‘’I mean’, [Alice] said, ‘that one can’t help growing older.’ ‘One can’t perhaps,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven.’’
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Played with BertKnot.
The genesis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) stemmed from the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, then a lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, and the Hellenist Henry George Liddell. Liddell had heard of Dodgson's photographic talents and regularly asked him to take portraits of his four children. On 4 July 1862, as they strolled along the water's edge, he improvised a story for the middle daughter, Alice, which eventually became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. For his pen name, Dodgson reversed his first name and called himself Lewis Carroll. An essential work in the modern literary canon, Alice in Wonderland has influenced many writers who have followed in its thematic footsteps: James Joyce, for example, borrowed the episodes of transformation and phantasmagoric hallucination when he wrote Ulysses (1920). But Carroll himself built Alice in Wonderland on an interplay of references and intertextuality.
Narratological and stylistic intertextualities
Carroll was inspired by a collection of children's stories, which he freely parodied and reworked, giving them a nonsensical flavour. It is difficult to read Carroll without thinking of Edward Lear's extravagant poetry; the prosody of the characters in Alice in Wonderland was certainly inspired by The Book of Nonsense (1846). Carroll also retained the anticipatory and mythological aspect that Charles Perrault had introduced into his Contes de ma mère l'Oye (1697), but offered a radical change of tone. Where Perrault wrote with seriousness for a court of aristocrats, Carroll gave way to an unbridled freedom in which intense emotions surface on every page. Just as the author relished the art of portmanteau to create new words, so Alice's encounters are fuelled by rich and varied inspirations – the fruit of an imagination that improvised children's stories in the summer heat of Godstow.
Although Alice in Wonderland is an essential work for Japan, immortalised alongside the adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a symbol of modernity in the late nineteenth century, it is surprising to see a franchise like Bayonetta picking it up to deliver a spin-off just months after the release of Bayonetta 3 (2022). Although the fushigi is an important part of Japanese culture and has exceptional plasticity, the different tone of the game is intriguing. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a radical departure from previous titles, adopting a childlike visual and narrative identity.
Dreams, children's stories and the forest
The player assumes the role of Cereza, whose early years are revealed. Her mother was imprisoned and she had to seek refuge with the witch Morgana. She has been taken under her wing and taught how to become a witch herself. In the hope of obtaining the powers necessary to save her mother, the young girl decides to venture into the Avalon Forest. There she soon calls a demon, who takes possession of her pet, Cheshire. The story is told through the use of an old female narrator, who immediately sets a dreamlike mood, while the colours, sometimes pastel, sometimes shimmering, engulf the player in a restful serenity. The formula works and it is easy to get caught up in this gentle universe, despite the lengthy exposition scenes. Bayonetta Origins is driven by a very polished art direction, which contrasts with the visual chaos that was Bayonetta 3. The shading, lighting and colours give a paper-like quality to the backgrounds and characters, reinforcing the dreaminess of the adventure. Avalon Forest, a magical location with enormous trees and strange creatures, functions as a catalyst for youthful emotions.
Sometimes serene, sometimes disturbing, the forest of Bayonetta Origins borrows equally from the film adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Hayao Miyazaki's Mononoke hime (1997). The emphasis on the light coming through the canopy is reminiscent of the 1951 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but the game is characterised by an abundance of visual effects and details, which contrast with the sobriety and uniform textures of the Disney film. The little wisps, although drawn from Gaelic folklore, bear a strong resemblance to the little spirits found in Miyazaki's work and their strong connection to nature. Either way, through the various elements Cereza obtains during the adventure, the game showcases varied colour palettes, which help to highlight the emotions Cereza and Cheshire go through. The calm and reassuring green of the early hours is replaced by gloomy reds or cooling blues; this variation in colour keeps things visually fresh and Bayonetta Origins manages to create some striking visuals, such as the arrival at the circus.
