Sep 2, 2022
This manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a dumbed down and dull retelling of the events that occurred in the video game.
The story is incredibly shortened, and in a lot of ways censored. Link will go from place to place, introducing characters which are then tossed to the curb in the exact same chapter. The time Link spends freeing the giants feels so horribly rushed, even though it's supposedly the main goal in the story. They especially did Twinmold dirty, not even really getting his own chapter and barely getting two pages worth of time, which is an odd pacing choice,
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considering how much time all of the other giants got. The only slight silver lining is the ending was pretty solid, nothing special. I definitely don't think the manga earned it's heartfelt ending, but it was endearing enough. 3/10
The characters are a complete disappointment. The character I enjoyed the most was Tatl, and that can't be a good thing since she's supposed to be the annoying one. The Happy Mask Salesman was delightfully creepy, and I enjoyed Link. The only other characters I can give the nod to are Anju and Kafei. Their relationship was sweet, but didn't need to be stretched as long as it was. In any case, the rest of the characters were either horribly rushed or just glossed over. Skull Kid had the time to win me over, but something about his presentation in the manga didn't really work. Maybe it's the fact that he's completely absent from the middle of the story. Speaking of which, the middle of the story is where it truly suffers. You meet all these characters that live in the different locations of Termina. In the video game, these characters are grounded and really make you care about them, but in the manga, they're all just plot devices, missing all the nuance of the video game. "Missing nuance" is the best way to describe the vast majority of these characters. 4/10
The art is all well done. Most characters have a somewhat cutesy style which is nice, but I think it would've been really powerful if contrasted by the dreadful tones found in the video game. Even without that, however, everything looks just right visually. I do have to say that sometimes it is incredibly difficult to understand what's going on. Panels can be cluttered with characters preforming these complicated actions that have a good opportunity to go right over the reader's head. 7/10
Overall, this manga isn't abysmal. If you have zero access to the video game, but you have the manga, you'll be able to understand just enough to get a feel for the actual game. I'd say this is the more child-friendly version of Majora's Mask, but a child could easily get lost when the panels begin to get overloaded with information. Fans of Majora's Mask would be disappointed, so this manga is purely for people with a passing interest in The Legend of Zelda. You can pick it up, put it down, and move on. 6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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