Is Super Mario Wonder’s Prince Florian a Nod to the Mario Anime?
One of the big questions I had about Nintendo’s offerings before and after the Super Mario Bros. movie was why there wasn’t an obvious tie-in video game — if not an adaptation of the movie specifically, then a release Nintendo could point fans to, essentially saying, “If you like the movie, then go play this game!”
It shows what I know; Nintendo reported a surge in profits without any such game, and pointing to the lineup of existing Mario titles proved tie-in enough.
Still, I half-expected some concessions to the film to show up in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the next major Mario game released in the wake of the movie. Would Foreman Spike be playable? The penguin king? Any of the Kongs that Nintendo seems so keen to promote lately? Again, it just shows how much I know about running a major video game business, because SMBW seems to skip over any of the film’s supporting characters, instead focusing on what might be considered a callback to the first Mario movie — and no, not the Bob Hoskins film but the 1986 anime, Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach.
But is it actually a callback?
In last week’s SMBW-focused Nintendo Direct, we learned that the kickoff to the game’s story seems to be Mario and company taking a leisurely stroll to the Flower Kingdom. Once they arrive, however, Bowser merges with the castle belonging to the reigning Flower Kingdom monarch, Prince Florian. The living Bowser castle flies off and Florian, now without a home, chooses to tag along on this new adventure, though as a ridealong and not as a playable character.
This set-up would seem to nod in several different ways toward the anime, which ends with Mario and Luigi rescuing Princess Peach, only to find that she’s already destined to marry Prince Haru of Flower Kingdom — or technically, Flower-koku (フラワー国), translated as “Flower Nation” or “Flower Country”. Not only that, Haru has been accompanying Mario and Luigi throughout their entire journey, it turns out, just in the form of a dog-like creature named Kibidango. In defeating Bowser, Mario and Luigi broke the evil spell that robbed him of his effeminate dreamboat form, and now he’s free to marry Peach, even if the brothers did all the dirty work for him.
What’s interesting about Haru’s dog-like form, aside from the fact that it bears some resemblance to the Popeye character Eugene the Jeep, making him yet another connection between Popeye and video games, is that it also bears some resemblance to Prince Florian. Both have ball-shaped noses and simple, “happy face”-style grins. You might be inclined to guess that Florian was designed to recall Haru in some way, but then again, this is pretty much how a lot of the characters look in this style; compare the Toads to their Flower Kingdom equivalents, the Poplins, for example. In any case, Prince Florian, who is clearly some kind of caterpillar, is also clearly meant to evoke Wiggler, the recurring caterpillar baddie who’s been rocking a round nose and a dopey grin ever since his debut in Super Mario World. That said, Kibidango originated the segmented, Wiggler-style body before there even was a Wiggler, and this shape is so core to the character’s essence that his name references this fact: kibi dango are round millet dumplings that, when stacked on a stick, give the appearances of round, Wiggerlish segments.
It remains to be seen if the decoration on Florian’s head is a crown, a Wiggler-style head flower or both. (Wiggler’s Japanese name is ハナチャン, Hanachan, from hana, “flower,” plus the diminutive suffix -chan, so that dealybob on his head is a lot more central to his identity there than it is in English localizations.)
A big difference between Florian and Haru is that the latter is introduced in his cursed, non-regular form. In SMBW, it seems like being a squirmy, green caterpillar is Florian’s default form. However, the one thing caterpillars dependably do is metamorphosize into something else, and I’m curious to see where the game’s story takes Florian, whether he changes into a butterfly version of his original self or, to take another note from the Mario anime, into an effeminate humanoid dreamboat that catches Peach and Daisy’s attention in a way Mario and Luigi don’t. Maybe post-metamorphosis Florian will be an unlockable playable character in SMBW, making him the playable, canonical version of Prince Haru that never materialized back in the day.
If that sounds like I’m reaching (and I might be), there’s actually some precedent for The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach introducing concepts that eventually would also appear in Mario games. Among others, it’s the Mario anime that first gives a version of giant-sized Koopa Troopas (which would appear in Super Mario Bros. 3), Mario stealing Lakitu’s cloud and riding around in it (which would appear in Super Mario World) and Mario defeating Bowser by grabbing by the tail and flinging him away (which would appear in Super Mario 64). Whether these ended up in games as a result of homage, accident or convergent evolution is up to you, I suppose.
