Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 12: Album Art Analysis

Welcome, everyone, to the 12th issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.

Today, we are going to look at artwork found on Japanese official Super Mario soundtrack albums.

Album Art Analysis

Before I begin, I would like to briefly talk about a fellow creator who specialized in obscure Mario content, as the images I will use in this article were once provided to me by that person.

For about two years between 2017 and 2019, there was a Twitter account called "Forest of Illusion", found at @forestillusion. It provided very obscure Mario content in a very similar fashion to my own account, and I am very glad that during its operation, the curator contacted me and we were able to have many interesting discussions about Mario. The person running the account had many valuable insights and was able to correct many of my own posts, some years after they were posted. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to talk to someone as enthusiastic about Mario as I was.

However, the account ceased operation in June 2019 due to the curator losing interest. Much the same happened to the original author of Supper Mario Broth back in 2014; I understand completely that if one's interests do not revolve completely around Mario, as they do with myself, it may be increasingly stressful to keep up operating such an account until it is no longer enjoyable. You do not have to worry about this with me; as I have said many times, Mario is my life, so the only thing that will keep me from posting entirely is an inability to access the Internet for whatever reason.

During our conversations, one thing provided to me by the Forest of Illusion author was a collection of scans of Japanese official Super Mario soundtrack albums. Many of these are available online, however, the ones I was given are very high-resolution. Again, my thanks to the curator and I wish that person success in all further endeavors.

Now, let us take a look at some of this artwork and see what we can discover. The first album we will be looking at is the official soundtrack to the 1986 anime Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. The anime itself was never translated into English, but for an unknown reason, the designers of the soundtrack booklet decided to put speech bubbles with broken English and even profanities in them:

You may have seen the panel in the middle of the page by itself in other places on the Internet before; the sheer shock of Mario using profanity like that in official Nintendo material has made it quite popular. The panels above it with the Koopa Troopa and to the right of it with the pipes also contain profanity. From what I understand about the Japanese language, their concept of swears is different from that of European languages, so this may simply be a case of the artist not realizing the severity of the words (this is also likely due to English education in Japan not being perfect in the 1970s and earlier, which is when this person would have learned English; this is also seen in the other speech bubbles like "Such a miracle you got!")

The artwork shown inside the panels here is taken from the movie, but the background partially replaced with solid colors for a more striking effect. Note the last panel; there is a higher-resolution isolated version of it on another page.

It is impressive how close the anime designs of the characters are to their current designs for being 33 years old.

The next two pages contain artwork that seems to be entirely original to the booklet and not taken from the movie.

There are a few things to note about this.

-Toads with striped caps would return in Super Mario RPG in 1995; interestingly, so would giant Paratroopas, although those were visibly obese in the game.
-Lakitu's design is almost entirely unchanged in current official artwork, more so than anyone else in the image.
-Giant Spinies would return only in Super Mario Maker in 2015. After this, they became a staple, appearing in Super Mario Run and Paper Mario: Color Splash.

Bowser's artwork here does not match his appearance in the movie perfectly. The old man, dog and birds are original characters - the dog being Peach's eventual husband, Prince Haru of the Flower Kingdom, being turned into a dog because of a curse. That story element was dropped completely and never referenced again, although it is noteworthy that a princess's betrothed being turned into something else, rescued by one of the Mario Bros., and then going on to marry the princess was a story line in the Luigi side story in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Next up is Mario's Big Adventure, a 1986 record with only two songs, both original; a Super Mario Bros. medley and a "Koopa Counting Song". Here is the cover:

This artwork was also used in some print ads for the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, known internationally as Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. It is the last official appearance of "Blue Bowser" based on Miyamoto's original design for him, visible on the cover of the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. Compare the artwork to see more references:

Note that most of the characters from the original cover appear on the album cover; however, less noticeable is that the landmarks in the background are reused, as well. The castle with the Bullet Bill Blaster, the cliff with the vine, and even the solitary Fire Flower on the right all return.

Luigi's color scheme also bears similarity to Ice Luigi, introduced in 2009; especially the light blue hat with the green L emblem; however, the shirt and overalls are reversed in color.

There is another version of this art from a special edition of the album that is slightly zoomed out, showing another character:

A Spiny riding in a cloud, on the right edge. This again never appeared in a game until Super Mario Maker, where all enemies could be made to ride clouds. 

The 1989 Super Mario Bros. 3 Hop, Step, Jump album includes 3 very lengthy dance remix medleys of songs from the game. The booklet contains mostly common official art, with the exception of this:

Mario swimming past a Lava Lotus. The Lava Lotus was a very rare enemy in Super Mario Bros. 3 (appearing much fewer times than the similar Volcano Lotus in Super Mario World), so having artwork of it at all is surprising, much less interacting with Mario.

The 1990 Super Mario Bros. Special album has songs that are arranged to the point that they may be original compositions altogether. Despite being released in 1990, the cover has a nonstandard Bowser coloring:

Bowser's face is entirely red. This may also be a stylistic decision, of course.

The arranged jazz album for Super Mario World includes this photo:

Sadao Watanabe is the saxophonist playing the arranged tracks, while Kohichi Sugiyama is the producer. Of interest is the reference to Mario as "Mr. Mario", implying he is from an English-speaking country (which was the accepted backstory at the time in the West, as seen in the cartoon series).

There is also this image on the back of the album:

It is unclear who the girl is and whether she is related to anyone involved in the production.

Another peculiar piece of official art can be found in the 1988 Fantastic World of Super Mario Bros. 3, containing 5 arranged medleys:

Mario seems to have a very pronounced upper lip, completely unlike all his other official art. This could also be a strange lopsided way to draw his tongue sticking out, but the shading on the red part and the expression suggest, to me, that it is a lip instead.

I hope these small oddities were worth looking into the artwork.

This concludes today's issue. Thank you very much for reading.