively riff on, is the trend of drawing humanized versions of inhuman characters (or drawing designs for characters who don't have official designs) and turning them into pretty blonde anime twinks in vests. He's that, but done to Flowey, to the point that he's a completely different character now. That's the joke. He's drifted so far away from the character he's supposed to be based on that when he actually does directly reference Flowey it comes off as an absurd non-sequitur. Now, there is a Venn diagram of the overlap between this blonde twinkification phenomenon and the Tumblr Sexyman, as many of the earliest examples of Tumblr Sexymen famously received this kind of fanart en masse. Bill Cipher, Wheatley, Cecil Palmer, etc. Fanart of Bill in this style is even featured on the Wikipedia page for the Tumblr Sexyman—which, yes, is a real Wikipedia page. But, crucially, being a pretty blonde anime twink does not automatically make a character a Tumblr Sexyman. It's just that a lot of fanartists will learn how to draw their favorite anime characters and then default to drawing everyone as a skinny young anime twink before branching out more.

But it's really his personality that disqualifies Flowery from being a Sexyman, for me.

The whole thing with Flowery is that, while he is an antagonist, he's not evil at all. There is no big twist with him. He's actually just a really good guy, a comically perfect best friend for Asgore. He's a hero antagonist. He just happens to be pitted against the party because their goal is to seal the Dark Fountain that's giving him and the other flowers life. The actual physical flowers in the Light World are fragile living things that need to stay in Asgore's flower shop, rather than being stuck in the storage closet where Castle Town resides, which means they can only exist in this Dark World. Yeah, he teases Ralsei, but Ralsei is basically telling Flowery that he needs to die for the greater good!

In the end Flowery becomes a shonen hero with major Kamina vibes, shouting out the names of his attacks and throwing the party's power of friendship stuff back in their face. Oh, your friends are your power? Well I also have friends I'm fighting for who will lend me their power! How come YOUR Dark Fountain is the one that gets to stay open and not ours? "Will you really take away someone else's fantasy just to keep your own?" He even tries to build up the party's Mercy meters to end the fight through pacifism! It's so good! It's such a potent way to confront the party when we have so many reasons to doubt what they're doing. Is following the script like Ralsei says really right? Is it right for Susie to be living in this fantasy, having literally abandoned her home in the Light World and moved into Castle Town by the time we pick her up for the festival this chapter? Does any of their heroic gesturing matter when Kris seems to be the actual villain, furthering the Knight's plan when not controlled by the player? Flowery even alludes to the fact that he knows Kris has changed and is up to no good!

Not to mention that "Flower Man" is, like, the best song in the game yet, even complete with its own karaoke lyrics to sing along with, and Flowery's boss fight is super fun and hype once you get the hang of his gimmick. Just an incredible sequence all around. What an awesome antagonist.

Flowery's dynamic with Ralsei in particular is one of the most fascinating things in this chapter. Where Ralsei is obsessed with rigidly following the rules, Flowery acknowledges the artifice of the Dark World. It's all just a game. They're playing pretend. He can give Asgore and the party whatever they want. Want some money? Here's infinite money. Wouldn't it be cooler if Flowery was the strongest guy ever? Then Flowery will just crank all of his stats up to max and plow through encounters for you. Flowery's doing things his own way and trying to find his own path to happiness, creating his perfect world for the other flowers and Asgore. And while he teases Ralsei, he does so because he can tell that Ralsei is struggling within the constraints of the prophecy and wants to try and encourage him to break free, too.

(Side note: there are multiple bits where it seems like Flowery is teasing Ralsei for being in denial about being a trans girl? Giving him the coupon for the pink and blue drink he knew Ralsei would like, calling him "princess," teasing him about how he's pretending to be something he's not and it's making him unhappy and he should just let himself be happy. I already liked the transfem Ralsei headcanons, because of course I did, but now this chapter has kind of turned me into a transfem Ralsei truther, wondering if that's actually going to be a part of the story. Ralsei literally cosplays as two female Ace Attorney characters this chapter and at the start of the Dark World you find him hiding in a closet! Like, come on!!)

But, tragically, Flowery isn't able to escape his fate after all. The Knight appears in an attempt to kidnap Asgore, and when Flowery stops him his shonen anime bluster and artificially inflated stats aren't enough to stop him from being sliced in half. Ralsei tries to heal him, but is unable to heal a mortal wound so grave, and Flowery dies and turns back into a regular flower with its stem cut. Susie tries to fix him, but we have no idea if it actually worked when he and the rest of the flowers have to stay in Asgore's shop and go back to being normal, unthinking plants, losing their all-to-brief personhood.

No more fun and games. The stakes are real. We have to take this seriously and stop the Knight.

Weird Route

While I haven't been playing it myself, I would be remiss not to mention the Weird Route. In a shocking turn of events, rather than changing only individual sequences, Chapter 5 is where the Weird Route completely, irreconcilably diverges from the main story.

