ゼルダの伝説(でんせつ)(The Legend of Zelda) is a game franchise by Nintendo mostly made up of Action-RPGs with basically the same story every time.

I’d consider Zelda to be among my favorites, though it’s a bit of a stranger one, since I haven’t personally experienced a lot of it.

Most of my understanding of Zelda comes from YouTube videos and the little I bothered to go thru myself. Thus, it could be said that my relationship with it is a bit strange as compared to something like Warcraft or Bionicle.
Buuut…that’s not gonna stop me from talking about it.

The franchise is interesting in general because, to me, there is some interesting story/worldbuilding that makes it stand out…but it also repeats itself a lot. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily, though it might be overdone. Obviously, the main appeal is gameplay, though I can’t comment on that much seeing as how I haven’t played much of the franchise.

One thing I’m convinced of is that the timeline just…doesn’t work. You can read about that in Canon.

Because I’m always a little more interested in story, I ended up reading the manga adaptations of a lot of the games…and it’s an interesting experience.

In general, I think I’d say the manga are kinda average or mediocre. Some exceptions include the 4コマ and Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess’ manga story might be (read: almost certainly is) better than the game’s. But I can’t really remember the rest.

They generally showcase a Link who talks and has more of a backbone, which is kinda interesting.

Considering I started to re-read the manga, I may have more to say soon (Ocarina of Time, added just now, is the first step here).

I re-read this recently and, thus, comes this.

The Ocarina of Time manga is split into two main arcs: Child and Adult. So, unlike in the game, Link doesn’t go back and forth between time periods.
And, of those, the Child Arc is better. Things just kinda…happen in the Adult Arc and we bounce between locations in an illogical manner. In the Child Arc, meanwhile, events usually connect to each-other. There’s a logical cause and effect here.

The sages thing is just…dumb, here. I dunno exactly what the issue is, but I thought it just wasn’t great.

The artwork is very good and the writing/dialog tends to be fine as well. Actually, Navi has an actual character (though it’s not like I can compare directly) and, thus, she’s actually kinda nice. You actually understand why Link likes her. The bonus story is pretty great too – especially in regards to Link and Navi.
However, this has the inexplicable departure of Navi make a bit less sense here than in the game.^A) Though we don’t know why she left in the first place.

Some changes, as compared to the game are: Link and Zelda clearly like each-other, which sorta adds to the tragedy of Link being sent back; Link talks and he talks a lot; the Deku shield was crafted from the Deku Tree instead of being bought; that’s all I know for now, as I need to play the game first.

But that Adult Arc made me remember why I thought it was kinda mediocre. I think that if the manga were longer (maybe 1.5 or 2x longer), it would have been vastly improved. Though that probably wasn’t possible.

This is the first Zelda game I played and was my introduction to it in general. As a kid I…didn’t finish it and, to this day, it remains unfinished. Some action bits were too difficult for me.

It still holds a special place in my heart.

This is, I believe, the second Zelda game that I’ve ever played. Though Minish Cap is the third.

I started playing it after reading the manga and getting annoyed that the translation just kinda stopped.^B) So I decided to play the game because I found the story very interesting.

Imagine my surprise upon learning the story was…quite different.

Here I’ll note that my experience with Twilight Princess was mostly neutral until it became negative. I found the gameplay very repetitive and the story not very good, though I don’t remember any specifics. The only thing I’ve found that I wrote about the game is that I thought it was “too easy”.

But I am certain the story in the manga adaptation is actually better than the game.^C)

Yes, I watched the cartoon. Arguably, it’s the second piece of Zelda media that I actually went thru and, unlike Phantom Hourglass, I actually finished this.

It’s okay, though not very good. Zelda’s hot. That’s all that you need to know.

Here I’ll mention something again that I really should just make an article on: the Japanese approach to canon. Namely, the Japanese don’t really recognize the concept. At least not in the Western sense.
As far as I can tell, they mostly categorize entries in a franchise on whether or not they’re official…and that’s it. Everything else is mostly up to individual interpretation. Whether you want to ignore a part of the franchise or not is up to you.

And this may explain why Zelda’s continuity is so weird: nobody ever considered continuity to even exist.

