Mallow’s Name Is a Better Pun in the Japanese Version of Super Mario RPG
Ever since Super Mario RPG came out in 1996, fans have been asking for Geno — almost exclusively, to the disregard of all other characters introduced in the game. It was always people asking when Geno would be joining Smash Bros. instead of wondering why anyone else might show up in any subsequent game, Smash or otherwise. I get it. Geno is flashier, figuratively and literally, than Mallow, the other playable character who is original to this game. And while both did eventually show up in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it’s Geno who gets to be playable, in a sense, while Mallow gets something less than that.
It’s because I think Mallow deserves a little more love that I’m making this post, but also I genuinely think there’s an aspect to this character that gets overlooked by those of us who first played Super Mario RPG in English. There’s some ace-level punnery going on with him that ties him more closely to the Mario mythos than you might realize.
(What follows will spoil some elements to Super Mario RPG, I should probably say, which is a three-decade-old game, but hey — some people are only playing it now for the first time, and good for them.)
On the most superficial level, Mallow’s name works because the connection most English-speakers would make is to marshmallows, which are soft, white and puffy just like Mallow is. That’s a no duh. But the name meaning goes deeper than this, in a few different ways.
In Japanese, for example, Mallow’s name is マロ or Maro, which sounds a lot more like Mario’s name, which is rendered in katakana as マリオ. I think of this as being sort of like how Goombario in Paper Mario is named after Mario, and it’s perhaps notable that both of them are the first partner Mario meets in their respective names. Obviously, Mallow doesn’t look like Mario, and I suppose a way to interpret this is that Mallow is, compared to Mario, somewhat lacking. He’s not famous, he’s not capable, and he’s a big crybaby to start out with; his arc over the course of the game is finding the ways he can be a hero in his own right. As far as how the name is pronounced, it reflects that he’s a little like Mario but also a little lacking; his name literally falls one syllable short of the name of the most famous hero in the Mushroom Kingdom.
I have to assume this similarity is intentional because Japanese has its own word for “mallow”: 葵 or aoi, which can also be a given name, though in that context it may mean “hollyhock” specifically instead of the mallow genus of plants as a whole. (Virtua Fighter has a recurring character named Aoi Umenokoji, for example, and she definitely seems like the kind of character who’d be named after a frilly flower, tough though she may be.) Because Mallow’s name is rendered differently in English, however, the similarity between it and Mario’s name is harder to spot.
This kind of wordplay comes back toward the end of the game, when Mario gets Mallow back to his native kingdom in the clouds, which in the English version is Nimbus Land, but it has a more telling name in the original Japanese: マシュマロの国 or Mashumaro no Kuni — ”Marshmallow Kingdom.” This place name is so close to Mushroom Kingdom that it seems intentional, even if in Japan the land of the Toads is キノコ王国 or Kinoko Ōkoku. For what it’s worth, マッシュルーム or mashurūmu does exist in Japanese as a loanword to refer to the mushrooms that are common in North America — the kind you get on pizza. The white ones even sort of look like marshmallows, as far as being white, puffy edible things. But yeah, if Mallow is named to suggest Mario but just a little bit different, then it would follow that the name of his homeland should also suggest the Mushroom Kingdom, even if only subtly.
(This point was brought to my attention by a comment on my post on my post about Super Mario RPG’s Valentina, which ultimately got me to realize that her name and design are a big, weird in-joke to the music of Jimmy Buffett. Thanks, Chad!)
It’s lost somewhat in the cleaner rendering on the Switch remake, but the 16-bit version of Nimbus Land really does look like marshmallows and candy. (Yes, I edited the castle so show off those marshmallow-looking steps. That’s some good fluff!)
But wait, there’s more!
Scientifically speaking, mallows are a whole genus of plants that includes hollyhock, okra, cotton, cacao, durian and hibiscus. But that genus name is probably best known to most English-speakers through its connection to the marshmallow, which is both a confection and a specific plant, Althaea officinalis, from which the candy was initially made. This marshmallow, the plant version, is literally a mallow that grows near marshes, and it’s perhaps notable that Mallow the character in Super Mario RPG is given a backstory of having grown up in the swampy environs of a tadpole pond, made to think he was a tadpole even though he looks nothing like the actual tadpoles he was raised alongside.
