As this year’s Games closed in Rio de Janeiro, excitement was already building in Japan, which won 41 medals in Rio – its best Olympic performance.
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This actually aired during the NBC closing ceremony for the 2016 Olympic Games.
But if this clip showcasing a mash-up of video games and animated characters from Japan together with the country’s top athletes and leader is a harbinger of things to come, Tokyo 2020 might just be the most cutesy, absurd and charming Olympics the world has ever seen.
But it was the appearance of Japanese PM Shinzo Abe dressed as computer game character Super Mario that appears to have people talking. However, he was unable to get out of traffic and decided that the only way he would be able to get to the closing ceremony on time would be to transform into Mario.
Ms Tamayo Marukawa, the Japanese minister in charge of the 2020 Tokyo Games, said she was not informed of Mr Abe’s plan to portray Super Mario. Mario was accompanied by another pop-cultural icon in Japan, Doraemon.
Below, watch (most of) the Tokyo 2020 “warming up” video, including Prime Minister Abe’s warp pipe entrance.
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She then suggested Mr Abe should start calling himself “Shinzo Mario Abe” to raise his global profile. Nintendo is not now a sponsor for the 2020 Olympic Games, but it will be interesting to see if that changes after the events of this past weekend.
