hey everyone I'm Cosmic and welcome to the cloud it's been a little while since the last scripted video but I'm thinking that a lot of you guys are going to like this one because today I'm attempting to do something long overdue for the Splatoon lore Community I will be covering to the best of my ability all of the lore surrounding sanitization in the Splatoon Series this topic is one that's particularly interesting to me and there are a few reasons I think it's important and fun to discuss the first reason is that side order give us a whole spaghetti pile of INF especially in regards to this specific subject plus if you're someone who started with Splatoon 3 and never played octo expansion you might be kind of confused about what the hell is even going on in Marina's Dev diary since it mostly ties up Loose Ends introduced in the previous games huh this video will hopefully connect the threads in a way that's easy to understand admittedly when it comes to sanitization there are some things that to this day are not completely understood so while I would like to keep this video mostly objective and factual I will be speculating a little bit to fill in the gaps to make things as clear as possible whenever I'm explaining something that's 100% confirmed the source of that information will appear in the top left corner if I'm making an educated guess to connect the dots you will simply see the word speculation I figure this is the best way to make sure we're all on the same page about what is and isn't Canon sanitization is in my opinion one of the most interesting elements of splatoon's world but it can be pretty hard to track down all the details surrounding it there's some really important stuff that only appears and developer interviews information from the Japanese only art book and even the in-game lowers now split between two DLC expansions so I thought it would be a good idea to compile everything into one place and tell the story of the sanitized so first things first sanitization was a process invented by Commander tardar tardar was an extremely Advanced artificial intelligence created by a human about 12,000 years before the events of Splatoon 1 this human is simply known as the professor as it became clear that the human race was approaching its final days the professor tasked Commander tarar with passing on humankind's vast knowledge to the next worthy species and so for thousands of years tardar waited for a new civilization to rise from the Waters of the flooded Earth the full extent of tardar emotional capabilities isn't exactly known but it is said that in this time of waiting tardar became lonely longing for the companionship it once shared with its human creators eventually the creatures of the sea evolved to walk on land most notably the inklings and the octarians who established complex societies rivaling and in many ways imitating those of the humans but the humans were gone despite its similarities to the world tarar once knew this was not what it had been waiting for observing them from a distance tartar became disgusted with the seapods resenting their aptitude for violence and vanity and so tarar took new approach if it could not find a worthy successor to humankind it would make one in a Q&A with the squid research lab that appeared in the Nintendo dream magazine splatoon's developers gave us some more insight into tarter's motivations they told us the Cibo Corporation analyzed the reasons for the extinction of the human race and identified that the cause was the desire to fight with others they believed that by analyzing the data of each individual through experimentation and by combining all of the best individuals together they eliminate the general idea of the individual and from there a new life form could be created and a harmonious world would be born drawing this conclusion Commander tartar set its plan in motion slowly it began to engage with the planet's new life it integrated into an underground Community linked by the deepsea metro there it would establish a series of test Chambers meant to evaluate the skills and intelligence of a number of subjects in looking for subjects tardar turned its gaze to the octarians while it didn't consider them worthy enough to succeed the human race it seems they were the closest thing to what tartar was looking for but rather than coming to their aid it lured them into a trap it took the appearance of an old-fashioned telephone vaguely resembling an octarian face and began to speak in goofy exaggerated slang it convinced the octarians at capture that it was on their side and that they only had to prove themselves through the completion of its test in order to ascend to the promised land by most test subjects the promised land was likely understood to mean the surface or freedom but in reality all of the successful subjects were Blended alive into a green paste Tarter compiled the remains of these subjects into a collective DNA sludge of Blended ink a substance it planned to use to cover the Earth in doing so it would destroy all life across the planet which it deemed unworthy and replace it with whatever emerged from this primordial oo new life would be born from those who prevailed those who were worthy but but what about everyone [Music] else Commander tartter could not do all of this alone and so it made use of the octarians to run its vast facility of course they wouldn't do this willingly so they had to First be cleansed of their Free Will stripping all of the memories from their minds and instilling them with a new purpose octarian after octarian was sanitized by the CBO Corporation a front for tardar dark plan but who exactly became sanitized this is actually where we run into our first roadblock we know subjects who