Tokyo - Inkopolis Locations

[radiant anchor]

so TIL the map of inkopolis/inkadia actually lines up extremely well with that of tokyo and tokyo bay, so I tried to make a map of where locations in the splatoon world are located relative to their IRL counterparts

i might post this to the sub later so im asking if anyone's got like adjustments or anything they think should be made to the map

not everything lines up 1:1 so i tried to guesstimate the scale of a lot of these ;A;

also the coastlines dont line up bc of Sea Level Rising™️

[rose flicker]

It's said that Alterna was built in the caverns of an extinct vulcano, so it'd fit quite well. Where else can you find a vulcano so close to the ocean? Aside from islands.

[radiant anchor]

mhm! and it lines up almost perfectly with mt. fuji as well in the map

[rose flicker]

Exactly. And the risen sea levels at one point and the lower sea levels at another point? Dunno...
But Tokio also has an Eifel Tower replica, so that'd fit as well.

[hazy sparrow]

It wouldn’t make that much sense if it was in Tokyo because of one simple thing: the person on the intercom in alterna is speaking English

Not only that the voice has a British accent

Unless Japan in the future speaks English it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be there

I myself have been looking at the full map of the Splatoon world and I will sometime soon look at the globe you can see in the Mr grizz fight in ROTM

[rose flicker]

I assume Alterna became a melting pot of different people. And since English is/was the language of the world, it'd make sense to let the announcer (and by extension O.R.C.A) speak English.

[hazy sparrow]

I have circled all the possible locations that inkcadia could be, I will however after getting a good look at the globe model try to narrow it down to places similar to the colored alterna log photo

[latent umbra]

remember that inkadia is a rough draft for the devs to work off of

sheldon has an actual map doesn't he

what about that

oh wait

thats

nvm nvm

[radiant anchor]

i probably should've shown this first but the japanese map actually labels a lot more land features that point to it being tokyo

this for example says "yokosuka peninsula" （ヨコスカ半島）which lines up with the real yokosuka peninsula in tokyo

this says "chiba" which again lines up with "chiba" in tokyo bay

@hazy sparrow

i found this out from a tweet from rassicas https://twitter.com/rassicas/status/1567599303191072768?s=20&t=gXg6D44-Sh4dEQbEFgsJyw

🦞🦀🦑カイ🦑🦀🦞 (@rassicas)

Theres a lower res map that has areas that are unlabeled in the higher res map?? "Yokosuka Peninsula" "Chi Ba Region"
after years of debate we can finally rest. this is where inkopolis and the splatlands are. tokyo. the tokyo to atami comparison was literal. there it is.

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Twitter · Sep 7, 2022, 7:42 PM

[wide otter]

wait, that would mean what we thought was the ruins of the Eiffel Tower was actually the Tokyo Tower, then?

[meager steeple]

Yee! Plus the area Splatsville is based on kinda looks like, well, Splatsville, lol.

I could NOT live in a city THIS dense lmao

I literally live in the densest region in my entire country, hell, the entire landmass, and we're about six times less dense than this.

I think Splatsville captured the vibe perfectly

[radiant anchor]

it rlly did omg

[radiant anchor]

probably! they do look more or less the same without the paint after all (tho dont ask me how it got all the way to mt. fuji)

[flat glade]

"lines up well". It's canon that it's tokyo. That's why you se tokyo tower upside down outside splatsville.

[radiant anchor]

i brought that up later, i know its canon from the JP map

[jovial condor]

Oh that means I used to live at around inkopolis bay

Yes, I lived in Japan before

[maiden ruin]

yeah wasn't it confirmed that it takes place in japan

with the lake and everything

[hybrid tapir]

Actually splatsville wasn’t based on Japan (location wise yes but not the city)

It was based on a now non existent slum in Taiwan or honkong i’m not sure

Idk how to write it in English but here’s the Japanese name for it

九龍城砦

[meager steeple]

Splatsville sure has a lot of skyscrapers and AC units for a slum.

[paper nacelle]

that's the post-splatocalypse gentrification

[hybrid tapir]

actually i’m not sure if it was actually based on it

but i think it is heavily inspired

[hybrid tapir]

also, do you mind if i ask the name of where specifically this is?

