Despite What Fans Say, Animal Crossing's Tom Nook Is Not a Capitalist

gamerant.com:

Tom Nook is one of the most iconic characters of the Animal Crossing series, and fans have often called him a capitalist due to how he practices business with the player. He opens shop and gives players homes that they need to pay off in increments. The cynical outlook of this cute tanuki character being a greedy capitalist is part joke as well as partly rooted in reason. After all, one dedicated fan did math that resulted in Nook possibly being four times as rich as Jeff Bezos.

A lot of conversation since Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out has long since died down, with most fans agreeing that Nook is a greedy character that takes advantage of others. However, there is a smaller group of fans that believe the opposite. Even the producer of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Hisashi Nogami, has said that Nook is a superb guy and fans have misunderstood him.

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These allegations against Nook are a major product of the times the fans are living in. A good deal of gamers are Gen Z and Millennials, who are currently living through the reality of a global housing crisis. Many young people cannot afford a house, and justifiably have negative emotions associated with landlords and those with the power behind housing prices. So, while Animal Crossing and Tom Nook are fiction, they do touch upon real anxieties.

There is also a reason that is not connected to the age gamers are living in. It is the simple trend that fans love cynical and dark takes on innocent-seeming media. Tom Nook being a capitalist crook is in the same vein as Ash possibly being in a coma in the Pokemon show or Mario's Shy Guys being failed genetic experiments. These outlooks spread like wildfire on the