succeed in collecting the four things are Blended so it might be tempting to assume that subjects who fail to do this are sanitized the thing is we don't actually know that for sure every Source I am aware of that talks about sanitization tells us that octarians were sanitized but not specifically which ones so that's our first question who even gets sanitized putting on my speculation hat for a minute I do think it makes sense that failed subjects would be the ones to undergo tarter's control as it would view their intelligence as inferior to its own but what exactly constitutes failure failing a test does not Spell immediate Doom for agent 8 after all they can simply spend more CQ points and try again my best guess is that a subject only becomes sanitized upon losing all of their CQ points in Octo expansion this results in a cannon game over and the only reason a is able to continue is due to Pearl's immense wealth and Marina's ability to convert said wealth into more points lacking this crutch a less fortunate subject would be faced with no way to progress and Tarter would likely consider them a bad batch one strange exception to all of this is isop podre like eight he was once a kamaboko test subject but isop podre was not successful lacking A's determination he simply accepted his fate after just two tests choosing to idly ride on the train without ever learning who he was whether isop Padre was aware of the fate of those who ran out of points or simply not courageous enough to fight on is unclear but either way I would wager he was sitting on a cache of CQ points he just never planned to spend unfortunately that's mostly pure speculation so what do we know for sure surprisingly the word sanitize does not actually appear anywhere within the English script of octo expansion the term comes from a social media post advertising the game before it release and at least one instance in the actual game when played in Japanese the first sanitized octalink we ever encounter appears in the first station we visit in the deep sea Metro Captain cuttlefish remarks on their odd behavior stating that it's strange for octarians to be aggressive toward fellow octarians soon after we come into contact with pearl and Marina the ladder of which analyzes the enemies eight comes across in doing so she discovers that they appear to lack any signs of life we can gather some additional Clues from environmental details namely the IV drip bags we see strewn about Cabo and of course during the escape sequence we pass through the belly phase where containers of sanitized octarians are seen being transported through giant Drums of Blended ink this is pretty much the clearest firsthand look we ever get into the sanitization process and yes the Japanese name for this area specifically identifies it as a sanitization site beyond that we learn about Commander tarter's plan to blend us alive but at the time there isn't any connection drawn between this event and sanitization and of course we meet a certain someone at the end of the escape sequence but we'll get to that later for now that's pretty much it as far as lore in the actual game between the release of octo expansion and Splatoon 3 side order our best understanding of sanitization came from these in-game details and highy Walker or anopolis Illustrated the Japanese only art book released in December 2018 in the book is a page about sanitization which reads when a regular octarian passes through a machine their body color instantly changes to green and blue and their eyes to black at the same time they lose all memory of their lives we found it to be like brainwashing this coincides with similar descriptions of San ization provided to us directly by the developers in the Splatoon 2 first anniversary interview director yusek Amano stated that sanitized octarians were brought forth from cbo's culture solution and by being sanitized they lost their sense of self like zombies when asked about sanitization in that Nintendo dream Q&A I mentioned earlier the developers said that sanitization is to purge life's energies so that they no longer cause unnecessary hesitation and instability in the mind in regards to the fluorescent green substance they said it's a blended ink if you bathe in that ink for a long time your head will be repainted with Cibo CO's ideas to quickly recap everything so far in order to satisfy its prime directive Commander tardar planned to end all life on Earth and replace it using a solution of supreme DNA tardar lured octarians into a fake company it created called kamaboko where it put them through a series of tests the most successful of these test subjects were turned into Blended ink using the Blended ink from the successful subjects a number of other octarians were sanitized their memories and will removed these sanitized octarians were then used to continue running kamoko basically Commander tartar invented sanitization to eliminate the concept of the individual it did this to avoid repeating the violent mistakes of humankind without free will it decided there would be no conflict and a prosperous Society could form this is our basic understanding of where sanitization comes from and how it works from here things get a little more complicated and that's mostly due to information we got in Splatoon 3's DLC side [Music] order in side order we gain access to Marina's Dev diary which Chronicles Marina's research over the course of four years as she was developing the merse included in this diary is a detailed explanation of the sanitization process so let's take a look one sanitization extracts the subject's thoughts and memories these are saved as mem cakes two post sanitization the structure housing the subject's soul is left as a hollow husk