Introduction
Developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door came out in 2004 in Japanese, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish on the Nintendo GameCube. The original Japanese title is ペーパーマリオＲＰＧ (Paper Mario RPG). It is the second installment of the Paper Mario series and the fourth RPG in the Mario IP overall, after Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, unless we count the RPG elements of the mobile Mario golf and tennis games. A complete remake of The Thousand-Year Door came out internationally in 2024 for the Nintendo Switch under the same title, changing the graphics, music, and, importantly here, the script.
Developers at Intelligent Systems have often taken a more daring and unusual approach to the Nintendo properties they work with. The Thousand-Year Door marks a departure from the studio’s earlier Paper Mario in how far it travels from the usual Mario setting and tone. While still appropriate for children and highly comedic, The Thousand-Year Door offers a more elaborate, sometimes dramatic storyline with darker themes and subject matter than the vast majority of Mario games, a trend that would be still further amplified in its less lauded sequel, Super Paper Mario.
Among the various subjects the script touches on is the gender variance or queerness of Vivian, one of the main characters. While I will not pretend this topic exists in a vacuum, there has been some controversy over the question of whether the 2004 Japanese script depicts Vivian as a transgender woman or an otokonoko/femboy, a point I will return to below. We will look at how exactly the different releases of The Thousand-Year Door portrayed this topic in 2004 and how this depiction was later revised.
To give credit to the specific real people who worked hard to produce the writing I will be discussing, the credits list Ryota Kawade as the chief director and Kaoru Kita, Tomoaki Fukuda, and Toshiyuki Nagahara as assistant directors. Hironobu Suzuki is listed as script director, but “script” is credited to Misao Fukuda. While “script” could refer to programming in this context, that there are distinct credits for “programming” suggests Hironobu Suzuki and Misao Fukuda were indeed responsible for writing the dialogue. As major a factor for the 2004 English release are the more numerous translators and localizers: Rich Amtower, Nate Bihldorff, Thomas Connery, Scott Richey, Bill Trinen, and Erik Peterson; “localization support” staff Mika Kurosawa and Norihide Sasaki; and “localization management” staff Jeff Miller and Leslie Swan.
The 2024 Switch remake credits Ryota Kawade as supervisor, while the director role passed to Masahiko Nagaya. Oddly enough, although the text of the script is largely identical, the remake’s credits do not clearly list any writers. “Game scripting” is attributed to Ryunosuke Kogi, Tasuku Kondo, Kaori Kawamura, Atsuki Kubota, and Raiki Hirose, but here this seems to mean programming rather than dialogue writing. The Switch remake’s localization credits are so extensive that it would be impractical to list them here. I cannot know what specifically these individuals did, such as whether a creative decision should be attributed to Suzuki or Fukuda or even Kawade, or who among the huge staff made a particular localization decision. Furthermore, different roles can often overlap in game design. What effect did the event designers have on the script writers, for instance, and what does the remake’s credit for “movies” refer to? I prefer to credit work to the people who did it, but given these considerations, I will not specifically refer to any of these creators below.
The different names I provide from the Japanese-language version of the script come from the Super Mario Wiki’s articles on Vivian, Marilyn, Beldam, Goom Goom, and The Thousand-Year Door and its remake; the page on Vivian from the Japanese-language Mario Wiki (apologies for using a Fandom site); and themushroomkingdom.net page “The Thousand-Year Door: From Japanese to English.” The quotations from the script I provide not from these sources I checked by consulting miscellaneous footage uploaded to YouTube as well as my own recordings. None of these are anything like formal academic sources, but they are sufficient for my purposes here.
If you are the sort who is worried about spoilers, you should not read more of this.
Meet Vivian
To begin, I will consider Vivian’s overall role in the adventure.
Vivian first appears as a member of a group of three witches called カゲ三人組 Kage Sannin-gumi, “Shadow Trio.” The 2004 English release calls them the “Shadow Sirens,” while the 2024 English release, perhaps to preserve the gender-neutrality of the original name, renders the name as “Three Shadows.” What kind of creatures the Three Shadows are is never entirely clear. They may be demons, as they seem to be smaller, cuter versions of the demonic final boss, the Shadow Queen, who even uses a variant of Vivian’s Veil power to pull Mario into shadows.
The eldest sister is マジョリン Majorin, renamed Beldam in the English release. This might vaguely preserve the magical allusion: マジョ“majo” means “witch” in Japanese, while “beldam” is an archaic English word for a hag. I will call the character Beldam. She is portrayed as a cackling evil witch, no more sympathetic than the Wicked Witch of the West, with whom she shares a sharp nose. Beldam wields ice magic, and though the tiniest, she is the leader, bossing the other sisters around. The powerhouse middle sister, who uses lightning magic, is called Marilyn in English and in Japanese, and with one exception seems to be unable to speak. Vivian, the youngest sister, uses fire magic and also has the same name in both languages. She is actually the only party member with the same name in both languages.
The three witches join the rogues gallery near the end of the first of eight chapters. Though Beldam is a major villain in the story, the Three Shadows largely serve as bumbling, comedic antagonists. Mario and his friends first encounter the them as a boss fight in the second chapter.
Ironically, given her general politeness, Vivian’s first lines of dialogue have her casually talking about killing Mario, and wondering if that will be bad. Beldam replies, “Oh, bad things happen all the time, Vivian.” Vivian is excited to find a pretty necklace in the Boggly Woods, but Beldam tells her off for being “disgusting” in response. Beldam does not know what Mario looks like, only having a single sketch for reference, but she discovers she has lost it: “Vivian, my dear pack rat… Bring out the sketch of that Mario guy that you got from Grodus! Mmmmmwee hee hee!”
