Luigi Mario

"Oh, no, I don't give my name to scoundrels! Just watch as Luigi punishes you for your badness!" - Luigi to Count Bleck, Super Paper Mario

Luigi (Japanese: ルイージ) is the deuteragonist of the Mario franchise and the titular main protagonist of the Luigi's Mansion spin-off series. He's Mario's younger twin brother and occasional sidekick, being regarded as one of the most beloved ones at that.

Why He's Number One

 * 1) Throughout his life, he has lived in Mario's shadow, developing both cowardly and heroic tendencies. Despite this, he has helped and fought alongside his brother on many occasions.
 * 2) Depending on the game, he may move a little slower and jump higher. He is also slightly taller and more physically trim than his brother.
 * 3) Due to being the little brother with half self-esteem and rational fears, many find Luigi to be very relatable as a character, and are able to sympathize more with him than with Mario.
 * 4) At times, he can have a sibling rivalry with Mario that many people can relate to.
 * 5) *Speaking of Mario, Luigi has a strong brotherly love for the man in red. In the first Paper Mario game, he writes in his diary how much he loves Mario and how much he wants to be like him.
 * 6) *Even without his big bro, he'll go to great lengths to save anyone he cares about no matter the costs:
 * 7) * Throughout the Luigi's Mansion series, for example, he battles his own crippling fear of ghosts to save his brother (as well as Peach and several of her Toad attendants in the third installment, Luigi's Mansion 3).
 * 8) * Likewise, in "The Subspace Emissary," the story mode for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, he joins Ness and King Dedede to save everyone from Tabuu, a mysterious being who puts the universe at stake.
 * 9) His bashful, unsure of himself demeanor is pretty cute, and his overreaction of almost anything is hilarious.
 * 10) Luigi is most often shown as being kind, cowardly, optimistic, clumsy, silly, caring, loyal, gentle, loveable and he's not afraid to show his emotions. This makes him such a great and relatable character.
 * 11) He would do anything to fight for others or to save Mario and Peach.
 * 12) He has an adorable love chemistry with Princess Daisy, established since the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie, where she made her second appearance.
 * 13) He is a great pet owner to his ghost dog, Polterpup, whom he adopted in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
 * 14) He's had great voice actors over the years, ranging from Danny Wells, Tony Rosato and of course, Charles Martinet. Even after the hilarious Mario Movie cast was revealed, Charlie Day as Luigi has been one of if not, the most well received choice.
 * 15) Like Mario, Luigi has the strength to lift castles. He also has fire and thunder manipulation.
 * 16) He remains his lovable self in his appearances in TV, most notably, the DiC Entertainment's Super Mario cartoon trilogy, where he actually talks, is the first time he has a personality before the examples mentioned above, and is a funny coward. But like his video game counterpart, he’s not afraid to be brave in order to help the ones he cares about, especially his brother, Mario, as well as Princess Toadstool (Peach), Toad, and Yoshi.
 * 17) Speaking of Yoshi, Luigi is very close to Yoshi and cares very much about him. This is especially shown in the Super Mario World TV show, where it showed how the 2 first meet and how Yoshi refers to him as "Mama Luigi".

Bad Qualities

 * 1) In the games, Luigi isn’t recognized by a lot of people. For example, in the Mario & Luigi RPG games, he is referred to as either "Green 'Stache" or "Green Mario".
 * 2) While still likable for the most part in the DiC Entertainment's Super Mario cartoon trilogy, he can be annoying sometimes in the first Super Mario show, as he and Mario act too much like Italian stereotypes often, especially the Italian food puns.
 * 3) Even though it was cool to see him as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. 64, he was not a good character to play as, mainly due to the fact he was very underpowered and his entire move set plagiarised Mario's moveset, even his voice lines are just Mario's voice lines but higher pitch.
 * 4) *Thankfully, he become more of a unique fighter in the later games and his voicelines were changed in Brawl.

Trivia

 * He has spawned several memes focusing on him, such as "Luigi's Death Stare", where it refers to the angry, determined staring expression that he occasionally shows in Mario Kart 8 when passing by opponents, and "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing", a series of videos where he is completely immobile but somehow wins (usually minigames from the Mario Party series or fights in Super Smash Bros.) as the other CPU-controlled opponents defeat themselves due to their very low AI.