Subjective Idealism is the idea that when an item is not being perceived it no longer exists. More specifically visual subjective idealism is the idea that when something is not being actively viewed by a set of eyes it no longer exists. Think of it like a video game - when you turn around, everything behind you is un-rendered to save on processing power. Things literally pop in and out of “existence” depending on whether or not they are within your camera’s field of view. This is why, in some games, you can see things popping in and out depending on how fast you’re going, render distance settings, and so on.
Now apply that same concept to real life. This article is here, along with the device you’re reading this on, but what about when you walk away? When you leave the house? Can you say for absolutely certain that those items still exist when you can no longer see them?
Let’s take it a step further. What if those items would disappear if you forgot about them? What if you left for a vacation and you were gone for so long you forgot you even owned a particular item? Then, when you return home, you aren’t expecting it to be there, so it simply isn’t. In your version of reality that item didn't exist anymore, so when you return home it’s simply gone.
GIRLS MADE PUDDING takes this strange concept that has been popping up in surrealist discussion more and more recently and makes it a reality. What if sight held more weight than we initially thought? What if it could pass on diseases? What if it could be blocked? What would happen if no one truly saw another person again? If objects don’t have permanence then who’s to say people don’t as well? If reality is simply our perception, what if that perception were warped? What if our world looked different from someone else’s, even just slightly? Would we all cease to exist? Or would we simply slip into our own version of reality, separate from everyone else’s?
Taking place in the aftermath of this strange, unknown apocalypse, you the player control the motorbike our two main characters, Sumibi and Nikomi, drive around on. Drive from location to location, look for new ingredients, recipes, fuel, and even tapes across your journey. Cook meals to stay alive but also to enjoy. Reminisce over memories of old and what each meal means to you. As you drive, missions will populate your screen. Cook specific meals using various ingredients to trigger a particular mission, which will then have dialogue that plays out at the speed you drive to your next destination. While balancing energy, hunger, and sanity are, in my opinion, an extremely engaging gameplay loop, you can also turn it off in the settings if it’s getting too stressful. This game is predominately about the vibes, the music, and the story - not to pressure you to loot food before you pass out (though I did have fun with balancing these mechanics myself).
Why are you here? What’s the point of it all? Is there a point to it all? Can we fix anything? Does it matter?
If you’ll excuse me for one moment, I’d like to bring up a manga I read right after completing GIRLS MADE PUDDING; Girls’ Last Tour.
Girls’ Last Tour is a 2014 manga about two young girls and their journey across a desolate mega-structure built upon the ruins of other, older societies again and again and again and… Their goal? To get to the top of the structure, called a stratum. Why are they going there? What is the end goal of it all? Even they have no idea, but the goal itself is what keeps them going. Ideas of grandeur, of salvation, of happiness, of people, of life. Never knowing what will happen until it’s already upon them. Simply taking the next step, even if they can’t see where that step will eventually lead them.
GIRLS MADE PUDDING follows a very similar overarching plot, even if everything in between is different. Ha, I just realized while writing this exact sentence that this similarity is the exact point of both the stories. While the goal may not matter, or be the same as someone else's, or may not be perceived as “important” to an outsider, it is important. Simply being the goal you walk toward every single day is the importance. The fact that the goal gets you up in the morning, makes you brush your teeth, allows you to experience another meal with a loved one, feel the sun on your skin and the wind on your cheeks; that’s what the goal is for. And in that way, everything about these two stories is the same. The ending isn’t what's important, nor is it concrete, it’s the moments leading up to the conclusion that meant everything. That lofty goal? Peanuts compared to the simple act of living and loving and creating and experiencing and sharing the moments with those around you.
GIRLS MADE PUDDING is a lament of the years we lost while not seeing one another. With the plot involving an extremely deadly disease spreading across the populace, forcing people to isolate, it’s clear this story is heavily inspired by the years we lost due to Covid, but it isn’t defined by that. Instead, it’s defined by how we move forward. So we got sick. So we stopped speaking to one another. So things got weird. Now what? Are we really all going to stop living? Stop going out? Stop making memories? GIRLS MADE PUDDING says absolutely not! Even if the goal is something as trivial, meaningless, and senseless as making a lost pudding recipe, it will keep us moving. It must. We cannot sit in the past or we will lose ourselves, our world, and the people we love most.
