Who's That Aniimo: This Week's Answer and Event Rewards

What is the Who’s That Aniimo event?

Who’s That Aniimo is a rotating photo event. The Polaris Institute reveals a silhouette that shows only the mystery Aniimo’s distinctive features, and you photograph other Aniimo that share its traits to fill in the hidden parts. Photograph the mystery creature itself in the right form and the research topic completes.

The mechanic is unusual for a live-service event because it asks for a camera, not a kill. Gather enough clues to identify the species, travel to its habitat, and take a direct photo. Photographing it before the full silhouette reveals earns bonus Aniimo Observation rewards on top of the completion payout.

Three rules catch people out. Only photos where the submitted Aniimo matches the mystery creature’s exact form count, so an evolved or regional variant of the right species will be rejected. Photos taken in a Sanctum or in the Holo-Battle Sim are not recognised or submittable at all, because the first are bound by ancient seals and the second are holograms. And you can complete the event with a photo of your own Aniimo, another player’s Aniimo or a wild one, so you never have to hunt a specific spawn if you already own the species.

Where is Who’s That Aniimo in the Events menu?

Open the Events screen with F2 and look in the rotating mini-event group, next to Idyll Ecological Investigation and Glamour Star. Those three formats repeat through the season in dated cycles, which is why they sit together rather than in the long-running story tabs.

One older description places the entry in the left-hand event list between Idyll Ecological Investigation and the SPARKELF x Aniimo crossover tab. Both descriptions refer to the same short-format cluster; the group label and its neighbours have shifted as tabs were added since launch, so follow the event name rather than the position. If you cannot find the tab at all, you are almost certainly looking at the wrong screen: events live on the F2 panel, not in the Escape menu, and the beginner guide walks through the rest of the interface.

When does Who’s That Aniimo reset and rotate?

Who’s That Aniimo runs in short weekly windows rather than continuously, and each window is its own cycle with its own mystery Aniimo. IGN’s event schedule states the event is available once a week and resets every Thursday, so a cycle is announced and replaced on a Thursday. The community calendar prints the same windows with a live countdown per server.

Cycle	Window (2026)	Mystery Aniimo	Confidence
Cycle 1	16 to 24 September	Budclaw	Confirmed by four independent sources
Cycle 2	2 to 8 October	Glacy	Single-source
Cycle 3	16 to 22 October	Helgon	Single-source
Cycle 4	30 October to 5 November	Not yet revealed	Unconfirmed

Dates are the EU server’s, in UTC. Windows open at 04:00 server time and close at 04:00 the morning after the last day; the NA server runs four hours later and the Asia server eight hours earlier. Because the gaps between cycles are longer than the cycles themselves, a missed window means a wait of roughly one to two weeks rather than a wait until next season.

[!warning] The Sunday reset claim belongs to a different event Several summaries attribute a Sunday refresh of rewards and vendor stock to Who’s That Aniimo. The quote actually sits in the Vein Abundance section of the source, describing the Prismana Flow rotation and its weekly vendor. For Who’s That Aniimo the credible statement is the Thursday cycle above. Do not plan around a Sunday reset for this event.

Who is this week’s mystery Aniimo?

As of 2026-09-24, the answer is Budclaw. Cycle 1 closes on 24 September, so this is the last day of the window; the next cycle opens on 2 October.

The clues printed on the event screen are Earth element, Lumin Stage, Basic form, a BREAK ability and no special Pathfinding abilities. Budclaw satisfies all five, which is why four independent outlets converge on it. Dexerto places it at Freshsprout Hill, while Sportskeeda puts it in Breezy Plains just east of the Outpost; both are early-zone locations, so this is the one cycle a low-level Pathfinder can finish without a detour.

There is a shortcut that skips the hunt entirely. Add Budclaw to your party, summon it, open the camera and photograph your own creature. The rules explicitly allow photos of Aniimo you own, and the game does not care whether the subject was wild or yours.

If you do go looking for a wild one, approach slowly. Budclaw burrows into the ground and vanishes the moment you get close, so take the shot from range rather than walking up to it. Photography basics and camera controls are covered alongside the creature list in the full Aniimo list.

Official source: Aniimo official site

What are the Who’s That Aniimo rewards?

The payout is layered, and part of it is time-sensitive. A correct photo of the mystery Aniimo pays 100 Sparkling Crystals. Photographing it before the silhouette is fully revealed adds 50 Breezy Plains Dewdrop Crystals, and that bonus is the only part you can permanently miss by playing slowly. Clue progress and correct guesses then unlock milestone rewards across the cycle.

Reward	How you earn it
Sparkling Crystal x100	Photograph the mystery Aniimo in the correct form
Breezy Plains Dewdrop Crystal x50	Photograph it before the full silhouette is revealed
Glimmer x50	One correct guess
Tumbler x1	Three correct guesses
Wonder Egg x1	Five correct guesses

Four independent sources list the same five lines, so the reward table is safe to plan around. Sparkling Crystals are the slow currency: they feed Sparkling Cubes, and a single cube costs 1,000 crystals at an outpost vendor, which makes this event one of the cheap weekly contributions toward a guaranteed Sparkling catch.

The milestone lines are where the phrasing gets confusing. IGN, Game8 and Aniimo Tools all describe the Glimmer, Tumbler and Wonder Egg tiers as correct-guess counts, while the in-game ladder also tracks photos and clue reveals. Treat the ladder as filling up through play rather than through five separate perfect guesses, and check the event panel for the current counter.

How do you work out the answer yourself?

Read the clue list as a filter rather than as flavour text. Each clue names a property the creature has: an element, a stage, a form, an ability category and sometimes the absence of a special Pathfinding ability. The current cycle’s clues were Earth element, Lumin Stage, Basic form, BREAK, and no special Pathfinding abilities.

Then narrow the roster. The Aniilog and the community creature lists both let you sort by element and stage, which usually leaves a handful of candidates; the ability line cuts that down further. The silhouette itself is the second half of the puzzle, because it shows genuine outline features such as jaw shape, ear placement or a tail silhouette, and comparing those against the candidates is faster than guessing from the text alone.

If you would rather not solve it, wait a few hours after a cycle opens. Community boards post the answer on day one, and the outlets above usually publish within a day of the window opening. What you should not do is trust a screenshot from a previous cycle: each window resets the silhouette and the rewards, and a stale answer costs you the early-photo bonus.

Related

• Idyll Ecological Investigation for the sister rotating event that asks you to catch targets instead of photographing them.
• Prismana Flow rotation for the weekly Vein Abundance region and the Sunday vendor refresh that gets misattributed to this event.
• Full Aniimo list for form names, elements and stages when you are narrowing down a silhouette.
• Rare and event Aniimo for the creatures restricted to events rather than the open world.