When exactly does the Child Timeline start?

Hyrule Historia made the split timeline official, but there is still one aspect of of it that is unclear and that's how much of the Child portion of OoT still happened?

Most Zelda theorizing videos on YT seem to be operating under the assumption that on the Child Timeline none of the actual events of OoT still happened besides in Link's memories.  But I find that unlikely for a few reasons.

1. The Great Deku Tree still died, since I think it's unlikely he's simply off camera in Twilight Princess.  That should have been prevented if Link was sent back far enough to undo all of the problems Ganondorf caused.

2. Link having Epona in Majora's Mask.  A common assumption seems to be that Link's relationship with Malon had to start over from scratch, that he just shows up at the Ranch as a stranger going "you don't remember me but we had a thing in the future so can I borrow your favorite Horse?".  I really think everything up to Link first being taught Epona's song must've still happened.

3. I've also seen a common sentiment that Ganondorf's imprisonment and attempted execution in the Twilight Princess flashbacks is some Minority Report type situation where he's being punished for what he could have done but didn't actually get to.  But I really don't think that much moral ambiguity is the intent of the scene.

4. And Skull Kid remembers Link teaching him Saria's song in the Lost Woods.

Clearly a lot of Zelda fans like the pathos of Link being in a situation where no one he helped remembers him at all, especially to explain the mood of how Majora's Mask opens.  But the opening of Majora's Mask explicitly tells us this is about him missing Navi, that's the only angst necessary to explain it.

There is a recent fanmade animated project on YouTube that depicts Link as being sent back to exactly when he first pulled the Master Sword.  There is a lot of logic to that mechanically, that's when Time started being messed with so that should be the furthest you can reset it to, and if Link went back any further he'd be stuck inside a locked Room of Time.

The problem with that theory however is the ending scenes of OoT seem to show Link going right to the place he first met Zelda when her and Impa should have fled the Castle by that point.  But I suppose there are ways around that.  

And that initial opening of the Door of Time still happening perhaps best explains why the Triforce pieces still split up.

Fall 2020 Anime Dubs finally start rolling out

The Day I Became A God had a very entertaining pilot, I’m certainly gonna keep watching it.

By The Grace of The Gods also had a decent pilot, it has my attention for now.

Our Last Crusade of The Rise of A New World episode 2 was also good.  I’m annoyed at this show getting called a “Romeo and Juliet with magic” or something along those lines.  I get that it’s common to make that analogy for any romance between people on opposing sides plot, but sometimes it’s worded as if it’s as similar as West Side Story was and this one is not.  But in the context of Anime we have shows named after Romeo and Juliet that are just as different from The Bard’s version as this is.

If it’s going to be compared to something based on a very basic premise I’d prefer the Bright comparison I made last week.  But I suppose that too can be viewed as arbitrary, I suppose there are technically other Anime I’ve seen that have as much in common with that premise and I really can’t explain why this is the one making my mind go there, it simply is.

HigurashiGou episode 6 was enjoyable.  I guess Takano does Shaft Head Tilts now.

A Dub for Gou with a new Cast has been announced.  I’ll give it a shot but I’m someone who actually is a fan of the old Dub cast.  If this new cast does turn out to be good then they need to Dub all of it with them, because Gou should NOT be anyone's entry point to this franchise. 

Well I watched the Dub of the first episode of HigurashiGou, besides the after credit scene this is pretty much the same as the old pilot so it’s the most direct comparison.  The new Dub cast will definitely take getting used to, but I don’t want to be unfair.  I feel my brain is criticizing things it probably wouldn't if I weren’t comparing it to a prior Dub I’m kind of attached to.  The only thing I feel close to being able to say maybe doesn’t work right are those moments where the camera zooms in on Rena or Mion’s mouth to imply they’re hiding something.

Of the three characters I particularly praise the old Dub’s VAs for only one is in this pilot and that would be Rika Furude.  Yu Apphia is an actress I’m a fan of from other stuff, she’s one of the handful I follow on twitter.  But those are very different kinds of roles mostly, her roles in Wixoss for example are characters who are “normal” by Anime standards, and some are fairly Kuudere.  

