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It Came From YouTube: The Super Mario Bros. Anime

Feb. 13 10:55 PM by Lynxara

I forget what I was looking for when I found this delight. A Mario Brothers glitch vid, I think. Regardless, this trumped everything else I could've possibly found on YouTube. Behold the terrible beauty of the 1986 Super Mario Bros. anime, mortals, and despair. Maybe other people have found it before, I don't know, but hell if I'm gonna pass up the chance to post it.

Although relatively rare and hard to find in hard copy form now, a watchable version is up on YouTube. Even in postage-stamp-vision, you'll marvel at the poor direction, cheap animation, and writing that veers between awkward comedy and incomprehensible craziness. There's no subtitling and it's all in Japanese, but fear not! I've watched this thing in stupefied disbelief more times than I care to count in the past 24 hours, so I'll be there with a running commentary for each clip. You won't be any more confused than I am.

Jump behind the cut to start your magical mystery tour of the place where Mario intersects with crap anime.

• 00:00 - 00:12: Mario is playing a Famicom (ha! ha! product placement) game that I shall call Deadly Flying Things. He also appears to be on heroin.
• 00:24: Luigi appears in cap and nightgown (to let us know it's late!), offering Mario a cup of tea. Mario is now in a killing rage and doesn't give a damn about Luigi's tea. He doesn't threaten to kill Luigi, but we know he's thinking it.
• 00:32: Mario snarls incoherently as Deadly Flying Thing reaches its climax, which includes a dude hitting flying pencils with a baseball bat and lobbing a baseball at a piano to make it disappear. (Shit, I want to play Deadly Flying Thing now.) Luigi realizes his brother is deep in the grip of addiction and decides to just go to bed.
• 00:44: Mario's high finally crashes, ending his creepy endless snarling. The TV has abruptly shut itself off.
• 01:43: Princess Peach and a horde of traditional Super Mario enemies come toppling out of Mario's TV, and then proceed to all explode or kill each other or something. Mario is justifiably confused.
• 02:04: Mario notices that Princess Peach is hot. Princess Peach immediately screams and cries for help upon waking up. Get used to that.
• 02:23: Peach recognizes Mario and tells him he's super-awesome. Mario's thought process at this point is clearly "durr pretty."
• 03:22: Oh snap, it's Koopa! Peach explains that Mario needs to kick his ass. Mario is all about this until Koopa crawls out of his TV and is roughly thirty feet tall. Peach urges him to try and fight Koopa anyway. It goes about as well as you think it would. Koopa picks up Peach and wanders off.
• 04:06: Koopa crawls back in Mario's TV. Mario is unhappy. Luigi wants to know what the hell is going on and mocks Mario soundly when he overhears him babbling about Princess Peach. I like how Luigi is carrying a candle when there's an electric lamp clearly drawn in the background. Also a great production value footnote: count how many of Mario's lines are spoken without any lipflap at all!
• 04:26: Maro finds Peach's broach-necklace thing. I only point this out because the animators will keep drawing it on her throughout the film anyway.
• 05:36: OPENING CREDITS. See your favorite Mario characters, molded from melting fondant!
• 06:15: Now we catch up with Mario and Luigi, working at their... uh... their grocery store in the middle of desert. Yes. Luigi is dressed in his traditional... uh... blue and yellow colors. A woman comes in asking for ingredients to bake a cake, and Mario hands her whatever's within reach because he just doesn't give a damn. She is unhappy and leaves, presumably to shop at the desert's other grocery store.
• 07:13: Luigi wants to know what the hell is Mario's problem, and sees him mooning over Peach's necklace. This gets him all hot and bothered, because Luigi's only character trait in this anime is being a bottomlessly greedy jerk. Mario just doesn't give a damn.
• 07:22: Oh god I have no idea. Kou informs me this conversation has something to do with wanting to travel to the land of golden mushrooms and diamond stars, but the phone call gag is incomprehensible.
• 08:56: A dog that bears an eerie resemblance to a Wiggler and has a horrible shrieking bark full of pseudo-speech enters the grocery store, assaults Mario, and runs off with Peach's necklace. Mario chases the dog down in a chase sequence full of awesomely terrible animation. The dog begins hiding in pipes in a construction zone. One, of course, is a magic warp zone pipe. Luigi follows Mario with a backpack full of prospecting equipment, obviously expecting some chances to loot and plunder in the future.