Vivian responds, “Eeep! Wh-what? You said it was way too important, so you took it. You should have it…”
Beldam blames Vivian for her own mistake and berates her: “Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t have that thing. You were in charge of it! You wretched little worm! Blaming me for something you probably screwed up!”
Here and in Chapter 4, Beldam does little except berate Vivian to the point of tears and use her as a scapegoat for her own mistakes. She frequently menaces her with オシオキ (お仕置き) “punishment,” perhaps made more sinister by remaining unseen and undefined. As Beldam yells at Vivian, Marilyn attempts to point out that Mario and his friends are running by them, but Beldam ignores her. Soon, the player (Mario and his party) learns the necklace Vivian found belongs to Flurrie.
As the player heads back to retrieve the necklace, Beldam finds the picture of Mario (and, realizing she ignored him when he ran past her, blames Vivian). When their target turns up, the Three Shadows introduce themselves, and then Mario and his friends defeat them. They make their escape and do not reappear for the duration of the chapter.
The Three Shadows return in Chapter 4, seeming at home in its dreary gothic horror setting. Beldam has constructed a イチコロバクダン “trouncing bomb,” in English called “Superbombomb,” to kill Mario. However, she loses it in the tall grass of Twilight Town, blames Vivian for her mistake yet again, and forces Vivian to search for it while she and Marilyn “go take a well-earned siesta.”
Meanwhile, a malicious shapeshifting monster who is invincible to anyone who doesn’t know his name steals Mario’s body and identity, turning him into a shadow and taking away the entire crew of friends the player has relied on so far. Vivian doesn’t recognize the shadow as Mario. In probably the most extreme example of Mario being kind in the entire franchise, he finds Vivian crying because she will be “punished” again and then locates the Superbombomb for her. However, it is broken.
“What’ll I do? What’ll I do? I guess I was just meant to be punished for life…” (The 2024 remake changes this to, “What’ll I do? What’ll I do? Ohhh, why does everything have to go wrong all of the time?!”)
Mario can respond either, “Hey, don’t feel bad!” or “Here, let me fix it.”
Moved by what might be the first kindness anyone showed her, Vivian, fed up with Beldam’s cruelty, declares her intention to help Mario get back his name and body, kisses him, and abandons the broken Superbombomb. “Gee whiz, you have way worse problems than I do! And you were worried about me that whole time… That’s so…kind…” At this point, the script makes explicit that Vivian is not a cisgender woman. The 2004 script seems to indicate she is a crossdressing boy, but the 2024 remake depicts her as transgender.
This is also when the player can use Vivian’s abilities in gameplay. Her combat powers are enabled via simple quick-time events. She continues to wield fire magic, capable of burning enemies for multiple turns. Another of her abilities is Infatuate, in which she blows a kiss that is able to inflict the Confused status on enemies, a fairly common power in Japanese RPGs (some of them add a unique status ailment specifically for being seduced, rather than the generic Confused status).
Vivian’s most important power is Veil, which conceals her and Mario in the shadows to avoid obstacles and attacks, as well as, only in Chapter 4, to eavesdrop. The latter power is necessary for them to discover the shapeshifter’s name from a parrot he keeps locked in his basement. In the original Japanese script, the name turns out to be ランペル Rumple. Though you would think an English-language audience would more readily recognize the reference, localizers gave him the English name Doopliss.
Mario’s allies believe that he is Doopliss and, seeing him in league with their enemy Vivian, join a battle on the impostor’s side. After the boss fight, Mario recovers his body. Mario’s party members are apologetic to him but unsympathetic to Vivian until he sticks up for her. Having already proven herself, Vivian apologizes for attacking him in Boggly Woods and “REALLY” joins the party.
The primary antagonists in Chapter 6, a gentle spin on Murder on the Orient Express, are the Three Shadows, now Beldam, Marilyn, and Doopliss. Notably, Beldam threatens Vivian specifically: “Normally, this would be where I finally deal with you and that homely traitor, Vivian…” Doopliss impersonates a celebrity as part of a plot to bomb the train Mario is riding. Strangely, the player does not actually fight the group, who simply run away when thwarted and later have a comical scene where they again screw up a scheme. (As a kid, I thought Beldam sends the Smorg monsters that subsequently attack the train as her plan B, but in fact the script never even implies this.) Note that the writers preemptively avoid having Vivian be involved in the more villainous, albeit still ridiculous, train bombing, allowing her redemption to be simpler. While the player can use any party members, Vivian is depicted as proactive about the wacky detective hijinx and thwarting Beldam as the others.
The Three Shadows only return in Chapter 8, the finale, where they attack Mario’s party inside the Palace of Shadow where the ancient world-conquering demon is sealed. Beldam specifies she intends to kill Vivian: “Ready for the end, my dears?” says Beldam. “You and that traitor Vivian have a date with eternity!” If Vivian is the active party member, now empowered, she inverts Beldam’s perpetual threats of punishment: “Today, Sis…I’m going to punish YOU, you hear me?” While any party member could be active instead, this optional dialogue completes Vivian’s arc: no longer a submissive but villainous victim, she is actively standing up to her sisters. The fight is much tougher than in Chapter 2, but Beldam, Marilyn, and Doopliss are left dazed on the ground with cartoon stars orbiting their heads.
