I dont get it. Raccoons can't fly.
>>12002390He’s a Tanuki— a mystical, shape-shifting creature found only in Japan. Sometimes they fly, sometimes they steal your soul.
>>12002391No, it's the raccoon suit. The Tanuki suit is something totally different.
>>12002397Proofs?
>>12002390He's not a raccoon he's a tanuki
>>12002397They are both Tanuki based, that's why it's represented by a leaf.
>>12002406>represented by a leaf I don’t understand the correlation
>>12002406first he's a raccoon, now he's a tanuki, and now you're saying he's a fucking leafmake up your goddamn mind already
>>12002408Tanuki use leaves to fuel their magical powers and transform, it's like Son Goku plucking hairs, part of the spell. Honestly go ask /jp/, they'll give you a lengthy rundown.
>>12002423>mfw he’s 100% right
>>12002390You ain't nebah seent a nibba fly?
>>12002423How does that make any sense?
>>12002440How doesn't it? The magical connection between the leaves and the trees and nature itself is transformative and powerful to the intrinsic anima of all they myriad things.Don't tell me you've blinded your shaman eye?
>>12002440bro because the leaf is like weed
>>12002450I did lose a little bit of sight in my left eye with age, but even before that I knew that trees and shit weren't Harry potter or whatever; that's just hippie talk
If he's a tanuki, where are his big magical testicles? We should be able to see them. Tanukis don't hide them with pants or underwear. Mario is a fraud
>>12002461>he hasn’t gone to the Japanese wilderness, taken a heroic dose of mushrooms, and had a tea party with the assortment of goofy woodland spirits that inhabit the frontier And you call yourself a gamer?
>>12002472hey now, I did not call myself a gamer>>12002471there's no such thing as a fucking tanukiMario is a fucking leaf anyway
>>12002478>there's no such thing as a fucking tanukiSee>>12002472There's a tanuki right there, carrying his testicles on his back
>>12002484that's just some computer thingnot retro
>>12002491>tanuki aren’t retro I suppose you think the War of 1812 isn’t retro either, then? Bigot
>>12002491>not retroOk, here's a Sexy Parodius boss
>>12002502>War of 1812miss me with that shit, i'm all about the Revolutionary>>12002509what's that shit?
>>12002440>How does that make any sense?"Raccoon Mario" is the localization of "Tail Mario". To become Tail Mario you must get the Super Leaf. The reason a leaf gives you a tail is because in Japanese mythology elder Tanuki whom live about 100 years become sentient magical creatures whom use leaves they enchant with their magic as the power source of transformation spells. So that leaf transforms you.The Tanuki suit is less a transformation cast on Mario than it is a suit that gives Mario the powers of a Tanuki, IE the power of transformation. At least that was the case until the 3D Land / World series where they merged the two concepts so that Mario gets the Tanuki suit from a Super Leaf but can not transform.So the idea that he gets a raccoon ears / tail is like all bad things the fault of localizers and the Magic Leaf / Tanuki folklore is so well understood by the average Japanese person that a Western equivalent would be say a pointy hat power up that lets a character fly on a broom and a full witch suit power up that lets them both fly on a broom and cast a magic attack. We would all understand that that both power ups are referring to witches.
>>12002528a Sexy Parodius boss
>>12002549>At least that was the case until the 3D Land / World series where they merged the two concepts so that Mario gets the Tanuki suit from a Super Leaf but can not transform.I'll never forgive them for this.
>>12002549is this ai? none of that made any sense>>12002563what's sexy about it?
>>12002590>is this ai? none of that made any senseWhat parts of the mythology have you lost?
>>12002596is it ai or not? cause that's not retro. i'm not even sure if tanuki is retro even though it's not real
>>12002617It's not AI, it's an explanation of what the two power ups are inspired by.
