Mother 3 Chapter 7 Analysis
Unlike every other chapter analysis prior to this one, I actually felt the need to start typing this up before finishing the chapter. Believe it or not, Chapters 7 and 8 make up roughly half of this 20 hour JRPG.
You know how in many games your hero is on a quest to gather X amount of items? “Find the seven sages” or “Go to the eight Your Sanctuary locations”. Something like that. Well, Mother 3 introduces that concept very late into its story.
Remember back in Chapter 2 we heard from Wess (Duster’s father) that he once asked about a needle-like object sitting in Osohe Castle’s courtyard? We finally find out what that needle is! There’s actually seven of them, and they are the key to awakening a dragon so large that its body is the size of Nowhere Islands! This dragon has the power to make or destroy an entire world. It depends on the heart of the person pulling the needles (sounds a little Dragon Ball, eh?)
It took me about 10 hours to get to this chapter, and this is where I start finding the story incredibly fulfilling.
For one, we bump into Dr. Andonuts from EarthBound! He’s working with the Pig Mask army?! All we can gather from his brief dialogue is that he’s gotten into military weapons.
We also bump into Salsa from Chapter 3 again who is on the run with his girlfriend. Frustratingly, we spend the first hour of this chapter with just Lucas and Boney in our party. For some reason, my memories from my first playthrough told me that we’d never be separated again from Kumatora, Duster and Boney starting in Chapter 5. I guess I was wrong! Luckily we get Kumatora back after an hour. We pull a few of these needles which are linked with the Magypsies. Every time a needle is pulled a Magypsy disappears (more on the Magypsies down below).
Another inclusion from EarthBound is Saturn Village! This is where another needle is hidden, and we finally reunite with Duster too! The village bears some similarities to the one from EarthBound which is peculiar. The Pig Mask army finally starts introducing us to its bosses. There’s a silent character with a helmet and mechanical wings. He’s the only one other than Lucas who can pull the needles from the ground (Gee, I wonder why!). There’s also a half-mechanical Fasaad who is still recovering from his great fall from Thunder Tower.
Essentially, this entire chapter is a truncated version of a journey that would take a normal JRPG 30-50 hours to explore. You’ll be exploring some eyebrow-raising locations and having some shocking experiences. What exactly do I mean by that?
I’d like to talk about why an official Mother 3 translation could prove challenging for Nintendo:
In Chapter 7, we learn a lot more about the Magypsies. I didn’t mention them in earlier parts because I wanted to get into them here. Magypsies are a group of magical people who are incredibly knowledgable, helpful, and important to Mother 3’s world and characters. They take the form of men wearing drag. They have five o’ clock shadows, makeup, dresses, and muscles. Needless to say, they would present some challenges to Nintendo both back in 2006, and even today in 2025. I’m not studied in Japan’s perception of homosexual and transgender people. As far as I do know, things are getting better there in terms of equal treatment. However, for many decades it was seen as totally normal to make fun of transgender or crossdressing people. I think these characters are definitely some of the more fascinating in the Mother trilogy, but they’d be begging for a culture war in the West. Especially due to one scene in Chapter 4 where a Magypsy is “awakening” Lucas’ power in a hot spring… This scene comes off as a double entendre. What’s actually happening is the Magypsy holding Lucas’ head underwater in order to awaken his psychic power. But due to the dialogue, it comes off as something incredibly disturbing.
Also in Chapter 7 is a scene where we need to swim underwater for a prolonged period of time. In order to get more oxygen, we must use these machines that look like mermen. Yep, the top half is an older man and the bottom half is a fish. And of course, we have to kiss the machine to get oxygen.
And then there’s the tripping on mushrooms scene! And hey, EarthBound definitely had some allusions towards drugs, but nothing as obvious as this.
Shigesato Itoi is definitely a man who liked to push buttons. Especially the type of buttons that Nintendo doesn’t particularly want pushed. Even in EarthBound there were some scenes that had to be altered, but again, nothing quite like the ones in Mother 3.
Anyways, back to the Chapter analysis:
We end up at a temple where the sixth needle is sleeping. We get to have one big clash with a Pig Mask Commander and the masked man from earlier. Flint (Lucas’ dad) gave us a rusty old badge of his. A sort of good luck charm. The nice folk at Saturn Village actually polished the badge and it turned out to be a Franklin Badge! If you remember from EarthBound, Franklin Badges can reflect lightning. This is particularly helpful for the masked man boss battle. He occasionally shoots lightning bolts which reflect right back at him.
After beating them to a pulp, they run away and forfeit the sixth needle. We get this nice little animation of these vines turning into flowers. I love the animations this game has scattered throughout. Lucas pulls it and the score is now tied- three needles have been pulled by the Pig Mask army and three have been pulled by Lucas and friends.
Who will get the seventh and final needle?
