Sunny (character)

Sunny is the protagonist of the 2020 psychological horror video game Omori. A mute hikikomori teenage boy, he has a dream world alter-ego named Omori.

Sunny
First appearance	Omori (2020)
Created by	Omocat

Appearances

The game follows Sunny in his last days before he and his mother move away from the town in which he grew up. In reality, Sunny has isolated himself from the rest of the world. However, he explores 'headspace', a fantastical dream world, as Omori, a younger monochrome version of himself, along with his older sister Mari and his friends Aubrey, Hero and Kel. In this world, they head on a quest to rescue Basil. In order to return to the real world, the player is required to select the "STAB" option, which results in Omori stabbing himself.

It is soon revealed that, in the real world, Mari is dead and the rest of his friends have suffered greatly in her absence, with Basil having become anxious and insecure. Sunny's father had left sometime after Mari's death and his mother is preoccupied with preparing for the move. The game features two primary routes, with one following Sunny leaving his house, reconnecting with his friends and confronting his trauma, and the other, known as the "Omori Route" following Sunny as he chooses to remain indoors and failing to confront his trauma. The "True Route" is only achievable through the first route. The two routes diverge when Kel knocks on Sunny's door after discovering that the latter is moving away. Choosing not to respond results in the "Omori Route" while responding to Kel triggers the other route.

Eventually, it is revealed through photographs that, while fighting over an upcoming recital after Sunny had thrown his violin down the stairs, he pushed Mari. As her leg was injured at the time, she tumbled down the stairs, landing on the broken violin and breaking her neck. Sunny and Basil then staged her suicide by hanging her on a tree by the neck. The resultant guilt led to Sunny's isolation and Basil's anxiety. After hanging her, they witness one of her eyes flash open, traumatising Sunny. This eventually manifests as SOMETHING, a black creature with one eye.

Sunny, now wanting to confront his trauma and face reality, engages Omori, who wants Sunny to remain in 'Headspace' and continue to repress his trauma by committing suicide, in a fight. By winning, Sunny destroys 'Headspace' as well. After defeating Omori in the route in which Sunny follows Kel outside, Sunny wakes up at the hospital in and says in front of Basil, Aubrey, Kel and Hero: "I have to tell you something." The game ends there and their reactions are not depicted.

Promotion and reception

On 12 February 2023, it was announced that a Nendoroid of Omori would be produced. Pre-orders for the Nendoroids were accepted from 12 October. There were four different facial expressions of the Nendoroid, each depicting one of Omori's facial expressions. Accessories included a knife and Sunny's cat. In June 2023, it was announced that SuperGroupies would be producing Omori-themed merchandise, including a monochrome watch depicting a knife and black light bulb, as well as a monochrome backpack with purple inner lining, referencing the final battle between Sunny and Omori. In celebration of the character's "birthday" on 20 July, the OMORI Tree Village Café in Tokyo offered a special menu.

According to Ronnel Bermas, Jenelle Capati and Francis Sabas Calubayan, writing for Press Start, Sunny's quest to find Basil in 'headspace' "serves as an allegory for his subconscious act of distancing himself from the truth." Jasmine Erazo of The Salem State Log writes that she went from seeing Sunny as a "quiet and shy child who was mourning the loss of his older sister, to seeing a shell of a person who desperately needed release from destroying several people's lives." Aya Younis and Jane Fedtke write that a Sunny's trauma results from a "crisis of identity" that is " central to the game's overall conflict and emblematic of the tension between Headspace and reality." They further conclude: "Inviting players to resolve this crisis through helping Sunny find himself ultimately deepens players' understanding of the severe impact trauma can have on identity and selfhood."

Ilaria Mariani, Mariana Ciancia and Judith Ackermann, writing in The Italian Journal of Game Studies, argue that the "gradual unveiling" of the contrast between Omori in 'Headspace' and Sunny in the real world "deepens players' understanding of the impact of trauma on personality and relationships, enhancing empathetic connections with the game's characters." They write that players are "granted an intimate perspective on his concerns and journey towards self-acceptance, emphasising the dichotomy between reality and psychological manifestation", allowing players to "foster an emotional bond and empathise with them". They further argue that the final fight between Sunny and Omori "symbolises a tormented battle between facing a painful reality and succumbing to a fabricated realm of denial", thus allowing players to "deeply engage with the themes of trauma, identity, and mental health disorders, fostering a profoundly empathetic connection with the protagonist."

Writing for The Michigan Daily, Saarthak Johri argues that the "blankness" of Sunny and Omori "allows the player to project themselves onto the protagonists" and "doubles as a telling characterization", with their "pessimistic personalities, their lack of emotion and the self-destructive heights the characters reach as the game progresses all serve to illustrate their depressive shutdown following their trauma." Tim Rattray of RPGFan argues that Sunny has "strong neurodivergent coding" and that he is depicted with an "inability to properly express his feelings relative to his friends’ emotional capacities". Rattray further states that this is evidenced by how Omori is able to "reach emotional states one level beyond his peers". He concludes: "Instead of being sidelined due to his unspecified illnesses, they instead make him the linchpin of battle strategies. Players build positive associations between these uniquely strong emotional states and winning, defying stigma they might have entered the game with."

Andrew Nakamura, also writing for The Michigan Daily, called the "STAB" mechanic "unique", and that it "doesn’t let the player find safety in the game menus, and the player realizes they can never be safe with the horrors of the game always in control." He wrote that the"juxtaposition between my dainty character model and the gruesome squelch of the knife entering my character's body made me more frightened than any gore or jump-scare", and that the game "forced me to search for an exit in all the wrong places before I walked into its trap all on my own" and that "felt especially grim to have to trigger the death myself." He concluded that "finally choosing to kill this character felt as though the game was asking me to destroy a piece of my own soul — and the game coerced me into saying yes."

Leah Isobel, writing for Superjump, argues that the twist makes Sunny a "lonely boy whose desire to rekindle his friendships comes from an extreme need for redemption and salvation", and that his actions "feel incredibly selfish." She further argues that the game "manipulates" the player's perception of Sunny turning the horror into an "external presence rather than an intrinsic part of Sunny's daily experience", thereby emphasizing his "innocence and victimhood." She claims that through this, the game is "lying to us about who he is and what he's done." Isobel argues that in the true ending, "actual truth and its repercussions don't matter; the only thing that matters is our ability to speak it as if confession and forgiveness are the same things." According to her, by "infantilizing" Sunny, the game fails to "meaningfully reckon with how his actions have affected the other people", as he does not "engage with his past honestly as he moves forward", nor is he "warped by his actions." Isobel argues that this prevents "meaningful role-playing opportunities" and that "forgiveness is something given as a gift, not something we can earn by suffering enough." Takuya Watanabe of IGN Japan felt that the "Good Ending" was a potentially negative one as he believed that his friends might not have accepted his apology or forgiven him for his crime. Additionally, he wrote that it appeared that it was very possible that Mari had not died by the fall, and may have been killed when Basil and Sunny hung her body by the neck at the tree.

With regard to an update which introduced new content for the "Omori Route", Priya Sridhar of Superjump wrote that the content introduced "reward us for turning away from reality" and that it "seems to undermine the message of the story", stating that it is "expressly about how Sunny chooses the fantasy world, rather than face the reality that he killed his sister and hid the truth for years." She further wrote that it "adds to the hopelessness that you can't save Sunny on this route, or make him face reality, because of an earlier choice that you made."