At the climax, Beldam, Marilyn, and Doopliss reappear to deliver a surprising twist. Far from a joke villain, Beldam is the mastermind behind the entire plot to unseal her master, the demonic conqueror the Shadow Queen, and re-enslave the world. If Vivian is the active party member, her surprise and confusion indicate that she was unaware this is what her sister was up to. This has a number of unexplored implications. For one, Beldam must be centuries old, which raises the question of how old Vivian is.
When she suspects they have to kill Princess Peach, whom the Shadow Queen is using as a host body, Vivian shows a darker side. She believes that after Peach is dead, she herself will be able to be together with Mario: “I feel bad for the princess, but that queen must fall before us! And when she does, you and I can… Well, anyway, let’s take this fight to her!” In a long final boss fight, Mario and his friends, with the power of the goodwill of all the people they’ve helped on their journeys, are able to break through the Shadow Queen’s powers, rescue Peach, and kill the demon. Beldam and Marilyn run away.
In the tearjerker ending scene, the various party members say goodbye as the curtain closes on the adventure. Vivian stops just short of confessing that she is in love with Mario: “Uhhhh… Mario… I… I feel… I feel like I’ve grown to lo — Uh, yeah, um, never mind… Y-Yeah, I sure do think that you and Peach make a nice couple… Hmm hmm hmm…” In the epilogue, Vivian is leading a happy life with her sisters, as Beldam has implausibly promised to never be mean to her again. Her replacement Doopliss, meanwhile, has turned over a new leaf in his arrogant quest for attention and uses his shapeshifting powers to perform in stage plays.
Since the original release, some fans have held up Vivian as positive transgender representation. The 2004 English and German releases completely scrub all mentions of Vivian being trans or “a boy” from the script, weakening the drama. However, the 2004 Italian-, French-, and Spanish-language releases retain that Vivian is transgender, and apparently the Italian script even has her call herself a woman and proud of it. The 2024 remake depicts Vivian as transgender in the original Japanese and (as far as I know) in every translation/localization.
Reviewing all the dialogue relevant to this topic may be informative. To analyze the depiction of Vivian’s gender, I will refer to five different versions of the script: the original 2004 Japanese-language script of the GameCube release; the 2004 English translation/localization of this script; a 2023 fan-made patch by Griscuit called Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door+, which, among numerous other tweaks, restores text about Vivian’s gender; the 2024 Japanese-language script of the Switch remake; and the 2024 English-language script of the remake. My Japanese language skills are poor, but because Paper Mario RPG is intended for elementary schoolers, I can understand the text at least well enough for our purposes here.
In Japanese, Vivian uses the feminine first-person pronoun あたし atashi for herself. Third-person pronouns are less common in Japanese than in English, and I did not notice any used for Vivian in any of the text I checked. All English-language scripts refer to Vivian only with feminine pronouns. Details about Vivian are not the only variations between these scripts, but they might be the most meaningful. Unfortunately, a lot of the specifics we will look at are Vivian being misgendered.
In Boggly Woods
The scene before Mario’s battle against the Three Shadows in the Boggly Woods (in Japanese ふしぎの森 “Forest of Mystery”) is the first in which the writers broach the subject of Vivian’s gender. Vivian introduces the カゲ三人組 as the Three Shadow Sisters. In the original game, Beldam, in yet another tirade, screams that Vivian is オトコ “a man”: 「コラッ！ビビアン！！なに いってんだよ あんた！カゲ三人組だろ！どこが 三姉妹だよ！あんた オトコじゃないかい！！！！！！」“Heeeey! Vivian! What’s that, you dope?! It’s the Shadow Trio! Shadow Trio!! Where do you see three sisters?! Aren’t you a man?!?!?!?!?!?!”
In response, Vivian begins crying. Clearly inured to this kind of bullying, she says, 「ゴメンナサイ～ お姉さま…つい…」“Sorry, Big Sister… I said it by mistake…”
Unmoved, Beldam threatens Vivian with punishment, as she has in every one of their interactions so far: 「つい… じゃないよ！あとで きっちり オシオキしてやるからね！！」“By mistake… not! Later, you’ll be punished properly!!”
Then Vivian falls to her knees, or equivalent thereof, in sadness. Calling Vivian a man is depicted as particularly cruel on Beldam’s part, as the word “man” is written in red text for emphasis. Though other parts of the 2004 script understand Vivian as a crossdresser, in this scene she seems to want other characters to perceive her as a woman.
The milder 2004 English script rewrites the scene so that Vivian introduces the group, called Shadow Sirens in this version, as “Shadow Beauties.” Beldam does not yell about Vivian’s gender: “Vivian! You nincompoop! What are you babbling about? It’s Shadow SIRENS! I don’t see three beauties! I see two, but then there’s you, and you’re PLUG-UGLY!!!” “PLUG-UGLY” is in red text, replacing オトコ from the Japanese. While Beldam is no doubt a cruel bully and Vivian’s mistreatment is, if anything, still overdone, calling Vivian ugly is less nasty than misgendering her.
Crying, Vivian no longer claims she said “sisters” by mistake: “Aw, right, Sis, I’m sorry… It’s just, you always call us ‘lovelies,’ and…”
Beldam cuts her off: “It’s just a figure of speech! Ooh, you’ve got some FIERCE punishment coming your way!”
The 2023 fan patch restores the sense of the original scene, with Vivian introducing the group as the “Shadow Sisters” and being met with backlash from Beldam, who does not recognize Vivian as a woman: “Vivian! You nincompoop! What are you babbling about? It’s Shadow SIRENS! I don’t see three sisters! I see two, but you, Vivian are hardly a sister!!!” Now the red-text phrase is the less direct “hardly a sister.” What has set off Beldam is a not as clear in this script, however. A “siren” is conventionally female, so even if Vivian said “sirens” instead of “sisters,” she would still seem to be identifying herself as a woman. This issue accounts for the English remake calling them the Three Shadows instead of the Shadow Sirens.
