Update on this Series: While it has been almost a year and a half since the previous video, Frog by Frog is in production once again on both my channel and the main blog. Ideally, I'd LOVE to release two of these a month, but for now, I'm going to aim for one a month (depending on what my editor can handle). My long-term goal is to be nearly finished with Chapter 2 by the end of the year for the RU-vid channel, and finished with Chapter 4 by the end of the year for the blog. As for other content on the channel, I have another video essay in the works that I'm hoping to release in mid to late May, so I hope you'll look forward to that, too. Thank you so much for your patience!! Shane
Glad it's coming back :) I know you mentioned you prefer it in video format but if that's too taxing, I loved listening to it in an audiobook/podcast format. Happy M3 anniversary!
thank you, mumbomod! I was hoping you would see that the new episode had come out :) now that I have a new job and my life has stabilized, I don't think the video version will be too taxing. Here's to more Frogs!!
Yeah, when I was struggling to keep the channel going over the past year or so, I considered releasing what would have been essentially audio-only episodes. However, now that I'm back on track, I'm happy I remained committed to the video version. I'm glad you appreciate the fully edited format :) My Frog by Frog editor, Lucas, is to thank for all of that hard work.
Somehow I got randomly recommended this video by youtube itself, and I'm happy for that. This video in particular is a surprisingly good entry point and made me curious enough to watch everything up to this point. I've really only played through Earthbound and Mother 3 once each and liked my time with both of them A LOT, and this series is making me think I should re-visit them for myself. I'm not sure if I'll have much to say, but I enjoy the thoughts provoked by the series so far. Maybe I'll go and read the blog itself if I get impatient enough :)
wow!! i'm so happy that you found this series in the whirlwind-expanse of RU-vid :) i would definitely recommend replaying EarthBound and Mother 3 if you haven't played them in a while. For me, they are like a great book, where every time I reread it, I notice more and more. Always rewarding and fun to play them again. I'm excited to have you along for the journey!! Thanks again for commenting and for giving the series a chance ~
What a nice little surprise to have dropped on the anniversary Saved it for today so I could listen to it at work and it was well worth the wait Hope you're doing well man glad to see ya back at it!
Jimmy!! It's so good to hear from you. I hope you are doing well, too :) Now that I'm settled in a new job, I'm going to begin making content/streaming again, so the party is BACK ON!!!
Ah, this video was a treat to experience! It was definitely worth the wait. :) A few comments: I can confirm that Paul (ポール) and Linda (リンダ) have the same names in the Japanese text, so they do appear to be a nod to the McCartney couple. And yeah, in regards to your thoughts on Reggie, I am likewise uneased by the lack of diversity in skin color in Tazmily, especially when you consider the circumstances surrounding the founding of the village. It seems that everyone else is white or perhaps light-skinned Asian (like I envision Hinawa as being.)
When it comes to Reggie's visual design, I think it's very important to focus on the intentions behind these designs. I don't think Shigesato Itoi or the artists who worked on mother had any bad intentions when drawing Reggie, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt. The game came out in 2006. While some cultural sensitivities might have been known to some people in Japan, I doubt it was a huge part of the Zeitgeist of the time. It's certainly nowhere on the same level as today, where these things are all over the internet, with everyone pointing them out all the time. Obviously, if the game had been localized, Nintendo of America would've likely edited the sprites. But again, I think the intentions behind it are what's important. Reggie is not an insulting character. He's a good guy. And he's one of the few characters who actually shows some integrity and stands up to the pigmasks' influences until the end. The actual minstrel shows back in the day would use blackface to portray black characters as dumb, lazy, and subserviant. That's what made blackface so insulting. Obviously Reggie is none of that. He just has an unfortunate visual similarity to the caricature. There's a similar situation in my country, Germany. A very famous childrens book from the early 60s features a black protagonist who was often drawn with those thick tube-shaped pink lips. Today, on the internet, everyone would compare that to blackface, but in Germany, when the book was written, or even when I read it as a kid in the late 90s, nobody really knew what blackface was or where it came from or anything. It wasn't a commonly known thing. Germany didn't have minstrel shows. This particular kind of face was just a visual trope. It was seen as a stylized and cartoony way of drawing black characters, but it wasn't meant to mock or insult those characters. It was merely a stylistic choice as a way to add contrast to the face and make it easily readable in a cartoony way. The book itself, which is called "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver" in the english release, actually features several anti-racism messages. And Jim, the black protagonist, is just an ordinary, curious, clever and well-meaning kid. So when I was a kid and read the stories or watched its marionette adaptation, I never thought about Jim in any negative light. That's just the way he was drawn. I didn't think about it any more than all the other abstract style choices. So I'd hate for anyone to literally judge the book by its cover and assume it's a racist story, just because it features a style choice that was not seen as harmful when it was made. And the same goes for Mother 3 and Reggie. You can usually tell whether or not there was any malice or disdain in the inclusion of a character. I'm sure if you asked the artists of Mother 3 today, they would say they didn't mean any harm and simply wanted to match the cartoony art style of the rest of the game with some silly faces, and that they weren't aware back then that a face alone could cause people's feelings to be hurt. Besides, it's not like all black characters in the game were drawn with those lips. The guy who looks like Mr. T has a much more reserved design. So it's much more likely that the artists simply saw this as one way to add personality to a design, rather than seeing it as the "correct" way to draw black people or something.