User blog comment:Emeraldblade95/PG Proposal: Mario/@comment-39032584-20190925023354

Yes. As someone who's been a Super Mario Bros. fan and played most of the games in the main series along with many of the spinoffs, I definitely think he qualifies. There are many cases where he's done far more than just save the princess; he has a practically boundless tendency to help virtually anyone in need that he comes across along the way, and let's not forget he's saved the whole universe, like in the Super Mario Galaxy games, and the whole multiverse in Super Paper Mario, if you count his Paper Mario counterpart as the same character. And of course, no matter how many times these sorts of things happen, he's always willing to devote himself to the cause, despite how time-consuming, and more importantly, how dangerous it usually is.

As for potential negative qualities, I honestly can't think of any. He may take out plenty of enemies along the way, but only ever in a manner that's necessary to move forward (unless the player makes him unnecessarily mean, of course, but I don't think that counts). I've also seen him described as arrogant here on a ocuple of occasions, but frankly, I've never seen that. Maybe there were certain multi-choice answers that you can choose in the Paper Mario games to make him seem that way, but again, that's up to the player, so I don't see why that should count. And on the fewer occasions where the games try to give him some sort of personality, like in the cutscenes of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, he, along with Peach, tend to be portrayed as very warm and all-loving, jsut like you'd expect them to be. In short, this isn't just a vote based on favoritism; based on all my experiences, I'm confident about him qualifying.