The red train of reference
Musically, the title features an elegant and rather intimate soundtrack, painting a charming fresco full of lyrical flourishes. The various musical tracks are built up almost like a symphonic poem; the different layers are interwoven with complex percussion, creating a particularly ethereal atmosphere. The score is similar to the compositions of Charles Villiers Stanford, who also used Irish material as a source of inspiration; his Irish Rhapsody No. 1, Op. 78 (1902) evoked the love story between Cú Chulainn and Emer, which also involved an initiation quest for the hero. Contemplative sequences follow intense, dramatic and fierce climaxes, just as dreamy melodies alternate with battle themes in Bayonetta Origins. The prominent use of the piano is reminiscent of An Irish Idyll in 6 Miniatures, Op. 77 (1901), where it contributes to the pastoral quality of the composition, while in the game it is imbued with mystery. Most striking are the small melodic motifs, which are taken directly from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
Bayonetta Origins makes no attempt to hide its many aesthetic references to other video games. Unlike Bayonetta 3, where the inspirations were chaotic and failed to create an overall coherence, the borrowings in Bayonetta Origins fit well with the themes of a children's story. The micropuzzles are still reminiscent of the Zelda games, but without the holistic brilliance, and some areas are very similar to NieR:Automata's (2017) Amusement Park and Robot Village, Super Mario Odyssey's (2017) Wooden Kingdom, or Hollow Knight's (2017) final boss sequence. It seems to me that the chronological proximity of all these titles suggests a strong referential loan, matching the development cycle of Bayonetta Origins, which certainly overlapped with that of Bayonetta 3.
Rejecting the absurd: an archaic and non-subversive approach
The title nevertheless suffers a structural shortcoming in this art of reference and in its unexpected artistic direction for the series. Torn between a desire for novelty and an obligation to remain in the bosom of its franchise, Bayonetta Origins struggles to forge an experience that goes beyond a simple charming discovery. While Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass featured very disparate scenes in quick succession to emphasise the strangeness of the universe, Bayonetta Origins quickly settles into a comfortable routine. Although the environments remain charming, the world-building often has the player returning to previously explored locations, while the notable areas, frequently saved for the bosses, are abandoned rather quickly. All the more burlesque and whimsical environments are trimmed away, as if the title was afraid to really commit to variety. Similarly, the game seems afraid to tell anything other than Cereza's initiation journey and her budding relationship with Cheshire; all information about the world is relegated to collectible notes and the wisps are pretextual and underused. They never contribute to a more complex picture of the forest, as the humorous touches in their personalities are not introduced during the exploration.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass stand out for their use of subtle and sometimes caustic humour, which contrasts with the childlike world Carroll draws – though it is very likely that these contrasts are more or less involuntary manifestations of Carroll's paedophile impulses, that he encoded his feelings in the absurdity of his text. [1] Beyond Alice in Wonderland, these tensions are emblematic of the modernist novel. James Joyce employed the same absurdist devices to create profound contemplation. When in Book V of Ulysses, 'Calypso', the story returns to Mr. Bloom, the reader thinks they have found a haven of tranquillity after the density of the previous sections. They are then surprised by a detailed description of the character's defecation after breakfast. This passage should certainly be read as a physical representation of the powerful creativity of existence and its capacity to generate art. [2]
A structure prone to repetition
Bayonetta Origins fails to generate the same creative and invigorating excitement. Departing from the absurdity that formed the aesthetic framework of the franchise, the game loses itself in a children's story, in the strictest sense of the expression. There is no subversion, no clever rewriting of the series. Bayonetta Origins is sweet and very pleasant to explore, but it offers no other major ideas. It also fails to subvert the franchise's original gameplay, opting for an awkwardly symmetrical approach: the left half of the controller is used to command Cereza, while the right is reserved for Cheshire. This dichotomy is reminiscent of Astral Chain (2019), but clearly lacks elegance. With the camera behind the protagonist, it has always be natural to use the left stick to move them; in Bayonetta Origins, the overhead view shuffles the two characters around, making it difficult to adjust effectively. Because the title is relatively short, there is no time for the player to learn how to build up hand independence, and it is always easier to switch one's attention between Cereza and Cheshire than controlling them at the same time. This makes for generally dull fights, saved only by the dynamic light and sound effects.
