I don’t usually care much for Donkey Kong. I’ve never really played many of his games, and the ones I have, beat me to a pulp at the fresh age of seven (I’ll never forgive you, Donkey Kong Country). Despite my overall disinterest in the character, I watched the trailer forDonkey Kong Bananzawith my eyes wide and jaw on the floor.
I wasn’t captivated by the platforming or digging mechanic or anything like that, but by Donkey Kong’s new look.He’s been redesignedto have a different face, but the thing that was blowing my tiny mind was the pair of pants and suspenders he was wearing. This shook me to my core.
After the trailer was over, I went back and scrubbed throughthe Mario Kart World trailer, pausing every time DK was on screen, hoping, praying, that my eyes were deceiving me, that Donkey Kong was wearing pants there too, that Nintendo didn’t turn a lovable gorilla who loves to rap and hates climate change into some sick pervert.
But they did. Donkey Kong knows he’s naked in Mario Kart World.
If You Give A Gorilla Slacks…
There’s always something a little unsettling about anthropomorphic animals, right? They walk around like people, they talk like people, but they’re not people, they’re animals. Giving them clothes is a cute way to distinguish them, but when you think about it, it’s a little weird, isn’t it?
This isn’t some sort of new take, the phrase “Winnie the Pooh-ing” has entered the public lexicon, but it’s always funny to think about how weird it is that iconic gamingcharacters like Sly Cooper, Conker, and Tom Nook all know they’re naked enough to need clothes, but walk around just letting it hang.
Up until now, Donkey Kong has existed in a weird nudity limbo of sorts. He certainly knows what clothes are, plenty of the DK crew wear them, and he himself wears a tie. Despite his attempt to look a little bit more dressed up, he’s never really fallen into the Donald Duck/Winnie the Pooh category like his friend Diddy (that’s DiddyKong, not, well, you know) because he’s not wearing anything meant to cover himself up.
Giving Donkey Kong pants for Donkey Kong Bananza means he understands his own nakedness and that he must cover himself in some capacity. It’s an unfortunate design implication because it can’t be undone for any of his subsequent appearances, otherwise, it will definitely feel weird.
Weirder than it already does.
…There’s No Going Back
Donkey Kong knows he’s naked. The phrase keeps repeating again and again in my mind, I turn it over in my hands like a coin, feeling its notched edges. He’s not wearing those pants in the trailer for Mario Kart World. It must mean that he deliberately refuses to wear pants to go kart racing for some reason, right? What’s wrong with this gorilla?
As I was spiraling, I realized that there’s only one situation where this can be okay. Mario Kart World launches day and date with theNintendo Switch 2on June 5. Donkey Kong Bananza launches on July 17, more than a month later.
For this to make sense and not turn DK into some kind of deranged weirdo, the events of Mario Kart Worldmusttake place before the events of Donkey Kong Bananza. Then, at some point afterward (hopefully in the prologue of Bananza), Donkey Kong will have to have some kind of realization about his nakedness – a moment where he bites from the apple of Eden and has his eyes opened. In his nakedness and shame, he grabs the first pair of corduroy pants he can find and throws them on for…the rest of time, I suppose.
That’s the thing with the concept of nakedness. Once a character is covered up for the first time, they can’t go back to wearing nothing without it being really, really weird. Mario Kart World might be –should be– the final time the first member of the DK crew can be displayed with innocence. Moving forward, Donkey Kong needs to have pants.
To be clear, I understand why Donkey Kong was given pants for Bananza. You can’t position the camera behind a cartoon ape for 15 hours as he romps around the world without havingthe Red Dead Redemption-horse-effect, so it was wise for Nintendo to cover him up. His long history, however, distorts the intention of giving him something to wear to be a little sinister.
It really paints his past appearances as a lot more disturbing than I think Nintendo intended. I, for one, can’tgo back and finish Donkey Kong Countrynow that I know it stars an ape and a monkey who, apparently, just can’t be bothered to put some shorts on.