>>12002549The witch hat is a good analogy. It'd also work for the powerup to be a broom. Either way, it makes no sense except to somebody familiar with the idiotic traditions of the originating culture. Imagine a wooden denture set that'd transform Mario into a US Revolutionary War outfit complete with musket.
>>12003143why does it read like ai? are you a machine?
>>12003179What makes cultural traditions idiotic?
>>12002405The point is that mammals don’t fly though, fuckin’ moron.
>>12002390Tanuki not racoon.
>anon falling for obvious troll responsesnu/vr/ never fails to disappoint.
>>12003387Where are their balls?Swinging is the breeze.
>>12003183no sir, i guarantee you that is no ai. im from uttar pradesh, so i know sir
>>12003384Oh yeah?
>>12003428I believe, in Japanese folklore, the tanuki scrotum is not distinct from the balls.
>>12002390>He has no imagination and whimsySad
>>12003183Because he's not a functionally illiterate zoomer like you. You zoomers all think that any decently thought-out post with more than one paragraph is automatically AI because you're retarded.
>>12003501words hardmany words harderhard to write - hard to write means AImuch sad::(
>>12003387that shit looks fake>>12003436>uttar pradeshmiss me with that shit, i'm going to peach's castle>>12003501rude and not retrtoit was definitely ai>>12003384that's actually a good point, I knew this shit was fake>>12003481what's that shit?
This guy is either baiting or a bot with "idgi wahhhh"
>>12004031>what's that shit?A komori-- a flying Japanese gerbil. Yeah, I don't think they're real either, must be more AI shenanigans.
>>12003179>The witch hat is a good analogy. It'd also work for the powerup to be a broom.The reason I chose a hat is because it is absurd that a pointy hat would give you the power to fly on a broom just like it is absurd a leaf would give you a tail, basically it only makes sense if you know the folklore. >familiar with the idiotic traditionsMost traditions are, everything to do with witches looks idiotic from an outside perspective as does every other bit of western spirituality, normalcy isn't normal but what we are used too. Something I dislike about old school localization is that they seemed ashamed of Japanese mythology, the Japanese love Wester mythologies and not only consuming games with those themes but making their own. Despite this, anytime a property was remotely Japanese beyond ninja's there was either no chance of it getting localized or if it was localized they would try and explain away the Japaneseness, like calling it Raccoon Mario. One of the most Japanese games available, Pocky and Rocky would rather say the enemies are Goblins rather than explain what a Youkai is in the manual. They westernized the main characters name, her purification rod is a magic stick (gohei), her paper talisman (ofuda) are magic cards and I'm surprised they didn't call her shrine a church. They are soooo ashamed of the source material that they want to paper over it instead of leaning into it and getting kids interested in the rich world of Japanese mythology.https://www.videogamemanual.com/snes/Pocky%20&%20Rocky%20(USA).pdf
>>12004052Next you're gonna say unicorns aren't real.
>>12004170Get out of my head, Charles!
Why does Mario run like Arale?
>>12004278I remember reading that they did in fact based Mario's running on Arale's.
>>12002572That shit was so gay. Couldn't fly with it either. It's like having Yoshi but you can't move while riding him and he can't eat anything.
>>12002472Pretty sure I saw some bum this summer with his hair looking like that
>>12004087>Something I dislike about old school localization is that they seemed ashamed of Japanese mythologyThey insisted that Western audiences wouldn't understand or relate to Japanese cultural elements. Some of it may have had to do with lingering anti-Japanese sentiment after WW2, at a time when WW2 vets were still alive and well.
>>12004556I mean… the leaf + tanuki thing is definitely something the average westerner wouldn’t have any knowledge of— like, at all. At best, it just seems like a random aesthetic choice.
>>12004568So what? Gen Z can watch subbed anime with all cultural references intact. They take it as it is and learn something. Are zoomers just innately better at this sort of thing than millennials were?
