Theory #3: Secret of the Green Family (Harvest Moon: 64)

In Harvest Moon: 64, there lives a family of ranchers who gives you a horse and sells you cows and chickens. This family has three people living in the Green Ranch; the young bachelorette Ann, her antisocial brother Gray, and their father Doug. All three of them lives peacefully in Flowerbud village making a living selling animals and participating in the jockey races twice a year. While this family seems happy and peaceful, evidence shows that these people are keeping a deep dark secret from the rest of the village. And somehow, they are making it their problem in the background.

To expose this secret, we will need to start from the beginning and follow the clues. During one of my earliest playthroughs of Harvest Moon: 64, I was able to get all five marriage candidates to pink heart level. I really enjoyed watching all the cutscenes, and smiling in awe as the girls act cute around my character. My favorite cutscene is when the girls are confessing their feelings to Pete. But during Ann’s confession, she tells Pete how she feels and asks how he feels. If you say that you feel the same, Ann will ask Pete to prove it. Pete moves close to give Ann a hug or kiss, but she hits him and demands a blue feather.

I will need to remind you that Ann does not hit your character lightly, she knocks the living daylights out of Pete and lays him out on the ground!

The way Ann hits Pete may be excessive, but we all laughed it off as if it was a joke. Many of us watched anime and laughed at the common tomboy stereotype beats up her boyfriend. Even Gwen from Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland punches you in the face if you let an animal die on your farm. But I will need to remind you that Gwen hits your character out of anger, Ann does it because she is in love. And this is not the only time Ann uses violence on someone she cares for deeply.

It was a tough choice, but I had my character marry Popuri. I had all the other girls marry their rivals, Ann married Cliff and had a baby. One day when I was talking to Cliff, I noticed his portrait has a weird mark on his face. Cliff also mentions that he got the mark from Ann during an argument or something like that. At this point, Ann’s behavior is not funny anymore. This is now a pattern of domestic violence.

So we’ve confirmed that Ann likes to strike her partner for pretty much no reason, but what about Gray? For obvious reasons, there is no direct evidence of domestic violence. Even so, Harvest Moon: 64 does leave small and subtle hints that shows Gray may be perfectly capable of it once provoked. The game shows that Gray is antisocial and always have a chip on his shoulder. Supposedly, Gray fell of a horse and got injured to the point where he can no longer ride them. You will never see him get violent, but there are times when he or other people around him act quite suspicious.

The clue I found was when I started to have my character befriend Popuri’s family. Lillia is happy to see your character getting along with Popuri and supports them being together. Lillia drops a few hints on Popuri’s personality traits, hoping that it will help your character marry her. One of the things she mentions is that Popuri is attracted to men who are aggressive. This is a very weird thing to add to the game, but I didn’t think too much about it. I kinda wrote it off as a translation error.

On the next playthrough of Harvest Moon: 64, I had my character marry Elli. At this point, I discovered that Popuri marries Gray. This I found to be infinitely strange. I thought Lillia said Popuri likes aggressive men? Gray is so quiet and antisocial that I cannot imagine him trying to aggressively pursue anyone, let alone Popuri. Popuri seems to be more aggressive than Gray is. . . Until you realize that “aggressive” has more than one meaning. Ann treats her lovers aggressively, is this a subtle way that Harvest Moon: 64 is trying to tell us that Gray is the same way?

There is also two other details that makes me believe that Gray is capable of violence. Once I watched one of Popuri and Gray’s cutscenes. As Popuri is trying to get to know Gray, he tells her (and I am quoting him directly) “. . . I wouldn’t get close if I were you.” This is quite an aggressive tone against someone he is attracted to. Gray must know what he is capable of, and tries to warn his love interest that he would rather her not get involved with him. But he falls in love anyways and marries Popuri. But the real odd detail is not in Harvest Moon: 64, but in Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility. In this game, Gray is older and living in Waffle Town while giving no explanation as to why he moved there. He is also not an eligible marriage candidate, which tells me that he either is or was married. Perhaps something happened in Flowerbud Village that forced him to leave his family?

Lets use our imagination a bit. Gray is no longer living in Flowerbud Village, and he’s not interested in marriage. This leads me to believe that he either is or was married to Popuri. If this is the case, what could have happened that caused him to leave his wife and daughter behind? (Yes, Gray and Popuri do have a daughter named Mint.) When I ask this question, I keep remembering Gray’s warning to Popuri pleading her to stay away from him. Could it be possible that he might have hurt his wife in a fit of anger? Once the villagers found out what he has done, they forced him to leave and never return? While there is no direct evidence that any of this is true, why would Harvest Moon add in so many odd details without context or explanation?

We now have Ann who likes to hit her love interests, and we have Gray who warns Popuri to keep away from him. This begs the question; why do these two act this way? As I pondered this question, I also asked myself; where is their mother? The game clearly explains that she died, but of what? I would normally not think about this too much, there are plenty of deceased parents in the Harvest Moon series. But seeing that Ann and Gray would grow up so mentally disturbed, I cannot accept that she just simply died. . . Unless her death is the reason they are that way.

Once again, lets use our imagination. What if Doug was a violent and controlling man and caused the death of his wife? What if Ann and Gray watched their father abuse their mother as they grew up? Is it possible that something horrible happened to their mother, and they were sworn to secrecy to protect Doug? This would explain Ann and Gray’s odd behavior. They do their absolute best to live in Flowerbud Village peacefully, but their violent memories leave their minds scarred and broken. They can’t always handle their past, and they end up taking it out on their own lovers.

I believe that Ann and Gray continue to keep their family secret to protect their father. The sad consequence of this is that they never get the help they need, and they end up just passing the baton to the next generation. And this is all that I have to say about this theory, but we are not done talking about Flowerbud Village’s dark secrets. Funny how we noticed that Gray is not the only one living in Waffle Town, running away from the village she was born in. And in my own opinion, her story is the most shocking of all the hidden lore of Harvest Moon: 64.