Any Metroid fan will tell you that Other M's script isn't very strong. But over the years, that would turn out to not be the full story. While everyone noticed how awkward the English was in the game, it was just an odd, overly literal translation of the original Japanese thanks to a non-English speaker being too hands-on in the localization process. It took a decade before anyone fluent in both languages actually sat down to make a detailed comparison of both scripts; after all, even if Yoshio Sakamoto wasn't fluent in English, there was no way anyone involved with the localization would fail to accurately translate the work properly. Right?
The mini-essay on this page uses the comparison work done by YouTube user Lexicon Lookout in his 50-minute video "The Other M that never was"
, released in 2020, as a base to re-examine what the game was attempting to accomplish, under the newfound understanding that while the English and Japanese versions of Other M share the Broad Strokes of the plot, many pertinent details were changed or Lost in Translation.
Understanding Samus's Character in Other M
Metroid: Other M does not have a particularly well-written story. It sucked in many aspects, suffering from cliché after cliché, dropping plot threads all over, and utterly failing to clearly communicate its ideas to the audience. Sakamoto wanted to move away from subtle storytelling to instead try a more dramatic and cinematic experience, and he frankly screwed up.However, where the game truly messed up was presentation - especially in the game's poor English translation. The story constantly struggles to inform the player of its themes and simple story beats, leading to a confusing and ultimately unfulfilling experience. And it's partially Sakamoto's fault as well: for example, apart from the fact that he's not good in English, he wanted Samus's voice acting in a very particular way, and in the process, he made the story actually less interesting and less clear. Some of the themes were also downgraded or even removed in translations, some of the translations with hyperbole just don't work and the choice of words either remove the meaning behind some details in the original version and/or changes it altogher, making everything more confusing than it should be. While not being the only reason, another one being the writing of the plot, the mediocre translation was a big factor for criticism the game received, and critics, while generally ranking it positively, thought that it was the weakest game of the series. Looking at the original Japanese script of the game can help us understand what Sakamoto was truly going for with this story, and what it could have been.
Samus's Weird Obsession with Babies
If there's one thing people know about Samus in this game, it's that she never shuts up about the baby. She is constantly talking about children, naivety, and immaturity. Why is this?
In flashbacks to her time with the Federation Police, we see that Samus hated being treated like a child - especially being treated this way because she's a woman. She hated when Adam called her "Lady" because it made her feel delicate, weak - she didn't hate Adam, just the phrase. She conflates the delicate nature of a child or a lady with weakness. She despises this feeling of weakness.
By the time of Other M, she has convinced herself that she has moved on from those days and is no longer a weak child. She thinks she's grown up, become a hardened and unstoppable warrior - but she hasn't. The death of the Baby Metroid reminds her of just how vulnerable she still is, and over the course of the flashbacks, she has to deal with this issue all over again and repeatedly calls herself, especially her past self, as a child, both directly and indirectly, as well as allusions like "Baby's Cry" and her thoughts about the distress signal. This is why, when she meets Adam on the Bottle Ship, who revives those feelings by chewing her out for trespassing, that she becomes re-obsessed with him.
Samus's Weird Relationship with Adam
Well, Samus isn't really obsessed with Adam per se, but rather with her old issue of feeling weak. He reminds her of it. She wants to prove to herself that she has gotten over this issue, and that's why she worries so much about getting Adam's approval - she's stubbornly trying to prove her strength by putting herself back under Adam's command again, thus deactivating her equipment until Adam explicitly authorizes her weapons. Could she have ignored Adam's authority and done it all on her own? Yes, but instead she was touched by an old relationship and decided to create a self-imposed challenge around it. She is not trying to surpass Adam, but herself.