>>12004573Zoomers have the privilege of anime being practically mainstream entertainment (not to mention the globalization of culture due to high speed internet), so localizers are a lot less inclined to “Westernize” concepts that are innately Japanese. Back then, would’ve taken a genuinely forward thinking approach to consider leaving it up to the player to figure out what the hell a Tanuki is.
>>12004587>Back then, would’ve taken a genuinely forward thinking approach to consider leaving it up to the player to figure out what the hell a Tanuki is.Instead, they left it up to the player to figure out how the hell a racoon tail allows Mario to fly.
>>12004598After all the other weird, seemingly random shit in the Mario games (fire flower, evil mushrooms, turtles who throw hammers at you, etc.) I don’t think you could logically convince a localization team that a raccoon suit that makes you fly would cause players to scratch their heads any more than the rest of it.
> WE CAN'T CALL THIS POWERUP BY IT'S NAME BASED JP MYTHOLOGY NOOOO> Let's rename this dinosaur boss to be based on Trent Reznor
>>12004618kek, america moment
>>12004618For me? It's Iggy Koopahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw7USmXMEYohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HewRir1P1Bshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbQHlQ-tubY
>>12004573>Gen Z can watch subbed anime with all cultural references intact.Millenials were the ones watching fansubbed anime with>(Translator's note: keikaku means plan)This is more of a case of coward executives replacing rice balls with hamburgers because they were afraid people would think Japanese things are too weird to be bought.
>>12004556>They insisted that Western audiences wouldn't understandThat's my problem though. You understand by being exposed to the thing. Dracula's and Mummy's and Dragons are all weird too but no one worried about. There worry that they won't understand is the reason why they don't understand.>or relate to Japanese cultural elements.That's the thing about fantasy, you aren't supposed to relate to it, it is supposed to be different. The Japanese had no problem adopting western mythology because they were exposed to it... and boy did they adopt it.>I mean… the leaf + tanuki thing is definitely something the average westerner wouldn’t have any knowledge of— like, at all.Yeah but they could have put a blurb in the manual instead of renaming Tail Mario to Raccoon Mario.>Super Leaf: This Magic Leaf gives Mario the ears and tail of a Tanuki. By wagging his tail Mario can now fly.Then show a little drawing of a Tanuki in the corner of the page that says "Tanuki are a type of raccoon-dog from Japan, in folk-lore they are believed to have magic powers to fly or shapeshift." Bam, done. It even makes more sense than Raccoon Mario because at least this explains the flying and later the turning into a statue.They make it worse by trying to paper over the Japanese-ness when 95% of needs to be conveyed can be done in a paragraph.
>>12004618It's funny to me that Zelda mostly just left the names of all the monsters identical to the Japanese version while Mario was like "THIS GUY IS NOW KILLS YOU KARL! THIS ONE IS SLAMMIN' SKYLER! THIS ONE IS "STEALLY" DAN!
>why is there japanese shit in my japanese games!?!!!i hate localizecucks so much
>>12004660>anon cannot comprehend why his modern sensibilities were not shared by corporate interests 35 years ago They simply didn’t see a point to any of that, anon. It was a lazy, short-sighted decision— one that they aren’t likely to make in 2025. Simple as.
>>12002440Mythology usually pulls random shit like that.
>>12004748https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA3Et3-unNg>>12004052>I don't think they're real eitherthen shut up bitch
>>12002590you're a retard anon
>>12004778>then shut up bitchwow, rude much?
>>12004940>>12005042you guys are bullies, and the tanuki shit is a bunch of bullshit
>>12004660I agree they could have done better and it would have been nice if they had. And in many cases it wouldn't have hurt sales; in some it might have even helped.But come on dude, they didn't hide this stuff out of "shame". They probably barely thought about it at all. Maybe somebody at some point heard from somewhere that this kind of localization was needed to keep sales up, and from then on, most of the companies ran with that idea just because they wanted to make money and didn't care at all about educating kids on foreign mythology. There's no "shame", they just wanted to make more money instead of less and didn't consider themselves to be teachers or cultural ambassadors.
