Hello everyone and welcome!
Recently, my boyfriend and I have
been replaying Ōkami and only now
have I realised I’ve omitted a notable character that appears in the game, who
displays werewolf qualities. That character is Oki and he will be the subject
of today’s article.
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| Concept art for Oki showing his human and wolf forms |
Oki (short for Okikurumi, also spelled Okikurmi)
is a character that appears in Capcom’s 2006 action-adventure video game Ōkami which tells the story of how the
great Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu descends into the human world in the form of a wolf and embarks on
a divine mission to rid the land of Nippon (Japan) of the corruption spread by
the demonic Yamata no Orochi and his supporters.
The game is filled to the brim with characters
taken from Japanese mythology and folklore and it is no different for Oki. He
is based on the figure of an Ainu hero of lore, Okikurumi, with a couple of
twists here and there. The Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan, who originally inhabited Hokkaido and
north-eastern Honshu, as well as parts of Russia (Sakhalin and the Kuril
Islands). Okikurumi was a hero of mythology poems called oina, part of the Ainu creation myths. According to legend, Okikurumi
was born when Pa Kor Kamui (the Pestilence God), while flying above the
newly-created land, sat on a branch of an elm tree to rest. The goddess of the
elm tree, Cikisani, became pregnant due to this and bore a son – Okikurumi. Because the Ainu people used the wood of elm trees to start fires, Okikurumi quickly became
associated with the element of fire. He was also said to have taught the people
of earth how to hunt and fish and when he became an adult, his mother,
Cikisani, presented him with a magic sword with which he conquered demons and
evil spirits of the world.
Amaterasu first encounters Oki
in the land of Kamui (more about the significance of the land’s name below), a
snowy region in the northern part of Nippon. He appears as a young man in
purplish-blue clothes and a red sleeveless vest embroidered with white symbols,
with long red-and-black hair, wearing a mask that resembles either a blue bear
or a wolf, and wielding the sacred sword Kutone. At first, Oki attacks Amaterasu
with his sword, but when the goddess defeats him in his human form, he
transforms into a large dark-furred wolf with a red mane, the white symbols
becoming a pattern on his back, his mask, pendant, and sword remaining as his
accessories. As a wolf, Oki can still speak and he battles using not only his
lupine features, but also his sword. After he is once again defeated by
Amaterasu, Oki turns back into a human and commends her and acknowledges that
she is not an ordinary wolf. He informs her that he is a warrior of the Oina
tribe (a reference to the Ainu mythology poems in which his original
counterpart featured) that inhabit Kamui and that he has stolen the sacred
sword Kutone in order to vanquish demons that have caused a deadly blizzard to
rage in the region. Subsequently, Oki accompanies Amaterasu on her journey to
slay demons in hope of sating his sword’s thirst for demon blood and stopping
the blizzard raging in Kamui.
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| Wolf form Oki and Amaterasu |
One thing to note here is that if
you look at the concept artwork for Oki or look at his sword during the game,
you will notice that the hilt and scabbard resemble wood and both have
totem-like carvings on their surface. The fact that Oki possesses a sword with
a hilt that resembles a totem is no coincidence. The Ainu’s religion featured
animism – a worldview that animals, plants, and some inanimate objects possess a spiritual essence. This spiritual
essence, or divine spirit, was called “kamui” (or “kamuy”) – the same name as
the land in which Oki and his tribe live and where Amaterasu first encounters
him. From this, we can deduce that the totem-hilt of the sword (or the
fang-shaped pendant Oki never parts with) acts as a conduit between Oki and the
wolf spirit, similarly to how tribal shamans channel the spirits through their
bodies, allowing him to transform into a wolf. It’s just a theory, though,
since I don’t remember if we see Oki shapeshift again after he returns Kutone
to his village’s shrine. I wasn’t able to find any mention of the legendary
Okikurumi being able to turn into a wolf, so I am going to go out on a limb and
say that Clover Studios, the developers of Ōkami,
simply combined his character with elements of Ainu beliefs.
I hope you’ve
enjoyed this post and I’ll see you next time! As a bonus, here is a GIF of Oki transforming into his wolf form for the first time :)
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| Oki transforms into a wolf during his fight with Amaterasu |
Since I am now part of Amazon’s Affiliate
program, you can support me by purchasing a copy of your own of Ōkami from Amazon!
Should my article spark your interest in the game (as it should, since Ōkami is an amazing game) – please consider buying
it using the link provided below. Simply click on the cover of
the game on the right-hand side and you will be sent to
a page listing all the offers related to it! Thank you and enjoy!
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| Click here to shop for the Playstation 3 HD Remastered version of Ōkami! |
Sources:
Donald
L. Philippi, Songs of Gods, Songs of
Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Princeton University Press, 1979
http://okami.wikia.com/wikia/Oki
http://kunnesiri.narod.ru/okikurumi.htm
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