Looking at the map it should be somewhere in yamanashi but idk since it looks like literally every single japanese city lmao

[viscid crystal]

Japan and the Eiffel Tower is in the Splatlands for some reason

[wide otter]

you mean the Kowloon Walled City (formerly) in Hong Kong?

[hybrid tapir]

Yes

[ember mural]

i think that the tower in game looks different to Tokyo tower, I think they new what they where doing when they made the model for the Eiffel tower

[latent umbra]

isnt the s1 tower based off tokyo tower

[unkempt moon]

Tokyo’s based of nagasaki or hiroshima I think, well at least 1 place was

[hybrid tapir]

kabooms

[radiant anchor]

kabooma

[unkempt moon]

in pokemon

[radiant anchor]

but yeah heres some takeaways:

• inkopolis is set in modern day funabashi-chiba/east tokyo
• western parts of tokyo got cratered (nuked probably?) and formed the north/northwest part of inkopolis bay
• everything southwest of tokyo became the splatlands desert
• splatsville is in modern day kofu, in a valley
• alterna is located under the cratered remnants of mt. fuji (with tokyo tower inside of it)

possibilities and speculation:

• octo canyon is probably around lake chuzenji/mount shirane
• octo valley might be in lake inawashiro
• pearl’s house might be in on the imperial palace island

[paper nacelle]

how did mount nantai get transplanted so far south

[hybrid tapir]

Geographic nonsense I guess

[teal plover]

the kanji for irl mt nantai and the mt nantai in splatoon are different (splatoon's "nantai" kanji means mollusk) so its probably just coincidental and not actually the same mountain

[lyric seal]

it could just be a pun they added on

[unkempt moon]

Just because the eiffel tower was in the area doesn’t mean that inkopolis is in france

The world flooded over which could’ve transferred the eiffel tower from country to country

[latent umbra]

but its unlikely though

unless the eiffel tower was underwater but now its not cause the sea levels went down

[paper nacelle]

do not forget world wars three through five not to mention various non-flooding natural disasters

could have been a freak supermassive hurricane

[rose flicker]

Do you know how many Eifel Tower-like Towers exist in the world?
At least 4: 1 in Japan, 1 in China, 1 in Las Vegas, 1 in Paris

And I certainly missed a few.

[latent umbra]

thousands.

[rose flicker]

I didn't say Eifel Tower-esque, I said Eifel Tower-like.
There's a difference.

[latent umbra]

[unkempt moon]

Wow I never knew that the eiffel tower was POWERful

[kindred trench]

Tokyo Tower do be flipped

[fervent oyster]

I saw mount nantai today

[paper nacelle]

did you hear 's voice echoing?

[fervent oyster]

There’s a famous waterfall nearby that we went to go see

[viscid crystal]

@teal plover Hello there! Glad to see you're in this server too lol.

I see you're a friend of Smadvil as well.

[teal plover]

i do know them yes👍

[hybrid tapir]

Oh hello rassicas!
I Love your videos

You’re quite literally the only person that gets the Japanese aspects of the lore right

[viscid crystal]

That's rad. Your translation stuff is top-notch by the way. I assume you're fluent in Japanese in that case?

[teal plover]

nope

[viscid crystal]

🤔

[hybrid tapir]

Could I know Where you learned Japanese?

[teal plover]

On and off in school for several years and self study, started taking it more seriously in college
studied abroad for a year
also majored in linguistics in college because I'm interested in translation and localization
And right now I recently started another 2 year exchange to Japan. going to language school to git gud

For my translations I usually use a web translator and I know enough to be able to tell if and where the auto translation is wrong, and then I do further research from there to fix it
this is a real translation method and I no longer feel imposter syndrome after seeing how poorly nintendo translated their own splatoon base website LOL

[hybrid tapir]

that’s incredible! i don’t see a lot of youtubers that are able to translate and comprehend japanese parts of games and it always bugs me when they get the definition of something ever so slightly wrong. But your videos are so in depth and never gets something wrong when it comes to translations and understanding what’s written. I’m japanese and i don’t see this alot on the internet, especially on splatoon. As for the web translation stuff, i do that too, like a lot lmao. I’m trilingual and can do english japanese and french but when i’m too lazy to think in french i just mash out a paragraph on deepl or something then correct the small imperfections myself. Also, I can confirm nintendo’s translate team did the website horrible lmao

i’d love to have a full on conversation with you in japanese one day

actually, my brother is currently studying in linguistics, seems like he’s having fun with that and philosophy lol

[viscid crystal]

You've been doing the Splatoon community a favor, haha.