While the corresponding dialogue is less relevant, I will include it for consistency’s sake. Vivian begins to cry and says, “Aw, I’m sorry, Sis… I didn’t meant to upset you, I just misspoke…” Beldam responds, “Just a slip of the tongue? I find that hard to believe! Ooh, you’ve got some FIERCE punishment coming your way!” Vivian then falls to her equivalent of knees. Griscuit continues to revise the bowdlerized 2004 English scene to follow the Japanese one.
Both the 2024 Japanese and English scripts remove Beldam’s major red-text insult and give Vivian additional dialogue. Instead of Beldam calling Vivian “a man,” Beldam says she isn’t a sister, a subtler insult reflecting the writers’ interest in having more tasteful treatment of the character even when portraying her villainous sister. Now Beldam tells Vivian,「コラッ！ビビアン！！なに いってんだよ あんた！カゲ三人組だろ！三人組！！三姉妹じゃなく 三人組だって いつも いってるじゃないかい！」 “Heeeey! Vivian! What’s that, you dope?! It’s the Shadow Trio! Shadow Trio!! I always tell you we’re not three sisters, we’re a trio!”
A crying Vivian gives an expanded, sadder version of her response from the original:「ゴメンナサイ～ お姉さま… アタイも… ココロの中では 妹だから つい…」“Sorry, Big Sister… I said it by mistake since I’m also… a sister in my heart…” Vivian being a girl “in her heart” recurs in the 2024 Japanese script.
Beldam retains the same line from the original but it seems even more vicious:「つい… じゃないよ！あとで きっちり オシオキしてやるからね！！」“By mistake… not! Later, you’ll be punished properly!!” As in the 2004 release, Vivian then falls to her equivalent of knees in sadness.
The 2024 English release resembles the revised scene in the Japanese script, losing the weaker dialogue about Vivian being ugly. When Vivian calls the Three Shadows the “Three Shadow Sisters,” Beldam shouts, “Vivian! You nincompoop! What are you babbling about? It’s just SHADOWS! The Three SHADOWS! ‘Sisters’ makes us sound less mysterious…and less scary! How many times must I remind you?!” This sentiment about the relative scariness of “sisters” is absent from the slightly more repetitious Japanese text.
The crying Vivian responds, “Aw, right, Sis. I’m sorry… It’s just, it makes me really happy when you call me your sister, so…” Instead of saying she is a sister inside her heart, Vivian leaves her transness subtler than in the Japanese script.
Then Beldam claims Vivian will be punished not for wanting to be a sister but for being “sappy”: “How insufferably sappy! Ooh, you’ve got some FIERCE punishment coming your way!”
Vivian falls to her equivalent of knees. To further rub it in, before the fight, Beldam declares, “The might of The Three Shadows — RELATION WITHHELD — will be more than enough to win the day!” There is no equivalent of “RELATION WITHHELD” in the corresponding Japanese text: 「われら カゲ三人組の チカラを たっぷりと 見せてやるわさっ！」“We shall display the might of the Shadow Trio!” Although カゲ三人組 is also a gender-neutral term, the English script emphasizes that Beldam avoids the term “sisters” to insult Vivian.
Tattle
In the subsequent battle against the Three Shadows, Goombella can use her Tattle ability on Vivian. With Tattle, Goombella looks up bosses and enemies in a guidebook to provide some information about them. In the 2004 game’s Tattle log, Goombella hesitantly calls Vivian 弟 “younger brother”: 「『ビビアン』よ カゲ三人組の一人で いちばん下の妹 …じゃなくて 弟ね 」“That’s Vivian. Of the Shadow Trio, she’s the youngest sister… er, brother.” If Vivian is a trans woman, as the preceding scene implies, this is very insulting. If she is instead a crossdressing man, it would be less so. This establishes the pattern of Vivian’s portrayal in the original script where she is often identified as the latter.
In the fan patch, Griscuit rewrites the Tattle so that Goombella is more supportive of Vivian: “According to the book, she’s the youngest brother of the trio. …Wait, what?! She looks like the youngest sister to me!” While still preserving the structure of the Japanese Tattle, this version draws attention to the fact that the book, rather than our friend Goombella, is identifying Vivian as the youngest brother.
In every version of the Japanese and English scripts, whether she calls Vivian the youngest sister or youngest brother, Goombella then goes on to ramble about how Vivian is very cute, possibly cuter than her. In both Japanese and English, the 2024 release removes the line about Vivian being the “youngest brother” and moves directly to Goombella commenting on how cute Vivian is.
Interestingly, Goombella’s lines about Vivian’s cuteness were slightly tweaked between the 2004 and 2024 releases in both Japanese and English. In the 2004 Japanese script, Goombella ends her comments about Vivian’s cuteness with, 「やだっ…あたしったら なにを かんがえているのかしら」“No way… What am I thinking?” The particle ったらindicates this is frustrated in tone. The English script is more or less the same: “…Uh… What am I thinking?” The original could be read as Goombella wondering why she is comparing her attractiveness to someone she has just identified as a man. But I am probably not the only player who read the line as suggesting Goombella is attracted to Vivian. Whether to remove Goombella being transphobic or Goombella being bisexual, the 2024 remake replaces this line with,「やだっ…あたしったら アキモチ やいているのかしら」I think this means something like, “No way… Feeling second-rate is burning me up!” Conveying the same sense, the 2024 English script has Goombella conclude, “Wow. I think I might be jealous.”
