- "Sebastian..."
- ―Anima calling out for Sebastian.
Anima is a special enemy encountered in The Evil Within 2.
Description[]
Anima is a mysterious creature haunting the streets and many residents of Union. While she seems to target Sebastian Castellanos specifically, multiple logs and diary entries found throughout the town suggest that she picks her other targets randomly, following and tormenting them for some time until they finally cave in from paranoia, or until she decides to just kill them herself. Anima is only visible to her victims.
Visually, Anima resembles a disheveled woman clad in tattered robes. Her face is shrouded by her long hair and is briefly visible when attacking the player. Although she walks with a slow shuffling gait, she is capable of an alarming rush of speed when pursuing a victim.
The presence of Anima can be determined by the environment becoming colder and shrouded with fog that only vanishes once the player has escaped her proximity. A visual distortion effect can be observed when she's within proximity of the player, which gets more garbled as she draws closer, letting them know when to stay put or find a way out. She constantly sings an eerie version of Clair de Lune which can be used to determine her distance from the player.
Anima is capable of phasing through walls and doors, as well as levitation and telekinesis, which she uses to hunt her victims. She is completely immune to damage and will instantly kill the player by draining their life force if she catches them. This presumably turns them into The Lost as well, as demonstrated when the local preacher is transformed after going through a very similar process.
Encounters[]
Chapter 3: Resonances[]
Anima is first encountered in Chapter 3, although she appears to have been present in Union before Sebastian's arrival. Several corpses can be found around the district with journal entries that describe being pursued by an unknown force, including a Mobius Soldier who barricaded himself inside an otherwise impenetrable garage. The first direct encounter with Anima occurs at 336. Cedar Avenue where she appears behind Sebastian as he attempts to leave the house. Forced into a nightmarish version of the hospital, he manages to elude the creature and escapes back to Union.
An optional encounter also occurs during this chapter in a small storage shed opposite the North Safe House. A hallucination is triggered upon entering the shed, where Anima violently pounds against the door for a few seconds, after which the hallucination ends and Sebastian finds himself transported outside. Another optional encounter occurs inside the shack with the workbench just north of Krimson Market. The hallucination triggers when attempting to leave the shack.
Lastly, a brief, but characteristic paranormal event could be observed in one of the abandoned train cars just adjacent to Krimson Maket. If Sebastian goes between the train cars, with Krimson Market on his right, and enters the upper right one, he would find a Residual Memory of a civilian who were chased by an unknown entity. Immediately after this, exit the train car and enter the lower left one instead, then walk up to the middle of the caboose. The screen will take on a blue hue and the corpse in the middle of the car will jerk up, before going limp and dissolving into a pool of Green Gel.
Chapter 7: Lust for Art[]
Anima's second encounter occurs in Chapter 7 in the Juke Diner. After witnessing the last memories of a man committing suicide to escape the creature stalking him, Sebastian is attacked when examining a nearby jukebox and forced into another hallucination. Despite Anima's attempts to disorientate him using the environment, he manages to escape her once more.
An optional encounter during this chapter occurs at the storage just south of Post Plus. After breaking into the building and securing the Full-barreled shotgun, the shed's interiors begins to glow blue and become unusually cold, thus heralding the wraith's arrival. Anima will stand blocking the exit, and the only way out of this sequence is to run directly at her, or let her come to the player. This is notably one of a very small handful of times (and the only one that's not a cutscene) where coming into direct contact with Anima doesn't result in immediate death. It should be noted that once the world has reverted, any enemies in the area will rush inside, including the Lament that wanders around the perimeter of the supply room, so dispatching all enemies beforehand is highly recommended.
Chapter 11: Reconnecting[]
Anima makes a final appearance in Chapter 11 in the Restricted Labs of the Marrow, ambushing Sebastian as he attempts to escape the underground facility and violently throws him into a final hallucination. Seemingly frustrated with Sebastian's continued survival, she begins to attack him more violently, blocking his path with debris and using her telekinesis to expose him from behind cover. Sebastian manages to evade her one final time and finds himself, as he was in Beacon, muttering about how it was his fault and he can't escape. Sebastian realises he needs to stop blaming himself for what happened, and move past Beacon, shooting his doppelganger in the head. This frees Sebastian from Anima and she is not seen for the rest of the game.
Other[]
In addition to the scripted encounters, Anima can manifest randomly as Sebastian explores Union. A bright light will precede her arrival and nearby enemies will vanish from the area, which will then take on a blue hue and become surrounded with a thin layer of mist. The glitch-like effect will start to affect the player's vision of Sebastian and their surroundings, with Anima's singing giving the player another sense of her proximity to them. To escape Anima, the player must move out of her proximity until the environment returns to normal, which will cause her to vanish.
Anima can manifest anywhere except Safe Houses. However, she does sometimes make a brief appearance outside of O'Neal's Safe House if players return there (and save and reload the game) after initially encountering her at 336 Cedar Avenue. While her singing can be heard and the visual distortion effect can be observed from the Safe House, she does not actually enter it, nor can she be seen anywhere outside.
