No video game character in the world is as cute as Kirby, right? Nothing is terrifying or evil about a pink blob that can suck up or eat anything, and nothing is unsettling about the lore of the games or the enemies or anything.
But hey, at least the Awoofies are cute. These adorable little puppies are found everywhere in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. They have chubby legs, little noses, and pointy ears. They're also incredibly fluffy — who would want to hurt them?? Well, us, the player, apparently.
The official Japanese Kirby Twitter account has shared some pretty monstrous data that has us feeling a bit terrible about ourselves — so we want to share it with everyone to make sure you wallow in collective guilt with us!
In the game's hub, Waddle Dee Town, there's a character known as Wise Waddle Dee who shares information that he's collected from players all over the world. And one of those bits of detail is *gulp* how many awoofies players have killed. And the body count of these sweet little pups has reached an enormous high — one billion.
Here's a very rough machine translation of what Kirby_JP's tweet says:
Hello everyone! This is Waddle Dee.
This time I will deliver worldwide information!
The number of Awoofies Kirby has slaughtered has exceeded 1 billion in the world!
But it's a tremendous number ... As expected, Kirby!
As expected? Is Wise Waddle Dee saying Kirby is a murderer? Does that mean we're murderers? We can't take the thought of contributing to this high number — it breaks our hearts. But, well, it was all for peace and saving the world, right? That's what we'll tell ourselves.
The tweet was shared on Reddit, where user razorbeamz revealed that the Japanese word for "kill" can also be used to say "defeat". But kill is obviously the optimal word here for maximum guilt. Although Google translate makes us feel even worse by using "slaughter". So we just feel bad whatever way it's put.
Well, we suppose we set ourselves up when we made this list where we ranked the Kirby enemies and the Awoofies placed pretty highly:
Do you feel terrible about contributing to the Awoofy death count? Or are you willing to do anything to save the world? Let us know your Kirby thoughts in the comments!
[source reddit.com, via gonintendo.com]
Comments 22
Capital punishment for endangering our precious pink boi?
This wannabe arbiter approves.
I got a few of them before I sold the game. Lot of people seem to like it but I really didn't care for the new Kirby game, those challenge room type deals really brought the game to a halt and just in general I found the gameplay too puzzle heavy, I don't like puzzles.
I've slaughtered my fair share, and my son... well I'm sure it's at least 1,000,000.
Is there a special place in hell for people who take pleasure in slaughtering Awoofies?
Who does that? ...me
@Expa0 At least the genocide was fun, right?
We have well and truly failed as an Awoofy loving society
WHY ON EARTH DID YOU HAVE TO SAY SLAUGHTERED OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
@Waka_the_Prophet Yeah, I mena he EATS otehr beings and takes their power! There is no indication that they are okay after this process. I know platformer video games tend to skirt the issue of death, but they did use the term "slaughtered" which is not the best choice.
It’s ok everyone just believe that when a enemy dies they revive.
Kirby ended up beating bandana dee once and he’s fine.
Kirby beats up kracko and it’s still alive
Heck all the Kirby mini bosses always return no worse for wear.
Oh man .. the mall scene. They're just MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS trying to enjoy their food...
Pretty sure this might be considered genocide, at this point!
Reminds me of the time From Soft had a website registering the number of player deaths by hazard in Dark Souls 2. Sure, people died a lot by the bosses and enemies, but those numbers paled in comparison to the number of players falling in pits! Gravity OP!
Happily took a cutter to them in their sleep. Poyo, suckers.. lol
Kirby kill eldrith abonimations like no tommorow, what the suprise?
If they attack it's all fair game. If you attack the sleeping ones though, you're a true monster
Doge: sad bork
Those are rookie numbers.
Time to pitch in a few more.
@Waka_the_Prophet I’ve been saying that for years and star allies kinda hinted at it. Gluttony has a physical form and it’s pink. With angry eyebrows.
There is no cute, only coins.
I love how the article is pink.
Kirby devours awoofies whole. I mean....just think about this for a minute.... Kirby may be the most violent video game ever. Sure, Doom gets all the attention, but you're just killing demons from Hell that have infested the living plane....they're technically not living to begin with, otherwise they wouldn't be in the afterlife like that. Kirby just rolls up and SWALLOWS PUPPIES with a big grin on his face and keeps going like a boss.
Meh, it’s all good. Killing cute critters in Kirby games is pretty much normal. Kirby is just a jerk.
@AlanaHagues @Fizza @BrianJL
The word ‘slaughtered’ (or anything equivalent to it) doesn’t actually appear in the original tweet. It seems to be a weird quirk of Twitter’s translation engine.
The point about 倒す (lit. topple/knock over/cause an upright object to no longer be standing) being used to mean ‘defeat’ (and by extension ‘kill’*) would be valid, but this verb doesn’t actually appear in the above tweet either.
倒す/defeat is a super common word in video games in general, but it’s not used here - and neither is verb 殺す/kill.
The verb used above is こらしめる, meaning to chastise/discipline/punish.
So the above could be (somewhat liberally) translated as:
“Kirby has disciplined over a billion naughty pups!”
Quite why the translation engine has gone for ‘slaughter’ is a mystery. I mean, it’s not wrong (Kirby is a mass slaughterer after all), but it’s quite a departure from the original Japanese.
*Really, it’s not that different from English. If the despot was ‘toppled in war’, we assume this to mean ‘defeated’ and likely also ‘killed’. It’s less that the Japanese word for ‘kill’ (殺す) means defeat, and more that the Japanese work for defeat/topple (倒す) can be used (somewhat euphemistically) to mean ‘kill’.
I'm sorry to hear about the Awoofies but, how many Waddle Dees have been slaughtered lifetime??? Is this why the reparations of Waddle Dee Town and the rise of Bandana Waddle Dee have arisen?? Will we have an Awoofie Town in the future??
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