For real. It gets even worse just after that as well. I've gotten some mild spoilers and I have a guess at what the game (eventually) might dig at but it remains very uncomfortably unresolved for many hours afterwards (Edit: It doesn't dig at it. It plays it straight and honestly is just plainly bad writing for this part even if the dev was attempting nuance). There's a certain cost even if the game is setting something up artistically.
Viewing post in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass comments
Yeahh for real I love this game for like, Every Single Other Part Of The Game Being Great and can even kinda understand Lars being.... like THAT as meant to represent how "sometimes family members have really really cruddy worldviews and a small child might not understand how thats extremely bad" but then the rest of the island being "haha y'know anime!?" is just friggin' insufferable. And makes the Lars stuff worse. And how its resolved is like, ugh. Not good. The rest of the game is like a 10/10 for me which makes it suck even more.
"like THAT as meant to represent how "sometimes family members have really really cruddy worldviews and a small child might not understand how thats extremely bad""
That's exactly what it is. You were so close to getting it. The rest of the island is Jimmy innocently trying to make Lars happy, without realizing any of the implications of it, because he's eight.
Oh i understand that, it makes sense in context, but. one can argue its value regardless. Can't help but think there was a way to get that point in a different way? i wouldn't argue it isn't coherent or thematically sensible it just kinda sucks anyways to have stuff like that thrown around regardless of the intent being decent. Should've been handled with better sensitivity, despite its intentions, is how i guess I'd put it, i suppose.
It's not like I'm advocating that the story should've gotten into a 30 minute sideplot of the player getting told that racism is bad over and over either, its fault isn't in being too subtle lmao. (Heck, the sense of subtlety and its depiction of a three-dimensional nuanced family from the viewpoint of a not-terribly-nuanced but empathetic child's perspective is the emotional core of the friggin' game.)