So, then, is Prince Florian a conscious nod to the Super Mario anime? That’s open to interpretation until we hear otherwise from the game’s creative team. There are a lot of parallels between Prince Florian and Prince Haru, and the fact that the setting of this new game is essentially the same as the homeland Haru hails from seems to be pretty spot-on. But then again, mushrooms and flowers have had a side-by-side relationship going back to the original Super Mario Bros., where the mushroom was the “starter” power-up and the Fire Flower was power-up 2.0.
From the SMB instruction manual. Mushroom : Flower : Star :: Peach : Daisy : Rosalina :: Mushroom Kingdom : Flower Kingdom : … Star Kingdom?
It stands to reason that if you’re making a “sister” location to exist alongside the Mushroom Kingdom, a Flower Kingdom is the most obvious choice — and in fact, a version of this has already appeared in Super Mario RPG, where the game begins in the Mushroom Kingdom and then the next stop on the journey is Rose Town.
In fact, I’d wager that it’s similar logic that gave Daisy her name; if Peach is the reigning monarch of the Mushroom Kingdom — the mushroom princess, if we want to remember how she was referred to in the English localization back in the day — it follows the logic of this fictional universe that the next princess Mario encounters would be flower-inspired. In most appearances, the Fire Flower even sports a color scheme that’s very close to Daisy’s. And if you want to think about Rosalina as being the next character who fits that pattern, then she’d be the star princess. That, I’d say, is a pretty clear callback to the original Super Mario Bros., and a nice, subtle way to incorporate one of the founding principles of the Mario universe into the characters who populate it.
I can’t say that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is making as clear a callback to the Mario anime, just because convergent evolution does happen. It’s entirely possible that the people who made the anime and the people who make the games separately came to similar conclusions about what it would be cool to see Mario do. And it’s also possible that both groups also decided to ask “What if Peach, but a boy?” and “What if the Mushroom Kingdom, but with flowers?” But I’d be very stoked to see The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach brought further into the Mario canon, one way or the other.
Miscellaneous Notes
Given the prominence Donkey Kong was given in the Super Mario Bros. movie, I would have guessed that he might be playable in SMBW. However, given how the announced characters all function identically, I’m guessing that may not be the case, just because it would look and feel wrong to have a playable D.K. in a platformer without his trademark somersault or any of the moves he has had since Donkey Kong Country. Ditto Wario and his shoulder charge or Rosalina and her spin attack, I would guess. In fact, I’d say one of the reasons it was easy to pop Daisy into the lineup of playable characters is that she wouldn’t have come with her own signature special moves the way a lot of other characters would have. That said, prove me wrong, Nintendo.
Reducing various Super Mario games down to their initials is getting confusing, what with SMW, SMBW, NSMB and NSMBW. Can we just shorthand the new one as Mario Wonder?
One odd way that Prince Florian does work as “What if Peach, but a boy?” is the fact that both he and Peach rule over kingdoms populated by characters who seem to be a different species than they are. Unless you buy into the idea that Peach is just a super-evolved Toadette, it sure looks like she’s a humanoid who’s giving orders to a bunch of mushroom folk. Similarly, Florian is a (apparently) a caterpillar but in charge of a kingdom of the very Toad-looking Poplins. And don’t caterpillars… eat plants? Hmm.
There’s a Pokémon connection that made some fans link Florian to Haru. In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the male player character is named Florian in English localizations and Haruto in the original Japanese. That Japanese name is related to 春, haru, meaning “springtime.” But in Japan, the character of Prince Florian is essentially named the same thing as he is in English: フロリアン王子, Furorian-ōji or “Prince Florian.” FWIW, Prince Florian is also the male lead from Disney’s Snow White.
If you want to hear me discuss the Mario anime alongside other, more obscure Mario adaptations, I do that on an episode of Retronauts. It’s Patreon-only, but I say well worth the monthly subscription.