Hello everybody and welcome back to one of my favorite series where I delve deep into
the relationship between two video game characters and try to determine what makes that relationship
healthy or unhealthy.
So far on our epic quest to show how fucked every fictional hero is, we’ve looked at
Peach and Mario, Kirito and Asuna, Amy and Sonic and a few others, but I’ve been saving
Mario and Luigi for a special occasion because these two already have so much analysis done
on them.
Whether you watch us, MatPat or other channels of the like, pretty much everyone has a video
about the not so brotherly bond between Mario and Luigi.
Most of those videos go over the top into how poorly Mario treats Luigi, how jealous
Luigi is of Mario and how they more likely hate each other than care for each other.
So with that being said, I don’t want to make another video like that.
I want to bring you something new and different from the generic italian ex plumber hate that
you’re used to.
So let's dive into the relationship between Mario and Luigi, but instead of just focusing
on the bad, let's take the bad in stride with the good and figure out why these two act
the way they do towards each other and more importantly whether this unique bond of hatred
and anger is unexplainable, or if we’re missing a crucial part to the story..you uh..(shit
it’s not that show)...the story you didn’t already know?
First off let's take a look at the backstory of these two.
In case you weren't aware, Mario and Luigi are supposedly twins.
While this has never been completely proven, the dual stork flight they both take during
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, seems to suggest a twin birth.
Now this may not seem like an important part of the story, but it is perhaps the most overlooked
and essential point to understanding Mario and Luigi’s relationship.
Twins, even fraternal twins are socially expected to be similar in abilities and personality.
There’s many articles about parents of twins being worried about their children having
different abilities and one being better at something than the other.
For example, a Times article depicts the struggle a mother and father went through when finding
out that one twin was more academically gifted than the other.
These parents toiled over whether or not to put their son in an advanced learning program
while not being able to enroll their daughter because she didn’t test well enough to be
accepted.
Questions like: “Will we ruin our daughter's self esteem if we enroll our son and not our
daughter?”
or “are we holding our son back if we keep them enrolled in the same program?”
Eventually they decided to enroll their son in the advanced program while their daughter
stayed in the regular program.
But those parents stressed to their kids that just because one child was enrolled in another
program doesn’t make that child inherently better than the other.
It just means that, like everyone else in the world, certain people are better at certain
things.
The son happens to be better at the sciences whereas the daughter is better at the arts.
Now what does this have to do with Mario and Luigi?
Well if you consider Mario and Luigi’s lives, literally since their birth, or i guess since
their stork ride (way to keep it pg Nintendo), Mario and Luigi have basically done one thing
and one thing only: adventuring.
And I dunno about you, but I suck at adventuring.
Hell, most people suck at adventuring.
We can’t all be Nathan Drake who can randomly find a fucking forest in the middle of France
and then find a fucking castle in the middle of the fucking forest!
It takes a very specific sort of person to drop everything and venture across multiple
worlds to be a hero.
I’m not that type of person and guess what, neither is Luigi.
You’ve seen how awkward he is, you’ve seen how scared he is.
He wasn’t meant to fight monsters and save princesses.
And there’s nothing wrong with that!
But his entire life has been based around the idea that this is what the mario brothers
do.
They adventure, they play the hero, they save the princess, they follow their own stereotype
to the death because it's what they are the best at.
Mario is that son who’s amazing in the sciences.
He was born to do what he does.
Luigi is the daughter who prefers the arts, he has his own abilities, but they aren’t
being utilized because he’s doing something that doesn’t play to his strengths.
I’m sure this is something you can all relate to.
How many people have siblings, or friends for you only children, who are better than
you at something?
Everyone does.
but that doesn’t make your sibling a better person or more worthy of respect and love.
Yet sometimes you still feel subpar compared to your brother or sister.
Now imagine having that feeling cemented into your brain day after day year after year by
everyone around you.
Everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom loves Mario.
Everyone praises him for his heroism.
And while Mario is in the limelight, Luigi is always seen as second best, the sidekick,
the second player.
He lives in Mario’s overwhelming shadow.
For years Mario has been getting his head filled with praise and glory, and over time
that can have a negative effect on a person.
Look at any celebrity that you might refer to as Dildo Douchebaggins.
Certain people, when peppered over and over with love and fame and admiration for years
on end, can let that go to their head, inflating their ego to the size of one of the Slow Mo
Guys water balloons.
Equally, in the opposite direction, if you're constantly being compared to your glorified
brother, you’d probably find your self esteem extremely fragile and low.
By understanding this, we’re getting closer to understanding the issues between Mario
and Luigi.
With one brother having an ego that’s too big and another having an ego that’s too
small, a pretty scary power dynamic can form over the years.
Since Mario’s entire ego is completely based around him being the chosen hero of the mushroom
kingdom, it would stand to reason that anyone else who could take that role from him would
be a threat to Mario.
A threat to his fame, his self esteem, his ego, everything that makes Mario who he is.
Inside, there really isn’t much to Mario’s personality.
He’s a stoic shell of nothingness held together by his actions and what people think about
him rather than who he really is as a person.
If his actions are overshadowed and his fame is taken away Mario would basically have nothing
to define himself with.
And who’s the biggest threat to overshadowing Mario?
Who’s been on almost as many adventures as Mario?
Who has actually saved Mario in the past?
Luigi.