These plants have been cooked and eaten going back to ancient Egypt, and it’s a dish made from the roots that gets us to modern-day marshmallows. The root extract is sometimes known as halawa, and yes, if you’re wondering, there’s an etymological connection to the similarly named Iranian dessert, which was and is still sometimes made using this substance. There’s a French dessert related to the Iranian one called pâte de guimauve (literally “marshmallow paste”) that included meringue into the mix, and this is very close to what we think of marshmallows being today, even if the kind you would buy at the supermarket today no longer contain any substance from the plant that gave it its name. But the word traveled from associations with wetlands to associations with these cloud-like candies, and that’s very similar to the route Mallow’s art takes him in the game: from the tadpole pond to a fanciful kingdom in the clouds.
And I think that is neat.
This concludes my presentation on the history of marshmallows, the surprising diversity of the mallow genus of plants and, most importantly, the rich wordplay that’s easy to miss in Super Mario RPG. I hope the next time you see someone campaigning for Geno’s inclusion in whatever upcoming game, you at least remember poor little Mallow, who is maybe not as cool as Geno but who manages to pack a lot of linguistic intrigue into that squat, puffy frame.
From Nintendo of Japan’s website, where the auto-tanslated text states, “Maro is a fluffy boy who thinks himself a frog.” And that’s just perfect. No notes.
Miscellaneous Notes
In Super Mario RPG, one of the few other named residents of Nimbus Land is Garro, the master sculptor who helps Mario sneak into Valentina’s castle. I think his name, which in Japanese is ガロ or Garo, is another double pun: both a reference to Mallow’s name (who in Japanese, don’t forget, is マロ or Maro) and a reference to the Japanese 画廊 or garō — literally “art gallery,” because he’s an artist. In that sense, I suppose localizing his name as Gallo would have made a little bit more sense, because it’s closer to both gallery and Mallow’s name, but I can also see where the parallel would have slipped by all too easily.
I’m only a few hours into my playthrough of the Super Mario RPG remake — and yes, I do realize the irony in me writing about a game rather than actually playing it — but it’s been really interesting looking at the localization changes made to this version compared to the 1996 Super NES release. Some of the changes I like. For example, certain characters in the original were given new names even when they existed as part of the Mario canon. What we’d commonly call a Beezo was called Shy Away, for example, and Koopa Paratrooopas were called Sky Koopas. It’s almost as if Ted Woolsey was trying to make this English version of the game more separate from the mainline Mario games than it needed to be, but these have all been fixed. This sort of change wasn’t made universally, however. There’s a character in the game who is clearly supposed to be Kamek — that is, not any Magikoopa but Bowser’s right-hand man Magikoopa — but the new translation terms him Wizakoopa.
Other changes are even more curious. There didn’t seem to be anything necessarily wrong with the first of Smithy’s weapon-themed goons being named Mack, an obvious reference to the Threepenny Opera song. In the remake, this character is now Claymorton, a pun on a type of sword and I guess the name Morton, if not Morton Koopa Jr. specifically, but I’m not sure that’s enough of an improvement to warrant the change. In Japanese, the character’s name was ケンゾール or Kenzōru, which the Super Mario Wiki unpacks as meaning more or less “sword soul,” but if these are the kind of changes being made, I would prefer it if Nimbus Land were renamed Marshmallow Kingdom, since that was the intention of the original script. I can only guess that it remains Nimbus Land in the remake because it’s somewhat of a giveaway to the plot that it’s so close to Mallow’s name.
Apparently the original translation denied us the fact that what appeared to be a generic Goomba character was actually a specific female Goomba in the Japanese original: クリジェンヌ or Kurijennu, now called Goomhilde, whose alleged feminine wiles make for a joke we English-speakers didn’t get until now. Not sure what kind of pun Kurijennu would be going for. Kuri-Jane? Kuri-Jenny?
At least Exor’s mouth is apparently no longer called Neosquid. According to Supper Mario Broth, at least, to this day we still don’t know how this name ended up in the localized Super NES version.
Finally, here is something that doesn’t have all that much to do with Mario but which did come up in discussing edits to this piece. I guess I overestimated how well-known this is, just because I grew up in an agricultural area and a decent amount of mushrooms were grown there, but the type of mushrooms that in Japan are termed マッシュルーム or masshurūmu can be the white, milder-tasting mushrooms or the larger, stronger-tasting brown ones… because there’s the same species, Agaricus bisporus. When they’re plucked young, we call them white mushrooms or button mushrooms, among other names, but when they’re allowed to mature, they turn brown and we call them cremini or baby bella mushrooms — or even sometimes chestnut mushrooms, which is weird because it’s a pairing of chestnuts and mushrooms that occurs completely separate from the Goomba, which also an unlikely pairing of chestnuts and mushrooms. And when they’re allowed to fully mature, we call them portobello mushrooms, and that is weird for no Mario-related reason but simply because no one knows how this name got attached to this type of mushroom.
This post ended up being more about produce than I anticipated.