I've pondered about this game for many years. Truthfully, I've been a fan and disciple of Pixel for a few years now. We all know Cave Story, Guxt, and such. But one game that really stood out to me out of all of Pixel's great works is the game JiLJiL.
On the outside, it seems to be a program that has little to no reason. It's about a cat-worm that runs away from cat-paws to hit a lemon and score points. Once you get hit, your score is recorded in the game's short term memory, and if it's a high score, the program will remind you of this. Is this really all that there is to this game?
Many nights I've lost sleep over this enigma of a game program. I've skipped classes. I'm currently in danger of failing college due to the time I've missed. My cat is even dying due to me forgetting to feed it (the cat's name is also JiL). But one bright day, when I was going over my old history books, I accidentally got a nasty papercut. That papercut made me bleed. A lot. The blood dripped down the paper and led a stain. Not only did it leave a stain on my book, however - it left a stain on my very soul. For you see, blood is red. And red can only mean one thing:
Communism.
Yes. That's why those cat paws are that same blood-red color. It's not a coincidence that Pixel made those paws that color. But what, you ask, could the cat-worm represent? Only Communism's eternal Nemesis (excuse the pun): America. That's why the cat-worm is blue. That is why we control America, the good guy, the protagonist. So what exactly does the lemon represent? To figure that out, we need to dig a little bit deeper into the history of the struggles against Communism, and the nature of the game.
I played the game five hours straight that day. The thoughts were rushing through my head, but none of them made since. I waited, and waited, and strained myself to my limits. And then, my finger sent a sharp pain up my arm: I had been using the wounded finger to play the game. And that was when I discovered the chapter that my finger had bled on:
The Vietnam War.
That is exactly what the lemon represents. Throughout the history of the Vietnam War, America tried several attempts to nudge the country towards the side of goodness, Democracy. The nudges represent the score you achieve by the literal nudges against the lemon. And the score kept going up, and up, and up...but the red-paws never relented their assault on America. Eventually, America had to give up because Congress decide to be a bunch of butthurt faggots and call him out of the war. This is represented by you having to leave the game client when your mother asks you to take a shower.
So that is what I truly believe is the deeper meaning to Pixel's game. I really think Pixel is a great man. His social commentaries and allegories in his works should definitely be recorded in the book of history as having such a significant impact on the lives of everyone in the entire universe.
