Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door will be released tomorrow, and saying that people are pumped doesn’t share the whole story. They’re truly counting down the hours and minutes until they can jump into the classic RPG and enjoy the adventures of Mario and his crew in paper form again. However, as the overwhelmingly positive reviews have arrived, a key detail from the 2004 GameCube version of the title has emerged via sites like ComicBook.com, and with it, a key reversal of a past character’s origins. Specifically, the fan-favorite character of Vivian. She’s one of the three “Shadow Sirens,” but “she” wasn’t always a “she” in the standard definition.
You see, in the 2004 version of Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door, the Japanese translation, and the European localization to boot, had Vivian reveal herself as a Transgender woman. But when it was translated to the United States, she was definitely stated to be a “regular woman,” pure and simple. They rewrote several pieces of dialogue to enforce this and made her character feel like more of a standard bullying/abuse victim than someone struggling with their identity.
However, in the Switch version, a key piece of dialogue notes that Vivian “took a while” to learn that she “was their sister, not their brother.” That’s what led to the bullying from her older sister Bedlam, and not because of more basic reasons like her being “plug-ugly.”
It’s not hard to see why this change was done back in 2004. LGBTQ+ rights were basically a taboo back in those days, and they’re still being fought for now. So, if Vivian had been allowed to remain Transgender back in those times, it might have caused serious controversy for the games. However, given the state of gaming now, not to mention the various rights passed in the US, it’s clear Nintendo is willing to go back to how Vivian was before, and gamers seem to be very welcoming of this fact.
It likely helps that Vivian is one of the best characters in the game. She arguably has one of the biggest arcs of the main companion characters, given how she interacts with her sisters as a “villain” at first, only to become Mario’s ally after their time in Twilight Town. Vivian is kind, sweet, always up to help, and finally learns to stand up to Bedlam. In short, Vivian is hard not to root for.
Either way, gamers will get to see Vivian in all her original glory when the RPG releases on Nintendo Switch tomorrow.