• 00:33: Mario and Luigi warp to the level with the cave and the old guy who gave you the sword in Zelda. You remember that, right? Old guy exposits some stupid crap about bringing them there and welcomes them to the Mushroom Kingdom. This prompts jubilant dancing!
• 00:42: Old guy informs them they're gonna fight Koopa. The Mario Brothers respond by having a grand mal seizure.
• 01:05: Old guy is telling them to rescue Peach. They begin having another joy seizure, but Mario flakes out halfway through because he's lovesick and emo. Doesn't stop Luigi, though.
• 01:16: The mushroom kingdom explodes. Wow, it's just like the beginning of Super Mario Galaxy!
• 02:05: So much exposition it all over your screen. Kou informs me that during this bit old dude mentions a legend about a "round man" from another country coming to save the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario takes less offense at this than I would expect.
• 03:04: Old guy mentions that Peach is going to end up having to marry Koopa if the Mario Brothers don't get off their predestined asses and do something about it. Mario is so outraged at the thought that he transforms into a Mexican bandito. When he's done firing his guns in the air, Shazam explains that to beat Bower they need to find the three mysterious power-ups.
• 03:40: The three power-ups are, of course, the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Invincibility Star. Shazam entrusts Mario and Luigi with finding them and using them to save the princess. Alright, time to pad out the movie with some fetch questing!
• 04:08: Shazam tells Luigi about gold coins, and now he's all about this adventuring thing. Wiggle-dog goes to follow them.
• 04:21: Mario and Luigi walk through a world of floating blocks and random explosions.
• 04:28: Mario and Luigi walk through a bad music video background effect.
• 04:45: Mario and Luigi walk through the desert. Luigi assaults some sort of city until it gives him a sufficient amount of coins.
• 05:08: Mario and Luigi walk until sufficient padding time is reached. A pair of Goombas watch.
• 06:00: Luigi is hungry enough to assault Mario with a shovel for dreaming about food. He contemplates eating the damned wiggle-dog, and gets bitten on the nose for his trouble.
• 07:45: The Goombas offer to take Luigi to some delicious mushrooms, which isn't a suspicious offer at all. They are apparently omg magic shrooms, as Mario is awakened by the sounds of Luigi's manic laughter. Mario inexplicably tries feeding him more shrooms to calm him down, which just sends Luigi through more extreme mood swings.
• 08:30: A paratroopa the size of a house (shades of World 4!) carries Mario off to feed him to her babies. Mario feeds them magic shrooms instead, rendering them too stoned to devour him.
• 09:35: Everyone's crashed out when mama paratroopa brings Luigi and wiggle-dog in to feed her babies. Mario makes a show of biting Luigi's nose and then alleges that he tastes terrible. He asks mama paratroopa for hamburgers, which the babies repeat anxiously. She flies off, no doubt experiencing great insecurity about her fitness as a parent.

