[Comic] Super Mario Bros. the movie: depictions in manga

April 20, 2018

I’m on record as a booster of the 1993 live-action Mario film. It’s got great effects and design, fun performances, and a fascinating reinterpretation of the Mario world and characters. So when I found references to the movie in various manga, I knew I wanted to translate them and bring them to a wider audience.

This package is a collection of pages from various manga sources: two 4koma gag strips, an excerpt from Yukio Sawada’s Super Mario-kun, and several sections from Kazuki Motoyama’s KC Deluxe Mario manga run. I’ve cleaned the scans and translated all text into English, while localising game and character names. I also inserted handy intermissions providing context for each of the pages as they come up.

Translating humour is always tricky but even if the jokes don’t land, at least we’ve got some amazing depictions of Bob Hoskins, the animatronic Yoshi, Dennis Hopper, etc. to look at. It’s interesting too seeing how the characters within the manga react to the existence of the movie and alternate versions of themselves; there’s a few different takes on this throughout.

Anyway please enjoy, there’s more information and credits in the images. If you find any more references to the movie in any manga source, please let me know and I’ll gladly add to this collection!

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Backups of source scans: KC 4koma v2, Action 4koma v5, Super Mario-kun v9, KC Super Mario Kart v3, KC Yoshi’s Safari v1, KC Yoshi’s Safari v2, KC Donkey Kong v2, KC Super Mario 64 v3. For much more like this, see the whole archive. And my other scanlation projects.