Super Mario Bros. : La Grande Mission pour sauver la princesse Peach !

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!!!!

I never heard of this anime movie until the internet, as this was ultra rare, and was never released in America (in fact, this was never re-released in Japan in any form). Made a year after the original Super Mario Bros. game was released, the anime movie sees Mario and Luigi as grocery store owners. One night, Mario meets Peach while playing video games late at night, where Koopa beats him and captures her, leaving her necklace. After a dog grabs it, the two chase it into a pipe, leading them into the Mushroom Kingdom, where they are tasked to stop Koopa, who is king of the Metal Kingdom, and save Peach from marriage, while also collecting the three powers needed to stop Bowser.

As this was made a year after the original Super Mario Bros. game was released, continuity was not established, so there are a lot of things that are different from the Mario lore we know today (Luigi is wearing blue overalls over a yellow shirt, and is greedy, a trait people know Wario better for having, and the film has some characters exclusive to it, like Kibidango the dog, and a Toadette that predates the official one), this is a okay, if not weird Mario anime movie. The main thing I like about it is the soundtrack, as it not only has music from the video game, but also the neat song "Doki-Doki Do It".

"Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach" is a children-oriented anime film made in 1986. It was directed by Masami Hata who also made stuff like "Ringing Bell" and "The Legend of Sirius".

However, this film is pretty hard to find. It was only released in Japan at the time it was made. It has not been released in the US at once, making this anime ultra-rare.

Short about the beginning: The film begins with Mario playing some video game, until the beautiful Princess Peach suddenly pops out of the TV, only to be kidnapped by Bowser in front of Mario's eyes. So it's later up to the Mario brothers to save her.

The film stays very true to the Mushroom Kingdom (Princess Peach's famous home-place), as well as the iconic save-the-princess-plot. The popular enemies like Goombas (Kuribo) and Lakitu (Jugem) are also portrayed well. The only things which bugged me a little bit is the fact Luigi is wearing yellow, not green as he usually does. The characters generally are much better drawn than they were in the US cartoon version made by DIC. And Princess Peach is just so CUTE in this film, compared to how she was in the later cartoon series as Princess Toadstool. These are the reasons for me saying this anime being a lot better than the US cartoon series "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" made by DIC three years later.

It was also interesting to know that Mami Yamase, who voiced as Princess Peach, also sung the touching closing song "I Love You".

As I said first in this review, this film is pretty hard to find as it was only released in Japan in 1986. Even in its homeland Japan this anime is a hard find. If you ever get to find this film, then you are lucky. ;-)

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.

After the original video game achieved great popularity in a short time, the decision was made to make this adaptation just a year after the video game was born. It can be seen that this film was made to learn more about the lore of the Mario universe when it was still in its early stages. This film takes all the characteristic elements of the original game and you can even notice that it has some ideas that would be reused in the video games that would come later. The film gives the opportunity to know the personality of the characters and what they are like. What it offers is a fun cartoon that knew how to materialize the video game universe, making it clear what was behind the pixels. The soundtrack is the same as the video game, but adding original songs that are quite good. There is no doubt that this film is a gem that has remained anonymous for a long time until it was discovered by the magic of the internet. This Super Mario Bros. Movie was the franchise's worthy big break on the big screen before the 1993 version put the franchise to sleep for 30 years and was then resurrected by the Illumination version. My final rating for this movie is a 9/10.