• 01:20: Mario spots one of the three power-ups located conveniently above the paratroopa's nest. He climbs up to snag the mushroom, which is weirdly ensconced in a crystal. Once snagged, gold coins rain out of the hole left behind. Mario falls back into the nest where Luigi is catching coins like an extra in that parade scene in Batman. This leads to the lot of them nearly toppling out of the nest.
• 03:00: The gold coins turn into freaky mushroom people-babies. The mushroom in the crystal turns into a freaky mushroom giantess named Kinopio. She hands Mario the real Super Mushroom and then tells him to get back to saving Princess Peach.
• 03:08: STOCK FOOTAGE
• 03:13: Mama paratroopa and the baby paratroopas say good-bye.
• 03:19: SHUT UP, MORE STOCK FOOTAGE
• 03:39: Mushrooms dance. Mario beats up Bullet Bills without breaking his stock footage loop.
• 03:56: A Koopa Troopa the size of a house wanders by and sits on Mario and Luigi while they're frozen in their stock footage loop. Mario presumably uses the Super Mushroom to become a giant. The scene abruptly becomes night and we see a baffling still shot of Mario as an incredibly poorly drawn giant, hundreds of feet tall.
• 04:04: HEY HOW BOUT SOME STOCK FOOTAGE
• 05:00: Mario and Luigi come to a crossroads marked by a giant shoe. The pair of Goombas pop out of it (is it THE shoe?!!) and fast-talk Mario and Luigi into heading toward the right.
• 06:15: Mario and Luigi enter a field of wonderful-smelling flowers that all happen to be pirahna plants, which of course try to eat them. Mario attempts to save himself by extracting a shake of salt from his crotch (no, seriously) and dashing it in the pirahna plant's mouth to make it sneeze. After this escape, Mario and Luigi defeat the pirahna plants by... running away from them. Woo, dramatic.
• 07:45: As the pirahna plants sink beneath the Earth for... no reason, really, the Mario Brothers stumble across their owner, Lakitu. He is thoroughly unhappy with the way they've damaged his garden and hurls Spiny Eggs at them. The Marios mock him while Lakitu uses the weather control options on his cloud to water them and, uh, shoot lightning at them. The Marios stop laughing when the Eggs begin to hatch.
• 08:10: The Spinies attack, and animation in this thing somehow manages to reach a new low.
• 08:55: Mario and Luigi are surrounded by enormous Spinies and appear doomed. Then a beanstalk begins growing beneath Mario's ass. No, I'm not making that up.

• 02:08: Lakitu justifiably believed he's won the battle, until he realizes it's Mario bobbing beside him on the beanstalk. Mario grabs hold of the cloud and Lakitu tries to flee. Eventually, the cloud splits in half, letting Lakitu escape and giving Mario his own magic weather-controlling cloud. He goes back to save Luigi and wiggle-dog, who are somehow not dead. He screws around with the weather control levers on the cloud while the Spinies wait courteously. Eventually he finds the setting for "snow", which somehow puts the Spinies to sleep as it covers them. Then the cloud disappears and the sun comes out to melt the snow. All of the Spnies disappear as they melt, replaced by flowers. A cloud flies down from the sky and turns into a mushroom girl, who hands Mario the Fire Flower power-up and gives him a kiss before disappearing as inexplicably as she first arrived. This is the most insipid thing I have ever seen.
• 02:15: TIME FOR STOCK FOOTAGE
• 02:23: Flowers dance.
• 02:31: Buzzy Beetles attack. Mario throws fireballs without breaking his walking stock footage loop, which results in a bizarre Egyptian-tomb-painting type throwing animation.
• 02:40: YEAAHHHH STOCK FOOTAGE
• 02:43: Luigi stops to mine for gold coins, which erupt from a hole in the ground like a gusher of oil.
• 02:47: THE PERSISTENCE OF STOCK FOOTAGE
• 03:02: Luigi stops to harvest coins from a floating brick by jumping up and hitting it. Mario begins jumping up and hitting the brick next to it, which results in a harvest of delicious Mario Cup Ramen, which the brothers immediately stop and enjoy. Product placement, or mere idiocy? I wish I knew.
• 03:10: Mario and Wiggle-Dog cross an arch which crumbles behind them. Luigi plummets down the chasm, then walks up the far side of the gorge. Why are you doing this, director, it is not a sight gag until it is funny.
• 04:33: Mario and Luigi enter a path through high cliffs. The Goombas hide behind rocks and use a trail of coins to lure Mario and Luigi into a deep cave. The cave's walls glitter with gold, so Luigi immediately busts out his pick-axe and begins mining. Then a boulder runs down the tunnel they entered through, stopping up the entrance and trapping them.
• 05:06: The cave is actually a jail cell, with... uh, a small entrance blocked by wooden bars. The Goombas reveal they work for Koopa and taunt Mario for his stupidity when he asks for help. Despite all his rage, Mario is still just a rat in a cage.
• 05:42: The Goombas post a Hammer Brother to guard the cell and then bugger off. Mario realizes that he's an idiot loser who'll never save the princess. Luigi continues digging not an escape tunnel, but to extract the gold from the walls. Douchebag.
• 06:35: While the heroes are spinning their wheels, Peach gazes out over a two-frame sea and laments her captivity. Koopa approaches and asks her what color wedding dress she would like. Peach is bitchy at him. Koopa professes his undying love for her. Peach is more bitchy at him.
• 07:35: What the shit? Peach demands that Koopa transform himself into a series of wacky forms for her amusement. Then she asks him to transform into something small and cute, so Koopa transforms into a teddy bear. Peach picks him up and locks him in a box.
• 08:36: Of course it didn't work, you stupid bint. Koopa just changes back to his regular huge form and breaks free. He sets Peach down in a chair, and they bicker for a bit. Peach appears to do the "Mario will save me!" routine, while Koopa goes "Har har no I caught him!" Peach cries. End scene, thank God.
• 09:32: Mario has a tediously romantic daydream about Peach. He keeps having it even after Luigi announces that the escape tunnel is ready.

• 00:35: The Hammer Brother is not happy with these shenanigans, prompting Mario and Luigi to actually begin escaping. Lousy sight gags abound.
• 01:14: Mario and wiggle-dog try to escape the Hammer Brother by climbing a sort of improbable butte. Hammer Brother flings lots of hammers at him, eventually dislodging a perfectly round boulder. The boulder crashes down at him, collapsing the stone arch he's standing on and leaving him beneath a pile of rubble.
• 02:40: Luigi weeps, for his gold has all stopped shining and turned to rock. He dumps his bag out over a cliff, and among the former gold is the Invincibility Star, which tumbles into the ocean. Mario dives in after it; Wiggle Dog follows. Luigi almost does but can't swim or some shit. Once underwater, Mario is menaced by a giant anglerfish and a weird manta ray that inflates into a giant Cheep Cheep which then explodes into a school of tiny Cheep Cheeps. They proceed to beat the crap out of Mario until he swims away.
• 03:30: The animation for this sequence is atrocious. Mario spots the Star in a giant clam's shell. When he goes to get it, the clam clamps shut. Mario and Wiggle-Dog try to entice it into opening, by, uh. Mario dresses up in a leotard and floofy pink tutu while Wiggle-Dog somehow plays lite FM rock on an electric guitar. The clam opens up to figure out what in god's name is going on out there, and Mario dives into its shell before it can close again. Wiggle-Dog frees him by tickling the edge of the clam, causing it to sneeze (?). Mario flies out with the Invincibility Star in hand.
• 04:20: A giant Cheep Cheep begins pursuing Mario and Wiggle-Dog, who flee rather than, say, use the Invincibility Star. They try to hide by clinging to the mast of a sunken ship, while the Cheep Cheep rams them. Eventually the Cheep Cheep explodes into a cloud of smaller, non-threatening Cheep Cheeps. The ship, loosened, begins to rise to the surface. This awakens a giant Blooper sleeping beneath it.
• 05:10: The giant Blooper pursues the pirate ship, which rises into the air and begins flying for basically no reason. Luigi is nearby on a deserted island, so Mario rescues him and the ship begins to fly away. The giant Blooper grabs hold of it and is dragged out of the water, and dashed against a rock as a... soft romantic love ballad starts up?
• 06:45: Montages and stock footage pad out a film that's long since becomes mind-numbingly tedious when it's not just mind-numbing. Luigi spots a castle and Mario figures out that it's probably Koopa's fortress. He spins the ship's wheel really hard to make it go faster, but all that really does is make the ship spin around and boards fly off. Good jorb.
• 07:20: It's a Koopa marriage festival! This consists of troopas carrying baskets of vague edible things and the a screeching Hammer Bros. choir.
• 07:40: A wacky make-up sequence where I'm pretty sure a four-year-old would find the payoff gag tedious. Still, I like Peach's butt-shaped hat. Also note that there isn't lipflap animation for a single line spoken during this scene.
• 08:05: Peach shows up, wedding march, Koopa priest, yadda yadda.
• 08:18: Mario's half-exploded pirate ship sails to the rescue very slowly.
• 09:48: Koopa wedding vows. When it's Peach's time to say "I do," Koopa misinterprets her happiness. Then Mario's flying ship shows up, shedding parts like mad until it eventually collapses and crashes into a tower.