For Weird Route players, Kris sleeps in, completely missing the festival. You still walk around with Susie as she reflects on all the fun she and Noelle had without you, but everything's deserted. Eventually, Kris meets with Noelle by the lake, where she and Susie had their incredibly cute yuri moment in the normal playthrough. No such luck here, where all the stuff with the Thorn Ring has pushed Noelle to the brink. Cast in ominous shadow by the setting sun, a distraught and manic Noelle talks about how she's the only person in town who's noticed how Kris has "changed," how "interesting" they've become, and while Noelle is terrified of what "Kris" is making her do she's also sickly fascinated by it. She feels like she's been living on autopilot ever since she lost Dess, but now "Kris" can push her to break free.

And so, at her request, with repeated and increasingly frantic "proceed" prompts, struggling to breathe, the screen blurring as roaring white noise overwhelms the scene, the player pushes Noelle deeper and deeper out into the lake until she and Kris are both completely submerged. Cut to black. "Insert Chapter 7 Side B."

This may just be the darkest and most harrowing scene Toby's written to date, which hits even harder due to its contrast with this chapter's goofy main route. Yeah, you can kill everyone in an evil playthrough of Undertale, but it's still at least somewhat tempered with fantasy elements and fun bullet hell battles. This is so much more real. It's two teenagers entering a murder-suicide pact and drowning together. It's absolutely haunting, and then it cuts the story short and leaves us with no clue what's going to happen next.

Have Kris and Noelle really found a way to escape their reality? Is an undead Noelle going to become a vessel piloted by someone else, like Kris has been this whole time? Is she going to become the Angel? Will we control Noelle? Does this create the Knight in some weird time loop, somehow? Or are they really, truly just dead, with no fantastical metanarrative twists to save them? We have no way of knowing right now.

You can also fail the drowning scene by not hitting "proceed," at which point you seemingly return to the normal route... but the jingle that usually plays when making a choice that veers off of the Weird Route never plays, and there are some subtle differences signaling that the game hasn't completely forgotten about the Weird Route. I'm very curious to see if that creates its own alternate ending.

The most curious part, though, is the fact that the Weird Route is skipping Chapter 6. It could be nothing. It could just be that the story is ready to reach its climax on that route now, and so there's no point in dragging it out through Chapter 6 and we've just got to wait for the final chapter that will give us all the endings. But I also wonder if the normal route will reconvene with those events at all. The regular story ends with Susie deciding that it's time to let Noelle in on everything and setting things up for her in Castle Town. Other than the underlying sadness of the fact that Susie's run away from home and moved into Castle Town, it's by far the most upbeat note one of these chapters has ever ended on, which naturally means I don't trust it. Especially when the last scene we saw with Noelle was her receiving a worrying phone call from her mother about her chronically ill father taking a fall. I can't help but wonder if we're going to go into Chapter 7 with Noelle's fate looking grim either way, and the Weird Route simply pushed her to the brink to get her there quicker.

...But at least that flower guy sure was funny, huh? Haha, jarona!

Really though, this blend of heartwarming comedy and bone-chilling meta horror is what makes these games so special. Even when things are going well, you know that Toby isn't afraid to take the story to some very dark and shocking yet still thematically rich places, which makes the stakes feel very real and makes it all the more exciting to see what happens. We want to see these kids get their happy ending, because we know all too well they aren't guaranteed one.

Stray observations

• It's very funny to me that there's no real in-universe explanation for why Asgore's flower shop turns into such a Japan-themed Dark World. Like he's not even particularly into stuff from Japan or anything
• The missable dialogue at the start where Kris contemplates the fact that Asriel's How to Draw Dragons book didn't turn into a sexy anthro dragon in the Chapter 3 dark world is so funny
• I can't believe there's an Umamusume joke. That's a lie yes I can
• Aqua seems to be partially inspired by Maria from Umineko right down to the "uuu" verbal tic, and that makes me smile
• I swear Kris's sword slashes in sidescroller mode are based on Zero's animations in the Mega Man X games and/or Model ZX from Mega Man ZX. That particular triple slash combo and the spinning slash attack they do when jumping. My muscle memory kicked in instantly. And fittingly, the last area of the Dark World even uses the SNES Mega Man X sound font
• I do not actually believe the Gaster bird at the festival (who suspiciously gives you a price in Undertale's gold currency before correcting themself) killed Onion and cooked him into takoyaki and had you eat him. But I think the game wants you to think that. But I think it's a misdirect so Onion can come back and be fine later, as a joke. Because that would be such an insane thing to randomly include in the normal route, right? Like what the fuck
• Sans gets Susie to draw her friends on an ice cream punch card, which is presumably the picture of three smiling people Sans had in his secret lab in Undertale, further hinting that this is a prequel on some level. Notably, this event is mandatory in both routes
• I love the foxes. Swisches my big fluffy $$$$-ing tail. Thank you Hitoshi Ariga
• This is the new funniest text box in the game: