Super Mario Bros. Art Style Retrospective Part 2: Establishing the Modern Style

In my last article I discussed some of the earlier works of the Super Mario Bros. series that have fallen into obscurity. This time around I want to focus on the observations I have made on Nintendo's more familiar artwork used for Super Mario Bros.2 (USA) and Super Mario Bros. 3.

Super Mario Bros.2 (USA) Release Date- Ocotber 9, 1988 (USA), September 14, 1992 (Japan)

The US release of Super Mario Bros. 2 has been with controversy in more recent times when fans learned that what we got as Mario 2 was essentially a retool of a game in Japan called Doki Doki Panic. Nintendo of America reasoned the original Mario 2 would seem too difficult for English players so we got our version that we're familiar with instead. Putting aside debates about the game itself Miyamoto and Kotabe were still responsible for the art direction. With the release of the English instruction booklets we finally got Luigi's final design that he would be known for.

There are two very interesting observations about the artwork I would like to point out. The first observation is that back in 1988 the original art work featured some elements of the earlier designs. The princess had yet to don her opera gloves (which was consistent with most of the artwork Nintendo was relasing at the time), her hair still had a reddish blonde tint, the Mario Bros. had a blue shirt under their respective colors (even though the actual game sprites featured the known coloring), also the Mario Bros. and the Princess lack their iris colors. As Nintendo re-released Super Mario Bros. 2 in other formats they revised the artwork to correspond to their more modern appearances.

The second observation has to do with an illustration that was released for Super Mario Bros. 2 USA that corresponds with a similar piece of artwork from the Japanese release of Doki Doki Panic. Much like the game itself the Mario characters replaces their Doki Doki counterparts. What is interesting is that Mario 2 USA was not released until 1992. As I will point out later in this article, by the time Super Mario World came out in late 1990 Nintendo had, more or less figured out the final designs for the characters. While there is no evidence this picture was created in 1992 it does carry some of the sensibilities of the earlier Mario artwork (the Mario Bros. overalls, Peach's ambiguous hair coloring and lack of opera gloves). Despite the lack of a dating of this piece it still corresponds with the visual consistency of the Mario 2 artwork.

Super Mario Bros. 3 Release Date- October 23, 1988

By Super Mario Bros. 3 Kotabe had settled on how the characters were designed. Much like the Mario 2 instruction booklet Nintendo did release a revised illustration of the popular “running from the castle” artwork that promoted Mario 3. What's interesting is that the changes are very slight (mainly look at Luigi and the Princess) compared to the Mario 2 revisions. The second illustration also has some visual relics from the earlier artwork.

Super Mario Land Release Date- April 21, 1989

Visually speaking Super Mario Land continued the same artwork style that Mario 3 had. It's just interesting to note Daisy's design here compared to her return later on in the franchise.

 

Super Mario World Release Date- November 21, 1990

The final series of illustrations come from the original Japanese artwork from Super Mario World, and the character artwork used in the American instruction booklet. By Super Mario World the standard for the characters had finally been established. Mario doned blue overalls, and brown hair. Luigi's character design had a slight alteration where his neckline is more visible. Bowser's design finally looked a little more flexible. Peach was officially a blond, and donned her opera gloves. Yoshi, being a new character, would still be revised slightly over the course of the later 90's but for most of the series mainstays the artwork stayed consistent from here on out.

 

The final article in this series will cover some of the design changes that took place during the 3D era as well of the resurgance of Kotabe's artwork for 3D Land, World, and the overall Super Mario franchise.

Anime Industry Then and Now Section 1: The VHS Era Part 2: My Love Affair With Rumiko Takahashi

Back in the day (1993) I was very much into video games. Being a big fan of the Super NES and Genesis I was always keeping up with the latest gaming trends. The popular (now defunct) video gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly had a section that interested me about Import Games. I was drawn to the wacky visuals and strange artwork from games that would never seem to make it here. One game for the Super NES stuck out in my eyes, Ranma ½: Hard Battle. EGM did a two page spread on the game using anime art for all the different characters and little did I know that this would begin my love affair with Rumiko Takahashi. I mean, c’mon, the game had a GIANT PANDA and a monster names Pantyhose Taro.

With that two page spread the seed was planted and it wasn’t fertilized until I went to my local comic book store and saw an issue of the comic book from Viz Comics. I picked it up and immediately began making associations with the video game. I knew that Ranma was a boy that turned into a girl but the other characters stories I had no inkling about. The comic I had picked up was already way past the introductory point so I later on rented the game and pieced together the characters stories (it was funny assuming that Ryoga was an amnesia victim 24/7 instead of just having no sense of direction).

Then the promised day had come. The day my comic book store began stocking the Ranma ½ VHS tapes starting with the first movie Ranma ½: Big Trouble in Nekonron China. I bought the tape for the nice price of $34.95 (now think how this much could by you an entire 26 episode series these days) I popped it in when I got home and within the first 10 minutes of the movie I was hooked. To explain, the first 10 minutes of the movie began with Ranma chasing after Happosai, the local pervert. Akane, his fiancé follows suit wielding a giant mallet and blaming everything on Ranma. Everything escalates into the humongous chase scene where EVERY character introduced in the series was chasing Ranma.


With the random assortment of ghosts, cross dressers cosplaying as mundane objects, giant cats, and various weirdoes I was piqued as to how things got so weird for this series. The movie also began my position on the then epic Dub vs. Sub debate as I bought the movie in English and I was beyond impressed with the dub version. Dubbed by Ocean Studios most famously known for dubbing Inuyasha it was one of the early dubs that stood out as being very good quality and Viz actually put thought into how each character was voiced (this is pretty commonplace now but back in 1993 this was a feat!).

The plot of the movie was very akin to a lot of martial arts films released during the 70’s where Ranma had to rescue Akane who was whisked off to China to marry a martial arts prince (this happens quite a bit in both the Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura movie series in case of the later often causing intergalactic wars). In the last third of the film you have Ranma and his friends fight off various foes to reach their goal where everything is a one on one with the main character and the main antagonist. The series, while is sometimes like this, is mostly a high school comedy. Still, this kicked off my love for the series and when I heard how long the series was (161 episodes) it did NOT deter my interest.


About a month later the first volume for the TV series came out and thus began my foray into anime fandom as I vowed to collect the entire series (a goal that was not reached until 10 years later when Viz released the final volume on DVD). The next month I got the first volume of the OAV series and here kicked off another curiosity, the difference between a television series and an OAV (or OVA, original video animation). These days there is not a huge difference between a TV series and OAVs (as OAVs are rarely full blown series but “extra episodes” for TV show usually with slightly more risqué material that could not air on TV) but back then OAVs were like small series and extended episodes with movie-quality animation. OAVs were the backbone to anime coming to America as companies back then were more willing to license a small 6 episode OAV series than commit to an 100-something episode TV series. Only Viz (Ranma ½) and Animeigo (Urusei Yatsura) were so bold to invest in a full TV series, but it was here where Viz had a better marketing strategy.


Ranma ½ was originally two connected TV series in Japan. The first series titled Ranma Nibbonuchi (or simply, Ranma ½) was composed of 18 episodes and covered the first 3 volumes of the manga. Despite having an above average budget the series was canceled prematurely (mainly because it wasn’t making the ratings Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku had which preceded it) to be retooled. This resulted in one popular character’s introduction to be pushed up earlier (resulting in a controversial flashback to an arc that had yet to happen) and said arc being postponed until the second series. After a time slot change Ranma ½ now had the subtitle Nettouhen (which roughly translated to “Chapter of Hard Battle”) and a reduced animation budget but it ran for its remaining 143 episodes. Now Viz took those episodes and separated them into 22-24 episode “seasons” (divided by when the OP/ED changed). These seasons are titled Anything-Goes Martial Arts, Hard Battle, Outta Control, Martial Mayhem, Random Rhapsody, and Ranma Forever respectively. This guaranteed that instead of seeing one long series people could invest into the series a season at a time.


Finally, after my Takahashi foundation had been established a real friendly guy at my comic book store recommended a few more titles for me to read. Those manga titles were the Mermaid Saga series, The Return of Lum* Urusei Yatsura, and Maison Ikkoku. This began my love for all things Takahashi as I was exposed to her range of storytelling, artwork, and characterization she even pioneered many of my early comic storytelling abilities.

Up next: Anime on TV and my further decent into two other franchises (take a lucky guess which ones!)