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I think you are definitely right on the money, and Reggie certainly gets his time to shine not only in Mother 3, but later on in the Frog by Frog series. I do not think that anyone on Mother 3's staff had malicious intent with Reggie by any means. And I think your comment outlines, accurately, what their thought process was. The game out in 2006, but we can assume Reggie was designed much earlier than that. Social awareness-wise, things are much different now than they were then, and Reggie's actual characterization, especially compared to the other Tazmilians, is exceedingly positive. When I first wrote this post, way back in 2020, I just felt it worth mentioning that the only black Tazmilian does embody a common stereotype, but, as you said, Reggie is also one of the more developed Tazmilians. He stands up to the oppression. Like Lucas's family, his own home is consistently struck by lightning. He never gives up either. He kind of reminds me of Fuel, in that way. In a different version of Mother 3, from a different perspective, he could have been one of the main characters. One of Mother 3's major themes is nature vs industry, and I think, more so than ANY Tazmilian, Reggie embodies the "nature" aspect of this theme. He really is a special character in the game. I would say that my perspective on Reggie nowadays is much more similar to the thoughts you have outlined here, and the main reason I left in my original thoughts on Reggie in this video is for this exact reason: to spark conversation, and see what other people thought. So, thank you again for this very thoughtful comment. I hope it didn't come off as me trying to cancel Mother 3, or anything like that, and I hope you have a good day.
@@CoyoteCocktail You are very welcome! Your points in the video were totally fair. There's nothing wrong with bringing these things up, as long as you give the creators in question the benefit of the doubt, which you did, so it's all good. I do think that it's important to talk about these things and put them into perspective. I'm sure a similar topic will come up once we meet the magypsies. Personally, I think we, as a society, should embrace our differences and be able to play around with them in lighthearted ways. They make us who we are. And depending on who you are, different things will stand out to you about different people. In the past, people have used those differences to devide us, but I think they can also be used to bring us together. If we can acknowledge what makes us different, without rejecting people for those differences, then we can get along much better. ...I know all of that sounds very wishy washy and corny, but I really mean it. If we can make caricatures of each other without getting mean-spirited about it, and if we can laugh with each other and about ourselves, that's how people bond. Like I've already mentioned, I'm from Germany, and whenever I see a stereotypical German character in an american TV show, it cracks me up! Even if the german words are gibberish and the jokes all boil down to german food or world war 2 references. It's still hilarious to me what kind of stuff america thinks is typically german. And hey, sometimes it's accurate. I do love me some good ol' Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. 😋 And yes, german chocolate is miles better than american chocolate! I've been to America, I've tasted that poor excuse for chocolate you guys have! 😂 And don't get me started on your architecture! ...but I digress. :P See? Isn't it much more fun to be able to rib each other in a friendly manner than try not to hurt anyone's feelings? I've seen some german people get really sensitive about german stereotypes and I don't know what their problem is. They need to live a little. I mean Mario Kart Tour gave us friggin' Luigi in Lederhosen driving a Bratwurst, and for some reason some germans got upset instead of celebrating this amazing creation! 🤣 I LIVE for this kind of stuff! I wanna see it more, not less!
@@ShyGuyXXL I absolutely love this kind and civil conversation! Points well made by both of you, I was gonna write my own comment but you summed my thoughts up perfectly. Being kind and considerate while making light of our human differences is so important :)
Only 8 mins in and had to stop to comment as I'm already loving it. Hard Rain is such a bop! I've said it before but really love this series, you're so eloquent and introspective. Essentially you're great! Also hubris and hummus 😂
thank you so much, mumbomod!! I'm just happy you are liking the series, as I know you are one of its longest supporters 😭 when i uploaded this, i did literally think to myself, "I hope MumboMod sees that this has come out!!"
Just found this blog/vlog/pod this week, and I've been starving for a Mother 3 travelogue walkthrough series (was actually considering making one myself) - this is so damn good and hope you keep up with it!!!
i definitely agree that Reggie is a pretty rough inclusion in Mother 3, and whenever I think about recommending the game, I think about him and the mag**sies, the latter including a racial slur in their title. but sticking to Reggie, I always found it perplexijg that there were black NPCs in Earthbound that were not racially insensitive, which was a game made in the 90s (this is without mentioning that the Tendas almost had a very racist design themselves, but still).
At the very least, it's nice that Reggie gets to play a pretty cool role for one of the Tazmilian NPCs. It's often in the background, but just knowing that he holds on to pre-industrial Tazmily and, like the main cast, pays the price for it, ties him into the drama in a more meaningful way. Reggie's experience is practically a whole separate journey... it's a shame we don't learn more about it.
i do not have one at this time, but when I release my next two videos (Frog #10, and a Funky Kong Documentary) I am going to begin building my channel a bit more :) I've been on a semi-hiatus for the past year. Thank you for asking!