three injecting dummy information into that husk enables total control of the original subject there's a lot to unpack from this explanation first we need to talk about souls up to this point most of the stuff surrounding sanitization seem to have more to do with bodies and Minds so the introduction of Souls was a little bit unexpected as Marina mentions cuttlefish did bring up Souls back in Octo expansion when talking about the calamari incantation but at the time that seemed to just be metaphorical from Marina's research though we are led to believe that souls are in fact just a real tangible part of inkling and octoling biology and you know I guess they always were there every time we get splatted we see a little squid or octopus ghost fly out of our character's Inky remains and jump back to the spawn point where their bodies are reformed we still don't know much about souls or respawning for that matter but I personally believe the souls Marina talks about and the souls we see upon getting splatted are one and the same here's where things get really interesting according to Marina the process of sanitization produces mcakes in Octo expansion we were told that mem cakes were memories compressed into physical form but we had no idea how they were actually made if they're created by sanitizing a subject though that has some pretty huge implications Marina herself suggests that sanitization may have been how eight originally lost their memory this would make a lot of sense as kaboko literally rewards our completion of test in Octo expansion with mcakes containing Eight's memories before side order we were pretty much just told that eight lost their memory when they hit their head falling into the deep sea Metro but honestly it always made more sense to me to think that their memory was stolen by kamaboko if I'm reading this correctly that means 8 was actually sanitized of course they didn't get brainwashed by Commander tardar but Marina refers to sanitization specifically as the removal of thoughts and memories supposedly it's only after a subject is sanitized that they are injected with dummy information and their mind is taken over the game never explicitly says eight was sanitized but it would explain why kamaboko had Eight's mcakes and why eight was chosen to be the first test subject for the members I really don't think the writers would just put this line here if they didn't want us to think this was the truth not to mention the character customization sequence in Octo expansion looks like this the first time we see a they're floating in a strange green liquid this screen has always been a bit of a mystery but I think interpreting it as eight sanitization makes a lot of sense we even see a screenshot of this scene in Marina's Dev diary for the entry that explains sanitization so I think it's a fair conclusion to draw but hold on this isn't how we were told sanitization Works back in 2018 don't we have two different explanations now well let's break down what we know at first we were told that subjects were put through a machine that showered them in Blended ink removing their thoughts and memories this is also how they became mind controlled in side order we were told that a subject's memories are first extracted from their soul and turned into mcakes only then is a subject injected with dummy information and their mind taken over this is what I meant by things getting more complicated at first glance these explanations seem to contradict one another hi carow Walker and those developer interviews implied that being covered in ink was enough for a subject to become brainwashed while side order pretty explicitly describes two steps to the process and importantly suggests that eight was put through only one of them High car Walker didn't say anything about injection and Marina's Dev diary never mentions covering subjects in ink that raises the question which explanation is the correct one well here's the thing most of the sanitization lore we had before side order came from external sources hiara Walker is an art book that never received an official English translation and even though the information from those interviews comes Direct directly from the developers that doesn't mean it isn't subject to change for example we were told in an interview back in 2018 that the inklings had evolved naturally from real life squids and were not influenced by human science or pollution This was later reconed by in-game lore in Splatoon 3 with the introduction of alterna's liquid crystals Splatoon is first and foremost a video game series and the Canon of Splatoon as explained by the games should take priority over any peripheral materials SPL Tunes developers are only human and it isn't really like Nintendo to build a massive story Bible for their games or plan narratives years and years in advance sometimes they'll tell us details about the world and lore before they themselves have decided to fully explore and flesh out these ideas which can lead to contradicting explanations with that said well it can be tempting to just lean toward whatever explanation you like the most in this case I think the information provided in Marina's Dev diary is what we should default to the Dev diary is the more recent and much more accessible source of information and the fact that it's you know in the actual game should give it Priority not to mention High car Walker isn't nearly as cut and dry as Marina the passage about sanitization is pretty vague and uses that sort of distant squid research lab style of voice where they remark on things only as far as they are able to observe them it's kind of an unreliable narrator situation only in an art book all of that is based basically to say sanitization got a bit more