Hi, this is going to be a dumb one, but it's a question I find interesting.  So, I've been playing Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade for my game clearing, Gaming Diary will be out whenever I finish it.  And I've been thinking a lot about the character of Lyn.  Lyn is a lord I'm very fond of, I don't think she's the most intricate character ever put to Fire Emblem, but she's a very unique lord nonetheless.  She's way more rugged and practical in comparison to the usually refined, well trained lords who adopt classical fencing techniques.  It's very fitting of her upbringing as a nomadic tribeswoman who would learn fighting for hunting and petty squabbles.

But it also made me think about Lyn in Smash Bros.  Lyn has always been a fairly popular request, being the first Fire Emblem lord the American audience was familiar with and with her style being very atypical for the often very samey potential Fire Emblem roster.  But this thought led me to another thought.  See, Lyn is a nomad and in the context of FE7, this is not so much a way of life as it is a distinctive racial or ethnic group.  Lyn is treated poorly, especially by other royals, due to her heritage, her father being a chieftan of a nomadic tribe rather than a highborn royal.  Even her own friends are kind of racist to her, noting how her "nomadic features" give her a "distinctive, unusual beauty" that they find striking.  Given the rough time period and state of European culture most Fire Emblem games are built off of, we can kind of infer that Lyn is half-Romani.  Or at least an equivalent race/ethnicity to the Romani.

Which brings me to my actual curiosity here: if Lyn were added to Smash Bros, would she be the first woman of color in the roster.  No.  The answer is no.  Of course not.  However, the actual answer is a bit more complicated than you'd expect, and has a number of possible answers.  It's a surprisingly complicated question, one whose answer is really up for interpretation.  And so I ask, dear reader...

Who was the first playable woman of color in Super Smash Bros?

Some Ground Rules

I want to first start by establishing some basic ground rules so that my intentions and understandings of the question I'm detailing are pretty clear.  They are, as follows:

1. This is not meant to be a criticism of Super Smash Bros.  I am not here to state that Super Smash Bros. has some sort of moral failing because there is a small potential roster of women of color or that this question is ambiguous in the first place.  This is genuine curiosity, and if there is any criticism present, it is moreso towards the gaming industry for both not featuring women enough and, moreover, not featuring women of color enough.  My only goal here is to go over the potential candidates and explain why they're each interesting as an answer to this question.
2. A potential candidate, in my mind, is not just a character who looks like they are a person of color.  This is an important thing to note as Smash, famously, has a number of characters who adopt an anime aesthetic in it and thus all could be considered Japanese.  However, most of the time these characters, despite their appearances, are meant to be analogous to European peoples.  Three Houses takes place in an analog of the Holy Roman Empire and thus all the characters can be considered to be German, Palutena is a Greek goddess, Samus Aran is the daughter of people named "Rodney" and "Virginia".  I'm only going to be focusing on characters who are either definitively people of color, or their place and/or people of origin are analogous to places and cultures that people of color come from.
3. Every candidate will be either human or humanoid.  The reasoning for this should be obvious but just to clear it up, this is a rule, if it's not a rule, the answer is Jigglypuff, who is a pink puffball from literal Japan.
4. If the candidate in question is related to an existing character rather than being a unique character, I will not that their technical origin date is when the character as a whole debuted but I will take into consideration whether the character debuted AFTER another character on this list as consideration on whether or not they were actually first.

With that out of the way, let's meet our candidates in order from least ambiguous to most.

Min Min

Btw, Min Min was my ARMs main, so I'm glad she got into Smash.

This is the easiest answer, this is the safest answer, this is the least ambiguous answer, but that does not mean it's correct.  Min Min comes to us from Smash Ultimate's 6th DLC, a DLC that fulfills an empty slot on the roster that Sakurai had always intended.  Sakurai had wanted to include characters from the Switch's first year on the market, but Ultimate was already pretty far into development before said games could come out and, as such, Breath of the Wild kind of had to be the cutoff.  Three Houses only really came into the first DLC pack, which was decided around Ultimate's release date because Intelligent Systems gave Sakurai a sneak peak copy years before the game hit market.

Min Min comes from the video game "ARMS", an early Switch 1 title designed to utilize the Joy-Con's motion controls.  It was essentially attempt to take the general idea that made Splatoon work, i.e. "what if we made a competitive game with the sensibilities of a more traditional singleplayer one" and try and create a more dedicated, competitive fighter with it.  In ARMS case, rather than being a shooter that played like a platformer, it was a fighting game that played like a third person shooter.  It unfortunately did not become successful to the degree that Splatoon did, but it certainly has its audience and Min Min in particular is the game's most popular character, having won their big character tournament at the end of their support window.

