ABSTRACT
Development for the Ni no Kuni franchise began with a clear goal. According to Level-5 President Hino Akihiro, the project aimed to raise the cultural status of gaming in Japan. To accomplish this feat, Hino turned to Studio Ghibli’s distinctive aesthetic and acoustic approaches to worldbuilding. However, when director Momose Yoshiyuki and composer Joe Hisaishi, framed as standard-bearers of the Ghibli brand, assumed key creative positions on the project, they brought with them competing ideas about how best to create an immersive, interactive “otherworld” (isekai).
In this chapter, we consider how various versions of the first Ni no Kuni game engage in a self-conscious act of looking forward—toward the future of video games—that depends on turning back—to older media and to more conventional conceptualizations of what constitutes “animation” (animēshon). We focus on three discrete objects constellating the game’s universe: the original soundtrack (OST); an in-game movie theater; and the Magic Master, a 352-page hardcover book bundled with the initial DS release. As our study’s operative question, we ask: To what extent did the act of legitimizing Ni no Kuni’s artistic status hinge upon its nostalgic and deferential treatment of established brands, sounds, and forms of animated media?
