This was originally uploaded to DeviantART on October 23, 2021.

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How about that Animal Crossing Direct, huh?!

So for anyone who doesn't know, Animal Crossing is one of my favorite video game series of all time, and at least on two platforms (hopefully three), it's my favorite game on these systems. I remember my first experience to it was during a family reunion sometime in the early 2000's when my cousin had brought his GameCube and was playing Animal Crossing on it. My brother and I were immediately interested and shortly after, my parents surprised us with the game. Maybe for Christmas, I can't quite remember.

Since then I've played a little bit of every Animal Crossing game that's come after it: the improved-upon Wild World, copy-and-paste City Folk, my current favorite New Leaf, the builder-friendly Happy Home Designer, the lackluster amiibo Festival, the holdover Pocket Camp, and the hopeful New Horizons.

Each of these games has been filled with so many memories and given me so much joy, but this upload isn't necessarily a personal retrospective of the series, but more of an image that went around last year to pick your favorite Animal Crossing villagers. Naturally, like Pokémon, when there's 488 villagers to pick from, you kinda run into trouble trying to pick a single favorite, let alone for each species. So instead, I picked my favorites; the plural!

I decided to do this in celebration of Version 2.0 of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which hopes to reignite interest in the game and its player base since I'd imagine a good chunk of it dropped the game when most of the updates we'd been receiving since its release was the returning holidays or bringing new or returning items into the game too. This entire post was pulled from my original tweet from May 25, 2020. You're more than welcome to go there and check it out too (maybe follow me while you're at it), and get a template for this grid as well so you can do it too!

To quickly explain what you're looking at, the intended way of filling this form out is to pick your favorite villager from each species that can move into your town or on your island. Favorite, as in singular, but as I said, there's too many to pick from, even in each category of species, so I chose more than one in multiple cases. In order to tell who I like most, I used layers to depict that; if a villager is up front and most clear, then they're my #1 for that species, with each villager behind them going down the numbering respectively. However, I know this might be difficult to see, especially for the Bears, Squirrels, and Wolves, so below is a breakdown of each villagers' names and the order of which I like them in; my least of those favorites is on the far right and continue left to indicate my most favorite. So for example, the first one down is the Alligator, with the first name you see being Alfonso. That means he's my #1 for that species, but Gayle is #2 and Boots is #3. Additionally, I even made a breakdown at the very bottom of the gender ratio that I picked as well as my favorites per their personalities. Take a look:

🐊 Alfonso ← Gayle ← Boots
🐜 Antonio, Anabelle
🐻 face Pinky ← Tutu ← Grizzly ← Paula ← Charlise
🧸 Maple
🐤 Robin
🐂 Chuck¹
🐱 Rosie ← Kid Cat

🐔 Ken
🐮 Tipper
🦌 Fauna ← Beau
🐶 Goldie ← Biskit ← Butch
🦆 Molly ← Bill ← Ketchup
🦅 Apollo
🐘 Dizzy ← Ellie ← Margie ← Eloise

🐸 Emerald¹ ← Lily ← Henry ← Ribbot
🐐 Kidd
🦍 Louis
🐹 Hamlet
🦛 Rollo¹
🐴 Epona² ← Elmer ← Colton
🦘 Koharu¹ ← Carrie

🐨 Melba
🦁 Bud
🐭 Dora
🐵 Champ¹
🐙 Marina ← Inkwell²
🦩 Flora ← Blanche
🐧 Sprinkle ← Roald ← Aurora

🐷 Gala ← Ganon²
🐰 Ruby ← Bunnie ← Coco
🦏 Tank ← Merengue
🐑 Eunice
🐿 Sally ← Caroline ← Poppy ← Marshal ← Kit¹
🐯 Bangle
🐺 Whitney ← Fang ← Chief ← Kyle ← Wolf Link² ← Skye

🚹 32
Lazy → 6½⁴
Jock → 13
Cranky → 7
Smug → 6½⁴

🚺 41
Normal → 22
Peppy → 13³
Snooty → 5
Sisterly/Uchi → 1³

¹ Villager was available in Doubutsu no Mori, Doubutsu no Mori+, and Animal Crossing, but not future games.
² Villager is available in the Welcome Amiibo update for Animal Crossing: New Leaf only.
³ Charlise and Paula were originally Peppy, but changed to Uchi.
⁴ Kidd was originally Lazy, but changed to Smug.



You may have noticed that I bolded Marina's name. While I personally am not sure which of these 73 villagers I would pick as my absolute favorite, Marina is the one that comes the closest, I'd think. I first met Marina in 2006 while playing Wild World, and one of the things I distinctly remember about her was not being able to tell what species she was. All I saw was a round snoot on a pink ball of a head, and a house full of pink; it was one of my favorite colors then, but this was also when I was 10 years old and liking pink as a guy was grounds for getting made fun of. Regardless, I went and said hi to her every chance I got, gifted her a ton, and she was the first villager to gift me her picture, probably considered the ultimate reward of friending a villager back in the day. It was so upsetting to see her eventually move out, even though I asked her not to, but there was nothing I could do. Her impact though lasted all these years, and it wasn't until New Horizons where I properly welcomed her back; the benefit of New Horizons too is that a villager has to get permission from you first before they can leave.

Marina is not my favorite villager in terms of appearance - she is an octopus and they're not my favorite species in the game - but based on how I felt of her as a kid and still do today, I think she's the closest thing I've got to a singular favorite villager. She's a member of any town I have, and recently I have an amiibo card of her too.

So there you go! Those are my favorite villagers in Animal Crossing! This list doesn't take into consideration the Series 5 amiibo cards announced during the Animal Crossing Direct, most of which are new, or the Sanrio crossover cards, but if I had to rectify that now, I'd say 🐙 Cephalobot is my favorite, followed by maybe 🐭 Petri, and 🐑 Étoile, at least for the new ones. The returning ones were likely in the pool to consider when I made this graphic, but if I had to choose again, I'd say 🐨 Faith and 🦏 Azalea would be considered. I'd also probably throw 🐂 Angus up there too. Once again, I encourage you to follow the link to my Twitter so you can find a blank graphic so you can try this yourself. Thanks for looking and reading! 💕