What is The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask About?
That question has plagued me for 21 years since first playing The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. And there is a clue in the word Majora.
Majora translates from Canto Japanese as devilish or demon. The game is about the devil’s mask. More specifically, how resentment leads one to become evil.
This is most evident in the character of Skull Kid. But before one can understand Majora’s Mask one has to understand Ocarina of Time. Plus understand both games are about growing up and how time changes us.
In Nintendo’s 1998 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the player watches Link transform from child to adult. The game is widely considered the greatest game of all-time and was the Zelda franchise’s first step into 3D, on the Nintendo 64. It was popular, selling seven million copies, a lot in 1998, and remains one of the most critically acclaimed games ever made.
The game revolutionized the action-adventure genre, introducing many mechanics which are still used today. Story-wise the game follows Link attempting to stop Ganondorf. Ganondorf is the King of Thieves, hailing from the desert, and aims to take complete control over the land of Hyrule.
To stop Ganondorf, Link needs the power of the Triforce. The Triforce is an ancient relic, which was created when the three goddesses created Hyrule. And the Triforce represents the three goddesses’ distinct contributions: power, wisdom, and courage.
Ganondorf already possesses the mark of power on his hand. Throughout Ocarina, Link comes to possess the mark of courage and Princess Zelda of the Hyrule Royal Family possesses the mark of wisdom. It is up to Link and Zelda to use courage and wisdom to defeat corrupted power.
Eventually Link enters the Temple of Time and plays the Song of Time to pull the Master Sword from its pedestal. When he does so he is trapped in the Sacred Realm for seven years. Then re-emerges as an adult into a dystopian Hyrule. Because seven years have passed, the normally joyous Hyrule is now a wasteland controlled by Ganondorf.
To defeat Ganondorf, Link must awaken the seven sages and bring them to the Sacred Realm. He does this by purging evil throughout the Temples of Hyrule. The seven sages he must awaken are all people Link knew as a child. The game shows an individual’s positive influence on the people the individual knows best over a span of time.
Once the seven sages are awakened Link storms Hyrule Castle and fights Ganondorf. When Ganondorf is defeated Ganondorf transforms into a beast known as Ganon. The beast is essentially evil incarnate, Satan. Link is able to defeat Ganon and peace is restored to Hyrule. Thanking Link, who gave up his childhood to save the world, Zelda sends Link back in time.
Link is a child again and the world does not know Link saved Hyrule. But Link is now able to live out his childhood, which he sacrificed to defeat Ganon. However at the end of Ocarina, Link’s companion Navi, a fairy, leaves Link. This is important for Majora’s Mask because a fairy is needed for Link to return to his childhood home, the Kokiri Forest.
The Kokiri Forest is where Ocarina begins. And the Kokiri are forever children. They are not permitted to leave the Forest. No adults are allowed into the Forest, only children, children with fairies. So at the end of Ocarina of Time, Link loses his fairy and cannot live out his childhood. That’s why Ganondorf is the King of Thieves, even in death he steals Link’s childhood.
The Kokiri Forrest is surrounded by The Lost Woods. The Lost Woods are basically a maze where only the Kokiri can navigate, with the help of a fairy. It is said if adults wander through The Lost Woods they will become Stalfos. Stalfos are skeleton warriors. There are also imps, Skull Kid is one of them, in The Lost Woods. These are little wood creatures who happily play music.
Majora’s Mask begins with Link wandering in The Lost Woods without his fairy.
Now, Majora’s Mask is a sequel to Ocarina of Time, but drastically different. Ocarina of Time took seven years to develop. Part of that was the gaming industry’s evolution from 2D to 3D. So to follow up the incredible success of Ocarina of Time, Zelda series producer Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Nintendo to develop a remixed version of Ocarina of Time. It would be fast to make.
It would include alternative enemy placements and rearranged puzzle elements. However, a designer on Ocarina of Time, Eiji Aonuma, was not content with simply changing an already completed game. He complained to Miyamoto and Miyamoto challenged Aonuma to create a new Zelda game in one year. Aonuma accepted the challenge and lead the team.
The remixed version of Ocarina of Time was eventually released in North America as Master Quest. But the new Zelda with a one-year deadline, was also being worked on. The rationale behind the deadline was that the Nintendo 64 was nearing the end of its commercial life, so a game would need to be released soon to have any chance at commercial success.
