Sunday, November 10, 2019

The Legend of Zelda Mangas need more attention.

Finally, it's been a few years since I successfully did a decent Zelda post for Zelda Month.

Did you know that Zelda is the only major Nintendo property without any Anime?  Mario's had a few Pokemon's is well known and Kirby had a uniquely popular one and even Fire Emblem got a surprisingly decent 90s OVA that was even Dubbed.  It shouldn't be hard to make a good Zelda Anime, just adapt one of the many Zelda Manga and entrust it to the same people who adapt Pokemon, or perhaps Slime Incarnation.

Legally speaking the only Zelda Manga that are available in English are the Nintendo Power Link to the Past Manga by Shoutarou Ishinomori that was done like a western comic, and the many Akira Himekawa Manga.  But unofficially others can be found translated, I've read the fascinating Yuu Mishouzaki adaptation of the original game and the start of it's Adventure of Link sequel.

The Zelda Universe Youteube Channel has a motion comic of the Link's Awakening Manga, and I think they intend to do one for the Link to The Past Manga from the same author, Ataru Cagiva, eventually.  Gaijilionaire has done a series of videos where he reads the Ranmaru Mangas for the original and Adventure of Link.

I'm clearly more interested in seeing fleshed out adaptations of the classic 2D games, the fully 3D ones are like CG cartoons already.

There are a number of interesting ways that these Manga have anticipated things the games did later.  Including having characters play the Navi role, having Zelda fire the upgraded Arrows at Ganon during the final battle, and Link's dark world form being a wolf rather then a rabbit.  The character of Roam kind of anticipated the Rito, particularly as they are in BOTW.

The tendency to treat Zelda as the real Messiah figure even though Link is the action hero is anticipated as well.  Which is one of my favorite things about the franchise.

I'm not sure which would be my first pick to make into an Anime.

The Nintendo Power one would be interesting to see done as a Western Cartoon since it was in a western style, but I haven't liked any Western Fantasy cartoons in awhile so I don't know who to trust there. 

The Akira Himekawa ones are the most popular, and Ganty/Ganti would make a great modern Anime Waifu.

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