I feel like things are developing a little too quickly in response to this development. Whilst in practice, it’s a nice idea to want to favour the original source material over localisations on this wiki, I think an issue with being so concerned over the Japanese text is a lot of people don’t really understand the language and so rely on the translations of others. This means when given a cookie-cutter translation, where all the nuances of the phrases are given no explanation, and it basically comes down to someone’s interpretation with no elaboration, people can’t really delve into the ins and outs. When we’re dealing with something so big that people are thinking of changing tiers over it, I feel these sorts of things are very important so everyone can be on the same page. Whilst I understand it can be quite time-consuming to have to explain these things when asked for a translation, I feel it’s probably best to cover them in this instance.
I’ve noticed two points of contention here, so I’ll try to cover both of them. The first issue hasn’t been mentioned much, but I’ve seen it being used to argue something quite awkward, so I’ll try to clear the air.
The term Toad uses to refer to the worlds inside the paintings is “カイバツのくに”, which so far has been translated as “monster land”/”monster kingdom” on this thread. The key word here is “くに” (“kuni”), which is pretty clearly the hiragana for “国”. If you were to take a Japanese language course, you’d probably first come across the word “国” to mean “country”, like “Japan”, “England”, “USA”, etc. However, the word does go a lot deeper. In Japanese fiction, “国” is used very liberally, and Mario is especially creative with this. For example, in Paper Mario, “国”, “ワールド” (
waarudo, i.e. world) and “世界” (sekai, i.e. world) are used interchangeably, with キノコ王国 (the Japanese name for the Mushroom Kingdom) sometimes referring to the entire planet. I’ve also been told the entire universe has been called the Mushroom Kingdom at some point in the franchise, but I couldn’t find a source for this. Also in Paper Mario, a world that’s said to be beyond the sky, stars, space (and even the void depending on your reading), Star Haven, is called “星の国” in Japan. Dream Depot is implied to be located here, as it makes a lot of allusions to it, and it’s a location where the Stars (such as the Star Spirits) live beyond outer space, so we can assume this place is indeed pretty impressive, though it’s hard to pinpoint an exact size to it.
Super Mario Advance’s manual also goes between referring to Subcon as a “夢の国” (land/country/kingdom of dreams) and “夢の世界” (world of dreams), further showing the interchangeability between the two terms. As you might expect, the kingdoms in Odyssey are also referred to as “国”, though interesting all three Kingdoms on the Moon are seen as being part of the “月の国”, meaning it is large enough to wrap around the entire moon considering it has both the side facing the Earth and facing away from the Earth. Surprisingly, Freezeflame Galaxy is also sometimes referred to with “国”. A general rule of thumb is that “国” can be seen as an area/space with a ruler like a king or emperor, so I’m assuming this is in reflection of Baron Brrr, though the term is used on
missions after their defeat.
With this in mind, we can pretty much see that “国” doesn’t exclusively refer to things that are around the size of a country in Mario, so the usage here doesn’t really dictate its size. In fact, it’s even used interchangeably with “世界” in this game, with
another Toad referring to the painting worlds as モンスターのせかい, which means “monster world”. Though, anyone with even vague knowledge of the word “sekai” knows this is a very ranging term, which can mean something as simple as a planet, to an entire universe. However, considering there’s proof of real stars existing in the painting worlds, as well as consistent nods to having day-night cycles, it’s pretty clear we’re at least dealing with beyond planetary-range. However, even if this creative use of “国” throughout the franchise (and many other examples of Japanese fiction) is ignored and we take it super-literally, considering all the Power Stars in, say, Bob-Omb Battlefield are found within the battlefield and you don’t have to explore the painting world Super Mario Galaxy-style, you could argue the Toad is just referring to the part of the world that’s actually relevant to the task at hand, or that he just wasn’t aware of the sheer size of the world.
So with that out of the way, we get to the much more contended point. This entire part of the discussion has basically spawned from wanting to know if Bowser created the painting worlds in the Japanese version. Whilst many people are finding that the text is claiming Bowser used the Power Stars to make/create the worlds, Qliphoth Bacikal found it to mean Bowser used the Power Stars to instead cover up the worlds. Considering the same text is being used here, it seems quite interesting that two radically different translations have stemmed from it. So, what is the cause of all this? Well, it comes down to how the dialogue in this game has been approached. In Japan, a common decision in media that is made to be accessible to children, who tend to struggle with kanji, is to instead use hiragana. Hiragana is basically a phonetic alphabet, so children can read it with more ease, so it makes sense for Super Mario 64 to use it over kanji. However, this makes translation harder, as it favours the sound of the word over the meaning of the word, meaning if there are words that sound the same, it’s down to the translator to decide what sounds best given the context. The verb in question here is “つくろうとしています”. The problem is both “繕う” and “作ろう” are written as “つくろう” in hiragana, which has caused the conflicting translations.
“作ろう”, a conjugation of the verb “作る”, means to create/make, whilst “繕う” generally means to repair/fix, but can be interpreted as to cover up/keep up appearances. To elaborate on the latter, the keep up appearances pretty much means pretend things are okay, like putting on a straight face, so you’re basically covering things up from a social/personal point of view. I’ve seen people try to defend the “cover up” translation by pointing out that many of the paintings are sealed behind Star Doors, but that’s not really what Qliphoth meant by this from what I can see. This would mean the monster worlds in the paintings already exist in Peach’s Castle, and Bowser’s plan is to hide/deny their existence, which not only is a pretty weird plot considering Bowser is usually the one with the army of monsters, but would also use the word “葬る” (which has the hiragana ほうむる) instead. The phrase “繕うとしています” would be much more akin to Bowser wanting to fix or repair the painting worlds using the Power Stars, though considering there isn’t any implication that they were broken to begin with, this feels like an awkward reading, especially when
I could only find 6 results of the verb being used that way grammatically on Google. Meanwhile, the phrase “作ろうとしています” seems to make much more sense given the context, and the phrase is used much more often by Japanese speakers. After all, Bowser creating monster worlds within Peach’s Castle generally seems more likely than Bowser wanting to repair monster worlds that Peach (who’s never really been associated with commanding monsters) apparently had at her disposal. So I’d be inclined to agree with the SM64 English localisation’s translation that Bowser created the painting worlds. Whilst Qliphoth’s interpretation isn’t wrong, it’s just awkward in both a grammatical and contextual point of view, making me feel less confident in this being what was intended to be taken away from this dialogue.
Hope this helped with explaining the context behind this piece of dialogue. I feel before we rush into the implications of what it means for tiering, we should first get to grips with what we’re dealing with, so this should lay out the facts.