fleshed out ins side order but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to completely disregard everything else we've learned so far in fact we can pretty easily combine these descriptions into one cohesive understanding putting everything together here is my current understanding of the sanitization process based on all of the information we have been given over the years there are two steps to sanitization Step One the subject's memories are removed and turned into mcakes this Hollows out the subject's soul this is the part Marina refers to as sanitization personally I believe this is done by covering a subject in Blended ink just like we see in the belly phase and in the agent 8 character customization screen step two the subject soul is injected with dummy information this dummy information is likely what we see in the IV drips littering coko it looks a lot like all of the other ink used by the sanitized octarians but it's unclear if it's the exact same substance regardless this data allows the subject to be controlled by someone else in this case commander tardar and that's pretty much it this has been the sanitization process with your host Cosmic cloud of course this still leaves us with a couple of questions for one when and where do octarians get injected we see them being covered in ink during the belly phase but the IV drips are just kind of laying around like everywhere are these signs of an attempted Escape or or does tarar just kind of throw these things over its shoulder when it's done with them in some of the earlier instances of these bags they're pretty much just used as simple decorations but during the escape sequence a lot of them feel more intentionally placed along the path could they have something to do with agent 3's sanitization I couldn't tell you as far as I'm aware it's just a mystery another mystery is when exactly in the sanitization process do a subject's skin and eyes change color again hiara Walker said this happened instantly and it's already happened to the octarians in the belly phase but if eight was sanitized why didn't they turn green I can't really say one last issue with this description of sanitization is that the severed tentacle octarians like octo Troopers don't have souls well actually they almost definitely do but it's weird that we can't see them right when we Splat an octoling even in single player we see a soul fly out of their body as they explode the same is not true for the common severed tentacle octo Troopers they kind of just die it's possible that they do have the same kind of soul but they just can't respawn so their souls are destroyed immediately upon death think of it like human Souls versus monster souls in undertale I'm sorry for always referencing undertale in these videos it's just the two things that are always floating around my brain okay but yeah Marina's Dev diary and various pieces of dialogue throughout side order imply that a soul is necessary for sanitization to be possible and we know all octarians can be sanitized so I guess they have to have souls it's just kind of weird and I thought I'd point it out with that we have determined pretty much how octarians are sanitized but what happens [Music] next after undergoing sanitization and injection of dummy information a subject has left no choice but to fully submit to the values and goals of coko what's more they are said to lack a pulse or any other signs of Life they're a bit like brainwashed zombies although they aren't quite dead as proven by Marina's efforts in side order the brains of the sanitized while lacking individual thought are still alive on some level once it amassed enough sanitized octarians Commander tarar began to distribute them throughout the test Chambers While most of them seemed to be placed right on the front lines not all of them were used as soldiers during their escape from the deep sea Metro Aid encountered a ton of sanitized octarians they were never meant to see including ones who appear to be serving as security guards CBO is a pretty massive facility after all it's likely that some of them were working behind the scenes transporting octarians or even helping to sanitize them and of course tarar had an octoling DJ known as dead fish produced music to be played throughout the facility it isn't exactly clear why they were given this role rather than simply being another Soldier but music in Splatoon has repeatedly been shown to be powerful the developers had previously suggested that DJ Octavio's music helped him control his own octarian forces by keeping a literal beat for them to march to and instill them with a sense of unity it's possible that dead fish's music was used for a similar purpose although that's pretty much pure speculation on my part so don't take that as a fact octarians had been getting sanitized for a long time before eight found themselves in the deep sea Metro we don't know exactly how long but considering tardar mentions how violent the inklings are and how they waste their time with hedonistic Lifestyles it seems like this all began sometime within the past 100 years after the end of the great Turf War something I haven't really touched on so far is the question of why eight was sanitized specifically why were they only put through the first step they were sanitized but never injected with dummy information and made into one of tarter's soldiers well this is partly speculation but it seems like this might have been done to every test subject remember isop podre also lost his memory upon arriving in the deep sea Metro and caboo rewards both him and eight with their own mcakes for completing tests in the events leading up to side order Marina managed to access a large Warehouse full of mem cakes of previous