The Legend of Zelda Manga: Legendary Ed. Vol. 01 (2016)

Ocarina of Time: Parts 1 and 2 (2000)

Author and Illustrator: Akira Himekawa | Page Count: 378

"You're certainly popular with the ladies."

The first TLoZ manga from Akira Himekawa* was a two-part work based on the excellent Nintendo 64 game of the same name. The Legendary Edition reprint collects both manga into one larger format HB book, with better paper and some additional colouring.

It essentially tells the same story as the game but there are some differences in how characters are introduced, none of which I found to be in any way disrespectful to its source. In fact, I feel the opposite was true - the narrative makes new connections between existing characters, enabling some very successful emotional moments to surface as a result.

The drama is never underplayed but nor does it take itself too seriously; it has an occasional playful laugh at its own expense (e.g. see the quote above).

The artwork is excellent; even the rough sketches that are included are fantastic! Child Link world has a different feel than Adult Link world and the danger level in each reflects that.

OoT was a pretty lengthy game with a lot of small events alongside its primary story, but not all of that content makes the transition from cartridge to page. The hurried pace of the manga — a consequence of content removed — is the only thing that drags the book(s) down. Although it's not all bad: the Water Temple is reduced to about four pages that amounts to Enter-Kill-Exit, which is something that many gamers wish they could've done while playing, myself included.

In addition to the main story there are two short bonus stories, one at the end of each individual volume. The first is a prequel featuring the mysterious Skull Kid; I liked it a lot. The other is unconnected to the game story and features a new race that I felt was less interesting.

It's formatted in the original 'Right to Left' manga format, so there's no flipping of the images, which is something that often happened in the era of its first publication; so yes, Link is a lefty!

*Akira Himekawa is a pen name used by a pair of authors/artists whose real names are currently unknown. In interviews they often refer to themselves individually as A. Honda and S. Nagano.