Super Mario Bros: Peach-hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen! Review

Following on from reviewing a juggernaut like Frozen, lets dive into the archive and pick on a lost OVA Anime that was shown during the early days of the Mario Franchise, now this is a mouthful as the title is called Super Mario Bros: Peach-hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen!

The short film starts off with Mario playing a video game, yes kind of ironic that Video Game's greatest known character is a gamer himself. Then Princess Peach appears on the game and exits into Mario's world to try and escape Bowser's minions, Bowser follows and quickly dispatches Mario and takes Peach back into the game world with Peach leaving behind an Emerald jewel much like the one attached to her dress. Luigi wakes up thinking Mario just made up the whole confrontation but changes his tune when he realizes the jewel he has is real and tries to encourage Mario to go save Peach but with no way of knowing how.
The next day the brothers are working in their grocery store, yes the so called plumbers were not originally plumbers, but Mario is too bummed out to work but things change for them when a blue dog named Kibidango takes the gem which leads the brothers to the Mushroom Kingdom through a warp pipe disguised among regular pipes.
Upon arrival an old man named Kinoko Sennin explains the situation that Bowser had his proposal of marriage rejected and in return not only kidnapped Peach but turned the Mushroom people into bricks and plants, in order to complete this quest Mario needs to find the three mystical power-ups of a Mushroom, Star & Flower, meanwhile the money grabbing Luigi is just happy that he can keep any coin they collect and Kibidango comes with them.
From there they basically go through a typical Mario game beating all the enemies you see in the game while Bowser attempts to woo Princess Peach. At one point the brothers come across Toad of whom was freed from being turned into a coin looking strangely feminine complete with pink color palette, now since this film was released in 1986, Toad hadn't been made yet or at least not confirmed to exist back then, so this version would be considered Toad 1.0.
From there it continues like a proper Mario game right up until the final confrontation with Bowser which ends much in the same way as Mario 64 with Mario grabbing Bowser's tail and throwing him around. With the Koopa King dispatched, Mario gets rewarded with a kiss but then to his dismay, Kibidango turns into a Prince named Haru and ends up married to Peach as they were pre-engaged to do so. Even in the anime, Mario ends up with no Princess and from there Mario is told he's welcome back anytime if more rescuing is needed while Bowser ends up running the Mario Bros Grocery Store.
So ends Mario's only attempt at an Anime and to be honest, this is the closest thing you'll get to a proper retelling of the Mario games on tv screens and it predates those that followed it. Is it any good? It's okay considering the time period and how young the franchise was at the time, like I said, Toad had not been invented as a speaking character nor was there any sign of Yoshi and typically being Japanese only, Bowser was of course referred to as King Koopa, mind you some elements never came back like the so called Prince and Kinoko Sennin are never spoken of again in the franchise and pretty much all the designs kept evolving over the years until present day. The availability of this anime is scarce, even a fansub you'll struggle to find as the movie had a very limited VHS release and most fans know how increasingly difficult it is to find those; your only option is Youtube where one uploader has got the movie up as a raw but I'll leave the viewers to find it, there may be a couple of fan dubs and fan remasters but that's it.
Final Verdict: Even without subtitles it's very easy to follow but considering it's rarity, seeking it out is a task in vain, I still say watch it if only to look into Mario's past at it's earliest stages in establishing it's mythos.

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