But! And this is important to note: they still did sequels and prequels and usually connected new games to past games…just that the approach they took to this is a bit different from how most do.

Rather than fitting everything into one big timeline, it makes a lot more sense to think in terms of starting points and direct connections.

What do I mean? Let’s take Ocarina of Time as an example. Ocarina of Time leads to three separate timelines as it’s where the split occurs.
In a starting point sense, its continuities would be:

• Majora’s Mask.
• Wind Waker.
• Twilight Princess.

All three of those games use Ocarina of Time as a jumping-off-point, but ultimately go in very different directions. And that’s mostly how all the games treat continuity.

Link to the Past uses the original Legend of Zelda as its starting point. Oracle of Ages/Seasons and Link’s Awakening then both use Link to the Past.
Along similar lines, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link uses the original as a starting point as well, but takes it in a different direction.

Phantom Hourglass uses Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks uses Phantom Hourglass in turn. Wind Waker used Ocarina of Time, just like Twilight Princess, but they otherwise are disconnected.

And this also explains why some things aren’t shared between timelines. Logically, the Twilight Realm exists in both Wind Waker’s and Link to the Past’s timeline…right? But it never shows up in either of those. That’s because it doesn’t actually exist in those continuities.
Why is it that Skyward Sword Link has a hat when The Minish Cap established that that Link got the hat? Because The Minish Cap and Skyward Sword don’t exist in the same continuity.

Honestly, I don’t mind this approach: I just wish that people didn’t try to cram it all into one timeline. Or Nintendo attempting the same thing.

This is an idea that I had at some point, but there’s no evidence to suggest that Link is actually called Link in most games (as far as I know)…and, well, that’s not that interesting. You name him, so obviously his name isn’t Link. Sometimes.

But where it gets weird is the green tunic: in actuality, Link probably doesn’t wear green most of the time. Now, this assumption is based on the assumption that the games are not accurate portrayals of what actually happens, but rather representations. The games mostly follow the story that happened, but make adjustments for one reason or another.

There is little evidence to suggest this, so consider it a crack theory.

One aspect of the overall Legend that raises questions is why nobody really recognizes Link as a hero despite him looking like the Heroes of legend. I mean: he’s wearing green clothes in basically every game and many of the games have those other games as backstories. Additionally, it is confirmed that there are other heroes outside of the games…so the green clothing should be a telltale sign that Link is a hero.

Along that line of thinking…what if somebody dons the hero’s green clothes because they want to be a hero or wish to be perceived as a hero…but then end up bad? This is just a natural twist you could apply to the story, though I doubt Nintendo would ever.

This is another crack theory of sorts, but it’s one which has a little more behind it (I hope).

Basically, what if each game is actually just an account of the same legend? Any differences between the accounts is explainable as geographic/chronological differences between each telling.
This would explain why the same stuff seems to happen over and over again, while the details change.

Having started rewatching matthewmatosis’ review on Zelda (linked in Trivilinks), I started to wonder where exactly Nintendo decided that Zelda needed to consistently reference past games and maintain a strict continuity…well, ‘strict’.
My gut reaction is telling me that this definitively started with Majora’s Mask or Wind Waker, but I can’t be certain yet.

So far, this is just a “thing I noticed” and I may expand on it in the future.

I’m titling the section like this because it’s catchy.

An issue that the Zelda franchise suffers from is the frequency of prequels. There are a lot of prequels…in fact, let me list them:

• A Link to the Past (Prequel to Zeldas I & II)
• Ocarina of Time (Prequel to A Link to the Past)
• Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages (Prequel to Link’s Awakening)^D)
• The Minish Cap (Prequel to the whole series)
• Skyward Sword (Prequel to the whole series)

While this doesn’t seem like a big deal, there’s a bit of a domino effect caused by so many prequels. One issue is that each prequel sorta kinda (but not always) positions itself as revealing some important truth relevant to the timeline/story as a whole (with the exception of the Oracle Games).
I’m not actually sure about A Link to the Past, so let’s just move on for now…
Ocarina of Time attempts to explain where Link got his iconic green clothes (he grew up among the Kokiri in the forest ), how Ganondorf became a thing and…that’s all I’m sure of for now.
The Minish Cap explains where Link got his green hat and why the heroes following him have worn it since.
Skyward Sword tries the same thing as Ocarina of Time, but taken to the extreme and tries to be the definitive prequel. It explains where Zelda, Link and Ganon come from and why the same events seem to happen over and over again. It explains the origin of Hyrule and the Master Sword.

