Talk:Naval Piranha

I love this boss.It is my absolute favorite!By the way, I think this is a pun, becuase her weakpoint is her navel!
— The preceding unsigned comment was added by The sylvan one (talk).

Please use the forum for discussion like that, the talk pages are to be used to find ways to improve articles. -- Sir Grodus

Boy or Girl?

I don't think "She" has a gender because ITS A PLANT!. Also, Does it ever DIRECTLY state it's a girl? Someone, tell me if I'm right! User:maxlover2

"In Tetris Attack, Naval Piranha is the tenth level and the boss of easy vs. mode. She frequently uses hearts in her dialogue, and calls Yoshi "Babeh" so it is presumed she is female." ~Kenja

In the Yoshi's Island Strategy Guide, which I happen to have, Naval Piranha is refered to as 'She' several times. --General Kelty 21:18, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

MPA says that SHE lives and thrives in the desert. Max, we know it's a plant. Petey is a plant. Toadsworth is a friggin mushroom. But there gender has never been questioned. - Ultimatetoad

Please note that fungi and plants can have gender, just like animals. -- Son of Suns

http://wikiwiki.jp/dette-island/?%A5%D3%A5%C3%A5%B0%A5%D1%A5%C3%A5%AF%A5%F3 she refers herself as "atai" , which usually used by a girl whose has bad manners.

Clarification

Does the skip work in the GBA version?
— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 50.177.204.231 (talk).

Seeing as Nintendo intended this to occur, it probably does Ray Trace^(T|C)

Naval Piranha Gender

Who referred it as a she? It’s best to use it because we don’t know what the gender is MarioFan403 (talk) 13:26, 17 April 2018 (EDT)

Apparently the Nintendo Power guide. There was a section regarding it, but I removed it as it seemed pointless to go into detail about real-life plant reproduction systems. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:39, 17 April 2018 (EDT)

Which one? The SNES guide uses "he", while the GBA guide uses "it". Hello, I'm Time Turner. 13:41, 17 April 2018 (EDT)

Maybe not, but check two sections above and check all of those sources? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:43, 17 April 2018 (EDT)

Only finding instance of gender in the SNES guide. Borp on Discord said the gender isn't specified in Tetris Attack, and same from M4E about Mario Party Advance. If the Yoshi's Woolly World game or a different guide calls Naval Piranha a female, we could add that. 21:17, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

There's a part in the Playing With Super Power: Nintendo Super NES Classics guide referring to Naval Piranha as female. LinkTheLefty (talk) 13:30, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Spike the Piranha

Is Spike the Piranha the same as Naval Piranha, as this article currently considers? I would say not, and here's why:

• Their origins are different. While Naval is just a regular Piranha Plant enchanted by Kamek, Spike is made from acorns and a party ball.
• The word "naval" doesn't even apply to Spike. He's fought in a garden, not in a watery area, and Yoshi damages him by hitting his head with spike balls, not hitting his belly button with eggs.
• While Spike does have growths similar to Naval Buds, they behave differently. Spike's buds spit out spiked balls and Shy Guys and also spread out in waves, while Naval Buds wrap around the stage.

I think Spike was meant to be a reference to Naval Piranha, not the same character. Scrooge200 (talk) 23:04, March 28, 2019 (EDT)

I agree with every argument you made concerning why these characters are separate; Spike's derived conceptually, but not the same thing since he has a different weak spot. ^(T|C) 23:42, March 28, 2019 (EDT)

That was added by an ip before the name of the new entity was known. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:56, March 28, 2019 (EDT)

At the release of the full game, we'll see if the Japanese name match. -- FanOfYoshi 02:35, March 29, 2019 (EDT)

That happened hours ago. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 04:36, March 29, 2019 (EDT)

Calling similar Piranha Plant bosses "Naval Piranhas"

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They may resemble Naval Piranha, but straight-up saying they are Naval Piranhas is just overdoing it, just because Naval Piranha was the first one with this design. To me, that looks like speculation. If we are going to mention these here, then at the very least we should say "similar to Naval Piranha". Nightwicked Bowser 11:55, May 29, 2021 (EDT)

"Big Pakkun." It's no more "speculation" than saying it in turn is derived from Big Piranha Plant; it's not "speculation" at all, it's inference. The design similarities were clearly intentional on the part of the developers, and that, combined with the generic name in the language of origin and Smash explicitly listing it as a species makes this seem pretty clear-cut to me. Another matter needing mentioned is how the Smilax are generically called "bud" in Japan, making them similar to Lava Bud (the only other "bud" with an official designation). To put it simply, if we wrote Megasmilax and Big Bungee as a species, there'd be no question that we'd have considered both of them derived from Naval Piranha for a long time, like how we consider Boolossus a Big Boo. And for that matter, how we considered this an individual Big Piranha Plant before I rewrote it as a character/species. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:43, May 29, 2021 (EDT)

