When Ness got to the Cave of the Past, and he saw Pokey there with Giygas, he was completely surprised. The player was not. Paula was not. Jeff was not. But Ness had constantly told each and every one of these skeptics that Pokey would turn around, and that he would be a good guy in the end. You might say that Ness never told you that he believed the best in Pokey until the very end. You weren’t listening.
Think back to Magicant, where Ness found a world made up of fragments from his own mind. We can tell that Magicant is not what he wants to happen simply because of the circumstances he finds himself in while he’s there. He has to fight krakens and sacrifice comrades, his very own courage. So we know that Magicant is made up of what he expects to happen. He expects to conquer the evil in himself, and it takes the form of the most recent and most tangible representation of evil his young mind can remember: the Mani Mani Statue. He expects his mother to still be there, cheering him on, and there she is with the rest of the family, a hot plate of steak ready on demand.
Ness gets to interact with many people in Magicant, and they all have predictable responses. The monkey speaks in monkey. Picky comments that Pokey took his snack again. Again, these are things that Ness expects to happen in the real world. They have happened in the real world, and so they happen inside his head. But the important part is remembering the scene with Pokey Minch.
There he sat in his own little special section of Ness’s brain. He took up the entire couch, similar to the night that started this entire mess in the first place, wearing the same exact overalls and expression. What he said always has and always will interest me. He states he is jealous of Ness, and he wants to be best friends forever.
Whether you believe Magicant is a world of what Ness expects or a world of what he wants, or a mess of both, Pokey Minch’s words still prove the point. Ness thought the best in Pokey. If he didn’t expect Pokey to be his friend forever, he at least wanted it, or vice versa.
And the fact that he didn’t breaks my heart.
crobatics