In recent years, fans of The Legend of Zelda can find numerous ways to explore the stories of their favorite titles beyond merely playing the games. Books like the Hyrule Historia and Zelda Encyclopedia have cataloged and codified the history of Zelda‘s ever-expanding lore, while more than half of the games in the series have received manga adaptations from Akira Himekawa, including an ongoing multi-volume epic based on Twilight Princess.
This was not always the case. In the early days of Zelda fandom, there were limited avenues to explore Hyrule outside of the games themselves. There was a mediocre animated television program, of course. There were a few published picture books based on that series (I read one of those from my school library when I was quite young, I remember, but there was little to its basic narrative to stick in the mind beyond its basic Zelda-ness).
And then, as if sensing the burgeoning need for Zelda content in any fashion we could get it, there appeared the serialized comic adaptation of A Link to the Past as written by Shotaro Ishinomori.
Ishinomori’s multi-part comic saga ran monthly in Nintendo Power and, in broad strokes, told the tale of Link’s adventures through Light and Dark Worlds with a style that felt both familiar and alien. It was Zelda, alright, but it was Zelda as interpreted by another creative mind than the brain trust at Nintendo. The artwork was bold and cartoony, without feeling as cookie-cutter as much as the later manga and anime that reached our shores could (even Himekawa’s work feels far more “on-brand” than the offbeat stylings of Ishinomori’s comic).
I didn’t originally read Ishinomori’s comic in Nintendo Power itself; I wouldn’t have a steady subscription to the magazine for a while to come. Instead, I discovered a trade paperback collecting the entire miniseries in the electronics section of Walmart and exhausted my meager allowance for the week in an instant by buying it without having read a word.
I wasn’t disappointed when I did read it. Sure, it had to cut a few dungeons here and there, and sometimes details were changed, as giant worms become monstrous spiders as Ishinomori’s muse led him. But there were all sorts of new details. Link flew a hot-air balloon into Hyrule Castle, crossed the ice to Misery Mire on a sledge propelled by sail power and, sans the game’s Moon Pearl, had to learn to control his anger in the Dark World lest he be transformed into a bestial form.
There were new characters, like Roam, a hawkish (sometimes literally!) archer who was determined to find the Silver Arrow to defeat Ganon, and a much expanded role for Princess Zelda as emotional confidant to Link.
I always felt the comic must have been read by some of the developers of Ocarina of Time, as Link is accompanied by a fairy companion here, much as Navi would travel with him in the Nintendo 64 game a few years later.
But even more than surface details than that, the comic now feels prescient on the tone future games would take. The first three Zelda games are all fairly light on story. The tone can be stark and lonely in the initial NES games due to the empty world, but the basic plot is pure fairy tale, conventional happy ending and all.
Link’s Awakening was the first game to really instill a sense of darkness and melancholy into Link’s ongoing adventures, and Ishinomori’s tone can often feel matched to the Game Boy title rather than the SNES title it was actually adapting.
Link’s ordeals in the comic are seen as deadly encounters, with emotional consequences that tear at his soul. Characters die and do not come back — there is no mystical resurrection for Link’s uncle as in the game. Roam is a tragic figure, consumed by his hatred even as he unexpectedly finds his goal without ever realizing it.
And Link and Zelda, connected so closely throughout the adventure, end up isolated and alone at game’s end, separated by duty and tradition in a scenario that cut off the possibility of shipping long before it truly began to develop in later games.
Reading it, I was a bit confounded by the ending; rather than triumphant, it was muted and bittersweet, a victory that felt like something was lost. In that, it was much closer to the epic fantasies Zelda games would soon aspire to equal rather than the fairy tales its early entries echoed, but it was bit odd for a pre-teen player who had read The Hobbit but yet to tackle The Lord of the Rings.
Yet it was excellent preparation for my future jaunts into Hyrule. Link’s Awakening had already paved the way in the games itself, but the comic helped me feel at home when I played Ocarina and found a game saturated in melancholy and loss. Ultimately, Ishinomori’s comic taught me what a Zelda story could be before Zelda games entirely realized it themselves.
