The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
© Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda's Manga
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The video game industry is maturing. Those of us who grew up with Donkey Kong, or more incredibly, Pong, might feel a little light-headed at the sheer power and wondrous tricks the new generation of game consoles have to offer. Speaking for myself, I recently acquired a Wii. I assure you if I didn't already have a husband, I would've been down the aisle with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ages ago.
Nintendo's famous Legend of Zelda series is probably the last game series to truly be revered by gamers past and present. Mario's awesome, but he's not shy about sometimes pimping his name where it's best not seen. Mega Man is hit and miss, and Sonic the Hedgehog's reputation is descending merrily into hell. But Link, the green-garbed champion of Hyrule, still commands the same respect he did twenty years ago. A Zelda fan receives a new game with more anticipation and happy tears than the birth of their first child.
In Japan, video games, manga and anime are considered something like tight-knit first cousins; a trio of friends who are not usually far from each other. A manga series will often spawn an anime, or a video game will inspire a manga series and so the Paper-Rock-Scissors combinations tumble on.
North America has been growingly receptive to game-inspired comics in recent years, and as a result companies like Image and the late Dreamwave have inked the adventures of Solid Snake from Metal Gear, Christopher Belmont from Castlevania, Dante from Devil May Cry, and others. While it's been years since Link from The Legend of Zelda starred in his own American comic series, he has his share of manga and doujinshi in Japan … and not all of it has been exclusive to the faraway side of the pond.
Word association: When I say "Nintendo Power," you go "Ohhhh!" Whether your tone is tinged by nostalgia or disgust is your choice, but it's true most kids who grew up with the Nintendo Entertainment System also took advantage of Nintendo's monthly publication. The honesty of Nintendo Power's game reviews might be debatable, but in the heyday of the NES and SNES the magazine featured some pretty cool extras you couldn't get from other game magazines at the time, including extensive previews, exclusive artwork and most notably, comics.
Nintendo Power's feature comics were based on various Nintendo games, usually timed to build up anticipation before said game's release. They often got the royal treatment and were drawn by popular manga artists. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (LTTP) for the Super Nintendo was likewise captured on the pages of Nintendo Power by Shotaro Ishinomori, a highly popular artist who's often credited as the father of sentai and henshin--Japanese superhero adventures that include posing, transforming, giant cheesy monsters and all the good stuff. The best example of sentai existing in America (although it's not one of Ishinomori's children) is the long-running Power Rangers series.
There's no arguing Ishinomori's talent as a manga artist. By the time of his death of heart failure in 1998, he created dozens of popular series including Cyborg 009 and Kamen Rider, and he even collaborated with his mentor Osamu Tezuka for some work on Astroboy. But his attempt at the fantasy world of Zelda is remembered with mixed reactions from fans.
The plot of Nintendo Power's comic is based loosely on the storyline presented in the game. "Loosely" is the word to use--the Tower of Hera, which is supposed to be located in the northernmost region of Hyrule was placed in the middle of a southern desert. A lot of other liberties are taken with the plot as well. One of the best-remembered moments in the Zelda games is Link's first excursion into the Dark World, where the magic-charged air changes visitors' forms to reflect what's in their hearts. In LTTP, Link's heart reveals his inner beast--a little pink bunny. But in Ishinomori's manga, Link simply turns into a standard wolf-like beast after he enters the Dark World and fails Anime Cliché #1: "Control your negative emotions or suffer the consequences!"
Or maybe Ishinomori simply experienced a dream of prophecy and became familiar with Link's lupine form years before the rest of us saw the first trailers for The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess? Either way, Link's absent inner rabbit is not the comic's sole detraction. Other whimsical story points and mechanics are exchanged for standard fantasy fare. The magical duck Link used to fly around Hyrule in the game is replaced by a pair of mechanical Icarus-issue wings. Link also gains a rival, Roam, who is a descendent of the legendary Knights of Hyrule (distracted thought: one Knight in particular? Or did they all breed together in some unholy orgy?). Roam is predictably stuck-up and obnoxious but of course in the end he shows a standard Heart of Gold, or something close enough to it, when he saves Link's bacon in Turtle Rock dungeon and against Ganon himself.
Ishinomori's art style, unsurprisingly, has been compared to Tezuka's. His work is definitely recognisable, and like Tezuka he was fond of slipping his characters from other series into whatever he was working on at the time (which explains why Roam is almost identical to Cyborg 002). His take on the characters in LTTP didn't please everyone, however. Link's hair was brown instead of blonde, and his features were flat. Later installments of the 12-part comic were messy at times, and the art quality in general didn't reflect what Ishinomori was truly capable of.
There are fans who did enjoy Ishinomori's interpretation of Link in spite of the changes made to his character and the story. A lot depends on the individual's tolerance for story-tampering. The comic series has since been collected into a graphic novel form and can be found easily on Ebay. Whatever your feelings on the story and art quality, it's a very nice nostalgic piece to have lying around. If you're really a collector, seek out Valiant Comics' Zelda-themed efforts. And for everyone else who's staring blankly right now, I'll go into more detail about that next week.