So why is Min Min the easy answer?  What makes her the safe option for the first woman of color in Smash.  Well uh.  She's Chinese.  Like, Min Min is from the ARMs' universe's version of China, she speaks actual Chinese, her name is a pun on the Chinese word for noodle, her theme is heavily inspired by music meant to depict China.  Min Min is the easy answer because she is the only character on this list who is definitively from a place in the real world and is the easiest to confirm as a woman of color.  She's also a handy line to draw for what we're doing, because she's so unambiguous, any character who is in contention for this title has to be before her.

Villager

The second "easy" option is the Villager.  The first new character to be confirmed for Smash 4 and, in fact, the first character to be shown for Smash 4 at all, Villager is one of Sakurai's truly most insane characters concepts that he actually got working.  Nowadays Villager almost feels quaint, as their moveset doesn't really do anything super crazy.  Compared to people like Min Min, who have had the mechanics from their own games fully adapted into Smash, to where you really feel like you are playing an ARMs character in this game.  But Villager is truly a highlight of Sakurai's creativity, a character from a life simulation game brought into a fighting game and made to work entirely within the context of them being from a life sim.  It's superb.

Villager hails from the Animal Crossing series, designed to represent the player character of Animal Crossing which is a player insert character.  An Animal Crossing character was actually in demand as early as Brawl, I remember a lot of speculation around Tom Nook being a character, or KK Slider mayhaps.  Instead, Sakurai decided that the customizable player character is instead the best way to represent the Animal Crossing series, having them utilize their various tools and items to fight.  In a way, Villager, and by extension the very similar but not quite a clone character Isabelle, kind of fight by just doing things randomly and the opponent sort of runs into them.  Being a player character though, the Smash team decided to include various alternate skins that represent the level of player customization present in the Animal Crossing series.

Which brings us to the question at hand.  As of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Villager's 8th skin is a dark-skinned woman, meant to represent skin tone customization, a feature I don't think was in Animal Crossing when Ultimate came out but was very likely planned for the then upcoming next entry, Animal Crossing New Horizons, which was famously in development for a long time.  And, with this character being before Min Min, both Villager as a whole and this particular skin, Villager has a strong case for being the first woman of color in Smash.  Especially when you consider that Villager is, like Min Min, meant to be human, not some sort of hybrid, not a fantasy race with dark skin, just an actual human that is a woman of color that was on the roster before Min Min.

However, I feel of the candidates we'll be talking about today, Villager actually has the worst claim to the title.  For starters, Villager 8 is not the earliest character we're going to be talking about on this list, though she's the earliest revealed character I think that is decidedly "human" we will be talking about technically.  There are at least two characters that debuted before original villager, and many more that debuted before this Smash Ultimate skin of Villager.  But also, this feels a bit weird, doesn't it?  Like Villager 8 is really who we're going with, a singular alternate skin of a character, and not even one that appeared in every game the character in question has been in?  I don't feel comfortable saying "the first woman of color in the Super Smash Bros. roster is the last skin of a character whose entire visual ideology is being customizable".  It'd be like if Dovakhiin were on the roster and we called them the first woman of color who was playable because Dovakhiin 6 is the Arabic-inspired Khajit skin, it just feels weird!

Leaf (Pokemon Trainer)

So how about, instead, a character who occupies half the skin slots of a character.  Pokemon Trainer appeared originally in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the form of Red, the original Generation 1 Pokemon protagonist, albeit in his FireRed and LeafGreen incarnation.  Pokemon was always a prominent part of the Smash Bros. roster, Pikachu is literally one of the original 8, Jigglypuff is one of the only secret characters in Smash 64, Melee's new character roster included multiple new Pokemon, and several Pokemon were planned and/or shopped at various stages of development.  But Pokemon Trainer is the character that represents the series the best, a character that sends out his Pokemon, represented by the Gen 1 starters at various stages of evolution, into battle and has them fight for him.  It's also a very clever way of doing a stance change character.  Unfortunately, Pokemon Trainer would have to be cut in Smash 4 as the 3DS couldn't handle him.  But when he returned in Ultimate, he brought a friend.

