LBMR stands for Layton Brothers Mystery Renaissance

Curious Village was truly ahead of its time considering the whole British “people” meme

CT’s back from the dead to analyze tf outta these images

Thank you to @call-me-rucy for making me aware of Level-5’s tweets with your post.

To open, I agree with @mysticpuzzleno001 that this desk very likely does not belong to Professor Layton. I also noticed the mug with the tea bag at first glance, and thought that it wasn’t the Professor’s style considering he’s a tea connoisseur who likes brewing loose tea.

I also thought that he’s not the type of person to keep mint gum lying around. No evidence for this, just that he never struck me as the type of person who likes chewing gum.

What else is in this image? There are a bunch of photos, and the only comprehensible one is of some buildings. I’m not sure what that thing with the recycling logo is, but it’s possible that it’s a pack of paper, a cardboard package, or a pizza box. If it’s a pizza box, that seems like the type of thing Al and Lucy might have in their office.

Lastly, I can’t tell what the shape on the bottom right is, but it’s outlined much thicker than the rest of the drawing. This leads me to believe that it might be part of a character, since manga artists, especially those working in black and white, want to make their simple, cartoonish characters contrast against the realistic and detailed background. Maybe it’s a shoulder with a short cuffed sleeve? The shadow implied that this shape is in front of/over the table, but it’s hard to tell what it is, especially with the angle of the drawing.

People have pointed out that this isn’t the Yard as it appears in any Professor Layton game nor LMJ/LMDA, but we’ve never seen the outside of the building in Mystery Room. I’m not sure how significant this is since they love to inconsistently redesign the Yard for no reason, but if it’s deliberate then it’d rule out Hershel and Kat as possible protagonists of this manga.

Who/what do I think it’s about?

Considering the overall tone of these drawings, I feel like they’re too serious and down-to-earth to be part of Katrielle’s world and more realistic than the Professor’s. Level-5 once said that they’re either done making PL games or PL’s adventures period (correct me which one), so if his years as a protagonist are over, I can’t imagine him getting a new manga.

Kat is predictable as a main character since the last two installments were about her, but her stories are always bright and bubbly, which doesn’t line up with the messy desk covered in papers and the rainy image of London. Katrielle doesn’t look at evidence and do paperwork, she runs outside and talks to everyone she sees on the street instead and gets right to the scene. The weather is also always uncharacteristically good in her world (someone’s clearly never been to London).

This leaves me with two possibilities. It’s extremely likely that this manga will be about LBMR. LMJ and LMDA both teased a LBMR sequel in Katrielle’s correspondence with Lucy in the game and Lucy and Al showing up at the agency in the last episode of the anime. The images of the desk and Yard match their story because, y’know, they work at the yard and their desks are typically covered in papers. They do their detective work in the mystery room rather than the field, and it’s in character for them to have things like bag tea, mint gum, and what is possibly a pizza box covered in yet more paper. We’ve never seen their Yard (seriously, does the Scotland Yard have multiple locations in the Laytonverse?), and this serious, realistic style matches the style of their game.

Second option. The manga isn’t about any of the three Laytons at all. They never said it would be. As an avid, unapologetic pusher of the Flora Main Character agenda, I’d love to see a new face solving the mysteries. I’m assuming this manga will be canon to the rest of the series, in which case I really hope some old characters at least show up. I want to see them again, and it’s quite frankly weird that we haven’t yet.

Overall, I think a “sequel” of sorts to LBMR is the most likely subject to the new manga. I might rb this post with updates when new teaser images come out, though, especially if my theory changes.

mysticpuzzleno000:

Professor Layton has a steampunk and archaeology adventure

Katrielle has an upbeat casual london adventure

Alfendi has a mystery murder investigation

So then…

What if Flora gets a mystery light-horror adventure?

100x this. I have had this exact same thought before, same brain.

If you think about it, Curious Village could easily be a light horror if it were written and art-directed in a different tone. Flora’s mom dies when she’s young and is replaced by an uncanny robot clone, and then her dad dies, leaving her and Bruno as the only humans in a walled off village in the middle of nowhere filled with robots. She’s stuck there, living at the top of a scarily tall tower as the prize in a game her late father set up where the winner gets his inheritance and her rather than leaving it to her, his next of kin. Two guys play the game, and neither of them are there for her, luckily or unluckily depending on how you look at it. One of them wrecks her tower where she could’ve died. After practically being raised by robots, she leaves the village with this guy and has to adjust to human society in a big city. Doesn’t help that her “guardian” leaves her, having separation anxiety, alone all the time because she gets kidnapped so frequently. Plenty to work with here.

Every protag’s game feels like the way they see the world, and since Flora’s so cheerful all the time, it’d be fun if her game had a super messed up plot worse than Mystery Room’s with a super happy tone like Mystery Journey. Flora loves murder novels, and she sees “serious investigations” as fun adventures. Plus, whenever something terrible happens to her she tends to come out kinda miffed rather than straight up traumatized. Imagine her going to a Forebodium style crime scene and starting to investigate it “Katrielle looking for Madame Dublee’s lost pet” style.

