Who is Mr. Saturn?

Mr. Saturn, Dosei-san in Japanese, is not a character but a species: the round, single-haired, red-bowed inhabitants of Saturn Valley, first met in EarthBound and returning in Mother 3. They speak a strange, kind dialect rendered in the games in a wobbly hand-scrawled font, are innocent of greed or conflict, and are casually the most advanced engineers in the world, building machinery for whoever asks, including, under duress, the villains.

Their design is the series in miniature: a circle, a bow, a nose, whiskers, and nothing else, a drawing a child could copy, which is precisely what millions of fans did. Itoi's world runs on that contrast, adorable forms carrying the story's most serious machinery.

Under the Hobonichi MOTHER Project, Mr. Saturn became the merchandise line's center of gravity. The October 2020 wave offered a small Mr. Saturn plush with its tiny house at ¥2,750 (about $26 at the time) and a large plush at ¥3,465 (about $33 at the time), alongside a Master Belch plush; Techo covers, charms and towels followed, and a Mr. Saturn stands among the five original clay figures recreated for the MOTHER no Katachi set.

He is also where the series' two visual languages meet: the clay Mr. Saturn of the 1994 guide is the photograph behind Hobonichi's lenticular Techo cover, clay to print to plastic, thirty years of one round man.