Tattle Log
Besides the Tattle that can be read in battle, there is also a Tattle Log that records information about each Tattled enemy and boss. The text of the Tattle Log is always different, and usually less colorful, than what Goombella says in her dialogue. This is the description in Vivian’s Tattle Log entry, with some added punctuation for clarity: 「カゲ三人組の 一人で マジョリンの妹…もとい 弟。オトコのコだけど その かわいさに みんな メロメロかもね」A translation will inevitably have some awkward pronoun reference, but since this character has only ever been referred to in English as she/her and since the Japanese text uses no pronouns, I will still use she/her: “One of the Shadow Trio, Beldam’s little sister… rather, brother. She is a boy but so cute that anyone might fall head-over-heels in love with her.”
Vivian is yet again identified as a cute boy who looks like a girl. The bit about Vivian being cute enough that anyone can fall in love with her uses the word メロメロ, which I rendered as “head-over-heels in love.” This alludes to the ability メロメロキッス “Head-Over-Heels Kiss” or, as the Super Mario Wiki renders it, “Heart-Melting Kiss,” which the English release calls Infatuate. Perhaps this bewitching cuteness accounts for Goombella’s reaction.
Another point of contention is that the word “boy” in this description, and in other menu text about Vivian, is オトコのコ otokonoko. Because it is written not in kanji but in phonetic katakana, this word has two possible meanings. The one probably intended here is 男の子, which means “boy.” The other, however, is also relevant in this context: 男の娘, literally something like “male girl.” The word 男の娘 became popular in manga culture in the early 2000s (and remains so). In the mainstream sex-gender taxonomy, an 男の娘 would usually be an effeminate crossdressing cisgender man. The word “femboy” originated in English-language manga discussion online in the 2000s to describe otokonoko characters and has an identical, or near-identical, meaning. I do not believe that “otokonoko” or “femboy” are usually regarded as pejorative, though on occasion I have observed some people consider them so. While these terms would be misgendering if used for a trans woman, I have noticed a small number of trans women online (two total) refer to themselves as “femboys,” as well as some nonbinary people. But I have observed effeminate cisgender men use the term “femboy” for themselves much more frequently. And I have seen such terms applied more often to fictional characters in anime and manga than real people. The use of “otokonoko” to describe Vivian in the original Paper Mario RPG is the most commonly cited evidence that the character is not transgender.
The equivalent English text in the 2004 release reads, “One of the Shadow Sirens and Beldam’s youngest sister. She’s so cute, she’s able to infatuate anyone.” There is no allusion to Vivian being anything but a girl. The reference to her メロメロキッス is preserved, however, since this kiss is called Infatuate in the English release.
In the fan patch, Griscuit did not change the Tattle Log text from the 2004 release.
The Switch remake removes any reference to Vivian’s gender from the Tattle Log:「カゲ三人組の 末っ子。 その かわいさに みんな メロメロかもね」“Youngest sibling of the Shadow Trio. She is so cute that anyone might fall head-over-heels in love with her.” The reference to her Infatuate ability remains intact. But there is literally no reference to her gender in the text because she is called a “sibling” rather than a “sister.”
In the 2024 English script, the Tattle Log entry is almost identical to the 2004 script, simply updated to reflect the new localization: “The youngest of the Three Shadows. She’s so cute, she’s able to infatuate anyone.”
Following Mario
Vivian’s big spotlight comes in Chapter 4. In the 2004 script, when Vivian chooses to run away from Beldam and Marilyn, she doesn’t make any reference to her gender. I will add some punctuation to the Japanese text for clarity. Near the end of the scene, she says,「いいの いいの。アタイのことは 気にしないで。どうせ お姉さまたちと いっしょに いても ちっとも いいことないし… それに あなたの やさしい キモチに アタイも こたえたいの。」“It’s fine, it’s fine! Don’t worry about my problems. Anyway, being together with my sisters also isn’t much good for me… Besides, I need to repay your earlier kindness.” Then she kisses Mario, establishing her crush on him for the remainder of Paper Mario RPG.
Her equivalent lines in the 2004 English script are as follows: “Hey, that’s OK! Don’t worry about my problems… I’m not sure I really want to stay with my sisters anymore, anyway… And I feel like I need to repay your earlier kindness. It’s the right thing to do.” Then she kisses Mario. The 2023 fan patch version of this scene is identical to the official English GameCube game, which was already accurate to the Japanese script, aside from adding Vivian remarking on the rightness of helping Mario. This, perhaps, reiterates that she understands right and wrong, as in her debut scene where she, albeit unseriously, comments it might be “bad” to kill Mario. So no details were lost to censorship in this case.
As well as giving Vivian her own theme music that begins to play, the 2024 remake expands her dialogue in this scene:「いいの いいの。アタイのことは 気にしないで。どうせ お姉さまたちと いっしょに いても ちっとも いいことないし… それに じつは アタイ… 体は オトコのコだけど ココロは カワイイ オンナのコなの。あなたの やさしい キモチに アタイも オトメゴコロで こたえたいの。」“It’s fine, it’s fine! Don’t worry about my problems. Anyway, being together with my sisters also isn’t much good for me… Besides, to be honest, I… have a boy’s body but a cute girl’s heart. I want to repay your kindness with a girl’s heart too.”