The various powers acquired throughout the adventure also struggle to find an elegant expression across combat and exploration. Infusing wood allows for moderately interesting puzzles, but the next three fail to inspire the same usefulness during exploration. It is therefore unsurprising, albeit unfortunate, that the game's final chapters are a series of battles that are all very similar to each other. Bayonetta Origins seems reluctant to move forward, and the bonus chapter featuring Jeanne is a prime example of this. The title feels forced to tie its story to Bayonetta 3 in the most frustrating and obnoxious way possible, removing all the childlike magic that inhabited the spin-off.
It is unclear who the game is intended for. Understandably, Platinum Games could not have foreseen the release of Devil May Cry 5 (2019), nor the mixed reception of Bayonetta 3. Nevertheless, as it stands, Bayonetta Origins, even if welcomed as a breath of fresh air by a fraction of the franchise's fans, is a proposition so radically different from the original series that it is hard to see how it can sustain itself over time. Conversely, anyone who discovers the franchise with the spin-off will surely be disappointed by the aesthetic approach of the main series – not to mention young children, for whom it is not at all suitable. It bears repeating that Bayonetta Origins is a charming and enjoyable experience, a perfect game for children, even if it does indulge in some empty references and a repetitive structure. But if the magic works here, the title offers no real guarantee that it will be able to achieve the same feat again, clouding Hideki Kamiya's inflated ambitions, which were already undermined by a Bayonetta 3 that failed to find its identity.
__________
[1] Morton N. Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography, Macmillan, London, 1995, pp. 226-231. It should be noted that for Cohen, who is generally sympathetic to Carroll, there is no doubt about his pedophile inclinations, even if he believes that they are bottled up in the literary text. These elements are clearly known, and Vladimir Nabokov made no mistake when he wrote Lolita (1955), as he scrambled his connection with the main character by denying any reference to Carroll, whereas he took the liberty of quoting Poe, whose image was not as tainted as Carroll's. On this topic, read Brandon S. Centerwall, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Nabokov and Pedophilia’, in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 32, no. 3, 1990, pp. 468-484.
[2] Robert S. Lehman, ‘Original Nonsense: James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, and Modernism’s Genius’, in Modernism/modernity, vol. 27, no. 2, 2020, pp. 339-360.
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Played with BertKnot.
The genesis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) stemmed from the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, then a lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, and the Hellenist Henry George Liddell. Liddell had heard of Dodgson's photographic talents and regularly asked him to take portraits of his four children. On 4 July 1862, as they strolled along the water's edge, he improvised a story for the middle daughter, Alice, which eventually became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. For his pen name, Dodgson reversed his first name and called himself Lewis Carroll. An essential work in the modern literary canon, Alice in Wonderland has influenced many writers who have followed in its thematic footsteps: James Joyce, for example, borrowed the episodes of transformation and phantasmagoric hallucination when he wrote Ulysses (1920). But Carroll himself built Alice in Wonderland on an interplay of references and intertextuality.
Narratological and stylistic intertextualities
Carroll was inspired by a collection of children's stories, which he freely parodied and reworked, giving them a nonsensical flavour. It is difficult to read Carroll without thinking of Edward Lear's extravagant poetry; the prosody of the characters in Alice in Wonderland was certainly inspired by The Book of Nonsense (1846). Carroll also retained the anticipatory and mythological aspect that Charles Perrault had introduced into his Contes de ma mère l'Oye (1697), but offered a radical change of tone. Where Perrault wrote with seriousness for a court of aristocrats, Carroll gave way to an unbridled freedom in which intense emotions surface on every page. Just as the author relished the art of portmanteau to create new words, so Alice's encounters are fuelled by rich and varied inspirations – the fruit of an imagination that improvised children's stories in the summer heat of Godstow.
Although Alice in Wonderland is an essential work for Japan, immortalised alongside the adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a symbol of modernity in the late nineteenth century, it is surprising to see a franchise like Bayonetta picking it up to deliver a spin-off just months after the release of Bayonetta 3 (2022). Although the fushigi is an important part of Japanese culture and has exceptional plasticity, the different tone of the game is intriguing. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a radical departure from previous titles, adopting a childlike visual and narrative identity.