To hit the deadline many assets from Ocarina were re-used. That means characters, items, and artwork from Ocarina of Time were copied and pasted into Majora’s Mask. This is where the weirdness of Majora’s Mask begins. People who played Ocarina would recognize all these characters, but in Majora’s Mask they have different identities.
Additionally, Majora’s Mask does not take place in Hyrule. Instead the player is in the world of Termina. According to Nintendo’s Hyrule Historia, Termina is a parallel universe to Hyrule. Which explains why the familiar characters are not familiar. Moreover, to hit the one-year deadline the team created the three-day cycle, the defining feature of Majora’s Mask.
In Majora’s Mask the player has three days before the moon will crash, destroying Termina (and Termina is the word “terminal”, meaning “at the end”.) Non-playable characters have well-defined schedules, which they act out during the three days. Yet the player has the ability to play the Song of Time, and rewind time to the beginning of the cycle. Doing so resets the clock, but also resets a lot of positive progress the player has made.
By having the three-day cycle the team at Nintendo could shorten the game’s development time. Because everything the player sees, repeats. Resetting the clock resets the other characters’ patterns, infinitely. But that cannot destroy the player’s immersion in the game because the story is about being stuck in a time loop. Majora’s Mask aims for something profound and focused rather than epic and expansive.
At the start of the game, child Link is wandering in The Lost Woods without a fairy. He is attacked by two unknown fairies. They startle Link’s horse and knock Link to the ground. One of the imps appears wearing a strange mask and steals the Ocarina of Time — an instrument, and Link’s horse. Link chases Skull Kid, the imp, through The Lost Woods and falls into a pit.
In Ocarina of Time, The Lost Woods also serve the purpose of transporting the player to different areas of Hyrule. Meaning, The Lost Woods are connected to places which it makes no sense for them to be connected to when looking at the map. That’s why Link falls into a pit in The Lost Woods (in Majora’s Mask). He is falling out of Hyrule into Termina’s parallel universe.
In the pit, Link encounters Skull Kid and Skull Kid transforms Link into a Deku Scrub. A Deku Scrub is a small, pathetic, wood creature. Then Skull Kid escapes with one of the fairies leaving the other fairy with Link. Link presses on in his pathetic Deku form, travelling through another portal, arriving inside a strange Clock Tower. Here Link encounters The Happy Mask Salesman.
He’s a mostly forgettable character in Ocarina of Time who sells masks, which do not do much in that game. But in Majora’s Mask he has a different character (although interestingly he retains the most identity of almost any character between Ocarina and Majora’s Mask). In Majora’s Mask, he now seems to be enveloped in dark magic. And he explains to Link, that Skull Kid stole an evil and powerful mask: Majora’s Mask. If Link can return Majora’s Mask, The Happy Mask Salesman will make Link a human again.
However, The Happy Mask Salesman has to leave town in three days. Link accepts the offer and leaves the Clock Tower, walking into Clock Town, the main city of Termina. Here the player encounters many familiar faces, but they are all different people from who they were in Ocarina of Time.
Some of the residents are concerned about the moon with a menacing face inching closer to the ground. Others do not believe the moon will actually crash. But as time ticks on and the days pass, people reveal who they truly are. Then the player can rewind time and evaluate who the characters pretend to be when catastrophe is still far away.
One of the key themes in the game is how people deal with death.
During the development of the game the team left Japan to attend a wedding in South Korea. During the wedding North Korea was launching a space satellite, but the media thought it was a missile. The team talked about how some people at the wedding were still happy even with death looming in the sky.
A moon with a menacing face, about to destroy everything.
The experience at the wedding became a focus of the game’s story. Both in terms of death looming in the sky and how people respond to such a terrible fate.
The most complicated optional quest has you reuniting torn apart fiancés, Anju and Kafei. If completed they reunite moments before the moon crashes. Majora’s Mask constantly asks: How do people deal with their own mortality? And the mortality of their loved ones? Especially in what may be their final hours?
In the final hours of the first three-day cycle, Link is able to retrieve the Ocarina of Time from Skull Kid. But Link doesn’t get back Majora’s Mask. Then Link resets the clock by playing the Song of Time on the Ocarina, to prevent the moon from destroying Termina.
