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WTFriday: The Super Mario Bros. Anime

Posted by Bob Mackey

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.



For as popular as Mario is, it's surprising that anime adaptations of The Mushroom Kindgdom have been shockingly few in number. That isn't exactly the case for American animation, though; if you were "lucky" enough to grow up in the late 80s and early 90s, there's no doubt that at some point your butt was parked in front of a TV airing one of the three Super Mario Bros. series painstakingly crafted by trained apes. For whatever reason, Japan never thought to inflict an animated version of their most popular fictional celebrity on the nation's youth, aside from two projects--and if you think I'm being unfair to the American Mario cartoons, watch about one minute of Super Mario World and feel free to change your opinion after you purchase a seeing-eye dog.

Today's WTFriday spotlight falls upon the 1986 Japanese movie, Super Mario Bros.: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen! (or, if you don't know what any of those words mean, Super Mario Bros.: Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!). What's interesting about this movie is that with only the original Super Mario Bros. in existence, the writers really didn't have a lot of mythology to draw from. This is probably why the movie wants us to think Princess Peach and the entire Mushroom Kingdom exist in a video game independent of Mario, and that somehow our two favorite Italian plumbers work in a grocery store. But even with all of the weirdness and that one fucking licensed song that they won't stop playing, Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach is a neat little Nintendo time capsule with a fun 80s anime aesthetic. I'll post the first segment of the movie below; if you want to watch the rest, click here to access a playlist with the following six segments.



I also recommend you check out the other Mario anime, which is a strange adaptation of the Japanese folk tale, Momotaro. Even if the content isn't too overwhelming, the animation is a fantastic realization of all that great Nintendo instruction book art put into motion.

Related Links:

WTFriday: The Soothing Sounds of Yoshi
WTFriday: Bob's Game Is a Big Ol' Slice of Psycho
WTFriday: PuLiRuLa


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT
Posted Jan 16 2009, 02:00 PM
Filed under: , , , , , ,

Comments

Speedy Service said:

Hey, I always wanted to see this after seeing a clip of the very beginning! Thanks!

January 16, 2009 2:56 PM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 was pretty good, and there were a few eps of the Super Show which managed to hold on to the Mario charm, amidst all the pop culture parodies.

World wasn't so hot, but "Send in the Clown" was a fun adaptation of the game.  "Mama Luigi" was alright, too, shy of the jabbering baby Yoshi.

Glad to know they finished subbing this.  Now, they just need to release a dub here with Martinet doing his thing.

January 17, 2009 2:11 AM

C said:

Reserving judgement on the cartoon itself, but you should know that the "translation" has nothing do with what's being said. I think the "translator" just made up whatever he thought the characters were saying.

January 18, 2009 4:10 AM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

Seriously?  That blows.

January 18, 2009 10:22 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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