Voices
Narrated by Mayumi Tanaka
Oh boy. I dunno if this should really be on the “Nintendo Animation System” blog as animation is a clear part of the title and this isn’t animation. Basically, there are some Chinese symbols that come up on the screen whilst in a small box a picture of a scene is shown. The Chinese symbols are narrating the story. The idea of this video is to teach Japanese children Chinese characters, so as an ignorant English viewer I really have no business complaining about something that was never aimed at me in the first place. Would I of liked it in school? (Primary school of course, or elementary school for you crazy Americans) Hell yeah I would, but then I would have been pleased to have a red cap back when I was a kid. Still I would have enjoyed having my favourite game hero trying to teach me another language. So I’m sure somewhere, for some poor sad case like me, this was a great memory, but for anyone looking for a cartoon, or actual fun and not planning on learning a language then really there’s no point in watching this.
One interesting thing though is the narration. It’s narrated by Mayumi Tanaka who apparently voiced some quite famous anime characters, like Monkey D Luffy in One Piece. She actually made me smile with Wario’s voice, I dunno why, maybe I’m far too easily impressed (well that much is obvious based on my reviews) but the fact I found the voice funny even without knowing what was going on must mean something, somewhere in the universe. Anyway, also cool are the pictures, just like the Mario OVAs, the artwork looks like it’s right out of the game manuals and boxart, which considering this is a glorified slideshow, at least makes it a nice enough looking glorified slide show (although not a work of art by any stretch of the imagination…)
As for the stories themselves. Well Mario fights Wario in his only, well “animated” appearance outside of adverts. As for the Kirby part, he’s the classic Kirby, as in a lot fatter and tries to help a dog find its mother or something. Then King Dedede shows up and in a real twist ending was he actually helps Kirby, then they all stuff their gullets full of food. Also interesting is that despite Dedede being based on his classic artwork, he looks a heck of a lot skinnier here.
And that’s it, it’s really hard to critique anything because really, this isn’t a cartoon, it’s just a learning video for kids in another language to my own, so really I can’t cry when the holy grail of Nintendo animation that I finally located turns out to be really more of a potty; not for the purpose I thought it would be and not aimed at my demographic (not that any of the stuff on here’s really aimed at my demographic, but still.) So I’d just say in conclusion, I’m sure it would have beaten some of the other crap I had to sit through at school.
And I can't believe I wrote so much on something that I didn't even understand...
