Super Mario Brothers: Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach (1986)

Here's a strange one. An early and oddly obscure, animated adaptation of the adventures of the Super Mario Brothers, Mario and Luigi.While this movie's rendition of the Mushroom Kingdom is actually pretty faithful to the original games, featuring almost all the classic enemies, sound effects, tunes and even level elements, it disappoints in all other respects. The quality of the animation is even below that of the already dreadful "Super Mario Bros. Super Show", the characters, rather than acting in accordance with some sort of personality, or at least a few consistent quirks, just keep throwing random emotional fits, the humor annoys with a blend of nonsensical (not to be mistaken with creative) silliness and utterly generic slapstick, and the songs that play throughout the entire thing have brain-meltingly dumb lyrics.All in all, I cannot understand why people are commenting positively on this one. As much as I consider the western Mario cartoons to be nothing but quick and lazy attempts to capitalize on the popularity of the character, I fail to see how this is any better, if not worse.

This is very hard to find, but I found it! Most of the characters have matured in design since Super Mario Bros. the game, released just one year earlier. It seems safe for me to say that with some exceptions, Bowser and Luigi (only because of his color scheme), the characters' designs and personalities are very well developed. Princess Peach is dead on.The story flows nicely throughout, I happen to be someone who thinks that Mario is very hard to write stories for because the games' storyline as a whole is weak and has no cinematic potential. In this case I was treated to a pretty solid story and some weird and sometimes unfitting J-pop.If you're not a die-hard Mario fan, this probably isn't for you. Once you finish watching it, you're gonna want to break out your old NES.

This is the oldest animated Super Mario Bros. Cartoon. And it contains all the elements from the game. The plot is similar to with the whole Mario Bros. travel in Mushroom Kingdom to save Princess Peach from Bowser. Only the story is different.There are minor and secondary characters entirely original for this movie only. Plus it has a few changes like Luigi wearing yellow instead of green, & the Mario Bros. are grocery store owners and not plumbers.Despite all that the movie has a good flow to it as well as some pretty catchy Japanese voice talent. But for only 60 minutes long, there's so much more they could include in this movie.Sadly this is the only existing Mario Bros. anime. And I think it wouldn't hurt to make another one that's done with newer animation. I mean if Pokemon can have a successful anime. Why not the Mario Bros, there's so much value that can make a highly interesting based off of a video game anime.I didn't see this movie till most recently. And it's never been released outside of Japan at all. An English dub is out of the question as very few anime distribution companies would never dub anything this old and out of date animation.The only way it would ever be released is to get it on a sub-only DVD and get permission by Nintendo in doing so.

The very first Japanimation of the Super Mario Bros. hits the big screen!!! This short, 60-minute movie was released to theaters on July 20, 1986 in Japan. The title, translated as "Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach" pretty much outlines the plot. This film was never released outside of Japan, and therefore has no English translation or subtitles. It is by now out-of-print and extremely difficult to find. In the opening segment, Mario and Luigi (Luigi's color scheme is different, the first and only time this is shown) are employees at a grocery. Mario is seen holding an emerald necklace, which we are lead to believe belongs to Princess Peach. (The Princess' name in Japan was always Peach, later changed to Toadstool while the games were being marketed in the U.S.) While he and Luigi discuss the value of this gem, some weird little creature walks in and steals the necklace. Mario and Luigi are seen giving chase until getting sucked into a Warp Zone. Once they arrive in the Time Warp they encounter the Mushroom Hermit, who tells them that Princess Peach has been captured by King Bowser Koopa. The rest of the movie shows the Bros. on their journey to save the Princess. One of the highlights is when Mario is asleep and Luigi looks for food before being tricked by two goombas into eating wild mushrooms. These of course turn out to be poisonous mushrooms, causing Luigi to become hysterical. Another incident is where Mario is asleep again and dreams about Princess Peach and him dancing together.The music that plays in the background is simply called "I Love You", the remaining lyrics sung in Japanese by Princess Peach, voiced by Mami Yamase. All in all, the movie is quite tastefully done. It is full of laughs as well as romance. The scenes of Mario and the Princess together are very touching. I have only seen a few clips of this movie on a website. I highly recommend it to be viewed by all Mario fans. This is a truly revolutionary piece of Mario history!!!!