test subjects and as we've established M cakes are produced through sanitization it's possible and I would argue very likely that tarar stole the memories of everyone it captured so that it could use their mcakes as incentive for going along with its plan the fact that isop podre was able to produce mem cakes does seem to suggest that sanitization mem cakes and even soles are not something unique to the seapods which makes sense when considering all of the characters whose Souls were pulled into to the merse in side order but every person we see under tarter's control in Octo expansion does seem to be an octarian whether or not this is because other creatures couldn't be controlled or simply because tardar believed octarians to be most suitable for the role is unknown well actually that's not completely true not everyone tartar controlled was an octarian there was exactly one exception [Applause] [Music] when it comes to sanitization agent 3 is an enigma first of all there's like a lot of stuff that happens off screen during the end of octo expansion and it's not super obvious what's even going on as a quick reminder at the end of the game eight collects the four things Commander tartar assembles them into a massive blender and it encourages aen cuttlefish to step in side they do because they're stupid so Marina triggers a distress signal as a last Stitch effort to save them miraculously agent 3 appears smashes the blender and promptly gets knocked out seizing the opportunity eight super jumps through the whole agent three created leaving three and cuttlefish behind here's where things get a little less clear all we really have to go off is the dialogue heard through the radio as eight climbs to the surface to the best of my understanding tarar was damaged by agent 3's attack but slowly regains control somehow it manages to place a dollop of Blended ink on the unconscious agent 3's head to which cuttlefish says what are you doing to agent 3 agent 3 wakes up now under the control of tardar they tie up cuttlefish board a UFO and fly up out of the Metro after eight the logistics of agent 3 getting sanitized by a telephone are anyone's guess it seems like tarar may have had sanitized ink inside of it based on some concept art which might explain why it looks like this when it confronts Us in the nil statue but I can't say for sure regardless when eight makes it to the SP phase and begins riding the elevator we get the grand reveal of sanitized agent 3 I say sanitized in quotes because they somehow skip the part where they lose their memories tardar managed to hijack agent 3's mind without first removing the contents of their soul we know this because after the fact three's memory is completely intact eight simply has to shoot away at the Blended ink on their head and they're pretty much perfectly fine another strange thing about this fight is the mention of a special weapon limiter the agent 3 boss fight is basically a battle against a play AI that spam special weapons from Splatoon 2's multiplayer Marina mentions that agent 3 removed the limiter which is why they're able to use several different specials at the same time it's unclear if the special limiter is something built into the weapons themselves or if it is a limitation of inkling biology the Splatoon one art book has a line about the inuka special using ink acquired from inklings in heightened emotional states so it's possible that tarar is somehow pushing agent 3 beyond their natural limits but it's equally likely that Tarter just REM removed a hardware limitation after all we have evidence of the inkling government imposing restrictions on the weapons used in battles so the limiter might just be a physical part of a weapon kit used to balance weapons for competition we don't really have a solid answer but I figured it's worth bringing up as this might have some connection to sanitization and before anyone mentions it yes agent 3 can also use multiple specials in the inner agent 3 fight but this battle literally happens inside of Eight's mind it's a representation of how eight viewed agent 3 based on their memories from the Octavio Fight 2 years prior I personally don't think it should be used as Canon evidence of their capabilities we played as agent 3 in Splatoon 1 and we could only use one special at a time so I'm pretty sure the only Canon instance of the special limiter being removed is when three was under the control of Commander Tarter to address the bigger question though was agent 3 sanitized uh kind of but not really I don't blame the community for referring to this as sanitized agent 3 that's what I've always called it but they were never fully covered in sanitized like the method shown in hiara Walker and they certainly didn't go through the process described in Marina's Dev diary most importantly while they did temporarily lose their will they never lost their memory and that kind of makes sense this wasn't a controlled calculated procedure like it was for the sanitized octarians it was a sloppy desperate attempt from tartar to stop eight from escaping what we can conclude from this encounter is that Blended ink still has the ability to control minds even without removing a subject's memories whether or not this will ever matter for anything other than the agent 3 fight who knows all we know is that agents 3 and 8 got lucky they escaped to the surface and in doing so evaded tardar control every other victim of sanitization was left behind for years they wandered the depths of the deep sea Metro lacking purpose or will here they would remain until the events of Splatoon 3 and the launch of project memberse as an octoling herself Marina was reasonably disturbed by the strange appearance and behavior of the sanitized