Now, before kissing Mario, Vivian states, without ambiguity, that she is not a boy, as the menu and Tattle of the original game would have it, but a woman with a male body. She clarifies that, while Mario/the player might have thought otherwise, perhaps from playing the original release, she is a woman and will repay his kindness as a woman would (with a kiss, as apparently women kiss people who help them). The line also calls back to her remark in Boggly Woods about being ココロの中では妹 a sister in her heart, and is echoed in her menu description that she has a girl’s heart, as I explain below. Delivering this speech before kissing him may also provide a more obvious setup to Vivian being in love with Mario.
The corresponding lines in the English remake remove the romantic overtones: “Hey, that’s OK! Don’t worry about my problems… I’m not sure I really want to stay with my sisters anymore, anyway. We aren’t very happy together. Truth is, it took me a while to realize I was their sister…not their brother. Now their usual bullying feels heavier. I also feel like I need to repay your earlier kindness. That’s the right thing to do, right? Right!”
As in the original, the kiss seems somewhat more sudden than in the 2024 Japanese script. However, the unambiguous revelation that Vivian is transgender is preserved. Instead of being incorporated into a setup for the kiss, Vivian’s transness is an additional insight into why she is leaving her sisters: Beldam was already mean to her but became even worse after she came out of the closet. This contextualizes the bullying more interestingly than the Japanese script.
Menu Description
In the character selection menu, every party member has a short bio in authoritative narration, as well as a description of his or her abilities. When Vivian joins Mario’s party, she receives some menu description too. Several versions use this to mention her gender.
The relevant description text in the 2004 Japanese release says this of Vivian: 「オンナのコのようで ホントは オトコのコ」“Looks like a girl but really is a boy.” Note that the term used is, as usual, otokonoko. Whatever we take this to mean, the Japanese description again states that Vivian looks like a girl but is something else.
As usual, the 2004 English release cuts any reference to the topic. The menu description instead gives the understatement, or mischaracterization of how badly Beldam treats her, “Vivian suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex.”
The 2023 fan patch adjusts the menu description to state Vivian is transgender: “Vivian was born male, but she prefers being a girl.” The 2004 Japanese script somewhat confusingly identifies Vivian as a crossdressing boy even as her introductory scene establishes her wanting to be called a woman. Clearly Griscuit falls on the side of considering the character trans.
In the Switch remake, the equivalent Japanese menu text is similar to some of Vivian’s new dialogue and equally as explicit as Griscuit’s script: 「体は オトコのコで ココロは オンナのコ」“Her body is a boy, but her heart is a girl.” Note the recurrence of the concept that she is a girl in her “heart.” The word “transgender” is not used, but this description no doubt depicts her as a trans girl (オンナのコ is “girl,” not “woman”). Describing a trans woman as having the body of a boy but the heart of a girl might be conventional in Japanese pop culture. For instance, in the article “LILY EXPLORES Ten Transgender Manga,” Lily Valeen concludes the survey mentioning, “‘I have the body of a boy, but the heart of a girl’ is still a notably common refrain across all of these stories.” Vivian, then, is in this tradition. Her portrayal follows the common “wrong body” transgender narrative, or perhaps not since the script never implies Vivian is at all unhappy with herself. This still might, however, be a flawed description: if someone is a girl, then her body is, by definition, a girl’s body regardless of that body’s physical features.
The full English menu text in the 2024 remake does not reference Vivian’s gender identity: “Vivian was one of the Three Shadows but now has chosen to leave her two sisters behind.” The Switch Japanese text is not more explicit than the Switch English text that Vivian is trans but does mention this point in more places.
Goom Goom Is a Cad
After Chapter 5, the player can embark on a sidequest called “Looking for a gal!” This involves meeting an extremely minor character called クリチェロ Kurichero in Japanese and Goom Goom in English. Goom Goom is an unsavory former sailor who wants a girlfriend to meet him in a haunted cave, for some reason. Though he is crass, he is also the butt of the joke.
The writing telegraphs that Goom Goom wants to meet Goombella (who herself even says she might “qualify as a cute Goomba gal” like he wants). The player can instead present him with any of the party members. The different versions of his reaction to Vivian follow the same pattern of changes we have discovered so far. In the original Japanese script, Kurichero says, 「おお！ これは かわいい… ってキミ… どうちなの？… オトコ… だよね… ようするに オスじゃん！ダメだよ～ ちゃんとしてよ～ ちゃんと おぼえてよ～」 “Ooh! You’re cute… but… what’s up with you? You’re a boy… aren’t you? To sum up, you’re male, right?! No good! Take this seriously. Seriously, remember it.” If Vivian is a trans woman, this is rude to the point of bigotry. Vivian’s response to these insults might be the only occasion she is bluntly impolite: 「こんなヤツ アタイから おことわり！」I tentatively think this means something like, “I have to turn down this jerk!”
In the 2004 English release, Goom Goom rejects Vivian for a completely unrelated reason: “Whoa! You sure are cute… But, um… That whole goth shadow thing is a bit… Creepy! There, I said it! This is all so very wrong!” Vivian’s uncharacteristic rudeness is preserved: “You’re not really doing much to impress me either, bud!”
The 2023 fan patch softens Goom Goom’s response: “Whoa! You sure are cute… But, um… I can’t quite tell… Are you a…? Or…? Ack! My brain can’t take this! It’s all too confusing for me!” This version increases how offended Vivian is relative to the 2004 English release: “Whuh… RUDE! You’re not really doing much to impress me either, bud!” As usual, the Thousand-Year Door+ script aims to depict Vivian more respectfully as a trans character. Avoiding the overt trans panic joke with Goom Goom may keep the tone of the scene from becoming too extreme.
