Nintendo’s Mysterious New Animated Short Confirmed to Have a Pikmin Connection

“Close to You” is about four minutes long, and features a mother playing with her infant before she gets up to leave to check a knock at the door. With the infant now alone in the room, items such as toy blocks and the baby’s pacifier begin floating around on their own. The baby begins following the items around the room, eventually taking their first steps before the mother comes back in to witness this important moment in their child’s life. This is all set to some very jazzy piano music. 

The original version of the animated film, with objects floating and Pikmin still invisible, is currently the only version still widely available on YouTube. This is a clever teaser for a new Pikmin project. While the objects are often floating around fairly arbitrarily, in many shots they appear to look more as if being carried by small, Pikmin sized invisible creatures. This proves relevant as the mobile game Pikmin Bloom revealed that Pikmin are canonically invisible to humans. 

Video game journalist and Kotaku founder Brian Crecente also revealed in his newsletter that Miyamoto showed him mockups of Pikmin shorts well over a decade ago. Nintendo has since released a number of Pikmin shorts, coincidentally around the exact same time as this new release, five years ago on Oct. 8 with the Pikmin short movies “The Night Juicer,” “Treasure in a Bottle,” and “Occupational Hazards.” 

This new short “Close to You” is notably different in its animation compared to the previous Pikmin videos, looking closer in style to The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Illumination. Given the success of the film, and a new Super Mario Galaxy film coming in 2026, it wouldn’t be surprising if “Close to You” ends up being the first teaser for either more Pikmin shorts or a full-fledged Pikmin animated film.