Title- The Bird, The Bird!
New/Guest voices
Lou Albano — Mario
Danny Wells — Luigi
Jeannie Elias — Princess Toadstool, Birdo, and Shy Guy
John Stocker — Toad, Mouser, Koopa Troopa and Beezo
Harvey Atkin — King Koopa and Tryclyde
Robert Bockstael — (Additonal Voices)
Dorian Joe Clark — (Additonal Voices)
Rob Cowan — (Additonal Voices)
Denise Pidgeon — (Additonal Voices)
Paulina Gillis — (Additonal Voices)
Greg Morton — (Additonal Voices)
Joyce Gordon — (Additonal Voices)
Greg Swanson — (Additonal Voices)
Diane Fabian — (Additonal Voices)
Marilyn Lightstone — (Additonal Voices)
Marla Lukofsky — (Additonal Voices)
Well this is probably one of the most popular of the Mario Cartoons, and whilst it’s not my personal favourite it’s definitely better than the other shows with Mario in them (excluding aosmb3 in my opinion.) It’s also the longest running one, with over 50 episodes produced. Mario has one of his best voice actors ever, the late Lou Albano. Luigi’s pretty good to, I mean I grew up with aosmb3’s Mario and Luigi, so I do prefer them, but these two did a great job too. Toadstall’s the only other member of the main cast who was a different voice actor to the other two series, I said before that she seemed to spacey, but to be honest, I prefer her to aosmb3’s Toadstall now I think about it. Toad and King Koopa are the same as they were in aosmb3 so I won’t repeat my comments on them from those reviews.
There is another thing despite the length that sets this apart from the other two Mario series (which in the canon did follow on from this series) One is that there was a very cheesy comedy part detailing Mario and Luigi’s regular life with them often having guest stars appearing asking them to do some plumbing for them. It’s kinda funny, if only for the fact that it’s two 30-40 year old Italian plumbers as opposed to the typical teen’s like Hannah Montana that are all the rage nowadays. I usually skip these parts when watching the episodes though, and since this is Nintendo Animation System I won’t be covering the live action segments.
Finally before going onto the actual episode, I want to go over the format and details on the animated sections. Basically, the show is based on Super Mario Bros 1+2. Whilst Bowser wasn’t the main boss in 2 he has the troops that Wart used in two as well as his usual ones. I find this kinda interesting as after this show, some of Wart’s troops actually started showing up in the games as Bowser’s forces (a key example being the Shy Guys who made up the bulk of Wart’s army.) Also a key feature of the episodes, were there were a heck of a lot of parodies, with episodes being based on various popular culture, from Star Wars to Hercules. These would sometimes be parody adaptations, and sometimes just feature a similar setting. King Koopa (Bowser) would often take on the role of a villain from the parody (such as Count Koopula, Koopenstien, Darth Koopa etc.) and sometimes Mario would refer to himself as a character from the same parody (Mario Skywalker, Sherlock Mario, Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid etc)
So what’s this first episode like? Well it has good and bad parts. The good parts all really involve Koopa and the Mario Bros. There are a fair few enemies that appear from the games here, mainly snow based Flurries, but also Albatross and the main character of the episode, a Birdo. They’re pretty faithful except the Birdo who can fly (I guess they took the name too seriously) has a baby and is an old and blind as a bat, as well as pretty deaf too. Also the Birdo is a female, not the transexual or whatever from the games.
Another good point is the characters. In this show both Mario and Luigi can be pretty funny, Mario doing stuff usually for food and Luigi being a complete coward. Koopa’s also pretty funny at some points.
The Birdo, which is the main story of the episode is the main bad part of the episode here. The whole story is tedious and the Birdo is incredibly annoying. Also she has all this saliva coming out of her mouth all the while, it’s actually pretty disgusting and ruined the episode for me.
Overall a pretty disappointing first episode, and probably one of the worst in the series.
