This article is the first in a series that we hope may bring new light to a question everyone is asking about the eerie-yet-endearing Japanese RPG Maker game, Yume Nikki.

“What is Yume Nikki trying to tell us?”

Our All-encompassing Theory Explained

To begin, a few important things should be addressed: 1) This series obviously contains major spoilers about the plot of Yume Nikki. It is best to finish the game completely before reading this, or to watch one of the many walk-throughs available on YouTube or NicoNico Douga. 2) Since the true nature of the game can only be speculated upon, this has been titled as a theory, rather than an explanation. These ideas are merely the observations and connections made by the staff here at maserbeam dot com and should only be taken as such, regardless of how chillingly-correct and insightful they may be. 3) If you subscribe to the theory that the game is just weird for the sake of weirditude, then you have no imagination and should not be playing Yume Nikki.

The First Conjecture: Throughout the game’s entirety, Madotsuki is lying comatose in a hospital ward.

The Evidence:

• The Toriningen (Bird-Humans) can, without a stretch, be seen as an over-exaggeration of medical staff rushing about wearing surgical-masks and eye-protection.
• Hostile Toriningen will send Madotsuki to areas that are inescapable.
• The ability to have the same dream repeatedly with no change in information is nearly impossible and is far more likely to be an aspect of one over-arching, deep state of unconsciousness.
• Madotsuki can fall asleep in exactly three seconds in the real world, even after repeated terrifying nightmares. This is not a likely ability to have in reality.
• In the dream world, her only task is to seek and find 24 effects which are randomly scattered.
• There is a room directly accessible from the Number World that is filled entirely with white beds (mostly occupied by people who have had their faces covered by the sheets). This room is also home to one non-hostile Toriningen who appears to be overseeing these beds. If one is lucky when checking a certain cupboard in this room, they will be able to see Madotsuki as a ghost.
• The room with the white beds is the only way to access the small room in which the Severed Head effect is found. This room is filled with hostile Toriningen and a guillotine.

The Resulting Extrapolations:

• Both the real world and the dream world in Yume Nikki are two layers of a dream world inside Madotsuki’s subconscious while in a comatose state.
• Madotsuki’s subconscious uses the two layers of the dream world to come to terms with things she has suffered in reality.
• The 24 effects represent 24 different aspects of her mind that she must come to terms with (by collecting them and owning them, thereby being able to use them without hindrance).
• Madotsuki is afraid of dying while being operated on, as shown by the Guillotine Room (Surgery Ward) adjacent to the Bed Room (Coma Ward) and the fact that any hostile Toriningen can send her to an inescapable area (Death).
• Madotsuki does not think she will survive, as shown by the ghostly image of her hidden in a cupboard in the Bed Room (imminent).

That’s all well and good, but why does it matter?

For years, interviews have been conducted with comatose patients who have woken up after days, or even years of seemed-lifelessness. Many of these patients tell similar stories of lucid dreams in which they were completely aware of what was happening, but were unable to wake up from for whatever reason. Sometimes, when in lighter cycles of sleep, these dreams can be affected by outside input, such as the voices of doctors or family members in the room, or the sounds of other patents.

If you interpret the entire game of Yume Nikki as one such dream, it helps to validate and even make sense of the eerie worlds, seemingly-random events, twisted characters, and disturbing monsters. When seen as a struggle to overcome an unmentioned recent trauma, the motif of finding things and gathering them all together doesn’t seem as random as it first appears, but rather, it makes sense that this would be the normal course of action to take for the mind of a young girl.

-Koda-P