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So playing through Mario Wonder - and I know this take isn't as smart as someone saying it might think it is- I was wondering about the presumptuousness of Mario + Friends = Good, and all those eminently stompable yet rather adorable "enemies" = Bad. Like, Koopas don't seem to have a lot of malice when you drive them around a Mario Kart track....
I think in Wonder it's more noticeable than in some previous games because every stomp has a little written rating that escalates with subsequent hits - but even the most normal stomp is labeled "GOOD!" which seems like it could be a value judgement as well as a performance evaluation.
(And of course old timers would note these moral dilemmas go all the way back to the Super Mario Bros on NES, where the instruction manual mentions "The quiet, peace-loving Mushroom People were turned into mere stones, bricks, and even field horse-hair plants"... Mario breaks a lot of bricks in that game.)

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