a designer from nintendo said mario is a Japanese man

because hes suprised
duh

He's actually italian

“Super Mario Bros. isn’t set in Japan, but the character’s Japanese. The name Mario sounds Italian, but he isn’t Italian. They were really able to capture that ambiguity,”
-a former Nintendo designer who passed away in 2021

Dude then that designer must've been bamboozled

Mario is Italian, and he lives in New York, as confirmed in the movie and the games

However he does go on adventures in the mushroom kingdom

in the movie, at the beginning he lives in Brooklyn and later moves to mushroom kingdom.
maybe he was originally supposed to be Japanese but later they changed his writing

Either what I said or Mario is multiethnic

Brain hamage

He's Italian

“Super Mario Bros. isn’t set in Japan, but the character’s Japanese. The name Mario sounds Italian, but he isn’t Italian. They were really able to capture that ambiguity,”
-a former Nintendo designer who passed away in 2021