I suppose some people feel the opposite of me about Rebecca Forstadt’s Rika.  Part of the problem is since they only did season 1 she only has a select few moments to do her Dark Rika voice but for me it was enough to show she had this dual voice character down.  I also know some people give certain Dub Voice Actresses crap for being technically too old for a character even though Japan does the same thing.  Rebecca is the oldest actress to voice Rika but all of them were adults and Rika is mentally older than her physical age, and Moe voices are not meant to sound like authentic children.  Yu is probably the youngest actress who’s voiced the character but Rebecca’s Moe voice definitely sounds better.  We still haven’t gotten to hear Yu’s Dark Rika yet however.

Assault Lily Bouquet episode 2’s title is a direct reference to the Song of Songs chapter 2 verse 1.  This show is truly going all in on it’s Yuri tropes, it’s basically Strawberry Panic with an action show premise.

I also watched the first episode of Yashahime now that it’s Dub has dropped.  As I said before I want to be the one person watching and publicly commenting on this show with the perspective of having not already seen Inuyasha.  In that context how much of this first episode focused on the old show’s cast rather than the new one was not what I was hoping for, though it also reminded me of This Year’s Girl being the first episode of Buffy I watched which was not a bad experience.  

Still I feel the general best route for a next generation sequel is to focus the pilot on introducing the new characters and then get us up to speed on the in-between history and the original cast later, that’s the approach I feel generally best works for both potential newcomers and the older fans.  That way the start can work as a stand alone pilot while also making the returning fans wonder what happened.  Then when the reveals do come, for the new fans it can be the same as any other worldbuilding or backstory exposition you’d get in Fantasy stories that aren’t sequels.

The Day I Became A God episode 2 was amusing, it seems in Japan people still remember the 1998 film Armageddon.

The pilot of Warlords of Sigridrifa was interesting. It looks like Odin is popular this season.  Also I suspect there was a Doctor Strangelove homage at the beginning.

Well at 11:30 Central on Saturday November 7th 2020  the last sub-season of Sword Art Online Alicization War of Underworld started airing on Toonami. SAO is a uniquely difficult show for me to even comment on, so I may not even bother including in future Anime 2020 posts.

At any rate this episode brings Sinon and Suguha into the action and they are my favorites.  I don’t get why so many Anime refer to Humanoid Pigs as Orcs?  To me Humanoid Pigs as armies serving a dark lord are Moblins from Zelda first and foremost, but that term I assume only Nintendo is allowed to use.

By The Grace of The Gods episode 2 was pretty fun.

Zelda Manga follow up post

I decided one of my projects for Zelda Month 2020 should be a follow up on talking about Zelda Manga.  But also make sure you check out the Zelda post I made in October.

To be slightly more critical than I was last year, The Adventure of Link Mangas suffer from a desire to give the story proper villains.  I guess some people assume the particular villain less nature of AoL can only work for a Video Game.  But this genre has plenty of truly no villain stories like the third Pokemon movie or Frozen II or….  Ya know Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a pretty good comparison, on my most recent rewatch of the 2010 film I found myself more able to enjoy it.  But still it’s issues mostly stem from the movie wanting to give the story a villain, and it seems like adaptations of the second Zelda game fall into a similar trap.

Another thing AoL Mangas do is give the first game’s Zelda a role in the story, that I don’t consider a problem however, I’m all for Video Game adaptations giving the MC a party of sorts to interact with like the Pokemon Anime has always done.  And the weird Dynamic of having two Zelda at once by the end is worth exploring.

I now own a box set of most of the Akira Himekawa manga, I’m not sure I ever will read all of them, but I’ve started with A Link to The Past, I always knew I probably would like it, but it is different than I expected.  The Dark World bosses are all given a backstory as transformed normal people that kind of gives this whole version of ALttP’s story a Magical Girl vibe.  And Ganti is an even better character than I expected, they have me now shipping a Threesome between this Zelda, Link and Ganti.  They also draw Link as such a Bishi Anime Boy in this, I think this Manga may be an overlooked step in how Link became so popular with the Gay community.