True Nature[]
Unlike the many creatures prowling around Union, Anima was not created by any specific entity. Rather, she is the quasi-physical manifestation of the STEM domination process. As a subject's mentality gradually erodes from being connected to STEM, they would begin to hear and see things that others may not, which matches how Anima was described to be a ghostly stalker that only the victims can see. At the peak of their corruption, an individual would seemingly be drained of their soul by Anima, which symbolizes their complete subsumption by STEM, and transforms into a mindless Lost shortly afterwards. According to a research log, the phenomenon associated with Anima has been a known subject for a while, and seems to manifest quicker in subjects with rewritten or damaged memory.
In Sebastian's case, Anima manifested due to mental trauma caused by a small vestige of memory within his mind of the horrors he had been through during his time inside Ruben Victoriano's STEM. Despite his best efforts to deny and bury this memory, certain triggers encountered throughout Union brought them out to the forefront, allowing STEM to resume its domination of his mind, which is represented by Anima manifesting and chasing him down during the plot of the game.
Tips[]
- Upon encountering her, make sure to take the steps of studying her patrol path when she is near. This will allow you to evade her and prevent you from letting her catch you off guard.
- If outside in the overworld and not in any interior space, she can simply be avoided by moving away from her immediate area. This will follow with a white flash, indicating that you are safe from her.
- Anima will hum to the tunes of Clair de Lune when not hostile, which will become progressively louder as she closes the distance between herself and Sebastian.
- The DualShock 4 controller's built-in speaker amplifies this humming, which will grow louder the closer the camera is pointed to her general direction, thus giving players on PlayStation 4 a clearer indication of Anima's whereabouts. PC players can set up Steam to use a DualShock 4 controller and give them the advantage of knowing what her general direction is as well.
- The screen will distort visibly when Anima is dangerously close. One can use this as an indicator as to where she is, though in some cases seeing the distortion means it's already too late to run away.
- Always keep a healthy distance away from Anima and stay out of sight regardless of how sneaky you are, as she is very prone to randomly turning around and backtracking for a short distance. This can be especially problematic during the latter two sequences, where Sebastian must break from cover at times in order to make it to the exit.
- Be careful where you step. Glass and bottles are a dead indicator of where you are at. She will immediately lurch towards the noise that you mistakenly generated within earshot.
- With that said, however, don't even bother to try and use bottles to lure her away, as Anima often has a fixed movement pattern that is unaffected by outside factors.
- In general, you want to listen for cues that can indicate her presence. Sometimes, she will quietly say "Sebastian" slowly. This will alert the player that she knows where Sebastian is.
Notes[]
- Completing all three of the primary encounters with Anima rewards the player with Sebastian's old police revolver, which was his primary weapon in The Evil Within. Upon completing the final sequence in The Marrow's Restricted Labs, Sebastian will be holding the revolver in his hand once control is regained.
Death Animations[]
- If Anima manages to actually catch Sebastian, she will seemingly drain his life force, giving the player a rare glimpse of a Lost version of the detective.
Sounds[]
| # | Description | Sound |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anima's song |
|
| 2 | Anima lunging |
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| 3 | Anima laughing |
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| 4 | Anima draining life essense |
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| 5 | Anima whispering indistinctly |
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| 6 | "Oh yes!" |
Trivia[]
- Anima's design was seemingly inspired by the Japanese Onryō.
- She has several similarities to Laura. Both are female creatures with long hair obscuring their faces, that are capable of rapid teleportation and instantly killing the player with a grab attack.
- All of Anima's encounters are optional, and she will not manifest in Union until the player has encountered her at least once. It is possible to skip one of the encounters and trigger another elsewhere.
- The random encounters with Anima are very similar to Ruvik's encounters during Chapter 9 of the first game, in which Ruvik will randomly appear and hunt down the player. Both are invulnerable to damage and the beginning of their encounter will start with the screen taking on a blue hue.
- A key difference in their encounters however is that Ruvik will usually always know where Sebastian is, and can teleport to get closer to, or even in front of Sebastian, and will usually persist on the map until he simply "times out" and disappears. Whereas in Anima encounters, the specter is usually limited to wandering within a very small zone and can be evaded by simply moving outside of her radius.
- The name "Anima" is most likely derived from one of the two Jungian anthropomorphic archetypes called the "anima" and "animus" based on Carl Jung's school of psychology. The anima is said to represent the feminine inner personality of a man, while the animus represents the masculine inner personality of a woman. The anima has been said to manifest by appearing in a man's dreams, influencing his interactions and attitude towards women. Sebastian's guilt over the events in STEM in The Evil Within and his confronting them in The Evil Within 2 by way of his encounters with the Anima - and her subsequent disappearance afterward - appropriately reflect many real-life concepts surrounding the subject of the anima.
- It is unclear if Anima would look the same way to all of her victims, or if her witnessed appearance is specific to Sebastian alone. The residual memory in the garage of the North Safe House seems to suggest that the sound of her singing is the same for everybody, however.
Gallery[]
| Characters and Creatures of The Evil Within 2 | ||||||||||||
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| Gameplay • Chapters • Characters & Creatures • Weapons & Equipment | ||||||||||||
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