octarians and so after the events of octo expansion and Splatoon 2's final Fest Marina began work on a project to save them it took two whole years just to make the first prototype of what she called the merse a virtual world designed to store memories it took another year just to hack into Koko's database this is when Marina learned the details of sanitization we talked about earlier somewhat surprisingly Marina suggests that everyone she knew from octarian society may have already been captured and sanitized between the mass Exodus caused by the calamari incantation the victims of kamaboko and those who turned into mammals the octarian Army has had a pretty rough few years this might be why Nintendo called Splatoon 3 the end of The Saga it's possible there just aren't many octarians left to [Music] [Applause] fight at this time Marina actually went back to the deep sea Metro there she found all of the mem cakes from ch Boo's test subjects in a massive Warehouse unfortunately she had no way to determine which mcakes belong to which octarian and apparently she was under the impression that a single memake could come from the memories of multiple people eventually she came up with an idea by converting a m cake into Data she could upload the memory it contained to the members there it could be formatted in such a way that it would be compatible with octoling Souls at some point during her research Marina determined that difficult repetitive tasks proved effective for memory retention so she made a Rog light the Spire of order was basically designed as a form of treatment for sanitized octarians something to help them become whole again a user would enter the members where they would be assigned a pallet representing their soul memories would be sifted through their pallette leaving only compatible memories to choose from in the form of color chips by climbing the Spire completing tasks and filling out their pallette with color chips a user could reconnect with their lost memories and restore their soul of course we know that didn't go quite as planned but explaining the entire plot of side order is a bit outside the scope of this video what we need to look at is the stuff going on in the background in a recent developer interview art director SATA anoi confirmed that the cubes we see containing various memorabilia are in fact the extracted memories of the sanitized octarians as part of the m versus construction Marina included a facility to produce these blocks of memory and we can see them being created transported and destroyed on a number of floors Marina explains in her Dev diary that the process of sifting through memories requires them to First be mixed together which might be what's happening on this floor where we can see them getting ground up and stirred by a massive machine unfortunately while it was in control of the Spire order was having these memories incinerated the snow- likee substance we see outside is actually their ashes drifting down from the top floor in the end order is defeated and the Spire is able to serve its intended purpose but some memories were lost [Music] forever in Splatoon 2 sanitization allowed Commander tartar to execute much of its plan and Justified the existence of the octarian army eight faces in the deep sea Metro but like many aspects of ooto expansion there is also a deeper more personal side to this phenomenon the developers of Splatoon did not only ask how the brainwashing of masses of soldiers might affect the World At Large but also what it might be like to become one of those people I am of course talking about o known at first only by their stage named deadish o was yet another victim of sanitization but they were a bit of a special case ox's sanitization is something I often see being misunderstood by members of the Splatoon community so I'd like to make this very clear to this day I still see people who believe that OCTA was only partially sanitized retaining more of their original Self than the sanitized soldiers we fight in the game this is not true from what I can tell the idea was popularized by a rascus video in which they incorrectly translated a quote from that squid research lab Q&A it was an easy mistake to make and they would quickly correct themselves on both YouTube and Twitter unfortunately it seems like not everyone got the memo and I had people commenting on one of my videos years later trying to tell me dead fish was half sanitized so I don't know how much reach this video will get in the community but I would like to do my best to set the record straight here is the corrected translation of that quote from from the Q&A sanitization is to purge life's energies so that they no longer cause unnecessary hesitation and instability in the mind and to become part of the loyal Cibo Corporation it is said that dead fish wasn't against the idea of being sanitized and did it so that they could give up their doubts and conflicts about production and devote themselves entirely to music so originally this was translated as dead fish wanted to be partially sanitized when really it means that dead fish was partially willing to be Sanz ized this quote simply means that unlike most of the octarians captured by tartar there was some part of dead fish that accepted their assimilation this fact while admittedly obscure and unfortunately often misunderstood by the Western audience is kind of an essential element of ox's character o like almost every other sanitized octarian was brought up as a trainee in the octarian Army but OCT didn't want to be a soldier even without the influence of the salari incantation OCT saw through the boldness of the octarian regime despite their upbringing in the domes and their explicitly nationalist education o wasn't