Leaf, or the female Pokemon trainer, hails from Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen.  She is not the first playable female Pokemon trainer in the series, that distinction goes to Krys from Pokemon Crystal, but Leaf is the first female Pokemon trainer that was likely designed to market the game to girls.  As was found in a recently translated old interview, FRLG made numerous design decisions to market to girls.  Leaf, and by extension, the concept of a female Pokemon Trainer, would make their way into the series with Ultimate, which marked the triumphant return of the Pokemon Trainer, with Leaf occupying the even numbered slots of Pokemon Trainer's alternate costumes, although she would end up representing the odd numbered Generations.  After the first two skins, which are default Red and default Leaf, they have costumes representing each Generation, up to VII, the most recent one out at the time, but because Leaf offsets it by one, Red gets the even numbers and Leaf gets the odd.

Leaf is a pretty strong contender for this crown.  Pokemon Trainer, as a character, was introduced to Smash much earlier than either Min Min or Villager, and is one of the earliest characters I will be talking about in general.  And while Leaf is locked to alternate skins, much like Villager 8, she occupies a more prominent role within those skins, making up 4 out of the 8 available.  Leaf is clearly a feature of the character, rather than just a one-off skin.  Most importantly though is that Leaf is Japanese.  The Pokemon world is not 1:1 with the real world, there are various geographical inconsistencies (like the UK being upside down) and the world is much more untamed than ours, but Leaf's region is probably THE Pokemon region that is the most analogous to a real world location, being basically a deurbanized Tokyo.  It's literally called "the Kanto region", which is literally a place in Japan.

However, Leaf runs into the problem that Villager 8 ultimately runs into.  While she definitely occupies more of a presence on the roster, Leaf is still just an alternate skin at the end of the day.  She's an other to her male counterpart, a set of slightly different character models to add some variety to the Pokemon Trainer.  As well, while Pokemon Trainer is an older character in the grand scheme of Smash, Leaf is new, being added into the character's DNA as of Smash Ultimate.  It still puts her in front of Min Min, but she's unlikely to be the first.  Still, I don't think she's a bad option by any means and if you want to consider her, then go for it.  There's not exactly a right answer here.

Corrin

This will be the only time I talk about Corrin as being interesting, so you better enjoy this.  Corrin is the oddball of the Fire Emblem lords in Smash.  Corrin was the penultimate character in Smash 4's DLC, coming between Cloud and Bayonetta.  A lot of people criticize Corrin's inclusion within Smash as a cynical business move, because it probably is, but I do think Sakurai kind of cooked with Corrin.  She's like the easiest cut from the roster if they make another game but Corrin has a super unique and very fun moveset, utilizing their bizarre half-dragon form to do a lot of wild stuff in combat.  Corrin is also the only Fire Emblem lord that I feel truly belongs in this conversation.  Whereas other lords are just intended to be European with a distinctly anime aesthetic, Corrin's race/ethnicity is much more complicated than that.  Why?  Well, let's get into it.

Hailing from the trilogy of Fire Emblem Fates, Corrin is the fully customizable main character of those games.  Corrin was raised as a prince/princess of the Kingdom of Nohr, a cold, harsh, very Eastern European style kingdom that encompasses the vast majority of the land on the continent that Nohr is located on.  Shortly after the game starts, however, it is quickly discovered the Corrin is actually the lost member of the royal family of Nohr's neighboring kingdom and long-time enemy, Hoshido.  The two kingdoms have been at war for a very long time, and any time there is a treaty between the two, it is only a matter of time before said treaty is broken.  As such, war ignites in the midst of Corrin's reunion with their birth family and they are forced to choose a side: either side with the family who raised them, knowing they stole them, or side with the family they were born to, even though they do not know them.  Or maybe they can forge their own path.  Or join Smash!

So why is Corrin in discussion for the first woman of color in the roster.  After all, as previously stated, most Fire Emblem lords look Japanese, but their Kingdoms are analogs for the numerous European kingdoms.  Well, Corrin is a bit unique because her heritage is distinctly inspired by East Asian culture.  Hoshido is a country that, as you could imagine from the name, carries a distinctive Japanese lean.  Their lord and heir apparent to the throne is designed after a samurai, the names all have that lean (Ryoma, Takumi, Hinoka, Sakura), and geographically it is a smaller country on the east coast of a continent that is on a peninsula with an island chain.  With all of this evidence, it can be easily surmised that Corrin is either Japanese or, given the geography, Korean, and that Nohr is actually Russia.  This would definitely put her in the running as the first woman of color on the roster, appearing an entire game before the others listed.

