Gaming

We Are In Love With These Mash-Ups Of Classic Vines With ‘Animal Crossing’

When

by Jared Richards  14 August 2019
Animal Crossing memes

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We’re currently in the longest Animal Crossing drought we’re ever had. A new full-fledged version of Nintendos’ adorable life simulator hasn’t arrived since 2012 — and while the Switch’s New Horizons is, uh, on the horizon for next March, the anticipation online for the next iteration has festered into a wonderful, weird thing. In 2019, Animal Crossing has reached meme status.

For the uninitiated, Animal Crossing is a delightful series where your avatar moves into a new town, and instantly rake up a massive mortgage in buying a house off Tom Nook, the town’s grocery store owner and property mogul. You make money by selling wares, which includes fishing, bug catching, fruit collecting, and doing tasks for your colourful anthropomorphic neighbours.

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Isabelle From Animal Crossing Is 2019's Most Powerful Queer Icon

It is truly the most relaxing game in the world, and fans are very serious about that relaxing — which means that when Nintendo announced at this year’s E3 that New Horizons was delayed from 2019 to March next year, they got mad, and made memes.

Hell, even saying ‘March 20, 2020’ online has become a signal for angst, frustration and fluffy animals. And in what might be the eighth state of grief, Isabelle, the town hall’s sole worker, is now an indisputable gay icon — and advocate for workers rights, feminism and environmental issues.

 

Of all the various memes and Twitter accounts that just post wholesome AC content, we’re most in love with a series of videos that recreate Vines and TikToks with AC animals. Made by Instagram/Twitter user Chanbabhi, they revisit old favourites — K.K. Slider serenades a villager by saying “i love you bitttttch”, or a group of villagers nod after Isabelle walks by and says ‘hi’.

While Chanbanhi makes a heap of videos around games, the Animal Crossing ones are by far their most popular videos. Talking to Junkee, they say it’s a perfect game for memes.

“The Animal Crossing characters are all so cute, it’s funny seeing them in that way,” they say. “Their Animalese language is also pretty funny to listen to, especially when it has the same inflection as the video I’m referencing, lol.”

Yes, sound on motherfuckers — a big part of the humour is hearing these characters speak in their jumble of sounds. We’re in absolute love with these — anything that makes the wait for New Horizons a little more bearable deserves all the attention in the world. If you’d like, you can share the love by sending Chanbanhi some cash online via Ko-Fi.

In the meantime, here are all of their Animal Crossing videos.