The 2024 Japanese script removes the entire joke. While all versions have Kurichero pass on Vivian, and anyone but Goombella, for not being a Goomba, this is now his only reason for rejecting Vivian: 「おお！ これは かわいい… ってキミ… クリボー じゃないし！ダメだよ～ ちゃんとしてよ～ ちゃんと おぼえてよ～」“Ooh! You’re cute… but… you’re not a Goomba! No good! Take this seriously. Seriously, remember it.” While it is nice the script is no longer offensive, the writers should have replaced the original lines some new joke or interesting detail, instead of with nothing. Perhaps Kurichero could say he hates her hat or does not like fire magic, or drop lines more like in the English version.
The Goom Goom scene in the 2024 English script is almost the same as the 2004 English script: “Whoa! You sure seem nice… But, um… That whole goth shadow thing is a bit… Creepy! There, I said it! You’re too goth for me!” For some reason, unlike in every other version, Goom Goom calls Vivian “nice” instead of “cute.”
In Super Paper Mario
Stepping outside of The Thousand-Year Door, the 2007 sequel Super Paper Mario features Vivian on one of the in-game collectible Catch Cards. The English-language version continues to use feminine pronouns: “It’s Vivian from the last Paper Mario adventure. She was a great friend once she split from her sisters.” The card’s totally different description in the Japanese release gives more detail: 「どうじょうした マリオのなかも 火の魔法を 使う キュートな オトコのコ カゲ三人組という てきの一人だった」This text uses no pronouns but calls Vivian キュートな オトコのコ “a cute boy” or “a cute otokonoko,” understanding the character, then, as a crossdressing boy.
I am aware of no further specific references to Vivian’s gender in the franchise (aside from feminine pronouns).
Assessments
The 2004 Japanese-language script is mixed, conflating being a transgender woman and a crossdressing man/femboy. Vivian does seem to behave as though transgender, invariably acting like a woman and wanting to be identified as one in an early character-establishing scene, yet the menu text and Tattle Log consider her a boy, and Goombella can call her the “youngest brother” without, apparently, being considered a jerk for doing so. However, at the same time, the villainous Beldam is depicted as a cruel bully for calling Vivian a man. This seems to be a case of friendly intentions somewhat bungled, as opposed to a deliberately disrespectful treatment of a trans character, as Vivian is written sympathetically throughout. The 2004 English script definitely loses depth, to the degree there is any, by removing this aspect of Vivian’s character.
In The Thousand-Year Door+, a desire to respect Vivian as a transgender character butts up against the edgier misgendering that was considered less unacceptable in 2004 and the writers often stating Vivian is a crossdressing man. Griscuit found ways to blunt the writing’s edges while also preserving the structure and tone of the relevant dialogue. However, the menu text that specifies Vivian was “born male, but she prefers being a girl,” rather than someone who “looks like a girl but really is a boy,” is a case of just rewriting.
The 2024 Japanese remake scrubs scenes of more explicit transphobia and the previous references to Vivian being a boy and gives her additional dialogue depicting her as transgender with no ambiguity. The writers understand her to be a trans woman and want to portray her with more care and respect than the first attempt did. The 2024 English script follows the 2024 Japanese script, unambiguously depicting Vivian as transgender. Where the Japanese script may emphasize this to a degree that risks overshadowing her other character traits, the English script is subtler, only including a few references in the dialogue.
I had hoped to find a script in which the character is unimpeachably trans. However, interpreting the 2004 Japanese Paper Mario RPG version of Vivian as a crossdressing man instead of a trans woman is reasonable, not a misreading or misinterpretation. (Not that it makes a difference in this case, but at risk of redundancy, and given that it’s a point of discussion online, Vivian is never clearly called 男の娘 “femboy” instead of the phonetically identical 男の子 “boy” in any of the text I have examined.) In this context, though Beldam remains a bully, her red-text insult in Boggly Woods may be intended to be comical rather than especially cruel, a kind of punchline revealing an unexpected silly aspect of the situation. It may also follow that Vivian’s love for Mario is meant to be slightly comical, particularly in her final scene when she feigns that she is happy he is together with Peach. Though this would mean there is a Mario game in which he has a gay kiss.
However, the 2004 version is still amenable to the trans reading. Vivian is introduced wanting to be considered a woman and speaks, acts, and looks like a woman from start to finish. She comes across as transgender based on the actual dialogue and story instead of less important supplemental text such as the Tattle Log or the Catch Card in the sequel. The confusion between crossdressing and transness seems to not be so much a deliberate writing choice as a reflection of a less socially aware climate. In 2004, people outside of LGBT spaces would tend more often to conflate crossdressers, transgender people, drag queens, etc. out of ignorance there was a difference between these kinds of gender variance. The 2024 releases of The Thousand-Year Door forced Intelligent Systems and Nintendo to return to the old script in a time when there is more public awareness of and respect for queer identities. So now they consistently depict Vivian as trans, a more plausible characterization, giving official clarification to the 2004 portrayal.
As with Bridget from the Guilty Gear franchise, the conservative “culture war” desire to regard Vivian not as a trans woman but as “just” a man who looks like, dresses as, speaks like, and is treated as a woman is fueled more by a desire to erase transgender visibility, even in innocuous corporate children’s entertainment, than by a hallowed respect for effeminate men. In any case, while the femboy reading is reasonable in the 2004 GameCube game, it is certainly not supported by the 2024 Switch game.