However, once again, there are issues.  Like with Villager and with Leaf, female Corrin is not the default, she is a series of alternate skins on a character who is, in Smash, traditionally depicted as male.  Which is actually kind of a rarity for Corrin, mind, as a lot of other sources tend to depict Corrin as canon female, but I digress.  There is, also, the issue with Corrin being an FE lord.  Fire Emblem takes place in a high fantasy world and while there are analogs to the real world given in its history and geography, it's also not uncommon for Fire Emblem to blur those lines.  There are a lot of ninjas in Europe in the FE world, I'm just saying.  There is also just the fact that Corrin isn't quite human.  Corrin is a dragon, a half-dragon mind you, but a dragon nonetheless.  The half-blood daughter of a truly ancient race of dragons that is now all but extinct.  So while I don't think a convincing argument could be made that she shouldn't count because she is "not actually human", I could understand why some people would go that way.  That being said, I think Corrin has the strongest claim to the title we've seen thus far, at least of the ones that are a little ambiguous.  

Inkling

I know, I know, I literally made a rule about this.  And I literally just brought it up as a counterargument that could be leveled at Corrin.  Hear me out though.  The Inklings were the very first characters revealed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, being revealed in the game's reveal trailer.  If you are keeping track, that means the majority of the potential answers to this question have technically debuted in Smash Ultimate.  That's certainly interesting, don't you think?  I promised I wasn't going to criticize, I know.  Anyways, Inkling is one of the only newcomers in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's base roster that doesn't come from a fairly old game, Splatoon being a game that came out during Smash 4's content cycle and very quickly became one of Nintendo's tentpoles.  And I think, given how Splatoon is, they become a very interesting answer to this question.

Splatoon is a franchise that takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, long after the extinction of humans.  Since the disappearance of the dominant race, squids have evolved into humanoids and have become obsessed with the pillars of human culture.  Things like fashion, music, sports, etc.  This new race of shapeshifting humanoid squids, called the Inklings, would inherit the Earth and recreate essentially the best of human culture, heavily influenced by Japanese idol culture.  In fact, the area that the Inklings occupy and from which they host their primary sport, Turf Wars, is heavily implied to have once been Japan and has now just been warped by whatever changes the Earth has gone through in the intermittent millions of years.  As such, the Inklings are themselves are something of a parrot of present day urban Japanese culture, and are noteworthy as such.

The Inklings have a bit of a leg up on the previous character's we've discussed in that, unlike with Villager 8, Leaf, and femme Corrin, the female Inklings ARE the default skin in Smash.  The Inkling's default skin is the platonic ideal of an Inkling, a young Japanese girl with orange hair and a white t-shirt with a brand logo on it.  I believe this is the design of the Inkling that we even first saw, appearing in the original Splatoon trailer which Smash Ultimate parrots for its reveal.  Not only that but Inkling, representing a game with loads of customization options, has skins of varying looks and, indeed, skin tones.  I feel like, outside of Min Min, the argument could be made that Inkling is the least ambiguous character in this lineup, not only is she a woman of color by default, but she is also represented by multiple women of color.

On the other hand, the Inkling is a squid.  That's a little reductive I realize, but the point is still valid.  Inklings are shapeshifters, they are not only able to switch between their squid and humanoid forms at will, but also change most things about their appearance on a whim.  This has been a very positive feature of the Splatoon series, as the games have been lauded for their inclusivity.  You can switch up your appearance and gender at basically any point.  But also, it makes this a little messy.  Can we consider Inklings PoC when they're actually humanoid squids shapeshifting into facsimiles of the culture that existed before them?  It also runs into the villager question, in that the reason why the Inkling is so varied in their alternate costumes is as a representation of player customization.  Splatoon is a series where you play as an Inkling you created, not any specific Inkling.  As such, the Inkling costumes are all designed to show the wide range of customization options present in the game.  The Inkling is very ambiguous despite in many ways being more concrete than any option previously listed despite Min Min.  They're probably the biggest question marks on this list.

Sheik

This is, to some people, the "correct" answer.  And this is, to other people, heresy.  I honestly just feel kind of gross even putting Sheik on here, to be honest.  Sheik is the earliest character on this list by far, being one of the first newcomers ever shown for Super Smash Bros. Melee.  Amusingly, because of how they're shown in the intro, Sheik is actually considered to be on the roster BEFORE Zelda, despite being the secondary transformation of her in Melee and Brawl.  Sheik is one of the very few Zelda characters on the roster and one of the only ones that has a unique moveset, as most Zelda characters are based on other characters in the roster as they were inserted as a means to buff the roster while not adding too much development time.  Sheik is very popular, despite the fact that they were included in a singular game from 1998, it's almost difficult to imagine the roster without them at this point.  Sheik is also complicated for this question for a couple very specific reasons.  We'll get into them.

