Give full coverage to the Kinoppe Forever manga?

[Koopa con Carne]

(the poll is informal and isn't a substitute for a wiki proposal.)

-the character Kinoppe was specifically created for a Mario manga. The Kinoppe Forever manga was her next appearance in a comic series, decades later. Given the large span of time between the two publications, and the fact that she appears in a starring role in the latter publication, I'd say that it can be reasonably considered a spin-off of the Mario franchise. (in contrast to what happened with Banjo and Conker, who may have debuted in Diddy Kong Racing, but appeared in that game largely to promote their upcoming starring entries, which were in active development at the time.)

-in addition, she derives from a species in the Mario franchise (Toad).

-both the Mario manga she originated from and her spin-off are copyrighted by Kazuki Motoyama. (see page below as proof for the former; imgur link). He has authority over both works (not the Mario IP itself, however--there's a difference!), including the character Kinoppe, so IMO the official capacity of the Mario manga is passed on to the spin-off, contradicting what the wiki currently claims ("Due to their self-published nature, [the Kinoppe doujin books] are not considered official Super Mario material.") Her spin-off can't be considered adjacent to fan-art, like the comic sequel to the '93 Mario film.

-the spin-off being extremely far-removed from the Mario franchise, with Kinoppe being their only tie, isn't, I think, a great argument against this giving it coverage. Consider that Wario is similarly the only piece connecting the Mario franchise with the game Wario: Master of Disguise, which is probably the furthest a work fully covered by Mario Wiki has gone from the Mario franchise in terms of scenario and characters.

 

[Xiahou Dun]

I suppose this was made with Diddy Kong Racing in mind, but I feel there's a stronger case to be made if this spinoff manga had still Mario's name tied to it, like say "Mario's Vacation Time" and Kinoppe was a major character, similar to Diddy Kong Racing having "Diddy" be spelled out.

That being said, Zelda Wiki still has Tingle's games on there, but I'm not sure how removed from the Link series these games are. Maybe we should be seeing it more from that angle.

 

[Camwoodstock]

Sorry to revitalize a thread dormant for 8 months or so (wait, seriously? 8 months? time flies.), but we've actually been curious about this for awhile and only just learned there's a thread for this. Over on Kinoppe's talk page, a good while ago, someone brought up the idea of potentially broadening the policy for what counts as "official material only", by allowing for pages to be created for pieces of media made by former Nintendo employees and featuring Mario or related characters, but were not created with Nintendo's direct involvement. We were curious if anyone knew any instances of something like this outside of Kinoppe-chan Forever, as that could potentially strengthen the argument to even give Kinoppe-chan Forever an article if it turns out to not be alone in this situation.

So! Out of curiosity and trying to be thorough; uh, does anyone have any other known instances of something like this happening? A piece of media featuring Mario characters (or otherwise characters we give full coverage to for non-crossover reasons), created by someone who was employed by Nintendo or a company involved with Nintendo, but the piece of media in question was not created by or for Nintendo, it was just its own thing.

 

[Koopa con Carne]

Sorry to revitalize a thread dormant for 8 months or so (wait, seriously? 8 months? time flies.), but we've actually been curious about this for awhile and only just learned there's a thread for this. Over on Kinoppe's talk page, a good while ago, someone brought up the idea of potentially broadening the policy for what counts as "official material only", by allowing for pages to be created for pieces of media made by former Nintendo employees and featuring Mario or related characters, but were not created with Nintendo's direct involvement. We were curious if anyone knew any instances of something like this outside of Kinoppe-chan Forever, as that could potentially strengthen the argument to even give Kinoppe-chan Forever an article if it turns out to not be alone in this situation.

So! Out of curiosity and trying to be thorough; uh, does anyone have any other known instances of something like this happening? A piece of media featuring Mario characters (or otherwise characters we give full coverage to for non-crossover reasons), created by someone who was employed by Nintendo or a company involved with Nintendo, but the piece of media in question was not created by or for Nintendo, it was just its own thing.