Professor Layton Syndrome is when you see some unanswered question or Thing That Is Deliberately Being Kept Secret in your everyday life and your brain goes puzzle? Puzzle for me? Mystery to solve? Which leads to going full detective mode and results in, “that’s a hell of a mystery no one thought a mystery and didn’t even really need solving. But damn if it didn’t just get solved so nice work.“

dragon-pawz:

Show me your favorite Professor Layton screenshots or sprites immediately

1) official LINE stickers, duh

2) I’m so glad I didn’t delete the Claudia sprite sheet I keep in my camera roll

Constance Doves’s Fortune

This is a question that comes up pretty often, and for good reason: where did Constance Dove get all that money? We don’t know anything about her other than her social status, that she was a good adoptive mother, and that she died. She sounds sweet and unassuming, but is basically just a plot device to explain why Clive is rich. Now this could be seen as more of a fic prompt than a theory, but could Clive be continuing/repurposing something that she started?

Look, Future London is massive. The construction is unfinished, as you can see on “Midland Road”, but the drainpipes and grates are rusted, and there are full grown trees out in the distance. You could say Dimitri and Clive got them like that on purpose, but what if they didn’t? Do you really think a city can be popped up in just ~5 years, even with infinite money at your disposal? What if Future London was a project started by Constance for whatever reason, and the whole thing was included in Clive’s inheritance?

Why would she build this? It would have to be for something both literally and figuratively underground. According to her anecdotally good nature, maybe she was trying to evade the corrupt government by building a secret community exempt from the law, housing people and letting them live on their own terms. It would explain why the residents didn’t seem like actors so much as people who have lived there for a long time, participating in an established community.

This is where the “theory” gets kind of edgy. Clive’s gang goes by the vague name of “The Family”. You’d think they’d have his name in front as families typically do. He somehow built up a functional organized crime ring in those ~5 years as well? It’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Spring and Cogg said that they loyally worked for the Dove family, right? What family? It was just Constance until she adopted Clive. What if The Family is short for The Dove Family, and it’s been around much longer than Clive? It would explain how organized and powerful it is, but it would also explain why Spring and Cogg didn’t seem too bothered by the underground city. They expressed guilt and horror at Clive’s terrorism plan, but not anything going on before that.

Back to the topic of the post, what if Constance’s massive fortune came from illegal activity? That way, someone could make a ridiculously obscene amount of money even at an old age. All of this could have been part of Clive’s inheritance, repurposed by him for his revenge plan, disregarding any of the original intent behind it.

Or Constance could’ve just made all that money from selling both soap andchocolate.

DaBabette

RIP Augustus Reinhold you would have loved the Mii Channel

Flora: please, Professor. Can I come just this once?

Layton: my dear, it’s too dangerous.

Flora: but I’ve never been in 3D before. Please, at least let me see what it’s like?

Layton: this adventure being in 3D is precisely why I can’t let you come. You and Paul are the only ones left, the only ones still safe…

Flora: safe? From whom?

Layton: that man… @dearesthershel…

https://r7.whiteboardfox.com/7613464-6174-7481

Whiteboard Fox

In an attempt to introduce some low-key yet interactive fandom activities, here’s a live whiteboard for collaborative PL shitposting. Go crazy, and I cannot stress this enough, go stupid.

I’m considering posting a static image of what it becomes after a while, but for the time being please be respectful of other people’s doodles, only erase your own, don’t add on to marked drawings, don’t vandalize, and for the love of god don’t clear the board. FYI: It takes a moment to load, and the canvas is infinite. Have fun!

Some of the villains of LBMR wish you a very 4kids Valentine’s Day

Damn, where’s this elevatortime machine taking us?

Don Paolo

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

• Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

A Hintcoin for Your Thoughts

• The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.
• True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.
• Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.
• Beasley is not a bee I wrotea post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Theory: Beasly isn’t a bee

• Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.
• Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.
• Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.
• All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.
• Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

• The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.
• Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.
• The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.
• Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.
• Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.
• The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.
• Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.
• Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.
• Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

• Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.
• Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.
• Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.
• The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.
• Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.
• You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.
• Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”
• Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

• Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.
• Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.
• Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)
• Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.
• Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.
• London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.
• Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.
• Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

Professor Layton iceberg

PL fandom, but in a slump - Group Chat on Tumblr

I know a lot of us are feeling pretty out of it lately; there’s a lot going on in the world and students are in the heat of the school year. I made this chat for everyone too tired or busy to contribute to the Layton fandom right now, so hopefully we could keep things moving just by casually chatting.

Professor Layton Megamind AU where Paul is Megamind

idk I haven’t figured out the rest

Another unpopular opinion: Level 5 has consistently done Flora dirty in just about every dub of the games. I say this is unpopular because I know some people like her voice is other languages, but listening to different samples of her speaking… they’re all unappealing. She sounds like she smoked a pack and then inhaled a balloon. Lani Minella’s American accent whispering is one thing, but the rest of them aren’t too great either imo. At least the new CVHD cutscenes sounded a bit better.

Professor Hershel Layton and Luke Triton!!!