Nintendo released a short video on the Nintendo Today app with no explanation, and it feels like it's hyping up something new for Pikmin.
The Nintendo Today app has been somewhat of an enigma since it launched earlier this year. You could be minding your own business and then suddenly Nintendo confirms a brand new Splatoon game out of the blue. In keeping up with its weird app, today Nintendo released an almost four-minute short film titled Close to You. This short follows a baby which drops its pacifier, which suddenly starts flying around the room on its own as the baby makes chase, resulting in it taking its first steps by the time its mom comes back into the room.
Of course, everyone's first reaction is "what is this?" There's no context for the short, there's no outright identifiable Nintendo features in the short, with the entity annoying the baby being completely invisible. Some speculate that – due to the baby's blue clothes and short blonde hair – it's a teaser for Rosalina in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (despite the difference in art style). However, there's a few details that seem to imply it's Pikmin related.
For example, at the 25 second mark when the mom closes the door and the first building block falls, a short piano sting plays the opening notes of the Pikmin main theme, before going into a different tune. But these notes return multiple times throughout the score to the short, and piano-focused tunes like this are a common sound in Pikmin scores. Plus a user on Reddit has noticed that a tune that plays towards the end is a piano version of a song the Pikmin sing in an ad for Pikmin 4.
New "Close to You" video Nintendo posted has pikmin music in it: from r/Pikmin
The objects moving on their own could be explained away as the baby not perceiving the Pikmin due to them being so small (Pikmin are roughly 1 inch tall on average), however if you look in the background at 1:39 you actually can see what looks like a red Pikmin running under the baby's crib in the background, perhaps teasing a new species of invisible Pikmin.
Of course, Nintendo does like to use Pikmin as an Easter egg in other series, such as a statue in the Super Mario Bros. Movie, and dotted all over the real life theme park, so they could be a red herring. Plus, humans should be long-dead in the Pikmin universe. But I choose to inhale the copium, and if I had to put my money on it, Nintendo is seemingly teasing a new Pikmin game or a Pikmin film, either way, we are so back.
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