Dreams, children's stories and the forest
The player assumes the role of Cereza, whose early years are revealed. Her mother was imprisoned and she had to seek refuge with the witch Morgana. She has been taken under her wing and taught how to become a witch herself. In the hope of obtaining the powers necessary to save her mother, the young girl decides to venture into the Avalon Forest. There she soon calls a demon, who takes possession of her pet, Cheshire. The story is told through the use of an old female narrator, who immediately sets a dreamlike mood, while the colours, sometimes pastel, sometimes shimmering, engulf the player in a restful serenity. The formula works and it is easy to get caught up in this gentle universe, despite the lengthy exposition scenes. Bayonetta Origins is driven by a very polished art direction, which contrasts with the visual chaos that was Bayonetta 3. The shading, lighting and colours give a paper-like quality to the backgrounds and characters, reinforcing the dreaminess of the adventure. Avalon Forest, a magical location with enormous trees and strange creatures, functions as a catalyst for youthful emotions.
Sometimes serene, sometimes disturbing, the forest of Bayonetta Origins borrows equally from the film adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Hayao Miyazaki's Mononoke hime (1997). The emphasis on the light coming through the canopy is reminiscent of the 1951 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but the game is characterised by an abundance of visual effects and details, which contrast with the sobriety and uniform textures of the Disney film. The little wisps, although drawn from Gaelic folklore, bear a strong resemblance to the little spirits found in Miyazaki's work and their strong connection to nature. Either way, through the various elements Cereza obtains during the adventure, the game showcases varied colour palettes, which help to highlight the emotions Cereza and Cheshire go through. The calm and reassuring green of the early hours is replaced by gloomy reds or cooling blues; this variation in colour keeps things visually fresh and Bayonetta Origins manages to create some striking visuals, such as the arrival at the circus.
The red train of reference
Musically, the title features an elegant and rather intimate soundtrack, painting a charming fresco full of lyrical flourishes. The various musical tracks are built up almost like a symphonic poem; the different layers are interwoven with complex percussion, creating a particularly ethereal atmosphere. The score is similar to the compositions of Charles Villiers Stanford, who also used Irish material as a source of inspiration; his Irish Rhapsody No. 1, Op. 78 (1902) evoked the love story between Cú Chulainn and Emer, which also involved an initiation quest for the hero. Contemplative sequences follow intense, dramatic and fierce climaxes, just as dreamy melodies alternate with battle themes in Bayonetta Origins. The prominent use of the piano is reminiscent of An Irish Idyll in 6 Miniatures, Op. 77 (1901), where it contributes to the pastoral quality of the composition, while in the game it is imbued with mystery. Most striking are the small melodic motifs, which are taken directly from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
Bayonetta Origins makes no attempt to hide its many aesthetic references to other video games. Unlike Bayonetta 3, where the inspirations were chaotic and failed to create an overall coherence, the borrowings in Bayonetta Origins fit well with the themes of a children's story. The micropuzzles are still reminiscent of the Zelda games, but without the holistic brilliance, and some areas are very similar to NieR:Automata's (2017) Amusement Park and Robot Village, Super Mario Odyssey's (2017) Wooden Kingdom, or Hollow Knight's (2017) final boss sequence. It seems to me that the chronological proximity of all these titles suggests a strong referential loan, matching the development cycle of Bayonetta Origins, which certainly overlapped with that of Bayonetta 3.