Boolossus is obviously a Big Boo though. Nightwicked Bowser 07:38, May 30, 2021 (EDT)

No more "obviously" than Megasmilax is a Big Pakkun. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 15:05, May 30, 2021 (EDT)

The problem with that I realised recently, is that Naval Piranha is not known as "Big Pakkun" outside of Japan, it's most likely given its name because of it dwelling in water, which as far I've seen the rest don't. I know the JP name is what you base these on, but really the English name actually doesn't make much sense the way its being worded. Nightwicked Bowser 16:59, May 30, 2021 (EDT)

And in Tetris Attack (the Western version of Panel de Pon), Mario Party Advance, and Yoshi's Woolly World, it's also outside of water, so the name is an artifact anyways. (In fact, MPA's ending has it happily living in the desert.) Also several of the other non-English names don't have an aquatic basis, like in French it being "Ultra Piranha" or it being named after Audrey II in German. Now, this is something I wouldn't put on the article without confirmation from the developers, but most likely the reason it was in water to begin with was so they wouldn't have to visibly connect all the vines, not intended as an innate part of it. (Not that this means anything but I do have a bachelor's degree in game development so I'm familiar with creative ways to work around limitations) Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 17:06, May 30, 2021 (EDT)

So here's my two cents: I agree to the point that several big boss plants with the similar tangled vines and bud design can probably be listed as variants with relatively little issue. Of these, it's safest to consider Big Bungee Piranha as clearly derived from Naval Piranha, since it's not only from the game's sequel but it has several of the same attacks such as use of Nipper Spores. Spike the Piranha seemingly takes more from Wild Ptooie Piranha as it utilizes other projectiles, but I think that can additionally be called a derivative by proxy, considering it's from a subsequent Yoshi platformer also including what's effectively another twist on Burt the Bashful. I'm iffier on RPG bosses due to the genre difference, but if I had to say what's likelier next, Lava Piranha simply has more similarities with Yoshi's Island Naval Piranha over Megasmilax right down to the bud design and "spore" usage. I wouldn't be too sure about Megasmilax since it's just not as transformative as the aforementioned in my estimation - the Smilax buds look virtually identical to typical Piranha Plant heads, the flower itself is most closely derived from Bean Valley's (potted/grown) plants, and this goes for the stem as depicted in the overworld. I'd remove Piranha Creeper and Prickly Piranha Plant enemies from the infobox entirely - the Naval Piranha similarities are the most general here, they lack common buds, and the thorny element there is mainly a visual indicator of what can't be stomped on in games where regular Piranha Plants are stompable more than particularly probable intention. LinkTheLefty (talk) 17:12, March 26, 2022 (EDT)

To bring in my two cents (since this talk seemingly hasn't been resolved), Naval Piranha is as much a "species" as Boss Teresa. Generic Japanese name be darned, it's still a singular character, of which only one Naval Piranha appears in a game (with the notable example of Yoshi's Wooly World, but even then the Mario franchise is no stranger to seemingly destroyed bosses inexplicably reappearing later on). By the same logic used to call Naval Piranha a species, shouldn't we be considering Burt the Bashful a species due to the existence of the Big Burt Bros., or Hookbill the Koopa a species because of Knot-Wing? And I don't think any of us want to see an article start with "Burt the Bashfuls are..." DrippingYellow (talk) 14:24, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

Yes, actually. Hookbill also has Kent C. to deal with while Tap-Tap the red nose has a "special" and a "super" version, while Roger the Potted Ghost gets combined with Boo Blah into a small recurring enemy that acts as a variant of both in DS. This is precisely why I had a "character/species" infobox that has since been deleted while I was away (because of something about voice actors? I dunno). The operative word here is "Big;" for that Boo, it's "Boss." That NoA decided to spice up the names in localization changes nothing in how they are treated as variable entities. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:29, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

I suggested once adding variant-type parameters to the character infobox, for situations like these, but otherwise I'm not sure they warrant treating these as species. Blinker (talk) 14:36, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

@Doc That's all well and good, but don't seem to have acknowledged the fact that the localized names are very clearly intended as character names by the localizers. To go past that and say that all Koopa Troopas that are transformed by Kamek are Hookbill the Koopas is to suggest that the localizers intended to have the name belong to a type of enemy, an intention that has never been communicated as such to my knowledge. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but outside of Naval Piranha, what other instances are there of this wiki considering characters/species to be a variant of a single-character "variant"? DrippingYellow (talk) 21:27, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