interested in becoming a loyal Cog in the machine unfortunately the domes were no place for a rebellious DJ O's passion for music and disregard for the octarian cause was frowned upon they were told that they were doing things wrong that they should be more diligent and focused they found themselves hiding away in a club Deep Underground where the noise of the city and the eyes of the authorities wouldn't reach them despite their Punk attitude it seems that o did internalize some of what they were told in the Spire of order they refer to themselves as a slacker often comparing themselves to the high achieving Marina while we still don't know much about life in the underground domes it's probably fair to say that the people living there weren't very happy but it seems like many octarians despite their situation were able to find a sense of purpose in their work by dedicating themselves to their schooling their training their loyalty to their home they could consider their lives worth living even Marina a friend of ox who seemed to have had some musical background before leaving the domes put most of her efforts toward doing what was expected of her she was an exceptional student and engineer who prior to deserting the Army served directly under DJ Octavio but o wasn't a soldier they weren't a scholar they were an artist and everyone they knew through words or actions told them that was wrong so so when confronted with the idea of sanitization they weren't entirely opposed faced with the weight of classmates colleagues a nation that did not accept them throwing away their inhibitions undergoing an ego death didn't sound so bad making music for No One But themsel marching to the sound of their own drum machine was exactly what they wanted for most people CBO and sanitization were a trap but for o it was an escape of course it wasn't what they really needed we don't know the details of ox encounter with tardar or if they really knew what they were getting into when asked about the deep sea Metro later on they remarked that they were forced to produce music there ox's life hadn't actually gotten any better they went from one oppressive regime to another but they still made that choice they sought that change o was not a fighter but they were also not a follower personally I see their decision to become sanitized as a final Act of rebellion even with their back against the wall they wouldn't give tarar what it wanted by refusing to test at all o denied tartar their data their DNA paradoxically when they gave up their will they proved just how strong it was this is why the distinction in that translation is so important to me O's choice to become fully sanitized is an extremely important aspect of their story and it makes their recovery y from sanitization that much more impactful when Marina deserted the Army she effectively abandoned everyone she had ever known including o they were mostly forgiving after the fact but they do mention being a little angry and honestly I think they're justified in feeling somewhat betrayed it took the creation of the members for Marina to mend this Bond she saved her old friend from their horrible decision and from O's Secret Letters it seems to have worked they're living on the surface they're back to making music they're finally able to be themsel I've seen a lot of people say they wish o played more of an active role in the events of side order and while I don't disagree I think understanding their story and what it means for all of the other sanitized octoling should not be overlooked OCT serves to add depth to the octarian people in the world of Splatoon as a whole like eight they're a reminder that every octene is a person with their own thoughts and feelings their own path through life knowing now the specifics of how sanitization Works retroactively adds a layer of tragedy but also hope to the story of octo expansion and we have Ed to thank for that to the best of my knowledge that's everything we know about sanitization if there's something I missed or got wrong I will correct myself in the pinned comment down below because the last thing I want to do is spread misinformation about the lore of this game to finish I just want to say that a ton of the information in this video and a ton of what we know about Splatoon lore in general comes from fan translations there's a lot of stuff that exists outside the game in Japanese only media and interviews and is left up to members of the community to convey this information to the Western audience I myself do not know any Japanese and I have a huge amount of respect and appreciation for everyone and Anyone who puts in the work to translate these details a massive shout out to rascus for their work translating those 2018 developer interviews and portions of the high carow Walker Art book shout out to magical girl FIA for translating the recent side order interview as well as octo plus Luna and the rest of the team that Faithfully reconstructed the entirety of High car Walker in English with proper type faces and formatting the dedication these people have to Splatoon lore is amazing and I wouldn't know half of the stuff I do about the series if not for their efforts the link to the aforementioned High carow Walker translation will be in the description along with all of the translators social media accounts I hope this video taught you something new about the world of Splatoon or at least gave you a new perspective on some of its characters before now I haven't really made a video that just documents information from the game so let me know if you enjoyed this style and if there are any other aspects of squid lore you would like me to cover until next time thanks for watching this has been Cosmic farewell [Music]