There are several issues with constantly doing prequels – one being diminishing returns as, at some point, the past becomes uninteresting when we could have been moving forward instead – but one aspect is that it raises questions about the worldbuilding. This is a point made by matthewmatosis in his Skyward Sword review, where he points out that it can’t be the ultimate definitive sequel for the simple fact Link is still exploring ancient ruins in that game. Somebody must have built those ruins before they were abandoned.
This point applies to the series as a whole, too…like, who built the ruins and why are they now abandoned?
At a certain point you’ll end up going so far back in time that there’s no way you can take the worldbuilding seriously…though I think that this stage had been hit with Skyward Sword. The Minish Cap is debatable.^E)

One other issue with these prequels is that they end up undermining each-other. Zelda II introduced ‘Zelda I’ as the explanation behind all the girls in the Hyrulean royal family being named ‘Zelda’. But thanks to…every game set before Zelda II…that explanation makes no sense. You could excuse it with Link to the Past (if the Zelda there really pre-dates Zelda I) as one of the few Zeldas prior…but there is functionally no difference between “Zelda is just a popular name in the royal family~” and “All the girls are legally to be named ‘Zelda’.”

Another issue that I noticed later – after counting the number of prequels among all the games and realizing that there aren’t that many – is that there aren’t a lot of sequels that are just…sequels.
As in: most of the sequels are sequels to prequels, which has an interesting effect.

So…I decided to count them.

To be clear, I’m identifying a ‘true sequel’ as any sequel which isn’t a sequel to a prequel…which means that games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker are excluded since those are both sequels to Ocarina of Time.

So, how many? There are two: Zelda II and Breath of the Wild.

This may or may not be a problem depending on your perspective, but Zelda as a series is (or was, until Breath of the Wild) stuck in the past. Though I wouldn’t say it’s that big of an issue since, as I have established, I don’t think canon really exists.

Considering just how many Zeldas there are…I think that, realistically, girls in the Hyrulean royal family would start giving their daughters additional names to differentiate them from other Zeldas. Y’know, like how Mary-Jane is named Mary-Jane instead of just Mary.

The closest the games ever seem to get to this is with Tetra…who is the only Zelda (that I’m aware of) who has a name besides Zelda. Though the question is: is that her first or second name? Or are they both first names? ‘Zelda Tetra’?
Though I guess this is besides the point.

The other issue here is that mothers (even Zelda XVI) would have specific names in mind for their daughters, right? Legally, they’d be forced to name their children ‘Zelda’…but what’s stopping them from just adding another name? It would be the best of both worlds.

There was a fan-made Hylian language at some point, which I learned of from here. I’m mentioning it just because, though I wouldn’t call it especially notable.

If there’s gonna be a Hylian Language Project, I’ll just do it myself.

• Zelda Wiki
• Fandom Wiki
• Zelda Dungeon
• Matthewmatosis’ review series.
• From prior experience with the Zelda wikis, they make some…strange choices. The only one that I’ve noted, though which may not apply anymore, is with how they treat characters: every ‘Zelda’ is treated as a single character – combining all the versions into one article. The same for ‘Link’. This is an odd choice because, even if you subscribe to the idea that they’re reincarnations, they are still distinctly different people.
  • There’s actually a bit of a rabbit-hole here, so I may end up writing a dedicated article for the Zeldadungeon.
• As a side note, Twilight Princess’ Link cannot be the same as Ocarina of Time’s Link because they literally meet each-other…so Twilight Link can’t be a reincarnation.
• The 1d6chan article says that there’s an implication Link to the Past Link is Zelda’s brother. What…?
• I don’t remember exactly where he said it, but matthewmatosis once said that he thinks Nintendo are better game designers than they are storytellers and…after looking at the stories of all the Zelda games, I think I have to agree with him. Though I may elaborate on my own thoughts later.
• The banner on this page features ‘Zelda’ written in Hylian. Though it mixes the scripts from Link to the Past and The Wind Waker.