In the mid-90s, with the Super Mario Bros movie already released, the failure of Virtual Boy weighing heavily and doubts about its future as it transitioned to 3D with the Nintendo 64 (a console that was born after a notorious falling out with Sony), Nintendo was on the tightrope. So much so that under the careful radar of the company and its “quality seal,” products that would have no place otherwise now slipped through. One of them, completely unknown to the public outside (and inside, to be honest) of Japan, was an absolute wild card that today seems incredible and that you will have to read twice to believe it. Welcome to Shitamachi Ninjo Gekijo.
Mario, don’t be so Super
Literally, Shitamachi Ninjo Gekijo can be translated as “Theater of Empathy of the Low City,” and it is more commonly known as Lily Franky Theater. It is not a video game, in fact: it was an official virtual magazine from Nintendo for the Satellaview, that peripheral for Super Nintendo that only appeared in Japan and managed to gather over 100,000 subscribers in a proto-Internet that gave us sequels to The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario that even had orchestras and live voices. To this day, however, they are considered practically lost in their natural state.
But what interests us today is this magazine created by the Japanese comedian Lily Franky, who in 1995 was just over 30 years old and dared to do the impossible: launch a comic full of wildness, vulgarities, swear words, and many more absurdities with Super Mario as the protagonist. We know that at least seven issues were published throughout 1995 and 1996, although most of them are logically lost today since rather than being downloaded, they were “broadcast” to consoles. The Internet before the Internet was quite a topic.
But then, what exactly was Shitamachi Ninjo Gekijo about? Well, it was about different comics and stories, each more terrible and out of place than the last. The first one, to start off, featured Mario and Toad receiving a photo from a fan. Toad, of course, is fascinated by her breasts, and Mario panics upon learning that she has never had boyfriends before. Toad then insists that he would like to “have more breasts” in his life. In the end, the letter mentions that the woman likes “xxx” (yes, you know what it is) and both Mario and Toad don’t know how to respond. Oh, yes: to top it all off, fans are invited to send photos for Mario and Toad to critique. Japan in the 90s? That was a thing.
The piti after killing goombas
But this was just the prelude. In the second story, Mario orders Toad to kill someone with a butter knife, and when he fails, he punishes him. The victim was none other than Bowser, who goes to the police to try to find out who the killer was. In the next comic, unrelated to the previous one, Mario and Toad try to escape from the prison where they have just been sentenced to 20 years. To get out, Mario pulls a drill from his scrotum (I wish I were making this up) and, digging, they manage to escape… in Brazil. Toad doesn’t know what to do because he knows nothing about the country, but Mario simply relaxes.
Everything is very sordid, but nothing foreshadows what is to come: in the following story, Mario and Toad fight to see who should drive Windows 95 (because, I mean, they think it’s a car) and then Bill Gates enters. Yes, that Bill Gates. They both ask him for money, but instead, the richest man in the world tells them that Windows 95 is not a car, but something you put on your head, and they both call him “idiot.” Japanese humor: if you don’t get it, that’s normal.
Up to this point, you might think it’s not that big of a deal, but the worst is yet to come in the last two magazines that were released. In the first one, Peach and Toad start criticizing Mario, who is not present, and they end up having oral sex (yes, really), but the plumber catches them and, out of anger, kills them in different ways (squeezing Toad and jumping on Peach). After killing them, he lights a cigarette and claims he has a new girlfriend… who turns out to be Bowser! I remind you that all of this appeared officially; someone at Nintendo said “Mario smoking, killing Peach, and getting involved with Bowser, all good”.
In the latest episode, Mario reveals to Toad that he is an alien from the “Celestial Star Shinjuku Naked Crotch” and must return to his planet. His friends then confront him with all sorts of things, and he decides to stay to fix it. At the very end, a man grabs the controller of a console, starts controlling Mario… And immediately ends up in Hell, where he has sex with a lobster. Don’t expect that Switch 2, no matter how many new features it includes, will have anything like this, for sure.
Satellaview completely died on June 30, 2000, with the Internet offering all kinds of content similar to its own. That said, Nintendo started to take much better care of what it offered to its fans and, in fact, we didn’t have another film adaptation until Super Mario Bros: The Movie two years ago. And no one in the company wonders anymore if Mario should kill Peach and Toad after catching them in the act of cunnilingus. Although, who knows? There’s always room in the next Smash for Mario the Stoner…
