30/12/2021
For those of you who don’t know about Mauritius, I don’t blame you. It’s a small island nation, slightly bigger than the size of London, situated off the coast of Madagascar (a place made popular by the film of the same name, which, like Animal Crossing, was about animals trying to find somewhere to call home). It was formed some 10 million years ago, from a volcano, and is covered in telltale black basalt. If you were wondering about all those dark boulder formations you see, as you wander your own island in New Horizons, it’s because of the game’s Mauritian influence.
Unfortunately I can’t say that the plane that takes me and my family to Mauritius is flown by a pair of dodos, but I challenge you to not love two of Animal Crossing’s newest characters, Orville and Wilbur—who regularly encourage the question, “What would dodos do?” Dodo’s were indeginous birds that lived on Mauritius, and boy does my country profit from it. Dodo key rings, dodo T-shirts, anything. It’s nice to see the people of my country are taking a new leaf out of Tom Nook’s book, by profiting wherever they can. So I was shocked to find out about the dynamic duo of dodos Orville and Wilbur, who fly you to the island—and on a seaplane no less. Seaplanes are often used in Mauritius, to get to the surrounding islands, such as Rodrigues and Réunion. I don’t know what’s more ironic: the fact that the pilots are flightless birds or that they are named after the inventors of the world’s first airplane, Orville and Wilbur Wright. In Japanese, the two are called MÅrÄ« (モーリー) and RodrÄ« (ãƒãƒ‰ãƒªãƒ¼), respectively referencing Mauritius and Rodrigues.