Link returns to The Happy Mask Salesman who teaches Link the Song of Healing. That song brings Link back to his human form and leaves a Deku Mask on the ground. The mask enables Link to become a Deku whenever Link wants to. Still, The Happy Mask Salesman is not happy when he finds out Link did not retrieve Majora’s Mask.
The Happy Mask Salesman explains more fully the evil of Majora’s Mask, and tells Link to travel to all corners of Termina to stop Skull Kid’s plan: making the moon crash. The player must cleanse the evil in all four regions of the map, and free the spirits of the four Giants, who are the guardians of Termina and the only ones who can hold the moon in the sky so it does not crash.
It is revealed to the player that Skull Kid was once friends with the Giants, but the Giants had to grow up and protect each region of Termina. This left Skull Kid without any friends. That deep isolation is what led him to resentment — hating his friends for growing up — and from there he donned Majora’s Mask, which possessed him and made him evil.
While Ocarina of Time has the evil Ganondorf, evil is much more elusive in Majora’s Mask. Because evil has been abstracted up a level. Skull Kid is a lost boy without friends who feels deep resentment. He is not Satan incarnate like Ganon. Rather Majora’s Mask itself is the antagonist of the game. Skull Kid is just a puppet, another victim of Majora’s Mask.
Skull Kid, possessed by resentment and evil, takes his revenge out on the whole world. He turns the swamp into poison, traps the mountains in never-ending winter, heats the bay’s water temperature too high for life, fills the valley with the undead, and sets the moon on a crash course with the land.
The game is a warning that if you become resentful you will take revenge on Being itself.
More than that, it picks up on the themes of lost childhood which define Ocarina of Time. Link is a child in Majora’s Mask, but a child without childhood. That is why time becomes the enemy in Majora’s Mask. Growing up means understanding how valuable time is because you have less of it. With a one-year deadline, Nintendo made a game about time running out.
During the game Link also acquires Goron and Zora masks (other species) when he heals the souls of a fallen Goron and Zora, by playing the Song of Healing. And Link is eventually able to save all four regions of Termina, freeing the Giants. Even though whenever Link resets the clock, he restarts everyone’s suffering. Still, the four Giants arrive near the end of the game to hold up the moon.
Then Majora’s Mask throws Skull Kid to the ground and retreats into the moon itself. Link follows Majora’s Mask into the moon. There is a big grassy hill reminiscent of The Garden of Eden, with a tree and children playing around the tree. The children wear the masks of the game’s bosses, the monsters who served to trap the Giants’ spirits. And one child wears Majora’s Mask.
If the player has earned all 21 optional masks from helping the people of Termina, the child with Majora’s Mask will ask Link if Link wants to play a game. The child says Link will be the bad guy and the child will be the good guy. Then the player is given the Fierce Deity Mask. The game asks the player, in text, if the powers of this new mask could be just as bad as Majora’s Mask.
This leads many to wonder if the game is suggesting the idea that we create our own values: moral relativity. That we choose what good and evil are. Yet according to an interview with Aonuma, the Fierce Deity Masks represents the will of the people of Termina. That is why you must help them all and earn all of their masks to get the Fierce Deity Mask.
So the game isn’t supporting moral relativity. Instead the Fierce Deity Mask asks the question if justice can be just as bad as resentment. Because resentment can be disguised as justice, leading to its own evil. The child wearing Majora’s Mask tells Link, Link is the bad guy, because Majora’s Mask itself believes in moral relativity (the idea that good and evil are just made-up human concepts).
And when the people of Termina want justice (not resentment) to stop evil, through the Fierce Deity Mask, they don’t lose their objective sense of good and evil. Rather that mask represents how a society responds to someone who takes revenge on Being. The entire populace is against Majora’s Mask and that is symbolically represented through the power of the Fierce Deity Mask to stop evil.
Yet the game warns, with the text about the Fierce Deity Mask, justice — or stopping evil — can get out of hand and become evil itself, if resentment is disguised as justice. But that is not the case with the Fierce Deity Mask. Because with or without the Fierce Deity Mask, Link destroys Majora’s Mask because Link has to, to stop the mask’s evil.
