First and foremost, this post is a love letter to Animal Crossing. Aside from any (half-arsed) academic thoughts I may present on this video game series, I need to make it clear that I have completely adored every Animal Crossing game I have ever played; it is my go-to game. Therefore, while I will attempt some academic discussion, I am also completely biased. When playing other video games, I often have to be in a particular state of mind to maximise my enjoyment. For example, when I have a surplus of restless energy, I switch on my Xbox and violently smash large, Fantastical monsters with ridiculously oversized weapons in Monster Hunter World. Or if I’m feeling a bout of indiscriminate rage, I once again boot up the Xbox and practice being the world’s worst markswoman in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (seriously – I’m a terrible shot). The point is, I have different games for different moods. There are very few games out there that I can play regardless of my mood. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is one of those few.

I have played every version of this game apart from the Gamecube edition. I was slightly too young for the Nintendo Gamecube when it was in its prime, therefore my first experience of the game was Animal Crossing: Wild World on my Nintendo DS Lite. I’ve also played Animal Crossing Let’s Go to the City (or City Folk if you’re American) on the Nintendo Wii, Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer on Nintendo 3DS and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp on my iPhone. However, out of all of those games, the one I have spent the most amount of time consistently playing and progressing through is New Leaf. I have had my current save since the day it was released in the UK in June 2013. The game and my old Nintendo 3DS were bought for me by my parents when I was extremely ill with an Ulcerative Colitis flare-up and had recently spent time in hospital for blood transfusions. For this reason alone, New Leaf has always been of great sentimental value and was a valuable source of entertainment and escapism for me at a time when my health was at its worst.

Six years later and having overcome my health issues repeatedly, I am currently in the process of completing an MLitt in Fantasy Literature. Therefore, I suppose you could consider me an extremely early-career Fantasy academic (if that’s even A Thing). Part of the appeal of studying Fantasy Literature at Masters level was the opportunity to study texts with which I am familiar and which I actually like. This prompted me to consider the possibility of applying the conventions of Fantasy to other things apart from books and seeing what happens. As part of my Masters course I took a class called ‘Fantasy Across Media’, during which we examined not just Fantasy texts, but TV shows, comics and video games too. This class was endlessly fascinating and continues to inspire me even now that it has finished and is the reason why this post exists. I wanted to see if I could do to Animal Crossing: New Leaf what I have done to several Fantasy texts during my Masters; to analyse it the same way I would analyse a Fantasy text using the same assumptions. In short, I wanted to see if I could make a convincing case for Animal Crossing: New Leaf as a Fantasy video game. My ability to do this may be somewhat limited by my desire to keep these posts relatively short, but if it proves successful I may develop this idea into a longer essay at some point in the future.

To begin with, Animal Crossing is described as a life-simulation game. The progression through this particular life-simulation game involves the player selling bugs, fish, fossils, fruit, etc. to pay off home loans to expand the size of their house. The game’s main character who is in charge of these home renovations is Tom Nook, an anthropomorphic racoon who is widely ridiculed on social media among fans as a sinister, Capitalist overlord. I won’t go too deeply into the Capitalist undertones of this game objective, as that would be enough material for an entirely new essay. However, the game mechanism of simulating the real-life act of paying off a home loan/mortgage doesn’t seem to fit in with the idea of ‘the Fantastic’. The game also lacks a real narrative, in that it is not story-driven like The Elder Scrolls game series. So how can New Leaf be redeemed as a Fantasy video game?

Tom Nook and his shady Capitalist tendencies aside, if we consider the notion that Fantasy contains the impossible, then it should be easy to identify which elements of New Leaf are Fantastic. The most obvious are the anthropomorphic animals that populate the player’s town, from neighbours to shopkeepers, even museum curators. The only human character in the entire town is that which the player controls. Anthropomorphic animals are an important aspect of children’s literature, fables and fairy tales. In the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, it is stated that as a device, animal fantasy can be traced back to ‘literary fairy tales, notably Hans Christian Anderson.’. Therefore, the game uses a device which has its roots in ancient literary tradition. The use of anthropomorphic animals empowers the child reader (or player) ‘since a child is usually bigger and stronger than a toy, a midget or a mouse. If a toy or animal character is featured in symbiosis with the child, the latter can act as a wiser and protective adult.’[1] This idea is interesting when considering the game is marketed as being playable by children as young as 3 years old. The decision to surround the player’s human character with various engaging animal characters makes the game infinitely more appealing to a younger audience who perhaps need to feel a sense of responsibility and sympathy for the animal characters which entices them to continue playing the game. Not to mention that each animal character has their own unique personality; talking to them enables the player to complete small tasks for them and earn rewards, which is extremely satisfying (in my biased opinion).

The Animal Crossing games are not story-driven, as I have already pointed out. They are life-simulation games. As there is no obvious Fantasy-inspired narrative to tether this game to the literary genre, we must instead look at the very nature of life-simulation instead. Mimesis – the act of mimicking that which we already know – goes hand-in-hand with Fantasy, as it is well established that Fantasy narratives must mimic the world we know (our ‘primary world’, as described by Tolkien) to a certain extent so as to maintain a sense of relatability. A world that is entirely unfamiliar would be incomprehensible, whereas a world that is entirely familiar is not Fantastic at all. Most successful Fantasy narratives strike a balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The same can be said of Animal Crossing. By simulating a real-life experience while using Fantastic elements like talking animals, the game creates an enjoyable play experience around the decidedly un-Fantastic goal of paying off home loans by selling items to make money. There is no pressure within the game to pay off the loans within a specified amount of time, therefore the player can choose instead to wander around town, planting flowers and talking to animals, which is how I often find myself passing the time.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I could have written about Animal Crossing as a Fantasy game, however I don’t want to bore you all with my ramblings. Before I know it, this post will turn into an essay that’s 4,000 words long, which nobody wants to read. I might one day turn it into a 4,000 word essay, but for now I will sign off by saying that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a game that will always be very special to me, both for its infinite playability and as a source of academic inspiration. I encourage everyone to play one of these games at least once in their lives and experience the Fantasy for themselves.



[1] Nikolajeva, Maria. ‘The Development of Children’s Fantasy’ in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (2012), ed. James, Edward & Mendlesohn, Farah. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) pp. 50-61