スーパーマリオくん 8

Well this is awkward, right after I praise volume 7 for excellent pacing and tight focus, the manga completely sidesteps the ongoing Super Mario Land 2 arc before even finishing to jump into an adaptation of Super Mario Brothers 2 with no warning (and when I say Super Mario Brothers 2 I actually do mean the American Mario 2 that started out as Doki Doki Panic which got re-imported back into Japan in 1992, after Super Mario World). I imagine this isn't Yukio Sawada's fault, Nintendo probably came and said "Hey we've got this game coming out we need you to advertise it" but it is jarring.

That weird context aside though, volume 8 still has a lot of the positive improvements that volume 7 brought. As weird as the timing of adapting another game before the one you're currently doing is finished, the Super Mario Brothers 2 arc is a lot of fun and only takes half the volume, lasting long enough to be memorable, but not dragging things out longer than they need. Because SMB2's Japanese release was after Super Mario World, we have the odd scenario of Yoshi replacing Peach's role from the game which is a little disappointing since the version of Peach in this series is so much fun, but it does mean we get a lot of time with Birdo who's kind of becoming the breakout character of Super-Mario Kun for me. This is also the first time we properly meet Toad outside of one-off cameos, which feels odd for such a significant character in Mario's universe to show up so late, but he wasn't really a player in World or SML2, so it makes sense given the context of the games at the time. There's not a ton of Toad so I haven't gotten a pin on what he's like yet, but I did like the gag that he's basically been progressing through the game way faster than the main gang since in the actual game he has the highest speed on everything. I also think the manga does the SMB2 story a lot better than the game, with Subcon being presented as a sort of dream dimension that connects all dreamers rather than the entire plotline famously being literally just a dream like it was in the game. It's cool seeing Wart and the art 100% feels like SMB2 while giving it that extra cartoony style befitting of a comic.

Once SMB2/USA is over we do get a few more fun chapters of the Super Mario Land 2 arc, and Wario is still a ton of fun. Even though there wasn't much Wario to go off of at the time, he feels plenty Wario-esque and I like that he actually has a tendency to pull one over on Mario which makes him feel different than Bowser losing every battle in the most embarrassing way possible throughout the Super Mario World arc. It differentiates him a bit as an enemy even if he does have some things that do feel a little "substitute villain"-ey, such as using the same viewing screen Bowser does to track Mario's progress and having a side-kick goomba that basically takes the role of Kamek. His personality is fun though and I love how Sawada draws him, so I'm glad there's a lot of Wario in store still.

The last two chapters are one-shot adaptations of Mario & Wario (the Japan exclusive SNES game with the buckets) and Yoshi's Safari and they're both a ton of fun. The Mario & Wario story is a series of little mazes, puzzles, and games for the reader to try and solve and this was the first time a puzzle in this series stumped me, and surprisingly it wasn't because of language barrier, but rather because it was kind of an odd puzzle that I'd never seen before. These are the most creative and engaging puzzles so far, and I did notice the puzzles last volume were getting more intricate, so Sawada must have been on a puzzle kick. The Yoshi's Safari chapter is a good laugh too because they actually fire the Super Scope maybe once. The whole thing seems like a goof on how useless a bazooka would actually be for Mario and friends and it seems to know how ridiculous the game's premise is (I've never actually played it but a Mario shooting game is a b it out there.