For example: the Hell run in Sector 3, which is considered a controversial part of it. Samus chooses to enter the Pyrosphere without the Varia feature activated. She clearly could have activated it if she wanted to since it's not a danger to any humans. Adam told her to explore the areas she can with her current equipment, so she should have gone a different route.Japanese But she wants to prove that she can make it through without it, just because Adam hasn't explicitly told her yet that the Varia Suit is authorized and goes through a bunch of superheated rooms that slowly chip away her energy, thus going against Adam's instructions to avoid those rooms. When Samus finally gets trapped in a volcano by the Goyagma, Adam insists that she activate the Varia feature before she gets herself killed, and only then does she use it. This is a lot more clear in the Japanese version, where Adam basically shouts at her to use the Varia Suit with an alarmed tone rather than calmly authorizing it.Japanese
The English version does a terrible job of handling Samus and Adam's relationship. They make her seem like a schoolgirl with a crush on him, daintily trying to respect his authority while he constantly rebukes her. It makes the player resent Adam for being controlling, when he was supposed to be more like a respectable parent, as Samus mentions that he was a father figure to her. It would be hilarious if it didn't also feel like such a betrayal of Samus's character.
Samus's Weird Problem with Ridley
This all comes to a head during the infamous confrontation with Ridley.
Here, Samus is forced to face it: she is not over her feelings of weakness, and truly still does feel like a child. She could not kill Ridley - he's back already (mere weeks after Super). She panics, feeling frustration, huge shock, inadequacy, and trauma all coming back at once - it was not meant to be a childhood trauma-induced PTSD attack, but more like a Heroic BSoD or Despair Event Horizon connected to her character arc. It is not because Ridley killed her parents (idk why people still try to make that such an important plot element, Samus literally never talks about them aside from a brief moments in the scene where she mentioned her past back in the army with Adam in command, but they have never been her motivation). This scene is about how Ridley was supposed to be dead for good this time, but has defied Samus by returning better than ever, not to mention the fact that this savage creature she encountered in Sector 1 was actually the larval state of whatever species Ridley is, and this thing was a Ridley clone. Samus is not all-powerful.
Like, just think about it. Sakamoto has claimed multiple times that Other M was made to appeal to wider audiences - that's why they made Samus cuter and shorter, gave her a supporting cast of characters, made the game playable with a single Wiimote, etc. So why would they add a reference to her childhood trauma, something only briefly mentioned in Fusion and only discussed in a Japan-only manga, into the game? It's because it wasn't a reference to her past. Or at least, it wasn't meant to be, but art is subjective and the fans took it their own way. Understandably so, to be fair - Samus reverts to the appearance of a child, which definitely didn't help the confusion. With Samus referring herself as a child both directly and indirectly and a few visual metaphors and subtle allusions are used here and there, this too was supposed to be a visual metaphor, but it wasn't explained clearly, so everyone misunderstood the real meaning behind it.
Anyways, after this Ridley-induced realization, which causes the presumed death of her old friend Anthony, she tries to run away from the issue, fleeing the Pyrosphere. Over the course of the rest of the game, she tries to cope with her own flaws, disobeying Adam by activating her own weapons again after losing contact with him, believing MB when she tells her that Adam is responsible for the Bottle Ship's operations, and deciding to go destroy the Metroids in Sector Zero to relive those moments of her past where she actually accomplished greatness.
Samus's Final Encounter with Adam
In Sector Zero, Adam stops Samus from throwing her life away by deactivating her Power Suit, knowing that the Metroids in Sector Zero don't have the normal Metroids' weakness to low temperatures and that she will just get herself killed in an attempt to destroy them. She is then unable to hide her obsession with proving her strength, pleading that Adam trust her. However, Adam insists that she is needed elsewhere to complete tasks such as finishing off Ridley and finding Madeline Bergman. By accepting Adam's tasks and earning his vocal trust, she finally regains her composure and heads out to finish the job while Adam sacrifices himself in Sector Zero. During this last part of the game she continues to use her own weapons and activates the last of her last function, the Gravity Suit, but not to defy Adam - rather, he has posthumously authorized every weapon in her arsenal so she can complete the mission.
In the final cutscenes of Other M, we see that Samus is finally able to connect with people such as Anthony again. She is finally able to respond to Adam's influence with a smile rather than regret or defiance. She embraces her inner child and lives with it, and this also makes her a foil to Melissa, who rebelled against the Galactic Federation and was killed for it.
Conclusion
So as you see, a lot of Samus's character was lost in the localization and shoddy storytelling.
And again, please go watch Lexicon Lookout's video on this subject, it's a banger.
