What is short, green, bald, and likes to stab you with a chef's knife? For the lay person, this makes for a bizarre riddle, but any fan of Final Fantasy will immediately belt out the correct answer.
The Tonberry is one of Final Fantasy's most memorable and bizarre creatures. In most appearances, the Tonberry is a little green man in brown cloth robes who carries a lantern thrust in front of it and a small butcher knife in the right hand, hanging idly at its side. Only standing three or four feet tall, the Tonberry hardly appears to be a threat of any significance, especially since all it seems to do is shuffle slowly towards the characters.
I well recall my first encounter with a Tonberry. It was in Final Fantasy VII. I was fighting my way through the Northern Crater, which is infamous for having no save points except one that you create. As a rule the enemies in the Northern Crater are more difficult than others in the game, able to deal party-slaughtering status effects like doom, break, and confuse, but the little green guy with the lantern seemed pretty unassuming. He just walked around the battle screen, which I thought was pretty cool because no other monster did that. He really looked like a waddling, green, penguin with glowing eyes. I was pretty deep in the dungeon by this point and had been leveling my Materia for over an hour. I was pumped up in both levels and abilities and even the tricky Zombie Dragons were falling quickly before me. The guy in front of me was a little creepy with his lantern and his butcher's knife, but hardly as threatening as an undead dragon. So I was fairly unconcerned as he inched his way closer to my party.
Then he reached out and stabbed. Full party death. Hours of progress lost. After that, I developed a healthy fear of little men with knives.
Actually, this was my second encounter with the little bastards. The first time was in the American version of Final Fantasy 6, where they were called "Pugs" and "Master Pugs." These names make more sense than "Tonberry," as pug meant imp or sprite (circa 1616) and may have developed as a misspelling of the Shakespearian trickster Puck. Looking at a Tonberry and their method, it is understandable that they would be named after trickster imps. However, that's just the American version of one game. By Final Fantasy 7, the names had been standardized and have remained Tonberry since (except for one import of Final Fantasy V where they are called Dingleberry, but I'm not touching that). This makes them the most bizarrely named creature in the series. Most monsters have clear mythological roots or are easily recognizable as satire, like the Marlboros. The only word that's even remotely related is Tonburi, a reddish plant whose seeds make a very popular garnish in Japanese cuisine and are sometimes called "land caviar" for their similarity in texture to fish eggs. There is a possibility that the fish tails that many Tonberrys have is a subtle reference to this nickname, but if this is true, it is like an inside joke between the creator and himself.
The design of the Tonberry is easier to trace and much more enlightening as to the inspiration behind the character. The green coloring and small size is common to monsters and goblins, so no one should read too deeply into that. But the lantern is an intriguing element. Most of the Western world knows the myth of the Will-o-the-Wisp, the phantom lights that lead travelers astray in swamps. Another name for these creatures was "pwca," pronounced puck or pug, which referred to a type of small, mischievous, goblin (that carried a lantern in order to trick wanderers).
The Japanese had their own versions of the phantom lights, influenced heavily by Chinese legends about sages using lights to show lost spirits the way to the other dimension. In the ancient myths, these spirits sometimes came back to Earth to try and lure former lovers and friends to the land of the dead. These ghost stories became especially popular in Japan during the Golden Age of Kabuki theater (1673-1841). One in particular, the Yotsuya Kaidan, features the ghost of a deformed woman named Oiwa. The classic Ukiyo-E and wood block artwork of Oiwa shows her as hunched, with large eyes and a balding head, huddled under a kimono and emerging from a lantern.
While the Tonberry may not be a direct translation of Oiwa, it is highly probable that inspiration was unconsciously drawn from this extremely popular image, not to mention other ghost plays and the subsequent art work that was produced in their wake. In fact, Yoshitaka Amano, prior to his work on Final Fantasy, was best known for his folk-lore illustrations, an art he continues today. In 2006-2007, he was a key animator for an anime remake of Yotsuya Kaidan and while his Oiwa bears little resemblance to a little green man, it is further proof that he is very aware of the traditional artistic style of these tales.
The significance of the knife and the cloth robe are harder to pin down. The robe bears a remarkable similarity to the classic portrayal of friar's robes (with the image being particularly apt in Final Fantasy Tactics) but this could be due to the simplicity of the clothing's design. The knife is almost certainly an homage to the horror genre. In older horror stories, the murder weapons were often expensive daggers, poisons, or family swords and played extremely important parts in the plots. These were the symbols of court intrigue and were engineered to allow an audience to enjoy the thrill of the murder without feeling too attached to it. The cleaver is a retort to this kind of "noble horror." The aesthetic of the cleaver is that of the "everyday murderer." It removes the barrier between the story and the audience, forcing them to see the horror at a more personal level. After all, anyone can grab a kitchen knife or a wood-axe and split a skull with it. In our modern world, it is these more common items which have become the true symbol of horror. Seeing one in the hand of the awkward Tonberry adds a disturbing element to the character, hinting at danger slowly coming closer.
The Tonberry is so memorable because it is a unique creature, drawing inspiration from many different lore, legends, and traditions. It is not an interpretation of a pre-existing monster but something completely new and undefinable. The Tonberry is one of the creepiest creatures in a Final Fantasy game simply because it is not a dragon or a demon. We do not recognize it, so we don't know what to expect from it. We only get subtle hints, mostly ones aimed at our subconscious, that something about this creature is dangerous. It caught me off guard on that first encounter. I imagine other players have had similar experiences. I imagine they won't forgot them.
This article's image was provided by Hylian Knight246
