スーパーマリオくん 1

I think a lot of people's motivation for learning Japanese is to find parts of their favorite franchises that never made it to their part of the world and Super Mario Kun is certainly a fine example of the joys that can come from such a pursuit. The series, which started in 1991 and still continues to this day, only got a translated version in French around 2014 and only just recently got a single collected "best of" volume in 2017, which hasn't been followed up on. Even the fan translations are only sporadic with large swaths missing, so the only way to consume the all 60 volumes or so is in it's native tongue.

But what is it that makes this series so elusive, when it seems to not only be a long-runner in it's homeland, but also popular enough to get an unlockable skin in Mario Maker? Probably a lot of things. First and foremost, a lot of the jokes rely on puns, which aren't going to translate well at all. I looked up some of the fan translations just to see how they dealt with it and the result didn't make sense in the slightest.

The other thing is probably opportunity and interest. As great as this is, it's also basically a marketing tie-in for games that are decades old at this point, so while keeping these in ebook circulation makes sense for Japanese audiences that grew up with the books, it'd seem kind of odd for Nintendo of America to just re-release a tie-in for an old Mario game when they could be selling you the shiny new $60 dollar mario, especially given just how much content would have to be translated.

But if I had to hone in on the real and biggest reason this probably never made it over, it's probably because this series is batshit insane. Mario media tends to be pretty straightlaced, despite how fantastical the setting is. Tonally, Super Mario Kun feels a lot more in line with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario and Luigi are brash, audacious trickster heroes and frequently quite rude, the humor is very slapsticky, and it's surprisingly raunchy in places. One of the running gags is things getting shoved up someone's ass. Only about 12 pages in Luigi gives Mario a liquid petroleum enema to make his fireballs hotter, and there's one bit where Mario accidentally sticks a key up a Porcu-Puffer's butthole because it looked like a keyhole. Yeah, it's wild.

So now that we've solved the Mystery of the Missing Mario Manga, is it any good? To steal a line from an infamous review of the 1993 Mario film, "it's a blast!" Super Mario Kun is vibrant, creative and funny. This first volume is based on Super Mario World and I was surprised how much story they squeezed from such narratively thin source material. Granted, it's mostly Mario and Lugi stumbling their way through a series of slapstick gags, and it doesn't rigidly adhere to the game's structure, but it is recognizable as Super Mario World and it puts a really fun spin on things. My favorite chapter involves a friendly Monty Mole named Indy who actually gets really nice character development in the space of a single short story and I also really enjoyed the chapter about a cheerful (but evil) Hammer Brother named Appare.

Also interesting is the final chapter, which imagines what a hypothetical Super Mario Bros 5 may be like and there's so much fun stuff here that would make for a great ROM hack. I'm sure Super Mario Bros 5 seemed like a sure bet given how well Super Mario World did, but there wouldn't be another Main-line 2D Mario platformer until New Super Mario Bros in 2006, so it's interesting to see how the Japanese side of Mario fandom may have been looking forward to a new platformer in the same way that say... Half-Life fans were looking forward to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Still waiting, Gaben! Alyx was a prequel, it doesn't count! Funnily enough there actually was a bootleg version of Super Mario Bros 2 that claimed to be "Mario 5, but it's really just a PAL region version of Mario USA where the 2 is a 5 and Mario's name is misspelt "Merio".

Anyway, the artwork is also a joy to behold. I love 90's Mario art and this is almost 200 pages of 90's Mario art I haven't seen before. Yukio Sawada's art style captures the vibrance and energy of that era's Mario art perfectly while still having a lot of his own style. I love the character designs in this and I think Peach actually ended up being my favorite, having kind of a unique look that's more like her in-game sprites than the boxart versions which suits her new sassy personality. I love seeing 2D Mario art, especially since the franchise's 3D look has become a bit plasticky and bland, so this was a lot of fun.

Language-wise, this is pretty reasonable. If you can get through Kuma Kuma Kuma bear, you'll probably do fine here. The main words I had to look up were the more coarse/vulgar expressions and some action words (and also both the English and Japanese names of certain Super Mario World enemies, just out of realizing "wait, what is that guy called"). My main issue with Manga vs. Prose for vocab acquisition is Manga doesn't quite give you as much repetition of certain words as a prose novel can, but this one actually does a pretty good job using the same vocab over and over.

All-in-all, highly reccomended to any curious Mario fans looking for some really deep cuts! Apparantly Kodansha had their own Mario manga going on around the same time that adapted a similar set of games, so it's kind of like the Archie/Fleetway situation for Sonic, except inside the same country