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quonitThis really could've been a segment in one of my many many Omori posts a year ago but I'm making it now sooooo I mean. lol
This post is about parents in Omori specifically and as such has major spoilers wow
Parents in Omori I think are super interesting and kind of underrated in terms of annalyzing the characters. I believe Omocat did a really good job of writing how the parents influenced the child's personality. It can all be traced back to them!
This post will be fully comprehensive because this is a Quo post and if I am going to restrict myself to just one topic I will find any excuse to go on for ages. I'll also source everything I can so you know I'm not just saying stuff I thought of without evidence, and also so you can come to your own conclusions as much of this is speculitive.
Let's start with Sunny and Mari's parents.
We don't know that much about them from when Mari was alive. I believe they were pretty well off financially because they
1. Sent their kids to music lessons
2. have a big house (it's much bigger than other houses in Faraway but they're all a little unrealistically small)
3. owned a lot of stuff compared to the other characters.
The dad is also potentially of Japanese decent because
1. Appearance
2. Older versions of Sunny could speak and write in Japanese
3. Used to own bonsai trees (a Japanese thing)
The dad is also mentioned in Basil's photo album
What I could say about their relationship with Mari is assumptions and mostly baseless. Both the Mom and Dad are not physically present during the game, and Mari is dead. In Headspace none of their parents exist.
What we do know is Mari had a problem with perfectionism. She always tried to have the most perfect stunning most radiant image of herself. She stressed Sunny out too much about the concert, to the point he threw his expensive violin and she pushed him. I feel like the family was very focused on keeping a specific image, and that rubbed off on Mari. The Dad might've been too hard on her grades and preformance (he did seem a little strict), and the Mom didn't have her fall back enough.
Sunny felt this pressure too, and we can't just blame Mari for that.
What IS a lot more clear is Sunny's feelings at this point. Though it becomes much more of a culmination issue over time, Sunny feeling like a burden is an old worry. He's the youngest of his friends, the youngest child, THE BABY!
This is all just marbles though really. Anyways then Mari dies
Sunny's parents divorced. His Dad rejected him, and his Mom was desparate to not lose her other kid.
^ This text appears in both the Truth sequence and in Black Space 2, interestingly enough. It's clearly very important in Sunny's memories.
Understandably especially for a twelve-year-old, Sunny felt like if he told his Mom the truth about what happened she would disown him like his Dad. Because that would make him bad. His mom didn't want to lose another child, and this felt like it was stipulated onto if he's good. Which he knew he was guilty. This drove him further and further indoors. If the Mom were not so clingy it's entirely possible Sunny would've been able to say something much sooner, but this fear is what developed his shell.
There's a little wiggle room when it comes to understanding the Dad, since while we know the shadowy figure is meant to be him from gamefiles names, it's also... like, Sunny's traumatized cloudy nightmare version of him. I believe the dialogue is accurate, but to be honest you can disagree.
I think it's entirely possible that the Dad had suspicions about Mari's suicide being faked. Or, at least Sunny worried that. Thinking about it realistically, it'd be very easy to tell that Mari died from falling not hanging from basically anyone, especially a coroner.
"But wait if the Dad knew then howcome it didn't get out?"
Ok well basically since Sunny and Basil hanged her body they can no longer get off scott free from manslaughter charges and so would end up in juvie and that fucks up a child's life forever, and is incredibly expensive for the parents. This is something the Dad would have a personal vested interest in keeping to as little people as possible and not talking about. But it might cause him to lash out at Sunny and leave.
It could also explain why the Mom was so focused on the "being good" part of keeping Sunny. If the Dad told her... it can't be true...! That would be really bad!!! causing the freakout. That's just one interpretation, though.
The mom in present clearly tries to care for Sunny a lot, though still ends up neglecting him. She didn't leave enough food in the fridge and he was left without power. It's likely a tutor comes to the house to get him through school, but that's entirely just speculation. He might not be in school at all.
Even still, despite Sunny refusing to talk to her, she leaves stickynotes everywhere like on the mirror to try to help him despite how closed off he is. She calls every day and is really nice.
Ignore Sunny drowning that's normal
I think that she's just lost and not sure how to help. She's probably TRIED therapy and that just drove him further in. She probably TRIED to make him go outside but couldn't do it. She probably tried everything she could, but as a mother with very little resources, no husband, a dead child, a hostile church, there's not really much she can do about the misbehaving teen with her limited knowledge she was given from growing up.
Next is Kel and Hero
Hero is a chronic people pleaser because his family expects him to be perfect and his mom is incredibly needy.
Hero is a full grown adult stop guilt tripping him over having a sleepover he's like twenty!!! Some moms are just like this though, it's not crazy behavior or anything.
Kel struggles to express or even feel negative emotions because he never felt like it mattered at home.
This very much so reflects in his happier more neutral attitude where he basically puts his feelings secent and finds it very difficult to express anything other than positivity.
Aubrey's parents we don't know much about. We know
1. When Aubrey was 12 she says her dad wouldn't let her dye her hair
2.That her parents are divorced
3. Her Dad is gone
4. her Mom fills their house with garbage and makes Aubrey live in the attic with a hole in the roof
5. Even when her Dad was around no one was allowed to visit her house
Her family seemed pretty disfunctional for a long time especially after Mari's death. She probably relied on Mari a lot, basically as a replacement mother I assume, so her death and subsequently "no one caring enough" made her very outwardly upset, and try to take whatever control she could into her own hands by abusing Basil, stealing his stuff, physically assulting him/having her friends assult him, spreading rumors, and constant emotional abuse.
It's very understandable how someone could feel so powerless in her situation and why she became what she did.
Lastly, Basil's parents.
His parents are only in concept art. There's a picture frame where the text reads along the lines of "Photos of Basil's parents. You've never met them before."
Most of the time they're discussed by Polly
There's also conflicting dialogue that Polly was hired years ago actually but that's not relavent to this post. What is relavent is that it is very clear that Basil's parents are, for the most part, absent. They travel a lot and Basil lives in his grandmother's house, not theirs. In the beta version of Omori, she even used to be in headspace
Basil, like, had his grandma growing up, but it's entirely understandable why he put so much emotional weight on his friend group. He'd never had friends before, and in a way he doesn't have more than one close family member either! It's why he was willing to do something so obviously amoral and heinous just to help Sunny, the most important person in his entire world. He wasn't just a childhood friend to him, Sunny was a lot more!
It also informs his relationship with Aubrey as well. In spite of how horribly Aubrey mistreats him, he still reaches out to her time and time again without any judgement. He's fearful and traumatized, but he never gets mad at her! He's completely and totally desperate.
She then immediately throws him in the lake
If his parents were actually there for him I doubt it would've gotten anywhere near as bad, before and after Mari's death.
End of post uhhhh I think the writing of Omori's parents is very underappreciated and very cool. They really do shape the personalities of the child protaganists in really realistic and tracible ways. They never really even talk about it outloud. I don't want its subtlety to go underappreciated!!!!!!!!!!!
LJ post
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Date: 2025-08-14 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 06:59 am (UTC)hehe that japanese text says hikikomori of course
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Date: 2025-08-15 02:45 pm (UTC)I was somewhat disappointed when in the game they made “Omori” an in universe brand name for a piano, because that totally gets rid of any of the significance behind the name in-universe replacing it with something else… but I guess it’s easier to explain and no one likes bilingual protagonists (joking….. I’m over it lol)