They made some similar adaptational choices to the Nintendo Power ALttP Comic, like Link’s Dark World beast form being a Wolf rather than a Rabbit (which would also become Game canon in Twilight Princess) and the Silver Arrow coming from it’s main OC rather than the cursed fairy.  It’s also interesting to look at this particular ALttP Manga remembering it wasn't made till 2005, there is a glimpse of Gerudo Ganondorf.  But it does also draw directly on the classic Instruction Manual and really doesn’t change anything to conform to OoT's retcons.

There is one more comment I want to make about the Nintendo Power ALttP Manga.  In the game when you go to the Dark World counterpart of Sahasralah’s hut you find this shrubby looking thing that provides some interesting exposition.  You don’t need to do this to beat the game, but it’s a detail that sticks in my memory.  It’s something I would not fault an adaptation leaving out as indeed I don’t fault Himekawa for not including it, but I do love how Shoutarou Ishinomori incorporated it.

I think ALttP is by nature the best to make an interesting adaptation of, it has enough story that you don't have to constantly invent things to keep it interesting, but still enough blanks to allow writers to express their creative freedom.  And as long as the art style uses the classic instruction manual as the starting point it’ll always have my favorite kind of Zelda Aesthetic.

I decided the next Himekawa Manga to read should be Four Swords, and I’m having trouble getting into it.  It’s perfectly competent and I can easily see some fans liking it the best of them, and I do love the meta knowledge that they decided what personalities to give the four Links from watching them AI controlled in SSB Melee.  But this story is simply not to my tastes as well as their ALttP is.

I had thought the other ALttP Manga didn’t even have a fan translation I could read, but it turns out if you know where to look the Ataru Cagiva Manga does have one.  

This is the longest version and for that reason ought to be the most fleshed out.  It unlike the others changes the start of Link’s adventure so it’s no longer in response to a telepathic message from Zelda.  I like the little things the early games do to give Zelda agency, even in the 1985 original she has a certain agency that Princess Toadstool didn’t in that the player character's mission is carrinyg out a plan she laid.  And in this game while there is a lot of backstory to parse, both distant and recent past, the Game proper begins because of Link’s (and his Uncle's) reaction to Zelda’s actions.

It looks like this one has also removed Sahasrahla.  And instead of Ganti or Roam we get a Shonen style rival character.  Nonetheless it has its own strengths and is worth reading.

Interestingly there is one thing that makes the Game of A Link To The Past more like what I look to Anime for then any of the Manga versions, and that’s how at the end Link’s wish when he touches The Triforce brings back everyone who died.  These adaptations are afraid to do that, and instead make the endings more bittersweet, something the Games would start doing more and more with Ocarina of Time.

I do want to comment on the Yuu Mishouzaki Manga again.  It’s by far the most unlike the Zelda we’re used to even among other Manga that had only the NES games to work with.  But it’s interesting seeing such a radically different take.  It ought to be interesting to those Tolkien fans who wish Tolkien had more Human-Elf pairing that went the other way gender wise.  I love how the titular Zelda of this Manga knows about her mother’s affair with someone who wasn’t her father and is totally okay with it.

With Sailor Moon I talked once about how the Manga is kind of driven by a fantasy of a girl having it both ways, being a powerful heroine and a princess reduced by a Knight in shining armor at the same time.  Well, this particular Zelda Manga I think was trying the same thing.  Zelda is so powerful and bad@$$ at the beginning, but then talks at the end about how she was dreaming of Link rescuing her.  It’s an interesting duality that so far, I’ve only seen Japanese media pull off in this way.

I then decided to start the Himekawa Oracle of Seasons Manga (it’s placement in the Box Set has me assuming it’s meant to precede Ages).  Even though I’ve never played the Oracle Games I’ve always felt like they are the only post OoT games to recapture the vibe of the pre OoT games.  And that’s why I think I might enjoy their Manga.