Mario sees Luigi as his greatest rival, the only threat he has to the fame and heroism
he defines himself with.
If this idea seems too exaggerated to you, perhaps a similar example will help you see
just how real this possibility is.
For my anime fans out there, let’s do a quick analysis of Midoriya and Bakugo from
My Hero Academia.
For those of you that haven’t seen this show, all you need to know is that the almost
everyone in this world has some sort of super power and because of that, people actually
started to have hero careers overseen by the government.
Bakugo has a fantastic ability, or quirk as they call it in the show.
He can create explosions with his body.
Midoriya was born without a quirk, but eventually gets one.
Bokugo gets overly competitive and angry with Midorya, but why?
Well, since his quirk developed in kindergarten, people have been telling him since he was
5 that he’s going to be a hero, that he’s going to do great things, that he’s going
to save people.
Whereas people have never told Midoriya that.
He was always told someone without a quirk could never be a hero.
So as you’d imagine, Midoriya grew up with low self esteem, Bakugo grew up with a massively
over inflated ego.
And now that Midoriya is starting to grow and gain some momentum, Bokugo feels incredibly
threatened and hates Midoriya even more.
We’re seeing this exact same thing with Mario and Luigi.
This isn’t something I’m making up, its something that happens when a person’s entire
being is based on their ego and what others have told them.
Now does this mean that Mario isn’t at fault for how he feels towards his brother?
Well...yes and no.
I can’t say that a person’s feelings and actions aren’t their own responsibility,
but Mario’s upbringing has just as much to do with it.
Mario was never taught that people are created differently, that being good at one thing
doesn’t make you inherently better than others.
So of course he feels superior to his brother who can’t keep up with him.
And of course he’s terrified of losing his edge and falling to where he sees his brother.
That gives us a pretty good idea of why Mario may not have as much brotherly love for Luigi
as Jamie has for Cersei.
Oh boy, an incest joke, I wonder how long until this video gets demonetized.
Anyway, that doesn’t explain how Luigi feels about Mario.
So let's get into that!
Luigi doesn’t really have anything going for him according to his own self esteem.
He feels constantly overshadowed, but he also knows that he is scared of things when Mario
isn’t and he is more clumsy when Mario’s steady.
These are truths about himself.
And yet, he has also saved Mario in the past.
He has played the hero.
That experience most likely makes him feel even more jealous towards Mario’s fame and
heroism.
But here’s the thing: jealousy, overly inflated egos, both of these things are fixable.
Jealousy is not a human emotion that everyone experiences naturally.
It’s a symptom of insecurity.
People are jealous of others because they are insecure about not having what others
have.
They feel second best to whoever they are jealous of.
To fix jealousy, one must confront their insecurities and overcome them.
It’s not an impossible task, I’ve done it many times, and when you are able to find
that insecurity and assure yourself you needn’t be insecure about it, that jealousy fades.
If Luigi tried anything other than exploring and adventuring he may find that there are
plenty of things he is better at that Mario.
By finding that truth within himself, that he’s not an adventurer, but he’s perfectly
capable of many other things, Luigi will find his self esteem start to lift and heal.
That’s why we have so many possible career options.
Everyone is made differently and can excel in different areas and no one area is better
than the rest.
If Luigi just tried something else and found something he was passionate about, that he
enjoyed, that wasn’t tied to his brother, he may find that insecurity of living in Mario’s
shadow disappear and his jealousy of Mario’s adventuring with it.
If he could do that, we may be able to solve the issues between these two brothers.
Now Mario’s inflated ego is another issue.
When I compared it to the Slo Mo Guy’s giant balloons, that analogy had two parts, one
was the massiveness of the balloon, but the other is that it will eventually pop.
Mario’s ego can’t possibly stay inflated forever, and when it does pop he’ll end
up falling into a downward spiral of depression and loneliness.
When all your friends are with you because of what you do not who you are, how can you
expect them to stick around long term?
That eventual pop may destroy Mario, but it will also give him a chance to start over,
to realize his mistakes, and hopefully, to realize that Luigi is not his enemy.
And here’s the thing, that ego deflation may come from seeing Luigi happy and no longer
stuck in Mario’s shadow.
The life shattering realization that Luigi actually could be better than him may throw
Mario for such a loop that he’ll have to rethink every he knows about his life.
If life isn’t about being better than everyone else, then what is it about?
That’s the question Mario will have to answer, and if he can come to a realization then maybe
it’s not too late for these brothers.
You see, if Mario blames Luigi for his ego breaking, that will turn their already rocky
relationship into something that will probably be impossible to heal.
However, if Mario is able to see the flaw in how he’s lived all these years, if he
can finally understand that people are not meant to be judged against each other and
that people are all different and not inherently better than one another, then perhaps these
two brothers can heal the damage that’s plagued them since their stork ride all those
years ago.
But of course, this is just my take on the Mario and Luigi relationship.
There’s always more going on beneath the surface if we’re willing to look a little
farther.
What do you think of my analysis?
Does it make sense to you?
Or do you think it’s a bit over the top?
I might see it that way too if it wasn’t for the fact that these issues between siblings
and twins in particular is so common.
Let me know what you think!
And thanks again for going through another video with me, You all who come back video
after video to see what I have to say are why we keep making videos!
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Thanks for hanging out and I’ll see you guys in a few days!