The Fierce Deity Mask is not resentment disguised as justice, it’s not an overreach of justice, and it’s not an invitation to moral relativity. There is just no other option besides destroying Majora’s Mask to stop it’s evil. This lack of choice is similar to what the Allies dealt with in World War II, having to fight to prevent evil from destroying good.
Link has no real choice. He has to destroy Majora’s Mask.
(It is worth noting the name of the Fierce Deity Mask. Majora’s Mask in its complete evil, has incurred the wrath of God so to speak. And if Link wants to make quick work of Majora’s Mask, Link must become God-like by easing the suffering of the people of Termina to earn the Fierce Deity Mask.)
Once Majora’s Mask is defeated, the time loop and suffering in Termina both end and there is the “Dawn of a New Day”.
The Giants forgive Skull Kid for the evil he was a part of because of Skull Kid’s resentment, and they all become friends again. The Happy Mask Salesman leaves Termina and Link does the same, riding off on his horse as most of Termina’s people rejoice.
After the events of Majora’s Mask, Link leaves Termina and continues looking for his lost fairy in The Lost Woods. This is clear because in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the player encounters a Stalfos known as “The Hero’s Shade”, who teaches the player swordsmanship.
Link in Ocarina and Majora is known as “The Hero of Time”. So without a fairy in The Lost Woods after Majora’s Mask, Link turned into a Stalfos. In an attempt to live out his childhood after time took it away, Link lost his humanity. This Stalfos connection is confirmed in Hyrule Historia.
Majora’s Mask is about resentment turning into evil, how people respond to mortality, a warning about moral relativity, how society responds to evil, a warning about justice, forgiving evil people, time being the enemy of childhood, the reality of good and evil, and the necessity of growing up.
The game stresses that good and evil are objectively real. Values grounded in something transcendent, something more than just human ideas or whims. And the game emphasizes the consequences of treating good and evil as made-up ideas, as represented in the character of Majora’s Mask itself.
Resentment, time, death, and moral relativity are the villains in Majora’s Mask. That’s why the game unsettles players. You are not fighting Satan incarnate, Ganondorf/Ganon, as in Ocarina. There is no obvious villain in Majora’s Mask because you are fighting villains you cannot kill with a sword, like time, resentment, suffering itself, and evil abstracted out of a character and represented as an inanimate mask.
Everyone is a victim in Majora’s Mask except for abstract evil itself — Majora’s Mask. And the evil mask latches onto the resentful Skull Kid while obscuring his face, hiding his real identity. Interestingly, the Fierce Deity Mask does not hide Link’s identity. Instead it elevates his best attributes.
Now one of the most well-known lines from the game, which is displayed if the player fails to rewind time and prevent the moon from crashing is: “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”
That line is followed by the sound of The Happy Mask Salesman laughing. He says that same line to Link when Skull Kid first transforms Link into a Deku.
That line is a reminder that we must not become resentful when we are met with a terrible fate. If Link did become resentful, either as a Deku or because of the moon falling, he never would have saved Termina and would’ve had an even more terrible fate as the character-arc of Skull Kid exemplifies.
Skull Kid falls into resentment and becomes evil. Link overcomes resentment and becomes a hero.
The player also cannot become resentful when they fail to rewind time and are met with that message. If they do become resentful over the difficulty of the game, and time, they give up on saving Termina and there will never be a resolution to the story.
Every character in the game deals with resentment, which is being produced by the terrible fate of the moon getting closer to crashing. Some characters fare better than others in the choice they have, of how to respond to that terrible fate and the resentment it produces.
Majora’s Mask is about overcoming resentment when one is met with a terrible fate. The choice is up to us, when we are met with a terrible fate: good or evil, hope or despair, faith or doubt, Link or Skull Kid.
And that is why Majora’s Mask is a timeless story. The game takes place in an eternal present where everyone is eternally choosing how to respond to the tragedy, evil, suffering, and consequent resentment such conditions of Being can produce if the character is not oriented toward Good.
Yet the characters the player admires in Majora’s Mask, like Link, or Anju and Kafei, are the ones who rise above resentment and choose to walk in the light of the Good despite their pain. In doing so they save the world in their own unique way, no matter how small or large, and become heroes.
But Link overcomes the most adversity: resentment, evil itself, and time itself.
That is why Majora’s Mask is a fitting conclusion to the story of “The Hero of Time”, which began in Ocarina.