[fervent oyster]

I’m fluent in Japanese and my hobby is Japanese literature, if I can help translate let me know…

Have read maybe 50-60,000 pages of Japanese text

[wide otter]

wait rassicas was here? cool

weirdly enough, despite having visited Tokyo I never thought about the map lining up with IRL Tokyo

[grave condor]

I can definitely say that it isn't the Tokyo Tower.

The middle part gives it away.

Too different.

The model also has the name "EffelTower," so I think it's intended to be based off of the Eiffel Tower itself.

Though that isn't to say that it can't be a replica. China, as mentioned above, has made close imitations.

There's an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to Eiffel Tower replicas and derivatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower_replicas_and_derivatives

There is a close replica of the Eiffel Tower in Tobu World Square, at 1/25 scale.

[latent umbra]

the las vegas eiffel tower that gru stole

[unkempt moon]

It’s a power pole

[grave condor]

That's interesting.

I measured the tower in Blender, exporting the model with Switch Toolbox.

Ignoring the broken bits of tower, the first and second platforms measure to about 158.947 meters.

I used an inkling model for comparison, 1.69117 meters from top of head to base of heel.

I did the same thing downloading the models from Model Resource. They are considerably smaller; the inkling model there only measured to a mere 0.042976 meters, while the tower was 4.10653 meters.

The size ratio between them seems to be the roughly the same, with a small deviation in the ratio which I think is from human error when measuring.

It's interesting, because the Eiffel Tower's real size between its first and second platforms is about 40 meters shorter than the model in game.

[grave condor]

Then again, the measurements might be off. Iso Padre in the files seems to be a lot bigger than he is in-game, and I am unaware of why that's the case.

[teal plover]

thats really cool! id love to be fluent like that someday. if youre serious, there is a dev interview from 2015 that ive been wanting to translate in its entirety, but havent been able to find the time lately

[teal plover]

yeah, ive noticed theres some size weirdness afoot with the in game models, like capn cuttlefish's model in the files being bigger than in game for OE. splatoon team seems to take liberties when scaling stuff in game (look at how big the sparrows are compared to the supposedly 5ft tall inklings)

[grave condor]

In any case, we can at least confirm that the Eiffel Tower is tall.

There's something else that's been bugging me, though. We know that the location of Inkadia is in Tokyo, but where is Tokyo geographically in Splatoon 3's Earth?

engiSonic had a separate thread called "Realistic Maps of Earth (LARGE IMAGES)" about the new world continents.

[fervent oyster]

Could you send it over? I might have time depending on how long it is

[teal plover]

theres an interview with two parts from 2015 that talks a bit about the background behind the design of the characters and the world. it is pretty long. linked is the translation doc for part 2
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n9m30v22Uzb5D_8lZarGFl8NfIMicix2bLaCbNCXQUQ/edit?usp=sharing

[teal plover]

i did see the world map yeah, its probably not too far from where irl tokyo is geographically

[grave condor]

Very curious.

[teal plover]

around here for sure

theres flooding and heavy artistic liberties taken by the splatoon team on this map. i could also imagine they didnt think too deeply about the placement of greenery and deserts for this background texture. (unless they use this exact map for that world tour dlc that we may get lol) but the tectonic plates didnt move around too much and alterna is 100% mt fuji

[grave condor]

I just noticed something random while looking at the Emissive Map for Earth.

There's light in Antarctica.

There's not a whole lot, but they're there.

[teal plover]

good catch! with how much marine life thrives around antartica the concept of antarctica being inhabited in splatoon earth crossed my mind, didnt notice there really are lights there

[grave condor]

I wonder why the Splatoon team decided to add light to the edges of most of the continents.

Make them pop out more visually, maybe?

[teal plover]

could be that + sea creatures opting to stay close to the seas for the most part

[grave condor]

Maybe, but the sheer number of them across most of the continents makes me suspicious. And I’m not sure if all of them are visible in the boss fight cutscenes.

You're probably right, though.

Maybe instead of making huge urban centers that spread inland, marine civilization instead opted to make urban centers that spread out across the coasts.

Makes me wonder how big Calamari County is.

