スーパーマリオくん 13

One of the more interesting volumes of Super Mario Kun and one that surprisingly features more original stories than game adaptations. We do get the end of both Wario Land 1 and Wario's Woods (which gives us two of the most cursed Mario images ever: Wario's skull bleeding like crazy with an axe lodged in it, and Birdo turning into the Quagmire Toilet), but the two main stories are another future story and a Mario-themed spin on a wacky races type story.

The last time Super Mario Kun did an original plot line was also a future story, but that one was a "resonably within the lifespan of the characters" type future where the setting was mostly the same aside from the general progression of the character. This one is more of a "generations ahead and everything's wacky" kind of story. Koopa has somehow taken over and Mario's descendant is a loser who works as a janitor (which isn't to say that he's a loser because he's a janitor, a janitor's a respectable job, it's just that he happens to be a loser who is also a janitor). While most of the adaptations of actual game plots are fairly loose to begin with, it's fun to see Sawada just cut loose and create things whole cloth. We also get our first appearnce of the myth, the meme, the legend, the most futuristic of all Nintendo systems, the Virtual Boy, and amusingly enough it shows up as a device used to attack Mario so perhaps Sawada wasn't a fan. If the two original plots this volume tie into any game at all, it's really Mario's Picross, but only in the sense that the characters have to solve a Picross puzzle or two to progress, none of that game's archaeology theme is present.

Where the future story is a new ongoing plot, the racing story is fully contained in this volume and reminded me a lot of Kirby: Big Race in Pupupu Land!, where's it's sort of a cross-country race involving different stops and traps. There's surprisingly few karts for a racing plotline but this is a lot of fun because everyone gets to throw down and it kind of feels like you're getting to experience the full breadth and texture of the Mushroom Kingdom and its inhabitants interacting and trying to beat each other, whereas the game adaptations tend to stick to a certain area or subset of characters. It's really fun just seeing a free-for-all and the final punchline is pretty great too.

This volume also has a bonus story which is a double-length "alternate epilogue" or "one more epilogue" for the Wario Land plotline. They did this with the prologue to the arc too, but it makes a lot more sense with the epilogue than it does with the prologue because the ending to the WL1 arc is played with to lead into the time travel story whereas the alternate ending is something a bit more faithful to the game. Both endings play off of the jokes in the game's ending in fun ways and I do like having something a bit more traditional as sort of a "hey, here's what it looks like as a finite end".

Also interesting to note is that this feels like a bit of a transitional volume in some ways and we're far enough in that they actually start using the margins of certain pages to advertise and recap prior volumes of Super Mario Kun. More stories end than start (the future story is the only one left open at the end of the volume), and certain depictions of Peach, like her statue and a picross puzzle are starting to use a more game-accurate hairstyle, though her in-the-flesh appearances are still using the style she's had up to this point. A couple of the puzzles incorporate Yoshi's Island motifs, though wisely the Yoshi's Island arc starts next volume rather than trying to cram yet another concurrent plotline in.

Language-wise it's about the same as ever, though I did miss a pun during the main trio's standup route which was bound to happen but I was quite happy at how I was doing actually getting the wordplays. There's also a running joke this issue based on a catchphrase and character from a local moving company ad which is cultural knowledge I don't think most will have but it was a fun rabbit hole to research. Japanese commercials are known for being wacky, but they're generally pretty high quality whereas this commercial had the sort of kitschy low-budget charm you'd see from any small town advertisement.

I feel like this is a good one to leave Super Mario Kun off on for a bit since I'm generally wanting something a bit different, but it's still fun and I think it's generally gotten stronger. The fact that I'm close to the Nintendo 64 era, which is one of my favorite eras of Mario and Nintendo is pretty exciting so I don't think I'll be away for too long, but since most of the current plots are wrapped up it's not a bad time to burn through some shorter series.