ZELDA NO DENSETSU: MAJORA NO KAMEN
STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
January 1, 2001
CHAPTERS
10
DESCRIPTION
Based off the popular N64 game. Looking for a old friend in the lost woods, Link soon finds himself thrown into a parallel world by the mischievous actions of a possessed Skull Kid. Link finds a land in grave danger. The dark power of a relic called Majora's Mask has wreaked havoc on the citizens of Termina, but their most urgent problem is a suicidal moon crashing toward the world. Link has only 72 hours to find a way to stop its descent.
(Source: Anime News Network)
CAST
Link
Zelda
Anju
Skull Kid
Fierce Deity Link
Kafei
CHAPTERS
RELATED TO ZELDA NO DENSETSU: MAJORA NO KAMEN
REVIEWS
MegaTheRealOne
If Majora's Mask Was BadContinue on AniList(Originally Reviewed On GoodReads)
As a big fan of the original N64 classic that we all know and love, I really enjoyed my time with the manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time back when I read it a week or so ago. Both volumes, Part 1 and Part 2, managed to give us a version of this familiar story that was slightly abridged, yet still felt like a faithful adaptation to the original source material that managed to be very entertaining and well done for what it was, which was helped out tremendously with a set of really good characters with plenty of personality (or at least, more personality than they had in the original game), solid writing all around, some pretty good art that fit the series it was meant to be adapting extremely well, and plenty of sweet action scenes that helped bring a lot of these moments to life and gave them the right amount of intensity that they needed. It felt nice to finally check out these two books again after not having read either of them for so long, but of course, that was just only the beginning for what this series of manga was willing to put out. Yes, the Ocarina of Time part of this epic tale was officially over, but there plenty of other manga made for the series that adapted several of the other games that were made over the years, and since they had already gotten done adapting one of the most popular games in the series, I figured they must’ve thought what better game could they have adapted next other than the direct sequel to that original game. So, after only a few months since the release of the last volume, we got our next chapter of these manga adaptations, that being with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Out of all of the different manga adaptations that this series has, this was definitely one of the ones that I was most excited to get to above a lot of the others. Majora’s Mask is definitely one of my favorite games in the entire series, and the story that comes from that game, along with all of the other minor story elements surrounding said main plot, are one of the best aspects of that game, so to see that properly adapted into an actual book like this was definitely one of the best choices that the two authors could've made with this series. Although, with that being said, I was also slightly worried about what I was gonna get from this adaptation, despite how excited I was to get to it. Unlike with Ocarina of Time, this adaptation was only one volume long, and seeing as those previous volumes did somewhat rush through the story elements of that game, I figured the same thing was gonna happen as well, which may not have been that big of a problem for Ocarina of Time, but for Majora’s Mask, that could DEFINITELY become a much more apparent flaw. Regardless of that though, I decided to press on with reading the manga either way, and whaddya know, I ended up having a great time with it anyway. Shocker, I know, right? I don’t think I would say I liked it quite as much as the Ocarina of Time adaptation, primarily because of how my fears from earlier were confirmed when reading it, but it still managed to make up for that for the most part in plenty of ways, giving us a great retellings of the original game’s main plot and carrying all of the same great elements from the previous adaptation to help make it all that much better.
The story is about what you would expect, being mostly an adaptation of Majora’s Mask main plotline, and while it isn’t perfect for the reasons you would expect, it still managed to be very entertaining and once again does a great job at retelling the plot of the original game, despite being somewhat abridged yet again, the characters are pretty good, with Link still being as great as ever, now being more mature due to what he experienced in the previous game, while also still having a good amount of that personality that makes him very likable in the first place, and all of the other characters like Tatl, Skull Kid, Anju and Kafei are also really good too, even if they also are resorted to the typical character traits you would expect, the writing is fairly solid once again for the most part, not really having any dialogue that is too great or clever for this series, but it works well enough in pushing this story further and giving these characters more… well, character then they would’ve had otherwise, the art is still great, using the same art style that the previous adaptation had, with it still looking pretty great and very fitting with the source material, with it even making some disgusting abominations from the original game, like the Goron Elder, slightly less disgusting, and the action is great as well, having plenty of great moments that look wonderful when illustrated, especially with the final battle with Link wearing the Fierce Deity’s Mask, even if it can also be short lived at times.
But of course, since this is a Legend of Zelda manga we are talking about, it obviously has some flaws, and if you are one who read the previous manga, you could probably recall the exact problems that I am talking about. Like with the original, the plot that they adapt here feels kinda rushed, to where it isn’t quite as bad as that of Ocarina of Time since there is less to cover here, but some story events and revelations can feel skimmed over and unimportant compared to other parts that they do focus on, such as how they dedicate one or two pages to Link defeating the last boss monster to awaken the fourth giant, and there are also grammar errors here once again, although I did notice that there weren’t nearly as many as that of the Ocarina of Time adaptation, so that’s good to see. Additionally, there was also another problem that I had with this thing overall, one that may not be really fair to call it out for given what the manga is at the end of the day, and that is the lack of side game content adapted here. If you have played Majora’s Mask to completion yourself, you would know that the side quests are some of the best parts of that whole game, as they are not only very fun to do and can give you plenty of great rewards, but they also help a lot at bringing the game to life, fleshing out a lot of these side characters, adding to the overall emotion of the game, and how it all ties into the themes the game explored and how everyone reacts to the fact that they are literally going to die in a couple of days time if Link doesn’t stop the moon from crashing into Termina. In the manga, they do somewhat do this to an extent, having one or two pages dedicated to the characters reacting to the moon getting closer and closer, but it doesn’t really go beyond that, which is somewhat disappointing. The only side quest material they do adapt from the game is the one with Anju and Kafei, which is great, considering that is one of the best side quests in the whole game, but I do wish there was just a little more of that here to really bring it all home in the same way that the game did. Unfortunately though, that is just not what we ended up with here.
Overall, despite how the story is once again rushed, there are still grammar errors, and there is a disappointing lack of side content present here, and the manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask still manages to be an incredibly solid adaptation of the original source material, one that does a great job at bringing in most of the main content from the original game that people loved while also making sure to keep things entertaining, adventurous, and sometimes disturbing all the way through, and I really enjoyed it, what with its really good story, another set of very solid characters paired with some good writing all around, art that still looks great and fits right in with the original source material, and enough brief, yet still great action scenes to really keep all of that excitement and tension up all the way throughout most of the whole thing. I would definitely recommend it to those that loved the previous Zelda adaptation, as well as those who are a big fan of the original game and other manga like this, as while it still isn’t the perfect adaptation of the original game by any means, it still manages to get a lot right both in terms of the story and everything else to where any Zelda fan and casual reader should be able to get plenty of enjoyment out of it either way, which is all anyone like me could ask for………….. oh yeah, I guess I should mention, this manga also has an original story that depicts the origins of Majora’s Mask and how it came to be…. for some reason. I wasn’t really wondering where it came from or why it contained a dark and evil power, but hey, it’s cool that we have that, I suppose. So that now begs the question, when is Nintendo gonna actually put this in an actual Zelda game in the future?......... probably never.
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MORE INFO
Ended inJanuary 1, 2001
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