Then and now: Mary

This is a legacy article and was originally published August 2nd, 2019.

So, clearly, one thing a lot of people noticed with the announcement of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is that a lot of the characters have changed their appearance. While some of these changes are hit and miss, there’s a lot of changes that make sense! So I thought I would do a little series about them. So I present…

Then and now: Mary!

Unlike a lot of characters, Mary’s Flowerbud Village and Mineral Town selves are both very similar, likely in part to most of their influence coming from their mother, Anna. Though one particular aspect is how outgoing they are: While Flowerbud’s is incredibly shy and soft spoken, Mineral Town’s Mary is fairly outgoing and friendly. Their respective fathers likely have a lot to do with that, as Basil regularly takes his family on outings to the mountain, which is usually followed-up by going into town for groceries. Meanwhile Flowerbud’s Maria is often left alone and her parents, while generally loving, occasionally have extremely questionable moments, even going as far as laughing off her crushed feelings should the player ever be so cruel.

In spite of these drastic changes in upbringing, it was a little hard to guess at first where Mary’s new design changes originated from. At first I thought the change from a style of Japanese school dress/modest women’s wear to a seifuku, another kind of school dress was odd, a very minor detail is also the Fleur-de-lis on her tie. I’ll admit this might be a stretch, but the original design for the seifuku was adapted from the French Sailor/Peter Thompson dress, and as the Fleur-de-lis is a French symbol, her personal event music in Back to Nature being French inspired and the symbol itself being a flower, this may be one of the most important (and subtle) contributions Basil has to Mary’s new design.

Anna’s influence is definitely strong as ever though, sharing a similar collar on her dress and even going as far as having similarly colored outfits that go right down to Mary’s new glasses. If my hunch is correct though, it seems both of her parents play a role in her new design, even if Basil isn’t as blatant about it. Regardless of what may or may not be her new design’s influences though, I’m glad she has a new look to help differentiate between her Mineral Town and Flowerbud designs.

Also, it’s somewhat come to my attention that a lot of commenters have never played Nintendo 64 game to see where these characters originated from! I guess that’s not too hard to imagine since it’s only available on Wii U and the original N64 release almost 20 years ago (!!) but if you’re interested in learning more about these versions of the characters, feel free to peruse the Wiki we’re building! Maria’s page in particular has nearly every single line of dialog and event from the game organized and ready to read.