Do You Remember the FIRST Super Mario Movie?

TL;DR

The 1986 Japanese anime Super Mario Bros. film was a bizarre, poorly animated cash-grab that never left Japan and nearly damaged the franchise.

Key Points

• 1.The first Mario movie was a 1986 Japanese anime released in only ~200 theaters. Titled *Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach*, it was 61 minutes long, featured rough animation, an ugly color palette, and a visibly tiny budget — and never received international distribution.
• 2.The plot wildly misinterprets the source material. Mario is a grocery store owner (not a plumber), Peach falls out of a TV set, and the brothers must collect three mystical weapons — a mushroom, flower, and star — to stop Koopa from marrying Peach, guided by a prophecy and summoned by a bearded wizard.
• 3.Nintendo signed off but was reportedly uninvolved in production. The film has no real acts, rising tension, or character arcs — described as a 'stream of consciousness tone poem animated by literal children,' closer to Mamoru Oshii's *Angel's Egg* than any Mario property.
• 4.The film's strangest twist is its ending: Peach already has a fiancé. The dog creature following Mario throughout the film was actually Prince Haru, Peach's betrothed, meaning Mario saves her only to lose her — a wildly unexpected conclusion for a children's adaptation.
• 5.A 4K fan restoration in 2022 made the film freely available on YouTube. The 2023 *The Super Mario Bros. Movie* — directed by Michael Jelinec and Aaron Horvath — grossed over $1 billion and achieved everything the 1986 anime attempted but failed to deliver, suggesting the franchise survived partly because the anime never left Japan.