Sheik originates from the iconic and critically acclaimed video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Entering the story after its game-defining time skip, Sheik appears as a helpful but mysterious figure in the darker and ravaged version of Hyrule that Link awakens in.  They are of the Sheikah tribe, a race of dark-skinned peoples who have loyally served the royal family for centuries and for whom Kakariko Village, a small farming town at the foot of Death Mountain, is home.  Sheik aids Link on his quest by nudging him in the right direction on his quest and teaching him the sacred songs which will allow him to more easily navigate Hyrule.  This all culminates in the plot twist that Smash likely spoiled for you if you weren't old enough to Zelda in 1998, the Sheik has actually been the missing Princess Zelda the entire time, having used the Triforce of Wisdom to transform themselves into a young Sheikah so they could hide from Ganondorf's eye.  Sheik was also planned to make an appearance in Twilight Princess, which is what their design from Brawl onward is based on, but this was ultimately scrapped.  Good thing too, Twilight Princess already has too many balls in the air.

There are two main problems with Sheik being the first woman of color on the roster.  One that's more based in canon and the other which is more based in fanon.  The former issue is that an argument could be made that Sheik is not truly a woman of color.  She is simply a magical disguise put on by Zelda, a means to hide herself as she awaits Link's return.  She is not necessarily a character to her own, just a costume put on by a woman whose appearance is more in line with European royalty.  But I could also easily see the argument that Sheik's popularity, her legend as it were, has made her a character in her own right.  And that Smash in particular is evidence of this fact, as the two characters have evolved in completely separate ways, with Sheik not even maintaining the very few elements that she shared with Zelda by the time Ultimate was released, i.e. losing the Light Arrow as a final smash.

The other problem is that Sheik is typically depicted as a man by the fandom.  Not only is Sheik a man to the fandom, but Sheik is a pretty important symbol of transmasc gamers, I distinctly remember the outcry that happened around Smash 4 when Sakurai confirmed Sheik in the game was female and people called for erasure.  Sheik being a guy is the first thing most people know about him, and the twist that Sheik is Zelda hits harder as a result.  It's why I feel uncomfortable with putting Sheik in this running, it feels a bit like stepping on the toes of a community I am not a part of.  Sheik's gender identity being masculine is very important to people, both in a narrative sense and in a representation sense.

So why is Sheik here at all?  Because, according to Nintendo, THIS is the correct answer to the question.  Or at least the closest thing to a correct answer that we'll be given without asking them directly, at which point I imagine they'll say like Min Min just to be safe.  Sheik has almost always been understood internally to be a woman.  The idea that Sheik is a man mostly arose about from the fandom, as previously stated, namely due to the fact that Sheik's gender is very ambiguous.  They don't lean too heavily into masculine or feminine character design and, to a lot of people, that immediately equates to masculine because most of our characters are male.  Especially in the context of video games in 1998.  I don't really like it either, to be clear.  Again, I feel like I'm stepping on people's toes by even suggesting this as an option.  I just want any trans readers to know I love them, I'm sorry Sheik is here, but I couldn't justify not putting them on here, especially since they're probably the "correct" answer.  It's an answer I really wish wasn't here and I don't blame anyone for disregarding Sheik as a possible contender, as this question is super ambiguous anyways.

Daisy

I bet when you clicked on this, you never thought it would end with Princess Daisy.  One of the very first characters to be shown off in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the first "newcomer" revealed in the first Smash Ultimate direct actually, Daisy was introduced as an "Echo Fighter".  Basically how Smash now contextualizes clone characters, rather than them having their own individual spots on the roster, they now share one with another character.  So Daisy isn't character 67, she's character 13E.  For the record you are only an Echo Fighter apparently if you debuted in Smash 4 or Ultimate, the Melee and Brawl clone characters got to keep their numberings.  Here's the thing, when I started thinking about this question, it was just something I was like "well here's the list of possible candidates but this one doesn't work for this reason or this one is ambiguous for that reason", stuff like that.  When I got to Daisy though, that's when I wanted to turn it into a blog post.  So let's do this.

Daisy hails from the original Game Boy launch title "Super Mario Land".  Created as a way to make the Game Boy game feel distinctive from the console Mario games, so as not to feel like just an inferior port, Daisy has become a fan favorite character over the years, in particular due to her portrayals in the Mario sports games, especially Mario Strikers.  Compared to her counterpart, Peach, she's tougher, more energetic, and just a bit psychotic.  It's honestly shocking how long it took Daisy to reappear in the mainline series with how beloved she is, she was literally in Smash Bros before she made another mainline Mario game reappearance.  However, it is from her origins of that our question comes into play.  And with Daisy in particular, it is exceptionally complicated.