Rejecting the absurd: an archaic and non-subversive approach
The title nevertheless suffers a structural shortcoming in this art of reference and in its unexpected artistic direction for the series. Torn between a desire for novelty and an obligation to remain in the bosom of its franchise, Bayonetta Origins struggles to forge an experience that goes beyond a simple charming discovery. While Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass featured very disparate scenes in quick succession to emphasise the strangeness of the universe, Bayonetta Origins quickly settles into a comfortable routine. Although the environments remain charming, the world-building often has the player returning to previously explored locations, while the notable areas, frequently saved for the bosses, are abandoned rather quickly. All the more burlesque and whimsical environments are trimmed away, as if the title was afraid to really commit to variety. Similarly, the game seems afraid to tell anything other than Cereza's initiation journey and her budding relationship with Cheshire; all information about the world is relegated to collectible notes and the wisps are pretextual and underused. They never contribute to a more complex picture of the forest, as the humorous touches in their personalities are not introduced during the exploration.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass stand out for their use of subtle and sometimes caustic humour, which contrasts with the childlike world Carroll draws – though it is very likely that these contrasts are more or less involuntary manifestations of Carroll's paedophile impulses, that he encoded his feelings in the absurdity of his text. [1] Beyond Alice in Wonderland, these tensions are emblematic of the modernist novel. James Joyce employed the same absurdist devices to create profound contemplation. When in Book V of Ulysses, 'Calypso', the story returns to Mr. Bloom, the reader thinks they have found a haven of tranquillity after the density of the previous sections. They are then surprised by a detailed description of the character's defecation after breakfast. This passage should certainly be read as a physical representation of the powerful creativity of existence and its capacity to generate art. [2]
A structure prone to repetition
Bayonetta Origins fails to generate the same creative and invigorating excitement. Departing from the absurdity that formed the aesthetic framework of the franchise, the game loses itself in a children's story, in the strictest sense of the expression. There is no subversion, no clever rewriting of the series. Bayonetta Origins is sweet and very pleasant to explore, but it offers no other major ideas. It also fails to subvert the franchise's original gameplay, opting for an awkwardly symmetrical approach: the left half of the controller is used to command Cereza, while the right is reserved for Cheshire. This dichotomy is reminiscent of Astral Chain (2019), but clearly lacks elegance. With the camera behind the protagonist, it has always be natural to use the left stick to move them; in Bayonetta Origins, the overhead view shuffles the two characters around, making it difficult to adjust effectively. Because the title is relatively short, there is no time for the player to learn how to build up hand independence, and it is always easier to switch one's attention between Cereza and Cheshire than controlling them at the same time. This makes for generally dull fights, saved only by the dynamic light and sound effects.
The various powers acquired throughout the adventure also struggle to find an elegant expression across combat and exploration. Infusing wood allows for moderately interesting puzzles, but the next three fail to inspire the same usefulness during exploration. It is therefore unsurprising, albeit unfortunate, that the game's final chapters are a series of battles that are all very similar to each other. Bayonetta Origins seems reluctant to move forward, and the bonus chapter featuring Jeanne is a prime example of this. The title feels forced to tie its story to Bayonetta 3 in the most frustrating and obnoxious way possible, removing all the childlike magic that inhabited the spin-off.
It is unclear who the game is intended for. Understandably, Platinum Games could not have foreseen the release of Devil May Cry 5 (2019), nor the mixed reception of Bayonetta 3. Nevertheless, as it stands, Bayonetta Origins, even if welcomed as a breath of fresh air by a fraction of the franchise's fans, is a proposition so radically different from the original series that it is hard to see how it can sustain itself over time. Conversely, anyone who discovers the franchise with the spin-off will surely be disappointed by the aesthetic approach of the main series – not to mention young children, for whom it is not at all suitable. It bears repeating that Bayonetta Origins is a charming and enjoyable experience, a perfect game for children, even if it does indulge in some empty references and a repetitive structure. But if the magic works here, the title offers no real guarantee that it will be able to achieve the same feat again, clouding Hideki Kamiya's inflated ambitions, which were already undermined by a Bayonetta 3 that failed to find its identity.
__________
[1] Morton N. Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography, Macmillan, London, 1995, pp. 226-231. It should be noted that for Cohen, who is generally sympathetic to Carroll, there is no doubt about his pedophile inclinations, even if he believes that they are bottled up in the literary text. These elements are clearly known, and Vladimir Nabokov made no mistake when he wrote Lolita (1955), as he scrambled his connection with the main character by denying any reference to Carroll, whereas he took the liberty of quoting Poe, whose image was not as tainted as Carroll's. On this topic, read Brandon S. Centerwall, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Nabokov and Pedophilia’, in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 32, no. 3, 1990, pp. 468-484.
[2] Robert S. Lehman, ‘Original Nonsense: James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, and Modernism’s Genius’, in Modernism/modernity, vol. 27, no. 2, 2020, pp. 339-360.