Captain N and the New Super Mario World : DVD Review
11.21.07 By Collin David
Let me preface this all by saying the following : this is a great DVD. It’s hilarious in its own way, and I’m very happy to have it in my collection.
So, you know those guys who go around the world eating elephant brains just because it’s considered a local delicacy for one tribe of forgotten peoples in the middle of nowhere? You know those guys who intentionally get themselves bitten by animals and shot with projectiles so they get on the internet and television? They ain’t got nothin’ on me, because I watched the third season of Captain N.
This week, the missing third season of Captain N was released by Shout Factory. What I (and other casual DVD collectors) had not realized was that the previously released ‘Captain N : The Complete Series’ was not, in fact, complete at all - and I’m nothing if not a completist. See, the first two seasons of Captain N are considered to be a relatively good cartoon show. They existed in a 22-or-so minute format, and the animation was pretty well done - and then, the third season happened. And boy, did it happen.
Captain N became a 11-or-so minute show, and the original animation studio was dropped, or all got the floppyhands, or SOMETHING - because nothing was the same. Movements became jerky and uneven, no character looked the same from scene to scene, and worst of all, the dynamic Mother Brain - chief archnemesis for the whole show, became a poor outline of her previous appearance. Just check out these comparison shots.
[left to right : Mother Brain from the original Metroid
video game, Mother Brain from the first seasons of Captain N,
and the regrettable Mother Brain from season 3]
What were once semi-relevant, interesting plotlines became hollow explorations into lame sports games and yes, even Tetris. You can never, ever, ever make a convincing nemesis out of a Tetris block, nor can you make an acceptable villain out of a scoreboard in Basketball World (or, as they call it, Hoopland) - and yet, AND YET, ‘Clock Man’ emerges to terrorize the N Team. In the stand-out most horrendously agonizing cartoon episode I’ve ever seen, a little boy named Hoopless makes a robot so that he might score a shot through a magic basketball hoop on Hoop-De-Doo-Dah Day. Apparently, living in Hoopland means that you need to throw the word ‘hoop’ randomly into every other sentence, and most of your indigenous animals are shaped like hoops and shoot hoops out of their mouths. I wish I was kidding. I wish so very much.
What I find most tangentially interesting is the fact that Mother Brain was voiced by none other than notable singer Levi Stubbs - member of the Four Tops and The Coasters, the latter of which was managed by Ian Levine, who I’d written about here once before. Everything is interconnected. So, in addition to be a colossal collector, Ian Levine was also in league with Mother Brain.
There are seven Captain N episodes contained in this 2-disc set, while ‘The Complete Series’ set has 26. Omitted form both is episode number 27, which was only a much-dreaded clip show anyhow.
But that’s not all! This set also includes 13 episodes of ‘The New Super Mario World’, the final of a trio of shows to feature the ‘Super Mario’ name. The Mario cartoon world had previously seen a total of 65 episodes, most released on DVD at this point. Of course, nothing will ever beat the original Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which featured live-action Lou Albano segments and voiceovers, but ‘Super Mario World’ is a fitting death knell to the Super Mario cartoon legacy.
Happening sometime after the release of Super Mario World for the SNES, this cartoon incorporated many elements from the video game - all of King Koopa’s horribly obnoxious children, the horribly obnoxious Yoshi, and other various horribly obnoxious bad guys. Of course, it also added a great deal of unrelated, nearly irrelevant elements - such as cavemen, everywhere, making you long for the days of Super Mario 3’s various mushroom kings and FryGuys and TriClydes. It feels kinda like wishing to return to the good ol’ days of the Great Depression.
Interestingly, the presence of cavemen in the show created some very Luddite narratives - the introduction of TV hypnotized the cavepeople, fast food was evil, cars caused traffic jams and chaos, and the phone made people talk too much. Maybe the message was that technology removes us from our roots and ourselves, or maybe just that stupid people can’t handle complex things. Or maybe they were just really, really easy episodes to write.
The DVD includes a brief storyboarding of the title sequence, and some original Yoshi sketches, but nothing else. Since episodes of Super Mario and Captain N aired back to back in their original format, they are presented as such within the DVD, but you do get the option of watching just the Mario or just the Captain N episodes. Their arrangement on the disc differs slightly from the original pairings and airdates, but you’ll be internally bleeding far too much to care.
It’s a great DVD set. The cartoons are so bizarre and awkward that it’s pretty amazing to watch. It completes the Captain N collection, it’s an important addition to the Super Mario collection, and seriously, if you’re watching these shows today, it’s not because they’re really, really good. It’s for pure nostalgia, and to laugh at yourself, and appreciate them for what they are. There’s a whole lot to be appreciated in the 4 hours of cartoons presented here.
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Article Tags: , Captain N, DVD, Ian Levine, Levi Stubbs, Mario World, Mother Brain, Nintendo, Shout Factory================
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