The variants of The Thousand-Year Door have more in common than they have differences. The text I’ve looked at is a minuscule fragment of of a sprawling script. How little about Vivian was changed from the original to the remake may indicate how uplifting a trans character the 2004 release depicted, despite its ignorance. Her transgender status is not used as a joke. The writing treats her no differently than the various other cute girls who kiss and flirt with Mario. (Every single woman in his party kisses him.) Though she displays gender variance, this is not her only defining trait. She is happy with herself and remains feminine to the end (compare that to, for instance, the quashing and rejection of queer identities in Summon Night: Swordcraft Story). Vivian is heroic, polite to a fault, given a cute design, considered extremely attractive by other characters, and no less intelligent than the rest of Mario’s crew.
A limitation of the writing is that any one party member can be active in any given scene, so despite their different personalities and motives, their dialogue and actions are largely variations of the same observations and thoughts (though this would not be obvious except upon more than one playthrough). As a result, ironically, the longer a character goes before joining Mario’s party, the more he or she can be developed. Vivian receives more opportunities for characterization than any party member besides Goombella and Ms. Mowz. She also enjoys a fuller arc (arguably) than the other party members, switching from villain to hero, courageously escaping an abusive situation, becoming stronger than her sisters, and thwarting their plan to conquer the world. Her major role in Chapter 4, more prominent than any other party member’s in the whole adventure aside from Goombella’s, may also be thematically relevant to her being a trans woman: she chooses to help Mario specifically when he is without his rightful body and nobody respects his identity (another point favoring a trans interpretation even in the original).
Like the abilities of Mario’s other party members, Veil remains indispensable to avoid obstacles throughout the subsequent chapters, ensuring Vivian remains consistently in use in the gameplay. In the finale, Vivian also has the honor of being essential in a way no other party member is: With Veil, she is the only one who enables Mario to avoid the Shadow Queen’s deadly charged attack. This is particularly notable because the twist ending reveals Beldam is effectively the Shadow Queen’s understudy. Though in the last Three Shadows boss fight Vivian can boldly declare she will punish Beldam this time, completing her arc, the player is not required to use her there. But because Veil is (at least almost) essential for the Shadow Queen battle, Vivian also, in this way, must be used against Beldam’s plot no matter what other party members the player chooses to utilize in the final boss fight.
However, Vivian’s story has a somewhat strange ending. The epilogue takes the form of a letter Goombella writes to Mario some time after the finale. Beldam has been portrayed as a relentless and cowardly abuser and deceiver motivated by devotion to an evil demonic conqueror who feeds people to dragons. In her last several appearances, Beldam has unfailingly tried to kill Vivian. But Goombella indicates Vivian has returned to live with Beldam and Marilyn. She also writes that, with the loss of the Shadow Queen, Beldam has given up on evil and promised to never be mean to Vivian again. The accompanying visual shows Goombella chatting with a happy Vivian in Twilight Town. This abrupt resolution is unearned. Beldam shows no redeeming qualities before this point, and the notion that such a deceptive, selfish character could be taken at her word strains credulity.
Specific scrutiny of the phrasing used will be as worthwhile as the rest of this analysis (however worthwhile that is). The text is mostly identical between versions. In both the 2004 and 2024 Japanese releases, Goombella writes, 「ビビアンは お姉さんたちの ところに もどりました」“Vivian has gone back to the place her sisters are.” In 2004, the localizers may have realized this is unbelievable because they added an emendation: “Vivian’s gone back to hang out with her sisters. Family is important, after all…” The comment with ellipsis implies Goombella thinks Vivian returning to Beldam and Marilyn is weird. The remake’s English script alters the line yet again: “Vivian’s gone back to hang out with her sisters. She wants to give them another chance.” Where the 2004 English text is slightly condescending, the 2024 line at least attempts a more positive framing, giving Vivian the initiative. However, while a story where Beldam changes and Vivian forgives her is possible, this story is nonetheless not the one presented in The Thousand-Year Door.
Vivian’s reconciliation with her sisters is just one of the over-the-top saccharine endings that defang some of the drama. Whether this is worse writing than retconning, within the same script that established their deaths, that Grodus, Crump, and TEC are inexplicably still alive remains to be seen. The writers might as easily have had Vivian decide to go to school with Goombella or some other less unearned resolution. Ultimately, however, there is only so much Vivian was ever going to be able to do as a one-off character in a Mario game. She could never have much of a relationship with an untalking robot of a player avatar who is also a strictly regulated corporate mascot with an established love interest. Despite how many words I have spilled, let’s not forget that the entire cast are effectively meant to be children’s toys bouncing around a world of dioramas.
Vivian’s last line of dialogue is her asking Mario, really the player, not to forget her: “I’ll never forget my time traveling with you. So… Don’t forget me either…” And the onus was on players. Starting in 2012, Nintendo moved to relegate the narrative-focused half of the Paper Mario franchise of which Vivian is a part to the past, even having the series written out of canon in 2015’s Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. I hope that the suits at Nintendo green-lighting a remake of The Thousand-Year Door in 2024 signals a return of openness to more complex stories, and characters like Vivian, in future products.
She is certainly better representation than the Mario franchise’s old trans punchline, Birdo, but whether or not Vivian is “good” representation is not ultimately for me, a cisgender man, to decide. I can say, anecdotally, that the handful of trans people I’ve seen online who care about such things love Vivian. And I can also say the willingness to embrace rather than downplay this aspect of the character, much less to include it at all in the 2024 English release, are welcome developments. Vivian’s unique role means many fans of The Thousand-Year Door will indeed not forget her for some time.
Originally posted on my website on 9 July 2024.
It is also on Tumblr.
