Random: Manga In Old Zelda: Link To The Past Guide Shows Link’s Pre-Navi Fairy Companion
Image: Nintendo Life
Zelda’s timeline is a difficult beast to understand. There are different threads with Link at a different stage of his heroism, things that are canon and non-canon and always the promise that the next game could come along and change everything (we’re looking at you, Tears of the Kingdom).
For the most part, the timeline excludes most Zelda-derived sources (TV shows, manga, graphic novels, etc.), though that’s not to say there aren’t interesting facts to be gleaned from it. these formats. Take the following images from “The Perfect Zelda Fan Book”, a Japanese guide for A Link to the Past which also contains a short manga for the first three games in the series.
The guide was recently scanned by Melora for the Zelda History of Hyrule fan site. This is the first time the pages have been uploaded in high quality and the manga therein gives us a glimpse of Link and a very human fairy companion, long before the arrival of Navi from Ocarina of Time. Check out the third image in the following tweet for a closer look.
This has never been online before! I just made 1200 dpi scans of the “Perfect Zelda Fan Book”, a little guide for LttP with adorable illustrations and short manga for each of the first 3 games. We see Link with a fairy companion before Navi appears: https://t.co/qONWPEo3bW pic.twitter.com/mkAMRsIDp8— History of Hyrule (Zelda Archivist) ♿✊🏿🏳️⚧️🏞️ (@HistoryofHyrule) 31 January , 2023
This fairy companion (potentially Emheralda from the other LTTP graphic novels) can be seen in two of the three manga found at the end of the guide, which you can view for free on the Internet Archive. Neither Zelda II: The Adventure of Link nor Link to the Past sees the titular hero teaming up with a fairy sidekick (this had to be saved until OOT), but this news shows that such an idea was definitely circulating at the time. – even if it was unofficially.
We also recommend checking out the full fan book itself on the archive. If you yearn for the return of informative playbooks, nothing will make you so nostalgic (and after playing Tunic last year, the comparisons are even clearer)!
Are there any other Zelda stories that haven’t made their way into the gaming world yet? Let us know in the comments!
[source archive.org, via twitter.com]
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Whether it’s raving about video games or superheroes, Jim wears his passions on his sleeve. Usually found replaying a Zelda title instead of working on its ever-growing backlog, he’s a huge fan of all things fantasy and loves nothing more than discussing it.