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.