They give this Link an origin story I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have in the games.  And as a Shadowmen nerd I can’t get over how much this first chapter reminds me of the beginning of The Three Musketeers with Link as D'artagnan.  Upon finishing it they definitely left a lot of stuff out, I know little about the Game but I do know it’s the 8-bit debut of Malon who wasn’t in this Manga.  It was pretty enjoyable.

If I decide I have more thoughts on Zelda Manga to share within the next month or so I’ll edit this post adding them here.  In the meantime I may have other Zelda topics to discuss for Zelda month.

Halloween 2020 Anime

Today is Halloween which is also my Birthday.  

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

So HigurashiGou episode 5 is beginning an arc that should be another take on the timeline that focuses on Shion, I’m unsure what to expect.  In a sense the way the first arc ended isn’t that unprecedented, the one who goes nuts is still one of the three who were already susceptible to that happening.  The main curveball is what happened to Rika and Satoko.  But since this premise is us knowing Rika’s role from the start, why aren’t we seeing her reaction to that yet?

There is a chance I’ll put Gou on hold after finishing this arc, in some ways this kind of show is one I prefer to binge.  In general I may wind up making less Anime2020 posts in November then I did in October.

I enjoyed the pilot of Our Last Crusade Or The Rise of A New World, I’d watched Lidnsay Ellis’ video on Bright and was thinking of that, this show has the potential to be a better execution of Bright’s core gimmick, a High Fantasy World that has advanced to the modern era, but with far less lazy world building.

I know some will consider the World Building Exposition at the beginning lazy, but I really don’t care how “organically” that is handled, just tell what I need to know to start following the story at hand.

I also gave the Pilot of Assault Lily Bouquet another shot now that it’s Dub is out and indeed it was much easier to follow.  

So as soon as Riri explained her flashback I assumed the pale haired Lily is now deceased, and the scene of her and Yuyu at the end only further convinced me of that, that’s clearly Yuyu imagining her.

The Dub of episode 24 of Railgun T took very slightly more than 2 weeks, but I’d already gotten used to that being a possibility.  It was pretty good too.

I now have the Batman Death in The Family BluRay.

I first did exactly one route, I was trying to get the happiest ending possible so those who already know everything can probably guess what ending that led me to.  

My plan was to do one route at a time, but I honestly don’t feel like I even got a full movie experience out of only one route and that isn’t good, the total runtime of all the routes is 3 hours, so I felt each route should have no trouble being as satisfying as one standard 70 minute movie.  

There are a total of 7 endings the opening said, but I have a sneaking suspicion everything after the first choice I made leads to the same outcome.

Then I watched the rest of it and found one of my initial assumptions was the opposite of correct.

It was a pretty fun experience, the closest thing I've done so far to playing a Visual Novel.  If you liked the Under The Red Hood animated movie from 2010 you'll probably enjoy this as a companion piece.  But I'm not sure it's worth the full price, maybe wait to you cna get it used for a little cheaper.

Anime 2020 creeps along

 Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

Episode 23 of Railgun T was great, I love in a genre like this when the story is being told from the POV of a supporting character temporarily.  And I considered it a pleasant surprise that our quirky group of antiheroes actually came out of it with a win.

Episode 4 of Higurashi Gou was unpredictably predictable.

I’ve decided to drop Majo no Tabitabi.  I think the show is fairly decent for anyone into it’s central premise, but I’m really not right now.

I'll try to have more to say in the next update.

Zelda Timeline speculation that is now long outdated

I know I'm making this Zelda post a little early, if I wind up blowing my Zelda load before November I'll just make sure to give this post additional promotion.  I simply have too much Zelda on the brain right now to post about anything else.

I'm one of those people who hated the Split timeline theory before Hyrule Historia made it official, and kind of still do.  My relationship to Timeline theorizing was always complicated however, as on some level I prefer seeing each Game as it's own universe.  None the less I'm the kind of person who also just can't resist getting into that kind of speculation, and the fully 3D games at least were definitely implying a shared universe.

