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.

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