[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1: ●Synopsis: Super Mario, the world's most popular video game hero, has finally made his way into the world of manga! Mario and Luigi are a pair of misfits who have lost Princess Peach to the new Koopa Army while she was playing in Dinosaur Land. The two immediately set off on a journey to rescue Princess Peach. On their journey, they are joined by Yoshi, the famous foodie! Can they save Princess Peach now that they have finally become a big, blunde...
Super Mario 64 continues, then ends, then continues again?
The Mario 64 arc continues to be head and shoulders above a lot of this manga so far, maybe I'm biased because of what game it is, my next-favorite arc behind this one was Super Mario Land 2 which is also a favorite so maybe I'm more accepting of poop humor if it's backdropped by a game I like but I honestly do think the additional structure and worldbuilding of Super Mario 64 is making these stories better.
This volume starts with Shifting Sand Land and again it's instantly recognizable. Yoshi joins the party and I'm not sure what the publication date of these chapters is vs. when the game came out but it kinda spoils the fact that Yoshi is on the roof which was supposed to be the big amazing reward for getting 120 stars even though unlocking a slightly better jump after you've beaten everything is a kind of lame reward since you don't need it anymore. The Pink bob-omb buddy continues to fill the role the sentient carrot in the Super Mario Land 2 arc (another similarity between the two favorite arcs) but since the Bob-omb buddies were a constant ally in the game it makes a bit more sense to condense them into one ally character. I like the little dude and the fact that there's a trio makes this rendition of Mario 64 feel more alive and less liminal than the game.
I do find that the humor is getting more diverse even if Sawada does frequently bring in his trademark shitting and farting and I'm not so pretentious to be above an outrageous scatological gag but I do need variety and the Yoshi's Island arc leaned way too hard into fecal funnies. Big Boo's haunt is beautifully drawn and becomes kind of a fun amusement park haunted house where the residents are trying really hard to be scary but not succeeding very well.
The Dire Dire docks chapter is the first to start adapting multiple missions from one level and in a few chapters mario fails at one star but pivots to another which I think is a good way to mine the game's worlds for the variety they offer. We get our first bowser fight which is Bowser in the Fire Sea I guess this is Speedrun mario and they skipped the Dark World. The drawings are so accurate to the actual level designs that I actually heard Mario's infamous AHAHAHAHAHA in my head when he dropped into the lava.
Further going out of order we get Snowman's land before Cool Cool mountain which struck me as odd because Cool Cool Mountain is the more iconic of the two levels but they atone by having a fantastic Cool Cool mountain later on. The giant snowman is actually freaky and uncanny in the way a massive snowman that doesn't seem sentient but stands there causing trouble should be and the Spindrifts are simultaneously kind of terrifying but also cute which fits with how they're kind of an odd presence in the game but largely useful rather than a threat (even though you'll get hurt for bumping into them). I think this is the first chapter that really tours all of its inspiration's missions and areas in one go and it's a good representation.
In the middle of the volume we get a Mario Kart 64 chapter which opens with Yoshi taking a massive shit and realizing that his poop is disappears halfway because he's actually shitting into one of Super Mario 64's invisible warp zones that takes them to Mario Kart 64 world. Given this Manga's penchant to adapt multiple different games at once without really commenting on it it's at least a diegetic (or perhaps diarrhetic?) way to acknowledge the events of two games at once. The chapter is a pretty good depiction of how everyone gangs up on the first place player in a round of Mario kart and I think it does actually capture the madcap feeling of playing Mario Kart with your friends (and also predicts metal mario as a playable character before it happened in a real Mario Kart game).
After that there are some Super Mario 64 themed Yonkomas and I do think the Yonkomas tend to feature some of Sawada's strongest humor since there's a setup and punchline. We get a little "What if" scenario that imagines Luigi going through Bob-Omb battlefield (not an uncommon fantasy but again predicting 64 DS) and I like the im plication that it's actually Luigi's hand on the title screen of 64.
After the yon-komas we get more Super Mario 64 chapters, though possibly not canon? These are marked as "Super Mario 64: the other stories" and basically presented as an alternate take on things. We get a new version of the opening invitation and Mario's arrival to the castle, an alternate Bob-Omb battlefield story with Koopa the Quick and another Shifting Sand land story with the inside of the pyramid and the Eyerok boss battle. It's a bit of an odd setup, the closest thing I'd compare it to is the second season of Non Non Biyori where instead of being a follow-up to the first season it's more stories that take place between the first season's episodes. One of the things I was hoping for when I read the prior volume was that we'd revisit some of the levels we've already seen to get adaptations of other stars and this format allows for that without throwing off the pacing of the main story too much or having to explain the backtracking for more stars. It's a little weird, but I'll allow it and I think most of it doesn't really contradict what's happened so far. It's not like this series has particularly strict lore anyway.
The "other stories" also give us the fantastic adaptation of Cool Cool Mountain. They hit on every mission and character and it really drives home how many unique memorable NPC's that level had, especially compared to the later levels which are a bit more spartan and surreal. It really makes Cool Cool Mountain feel like this funky little world with a bunch of fun personalities while still being really faithful to the size and layout of the original.
After a quick burst through Rainbow Ride they do Bowser in the Sky and get to the ending of the game, but the preview for the next volume teases Tiny-Huge Island which implies that even the parts of the "other stories" that explore levels we haven't seen yet are still part of this elseworlds alternate canon thing. It is weird and I think if they hadn't given an ending the other stories would be easy to understand as "here' some other stuff that also happened" but it's also not the first time this series has given one ending to a game's arc only to press rewind and keep going though in the case of the exceedingly long Super Mario World arc it was more that people were complaining so he wrote the canon ending first and then when it got to the point it literally said something like "go back to volume X to read the ending again". I have a feeling this arc is going to end cleaner but it's a decent adaptation of the game's ending so I kinda wish they'd just saved it for when it actually ends. It's a weird quirk but all of this is an excuse for more Super Mario 64 content and that's been the strongest stuff in this series so far so I'll take it.