• 00:23: Koopa is unhappy with this turn of events, kvetches at the Goombas, picks up Peach, and walks off. Mario tries to follow him but is foiled by a spontaneously appearing wall.
• 00:55: Time for an homage to the fortress levels! Mario enters one by ducking into a crack in the wall. Cameras inexplicably go 2D for a bit and he begins moving in sidescroller fashion, with the frame rate trimmed way down to "simulate" Famicom animations. Luigi digs his way into the screen, with a shower of wacky coins.
• 01:56: Mario and Wiggle-Dog pass through a series of giant gears, Modern Times-style, for pretty much no reason. Then they enter a huge round room guarded by the two jerkface Goombas from earlier. Mario tries to make his way across the room's many platforms, but the Goombas control everything and so can begin filling it with fireballs and waves of fire and other stuff.
• 02:52: Back in the 2D part of the level, Luigi is still mining for showers of gold coins. Eventually he starts digging and just hits a massive water source. His tiny hole somehow floods the entire castle and especially the Goomba room, once more saving Mario from having to do anything. The sequence culminates in a lousy hot spring gag.
• 04:00: As steam rises, the Goomba room starts inexplicably collapsing. Cut to Koopa, who's trying to get the ceremony completed elsewhere in the castle. Cue lousy gag with Koopa giving her a giant engagement ring. Fortunately, the room begins collapsing to end this stupid scene. Cut to outside, and somehow the entire castle collapses, leaving only Mario and Wiggle-Dog on platforms spared.
• 05:30: Peach emerges from the rubble, but before Mario can go to her, so does Koopa. He's pissed about Mario screwing with his wedding. Mario and Koopa proceed to have basically their lousiest battle ever, with Koopa stomping around and shooting fire while Mario runs off, and hides behind rocks Koopa can burn up anyway. Princess Peach does a total about-face and tells Mario to run away and leave her. Wiggle-Dog makes the most headway by repeatedly biting Koopa's nose while Mario tries to figure out which power-ups to use. He eats the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, which prompts, uh, a packet of Mario furikake and a bowl of steamed rice to appear. He eats that until Koopa stomps into him, prompting him to, you know, drop the damned Invincibility Star down a hole. Anime Mario is the crappiest Mario ever.
• 07:36: Oh geez. Okay, Mario falls over a three foot cliff and lays there. Princess Peach begs for Mario's life. Luigi tunnels into the scene, Invincibility Star in hand. He's about to feed it to Mario when Koopa steps on them and begins grinding for good measure. This apparently did nothing, because Mario rises up beneath his foot anyways. He knocks Koopa over, causing him to drop Peach, who he then dashes over and catches. Mario glows, Invincibility Star theme, and then he proceeds to kick the snot out of Koopa for awhile. The fight looks remarkably like the Mario 64 Koopa battle in a frankly unsettling way. Koopa eventually is hurled into the distance, explodes into fireworks, and then floats away. Hooray for Mario!! Now on to the stupid denouement.

• 02:16: Koopa's dead so now it's a race to get the damn thing over with. Koopa's castle spontaneously turns into a field of flowers, where a new castle materializes. Oh look, it's Peach's. Mario gives her the necklace, which is now a brooch somehow in dialog, back. Oh look, Wiggle-Dog turns into the handsome Prince Haru, who I think is ruler of the Flower Kingdom. Oh, look, he's Peach's fiancee ha ha ha screw you, Mario.
• 03:07: Good-bye, Mario! You get jack-all for your troubles but praise from Shazam and Prince Fruity. Don't let little bits of your soul die as you think of them cuddling behind you!
• 05:57: REVENGE OF STOCK FOOTAGE
• 06:23: Ah, and now a wacky teaser to end things with. Back at the Mario Brothers, uh, grocery store, the old lady from earlier returns wanting ingredients for an apple pie. Although apparently greeted by Luigi, all of her groceries are assembled for her by Koopa and a trio of troopas. Wacky-take! So long, folks!
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