So, Daisy's place of origin is Sarasaland, an empire ruled by Daisy's royal family.  Daisy is an empress.  Sarasaland is comprised of four Kingdoms; the Birabuto Kingdom, a vast desert kingdom which contains ancient ruins, namely large pyramids, the Muda Kingdom, an kingdom set on a large island chain in the ocean where weird occurrences happen, the Easton Kingdom, a mountainous kingdom high in the sky where the people have built large statues of men, and the Chai Kingdom, a forested kingdom covered in primarily bamboo.  Sarasaland, in a departure from most other Mario games before or since, has its kingdoms representing real world locations, spanning Egypt, China, Rapa Nui and Bermuda, though the last one could be the mythical continent of Mu, which was believed to be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Aside from the fact that this empire would be comically massive if it were in the real world, stretching from North Africa all the way to the coast of the Americas, this also raises a very interesting question about Daisy: is Daisy a WoC?

Now, I don't think Nintendo has ever or will ever weigh in on this debate one way or another.  I think in their mind, Daisy is the princess of a fictionalized kingdom and while that kingdom has real world analogs, it's not a place.  Daisy isn't Egyptian just because her kingdom is Egyptian, it's a fantasy world.  Daisy is very likely a generic European royal that just so happens to have a kingdom made up of cool iconography that the team working on Super Mario Land thought would be cool.  Except I don't think that's actually true.

See, the answer of "is Daisy a WoC" seems to change based on the game.  Daisy is typically depicted next to Peach and, as a rule, always has darker skin than her.  Even the most pale Daisy appearances are slightly tanned.  But again, it's not enough to where you could look and go "yes, Daisy is a person of color".  But sometimes, Daisy has fairly dark skin.  Her first appearance in color, Mario Tennis, is one such case, having Daisy's official art have pretty dark skin.  And this is also true of Mario Party 3, Daisy again has dark skin in that game.  But then in Mario Party 4, she is much paler.  And it keeps going back and forth like that.  Daisy sometimes has pale skin, sometimes has tanned skin, sometimes has dark skin.  There are some Daisies where it seems like the art team was implying that Daisy was a woman of color and other Daisies where she just definitively isn't.  It's shockingly complicated and I think it is only fitting that the surprisingly ambiguous question of "who was the first playable woman of color in Super Smash Bros." ends with a character who, herself, is really ambiguous.

In recent years, though, there's been more of an acceptance among the community that Daisy is indeed a woman of color, or at least she should be.  It seems a bit obvious to many of them, Daisy's massive globe spanning empire she is the singular monarch of would cover North Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, the Pacific Islands, Central America, before finally landing in the Caribbean and coastal America.  It's comically large, as previously stated, but it is a diverse swath of people and it would imply Daisy is part of them.  Granted, the British Empire also was comically large, to the point where the sun never set on Britain, but I imagine Nintendo doesn't want to imply that one of the biggest characters from their cartoony mascot platformer is a ruthless colonialist who violently conquered this land.  If Daisy is not officially a woman of color currently, which again is complicated, she probably should be going forward.  It'd be nice for Nintendo's biggest franchise to prominently feature a woman of color.

So what is the answer?

Min Min probably.  Look, I don't know what the actual answer is, and I don't really think there is one singular answer.  There are many asterisks to basically any candidate that is not Min Min, and the other answers can be seen as unsatisfying.  Like I said, what is probably the "correct" answer is one that feels a little icky because of how much that character means to transmascs.  Everyone is going to interpret this question differently and, honestly, even if it were something Nintendo was interested in answering, I don't think we'd like their answer, because it'd probably be Min Min.  I will say though, it is infinitely disappointing to me that every eligible character besides one debuted within the last two Smash games.  Smash is a series that has been around for almost 30 years now and not only is this question ambiguous, it's a depressingly small sample pool.  I think even the characters after Min Min, there's like A Steve skin that is a black woman, and then that's every woman of color on the roster period.  And that's honestly the other reason why I don't like just saying Min Min, because it means that in the 30 years we've had Super Smash Bros, the 6th to last character introduced in the game about having EVERY Smash character is the first WoC.  Feels just a bit wrong, doesn't it?  Maybe the answer should be Jigglypuff.