The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask by Akira Himekawa
The comic book I chose to cover is Akira Himekawa’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, a dub off of the video game series by Nintendo. This manga novel by Himekawa is about the 2000 Nintendo 64 title by the same title and generally follows the structure and look of the game. The game serves as a direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where Himekawa has two novels on that game, and is considered one of the most iconic games at the time.
The plot follows Link, a young man from the kingdom of Hyrule who has just completed his quest as “The Hero of Time” where he defeated Ganondorf seven years in the future after the Gerudo king took over the land. Link would return to the past, warn the kingdom prior to its conquest, however his companion fairy, Navi, would be lost in the process. On a quest to find his friend, Link encounters two fairies similar to Navi named Tatl and Tael and a Skull Kid with a mysterious mask on. Turns out that the mask has possessed the Skull Kid and turns Link into a small scrub-like creature known as a Deku.
Link travels to the mysterious land of Termina which is on the brinks of apocalyptic catastrophe with a giant moon about to crash into the Earth in three days, all thanks to the cursed mask that Skull Kid was wearing. Link teams up with one of the fairies that got abandoned in order to save the land by finding four giants spread across Termina. Link eventually is able to set time back three days and assume his normal form in order to stop the cataclysm that is Majora’s Mask.
Looking more-so at the design that Himekawa uses for their illustrations is varied across pages, but mostly adopts the “hierarchical grid” from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics where the design is never the same for each page in order to give off a sense of what’s occurring in the story. The art design of the character icons in the novel follow the designs made by the artists at Nintendo, but have an anime-esque flare that shows the region the illustrator is from. The outside cover of the novel is in color, however the actual book is in black and white which I do believe changes many aspects of how things were positively and negatively affected by its lack of color.
For starters, the atmosphere of the game and the story is very dark and mysterious, adding shades here and there to depict darker tones that the story is trying to portray. However, there are moments where I felt like color could have potentially helped add a sense of surroundings to the reader to feel more immersed. As somebody who grew up playing the actual game, it’s a sharp difference when the game can change its tone of color rather than just go from light to dark. The other novels by Himekawa are in black and white as well with covers in full color, but especially for this story I do believe the addition of colors would have made the feel of the story go beyond what it is displaying.
But with the pace of the 200 page comic novel covering hours worth of video game action led to great ways that Himekawa covered moments in the actual plot. Drawn-out, character developing moments were shortened to basically three days of time in the story, but never did it feel like stones were left unturned due to the constant action the story has to do in order to not draw the reader away.
My favorite part of the book comes from near the ending battle between Fierce Deity Link, which is an unlockable form in the game, and Majora’s Mask. The design of the characters fits right with the game and scenes are very climatic for the final duel. Two major characters in the manga appear to boast about how heroic Link was to stop the demonic mask from destroying the kingdom of Termina.