[meager steeple]

Eiffel Tower was the tip of an ICBM launched at Japan from Russo-Occupied France?

[grave condor]

There's actually an Eiffel Tower in Nikko, which is about 118 km away from Tokyo.

It's 1/25th the size of the real one, though.

[vestal zephyr]

Which means the bunkers in where Octo Valley and Canton are supposed to be… considering what these areas are, we wonder… have they desertified during now and the setting?

[jovial condor]

ITS THE REAL RASSICAS 😱

R E A L

Very real

[latent umbra]

he doesn't know it is actually rassicas

[jovial condor]

Lol

Wait Fr?

[teal plover]

lol

[jovial condor]

Almost had me there for a sec

💀

[latent umbra]

they are though

the account made in 2016 says enough

[jovial condor]

Oh lol I’m just confused rn

Real Rassicas?

Or not real lol

[latent umbra]

actually it isnt but whatever i trust them, it wouldnt be a very interesting gag if they didn't say some bullshit about the lore under the name of rassicas

[jovial condor]

O yea makes sence

[latent umbra]

so i believe it is

[jovial condor]

Plus very intelligent lore wise

Like the real Rassicas

[teal plover]

[jovial condor]

Why is there more land on the splatoon map than on the real world map lol 💀

I thought the floods took out all the land on earth

[teal plover]

probably a different map projection they based it on. stylization or something

[jovial condor]

Could be

Maybe the devs just forgot to add detail lol

[teal plover]

neglecting to make precise details because not expecting fans to be crazy enough to extract the texture and pore over every detail or something

[jovial condor]

Nintendo being Nintendo

[latent umbra]

well isnt one of the stages formations underwater but are now dried up?

i guess s3 takes place during a time where the levels are way lower

[paper nacelle]

really they should have expected this by now
they should have put fake lore hidden in the files to screw with dataminers

[latent umbra]

i literally predicted this when the map in sheldons shop was datamined
i was like "their gonna make 50 variations and each will be different"

[grave condor]

I noticed something else about Antarctica, and it's that it and the Arctic do not appear on Sheldon's world map.

[unkempt moon]

That’s because the warhead was launched at antarctica

the ice melted and flooded over the world

[grave condor]

It’s still there, though.

It’s just much smaller.

[unkempt moon]

It’s hard to see

[grave condor]

Give me a moment.

Arctic.

Antarctic.

[paper nacelle]

antarctica IRL has enough ice that if it completely melted, sea levels would rise by 58 meters
obviously there is still some ice remaining near the south pole in splatoon, but id say that the sea level in the mollusc era would probably be at least 20 meters higher from the melted antarctic ice alone

depending on the power of the world war 5 nuke its possible that there would be tsunamis all around the southern hemisphere in the immediate aftermath

and believe me between this and a large underground cavern implicitly near hakone holding humanitys hope for rebuilding the world, its getting harder and harder not to make an evangelion joke

[hybrid tapir]

lmao

[grave condor]

There is promotional art for Japan Expo 2016 that show the Squid Sisters in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

However, there is also documentation of Callie and Marie being brutally attacked by giant birds.

I don't know whether to believe it or not.

https://twitter.com/SplatoonJP/status/750627547574964225 source of Eiffel Tower image.
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/147202607622/have-you-decided-if-youre-team-callie-or-team source of birds image.

[paper nacelle]

the squids have time travel technology

[teal plover]

Not all promo art is canon but time travel is the funnier answer

[rose flicker]

Yeah

[hybrid tapir]

I mean honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if time travel was the theme for the dlc or something
I don’t know how they would incorporate off the hook with it tho

[latent umbra]

how is that even related to this thread

lo

[rose flicker]

They probably just misclicked.

[dapper ridge]

Wait how do we know about this World War 3-5 stuff

[paper nacelle]

rough backstory manga in splatoon 1 artbook. this is also the source for antarctica getting nuked

[dapper ridge]

Oh ok thanks

[dapper ridge]

Ok thanks.

[latent umbra]

still strange theres just some guy who wrote all this and then closes his book and no one mentions it lo

[grave condor]

Given Splatoon 3's Alterna Logs it's been somewhat retconned to where the entire surface of Earth was inhospitable, instead of simple flooding.

And the rest of the backstory manga is pretty weird in of itself.