I am still convinced to this day that the split timeline was not at all what anyone was thinking when they wrote Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.  The fact that in TP of all the sages they had Ganondorf kill the Water Sage was clearly meant to foreshadow things going wrong with that element in the future.  

There was always this notion that single timeline was simply "everything is the child timeline" and so they'd make arguments like "how does Adventure of Link have cities named after the OoT Sages if they were never awoken?"

1. Each of them was already at least an important person to their tribe.

2. The Sages clearly exist in TP with the same elemental symbols, so clearly they transcend timelines in some capacity.

3. And it turns out AoL is on the not at all anticipated Downfall timeline where there is no logical reason to celebrate anything the OoT characters did.  So in hindsight that argument for the split meant nothing.

I always viewed the end of OoT as the same as the perfect ending of Majora's Mask where the Goddess of Time somehow creates a timeline where Link did all of the Mask missions even though that's not actually possible.  Link gets to have his Childhood but the Sages are still Sages and Ganon was still captured.

Breath of the Wild has confirmed that TP's Ganondorf wasn't permanently killed regardless so that argument isn't valid anymore.  If I'd seen Infinity War at the time I would have made a certain reference to compare the finishing blows of WW and TP.

Another theory I always advocated before Skyward Sword retconned why Hyrule always has a Zelda was that the Sleeping Zelda of AoL was the same Zelda as OoT Zelda.  She was supposed to be the first Princess named Zelda, but her father also ruled a recently united Hyrule and in OoT Hyrule was unified at the time it's Link and Zelda were born. Her brother is missing from OoT but we never see the King either, or the Shiekah as a tribe, a lot of stuff was somehow off screen there.

A Link To The Past however remains the major problem for creating a timeline.  

Ocarina of Time was definitely made to be a prequel originally, but it was also retconning like crazy.  The real reason the Downfall timeline was needed was because that's the only way to have a Ganon with the full Triforce.  That plot hole clearly didn't concern them at the time however.

I don't mind OoT making the Sages all come from different tribes since that alleviates a certain problem this Genre often suffers from.  But it is still a retcon, in ALttP there is no ambiguity that all Seven "Wise Men" were all Hylian.  It was also heavily implied that no one before this Link ever wielded The Master Sword.

I have a lot of Nostalgia for ALttP, it is roughly tied with my Mom reading The Hobbit to me as my introduction to High Fantasy.  The game may have always been promoted as a hypothetical prequel to the NES games, but it was clearly written as a remake of the original, all of it's core elements now more fleshed out.  

And so I still prefer to envision all of the backstory that game and it's instruction manual gave us as I did when there wasn't a Zelda 64 yet, as taking place on those maps and in that art style.  And with the reason for Mandrag Ganon being a humanoid Boar being simply that that is the Darkworld form of Ganondorf Dragmire.  And that he was just the leader of a gang of thieves that were like the thieves you encounter in that game, none of this only male Gerudo or reincarnation of (basically Morgoth)'s Malice stuff.

I suppose that's how certain Star Wars fans feel, they had their own vision for what Episodes 1-III should have been that they were attached to.  But I'm not a hypocrite because I'm not offended by the existence of Zelda Prequels, I don't think they actually work as Prequels as well as the Star Wars Prequels do, but I still like each of them as their own story, as their own take on the basics of what Zelda is.  My ablity to imagine something different isn't taken away.

Maybe ALttP as the start of it's own timeline but also a prequel to the NES games can also work.  Maybe Sleeping Zelda is that Zelda and the Triforce pieces were separated after Link entrusted it to the Royal family and then left.  That still gives Zelda an offscreen brother, and makes him trusting a shady wizard even weirder after the whole Agahnim fiasco, but never underestimate the selfishness of a spoiled rich kid.

When I first played the game I actually didn't know that the Golden Sword was just another upgrade of the Master Sword.  What the Cursed Fairy said (at least how the SNES localization translated it) made it sound like a completely new sword, and the official artwork made it look like more then just the color of the blade had changed.  I also because of a friend I think used to believe it was called the Magical Sword, same as the final sword in the original.