Here's the rub: it doesn't really matter how the localizers interpreted it for one specific game. Localization is a fickle process, open to interpretation of whatever what random team of people decides to write. Hence why so many of the enemies in SMW2 have names contradicting previously established ones. The original language, in this case Japanese, simply wrote them as being "enlarged form of [x]" rather than giving an ultra-snappy name to them. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:03, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

I wager it does matter when you put a name intended for a single character into a field labelled "species". And if something is an "enlarged version of [x]", doesn't that just make it a variant of [x], and not necessarily a variant of "yet another enlarged version of [x] that happened to come first"? I should also note that most of the weird SMW2 names are from the Nintendo Player's Guide, which to my knowledge was produced by Nintendo Power, not the localizers of the game itself. DrippingYellow (talk) 23:51, May 7, 2024 (EDT)

"Hootie the Blue Fish," "Jean de Fillet," "Seedy Sally," and "Piscatory Pete," among others, also come off as names that would make more sense for a singular character rather than a species - heck, "Baron von Zeppelin" and "Dr. Freezegood" are just non-sentient objects. Also, they acted pretty hand-in-hand back in the day; for example, the enclosed manual for DKC2 pretty blatantly plugs the Player's Guide for that game. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:03, May 8, 2024 (EDT)

My problem isn't that the names "sound" like character names, the problem is that these boss names were chosen in the context of a single entity (even the Player's Guide gives "Hooties" a plural form, and other enemies with less proper-sounding names are also referred to in the singular in their descriptions, such as Frog Pirate and Dangling Ghost). To my knowledge, they have never called the Big Burt Brothers "Burt the Bashfuls" or called Knot-Wing a "winged Hookbill the Koopa". I would rather not invent a usage case for a name, personally.
Also, the manuals and the player's guide going "hand-in-hand"? All the manuals I've seen are essentially translations of the Japanese manual. I find it very hard to believe that the people writing the matter-of-fact english manual are from the same internal group as whoever referred to Roger the Potted Ghost as a "raging blowhard" and called the already-named "Pound the ground" move "The Fall Guy".
Take a look at Mario Mania for instance, and you will notice a not insignificant amount of, even at the time, names that directly contradict names already set in stone, even those in the credits of the game itself ("Mini-Ninja", anyone? How about Volcano Plant? "Mini-Dino" contradicts both the credits and the manual, where it is called "Mini-Rhino".) Even Nintendo Power itself is prone to baffling mistakes (like in issue 28, calling the Jumping Piranha Plant "Pumpkin Plant", calling Urchins "Porcu-Puffers"), suggesting that the marketing/magazine team and localization team are not in nearly as close communication as you seem to think. DrippingYellow (talk) 12:54, May 8, 2024 (EDT)

While it indeed does vary, inconsistencies like that also exist within each of these publications as well, such as how certain enemies were given multiple listings in the SMW2 guide. All this really proves is how fickle the process truly is, such as when Tap-Tap the Golden and the disguising Slimes were treated as being another Tap-Tap the Red Nose and Salvo the Slime. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:11, May 8, 2024 (EDT)

Okay, I was never arguing that the guides didn't contain errors and just contradicted each other. My point was that since these publications have mistakes not uncommonly, that puts their trustworthiness for being the localizers' mouthpiece into question.
Anyway, that was kind of off-topic, this was about boss names. I don't really buy "localization can be weird sometimes" as a reason for appropriating a name. Basically every English source, including in-game dialogue, uses the boss names as proper names, not merely descriptors (see the intro dialogue for Marching Milde, Bessie Bass, Big Beanie, Count Fang, Fred de Fillet). Just because names for singular subjects are what the localizers used to replace "Big [x]", that doesn't mean they are a complete substitution that you can just fill in the blank with said name to represent a species. If that makes sense.

Also, correction: the slimes are talked about as though they are the Salvo the Slime, and even then that's only the case for two out of three of them; the first one in Tap-Tap's fort is actually referred to in the Player's Guide as just "a sneaky slime" (surprised nobody caught that and put it as another reference for the name by now). The Tap-Tap the Red-Nose/Golden confusion doesn't seem to have shown up until the SMA3 guide, with vague phrasing that doesn't in itself suggest that Golden is a resurrected Red-Nose, just stating that "Tap-Tap the Golden is back". Both of these are less products of a "fickle process" and moreso straight-up mistakes on the authors' parts. DrippingYellow (talk) 00:44, May 9, 2024 (EDT)