Sûpâ Mario burazâzu: Pîchi-hime kyushutsu dai sakusen!

"Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach" is a children-oriented anime film made in 1986. It was directed by Masami Hata who also made stuff like "Ringing Bell" and "The Legend of Sirius".

However, this film is pretty hard to find. It was only released in Japan at the time it was made. It has not been released in the US at once, making this anime ultra-rare.

Short about the beginning: The film begins with Mario playing some video game, until the beautiful Princess Peach suddenly pops out of the TV, only to be kidnapped by Bowser in front of Mario's eyes. So it's later up to the Mario brothers to save her.

The film stays very true to the Mushroom Kingdom (Princess Peach's famous home-place), as well as the iconic save-the-princess-plot. The popular enemies like Goombas (Kuribo) and Lakitu (Jugem) are also portrayed well. The only things which bugged me a little bit is the fact Luigi is wearing yellow, not green as he usually does. The characters generally are much better drawn than they were in the US cartoon version made by DIC. And Princess Peach is just so CUTE in this film, compared to how she was in the later cartoon series as Princess Toadstool. These are the reasons for me saying this anime being a lot better than the US cartoon series "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" made by DIC three years later.

It was also interesting to know that Mami Yamase, who voiced as Princess Peach, also sung the touching closing song "I Love You".

As I said first in this review, this film is pretty hard to find as it was only released in Japan in 1986. Even in its homeland Japan this anime is a hard find. If you ever get to find this film, then you are lucky. ;-)