When Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched in March of 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, its timing couldn’t have been better. 

For the five people unfamiliar, the Animal Crossing series follows a human villager who moves to a town full of anthropomorphic animal people. 

The player goes about living their life — planting flowers, decorating their house, fishing, socializing, catching bugs and helping develop the town — at whatever pace they like. There’s no end goal. Just make friends and plant flowers, man. Worry about the rest later.

During a time when everyone was locked inside and uncertain of the future, New Horizons let people connect with others. Whether it was with the non-player characters on their island or with real people via the internet, the game gave people a pseudo-sense of normalcy. 

While the game doesn’t quite have the world by storm in the same way today, it’s still popular. It has sold over 48 million copies, and Nintendo announced new content for the game almost six years after release. 

Many recurring characters have helped make the franchise as recognizable as it is today. Isabelle, the hard-working mayoral assistant, was introduced in Animal Crossing: New Leaf in 2013. Others, like the sleazy art merchant Crazy Redd, have been around since the series’ inception in 2002. 

But one character gets an unreasonable amount of flak despite fulfilling an extremely necessary role in every Animal Crossing game. And no, I’m not referring to Zipper T. Bunny.

Tom Nook is present in every entry in the franchise. In the beginning, he ran the only shop in town and gave the player a home loan. He still does those things, but his role has also expanded in more recent entries. 

In every game, the player arrives at a new town/city/island with nothing but the shirt on their back. They are told to meet with Nook immediately upon arrival. 

Nook provides the player with a home, sometimes also employing them. Carrying out his tasks not only teaches the player how to do basic, essential things in the game, such as planting flowers and changing clothes, but the player is also rewarded monetarily for their efforts. 

Either way, once Nook is done assisting the player, he tallies up what their home loan total will be. What, we weren’t expecting him to just give us a house for free, were we?

Here’s the catch: the loan can be paid back at the player’s total leisure. There is no interest and no deadline. Once the loan is paid off, Nook offers to upgrade the player’s home again under the same loan system. 

Here’s a challenge that any critic of Tom Nook is free to try: get rid of everything they own, move to a new place where they know absolutely nobody and have solid food and shelter by the end of the night. 

All of this doesn’t even mention how he’s likely the only one facilitating any meaningful import and export of goods in the local economy, but that’s purely speculative on my part.

So when people say that Tom Nook is a dirty slumlord, show them this article. Nook is more than a tanuki — he is a tanuki with a very big … heart.

Tolbert can be reached at [email protected]. Debate Tom Nook’s contributions to society with him.