By the end of both stories this is what matters above all else: the people we love, the ones we have spent all our time with, be it by choice or pure coincidence. No matter how we’ve found the ones in our life, they are the ones that give it meaning. If objects indeed don’t have permanence unless we’re looking at them then do memories have meaning if they aren’t being shared with someone else? Do the experiences have as much depth and weight if they don’t involve other perspectives?
Who’s to say.
In Girls’ Last Tour and GIRLS MADE PUDDING, though, the connection is what keeps them grounded. It’s what keeps them living. Moving. Pushing forward. Calm. Warm. Safe. No matter the disagreements, the strife, whatever it is, the company keeps us secure and it gives life meaning; or whatever meaning a human wants to assign to this ticking clock.
But then there’s this fear of death. It lingers over us for decades. We fight it every step of the way, but we can't stop it. Dying. Disappearing. It's all inevitable. Yet we resist it with all our hearts and souls and we fear it with every single fiber of our being. Is it the fear of the supposed blackness? The potential loneliness?
Or is it the fear of leaving someone behind? To subject them to that all encompassing loneliness that we’re certain exists in this reality? As we live with someone longer, get to know them more and more, we know their flaws, their fears, all their weaknesses - maybe even more than they themselves know these things. To die is to leave them with no safety net. Who will pick up after them? Account for their quirks? Hold their hand in the scary moments? Be their warmth when it’s too cold? When we’re gone we’re just gone; it doesn't matter anymore what we’ve left behind. But we do worry about what we leave behind because of the people we’re also leaving behind and the effects our death will have on those people. What can we do to ease their pain, their suffering? What can we leave behind to set them up for success in this new world without us?
Even as Yuu willingly burns her journal in Girls’ Last Tour to keep her and Chii warm, I sit here and type my blog post. Will it stay behind forever online? Train an AI to think and feel a certain way? Touch someone's heart and alter their reality? Or is it simply a way for me to live and feel fulfilled? A reason to wake up and fill the days? It could all be deleted tomorrow and I would continue on. I do continue on. Leaving social media after social media. Spending years on a website, an MMO, a forum, a social site just for it to be defunct. Deleted. Gone. Never to be seen again. Acceptance. Move on. Continue living. There's nothing else you can do. It's a fact of life. The sun burns and decays, the world turns closer to its inevitable death, and every step we take is closer to the last one.
I try to remind myself how special life is every single day. I don't need to be doing something extraordinary to be living, just like Sumibi and Nikomi don’t need a lofty goal to keep going. The smell of the flowers, the warmth of my family, and the joy of just existing is enough. I wish it could be enough for us all. The idealization of an apocalypse so the last living few can live freely. The idealization of societal collapse just so no one has to go to war ever again. The joy of the simple things and how far removed those have become in modern day. I resonate with these themes so much they make my heart ache. I think it makes these creator’s hearts ache too; based on their works. Sumibi, when asked if she would like things to go back to how they were before, answers “No”. Why would she? With nothing but time on their hands, Sumibi and Nikomi can grow closer until they die, with nothing impeding them but life itself. As Tsukumizu, Girls’ Last Tour’s author, writes: “Why are there always wars…? Why can’t everyone have equal lives…? …I don’t get it. I start to hate everything. … The only feeling I want in life is the texture of the persimmons from the persimmon tree in my family’s yard.”
Thank you for reading my highly emotional review and opinion piece about GIRLS MADE PUDDING. I had an absolutely lovely time playing it, laughing and crying throughout. I tried my best not to spoil too much and simply talk about vague concepts so you, the reader, could enjoy your own playthrough of it as well. Please check it out on Steam and give the OST a purchase while you’re at it; both are stellar. Girls’ Last Tour wasn’t really the thing being reviewed here, but it’s a wonderful companion piece if you’re looking for more once you’ve finished GIRLS MADE PUDDING.
Thank you so much to Kazuhide Oka for making GIRLS MADE PUDDING and thank you Tsukumizu for making Girls’ Last Tour. It’s been a wonderful week to think about life, its meaning, and how I feel about it all. These stories make me feel less lonely in my thoughts, too. I guess that’s what creating is all about, huh?