There are plenty such examples, like the comic sequel to the '93 Super Mario Bros film, Rare Treats: DONKEY KONG 64 Revisited, and the misc. personal artwork posted on social media by people who took part in official media. The people who made these things not only have no claim of ownership over the subjects in these works, they have no legal stake in the media they base their works on, and as such they are considered by the wiki to be essentially closer to fan art.

What makes Kinoppe more unique is that, apparently, the author of the Mario manga she debuted in owns the copyright over said manga as per the scans I produced above and in Kinoppe's wiki talk (excerpt). If that's not just an awful misreading of the fine print or a complete misunderstanding of Japanese copyright law (I'd love an expert take on this), that means the Kinoppe doujin should technically count as an official spin-off, especially after this proposal, which ended in favor of keeping the page on Rare Racers. That is a line products licensed by Microsoft but which had no involvement from Nintendo and is the only remotely similar case on the wiki.

Imagine if WildBrain Entertainment, who owns the library of DIC Mario cartoons, licensed someone to make a cartoon series centering on Oogtar, a DIC creation. Would such a work get coverage on the wiki?

 

[Glowsquid]

It's more like if one guy involved in the production of the SMW cartoon clung on Oogtar, did a comic / web animation starring Oogtar and literally nothing else recognizable from the property where he's isekai'd, and published it on Deviantart, Youtube or [insert other platform that has no stringent barrier to entry].

[H1]MarioWiki:Coverage[/H1] states " Since there is no canon, we cover any "Mario-related" media product given some sort of official authorization by Nintendo at some point in time, be it through the Official Nintendo Seal or a contract with another company, etc. ". Kinoppe-chan Forever is a doujin, and doujins are by definition unauthorized.

 

[Koopa con Carne]

I understood that, but you've yet to address to the fact that the Mario manga has "(C) Kazuki Motoyama" in fine print, meaning he wasn't just Some Guy employed by Nintendo to draw Mario for them--he has some legal authority over the manga. The extent of that, I'm unsure of, as the fine print doesn't specify which parts of the manga he owns--the entirety of it, or just the original parts. I noticed a similar practice in the Elden Ring: Road to the Erdtree manga, where at the end of it, the artist (a distinct party from From Software) is (C)'d without any elaboration. Contrast that to an American Marvel comic where the only entity specified in fine print to be in such a position is Marvel.

The Rare Racers proposal set a precedent that, no, a product does not have to be signed off by Nintendo to be considered official, but by at least one of the entities with legal authority over the IP that that product spun off of. For these purposes, Motoyama decidedly is less like that Oogtar person in your example, and more like Microsoft.

Now, if someone could produce evidence that Motoyama somehow lost his rights over the Mario manga before he created that doujin in 2019, I'll change my tune.

EDIT: This is an explanation of how copyright law works for manga. It does differentiate between "joint works" and corporate licensers (they provide an example involving CAPCOM), but I'm still not convinced that Motoyama falls in either of these categories.

 

[Camwoodstock]

Come to think of it, that Fangamer merchandise does actually provide a pretty decent argument in favor of a Kinoppe Forever page; while Nintendo themselves wasn't involved, the creators behind Diddy Kong Racing (Rare) definitely were. While we don't know enough about manga-related copyright to know if Kinoppe is a character that even has copyright-based ownership (obviously), if Fangamer were to somehow go off their rocker and make a Kinoppe plush, we don't see why we wouldn't cover that, and not just because it'd be really, really strange. In turn, well, it's definitely worth some consideration for Kinoppe's other, non-Nintendo appearances, authorized at least by the character's creator, that y'know, actually do exist and aren't strictly hypothetical.

We've already got a proposal co-authored with Nelsonic cooking, so we definitely aren't drafting a proposal for this anytime soon, but we wonder if it'd be something worth putting to proposal.

It's more like if one guy involved in the production of the SMW cartoon clung on Oogtar, did a comic / web animation starring Oogtar and literally nothing else recognizable from the property where he's isekai'd, and published it on Deviantart, Youtube or [insert other platform that has no stringent barrier to entry].

wait is this about the fucking plok comic--