The LttP manga basically has the concepts for the Hero of Time/Ancient Hero/the split timeline (and Fi) years before OoT, TP, and SS:

"The Master Sword is reacting to something..it's trying to tell me where the location of the enemy is" 

-Zelda: A Link to the Past by Ataru Cagiva, 1996

"Oh hey there Fi!"

For people who don't know me, these posts about the manga are just for fun because I think it's interesting.

I've known Mak probably longer than anyone else on the internet since we were both on the first forum/social site I ever joined, Gaming Universe. It was a general gaming forum but he was a Zelda knowledge guru and I was all about the Zelda material scanning. The thing I love about knowing him is that my mind does not remember story details, his does, and I will forever love the incredible but somewhat random discussions that happen when we all get together.

When I was re-scanning the LttP manga I posted this:

HoH: "Spoiler if you haven't read the LttP Cagiva manga then this is that time, all the way in 1995, that Link met the spirit of a Link from the past at the Master Sword who then tested him and eventually taught him how to wield it."

HoH: "From our old translations/scanlations of volume 3: I'm going to be uploading good, new, scans of these 3 volumes starting tomorrow but if you want to read the old scans in English, just start here: historyofhyrule.com/publications/manga_lttp1 "

HoH: "If you don't get my wistful reference *cough*"

The Ancient Hero, the Hero's Spirit, Hero's Shade from Twilight Princess, teaches his descendent

And Mak dropped in and pointed out: "In ALttP's backstory, no one was around to wield the Master Sword, so Ganon was sealed away. In the game's boss fight, Ganon has a secret technique of darkness. In the manga (1996) Ganon also used the technique of darkness and the hero from the Imprisoning War 600 years ago lost."

Mak: "Ocarina of Time (1998) deals with the Imprisoning War and the sealing of Ganon. In the game Ganondorf uses waves of darkness, and Navi cannot help. Link ultimately defeats Ganondorf with Zelda and the Sages. That should lead to A Link to the Past, but the Master Sword was used..."

Mak: "Ganon is suppose to be sealed with the whole Triforce for ALttP to occur but only has Power in the game's ending. Its mentioned early Ganon has to take it from Link and Zelda since it split."

"Hyrule Historia (2011) explains a timeline split occurs during the battle with Ganondorf, one where Link wins, and one where Link loses with Ganondorf gaining the entire Triforce and sealed by the Sages, leading to ALttP."

Mak: "I brought this up before when you first published the Cagiva manga English translations . Its interesting to see a similar scenario play out with the previous hero in the early manga from 1996."

"Going back to influences, Dragon Ball Z is huge in Japan, everyone has seen it. The time travel aspect with Trunks is similar to Ocarina of Time (and Avengers Endgame). Trunks can only return to his future, he can't change it. The sequel Dragon Ball Super follows the same logic."

HoH: "This is really random but didn't one of the earlier artists for Zelda also come from a Dragon Ball background? I could be remembering wrong but if not: I wonder if they did what people do and still went to lunch with their old colleagues and discussed work and stuff."

Mak: "Toei produced the Dragon Ball anime and supposedly the cell art for Zelda 1."

 

Mak: "The ancestor in the manga is basically an early Hero of Time."

And that was our fun little manga chat! Enjoy the manga, y'all. 

Massive Dump of Retro Magazine Scans Incoming

I would like to mention that there are interviews in them that I really hope someone translates! Link me if you know of someone who is doing that!

I've been wanting to post this (and a few other things!) for a few days but Blogger has been acting up and then I had to play through LttP, lol, but thanks to the absolutely incredible efforts of the Videogame History Foundation, and Hubz of Gaming Alexandria, a huge batch of Family Computer Magazine from 1886 and beyond (and Famitsu magazine) have been purchased in bulk and are being archivally scanned. And just being scanned, period, for the first time is incredible because it's allowing us a whole new look at the history of the series: and it's honestly it's already a goldmine. Look at just a few highlights from just a few issues:

As twitter user MrTalida points out:

In this series of tweets we see that these 4 issues feature Legend of Zelda Q&A interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, identified by their pseudonyms at the time of "MIYAHON" and "TEN TEN."

That this features images of sprites before they were finalized

This is a Q&A with Miyamoto and Tezuka teasing mentioning the Adventure of Link very recently after Hyrule Fantasy's release

Dark_Linkael realized this was a different photo of the overworld map model and noted these cool differences that mirror what the original prototype of the Hyrule overworld looked like

This, below, is my favorite thing ever though!

VGDensetsu posted these pages of these adorable clay models of pink haired Link from A Link to the Past and let us know that they were created by Hiroyuki Nakazawa / なかざわひろゆき. They're pictures taken from the September 11, 1992 issue of Famitsu, also uploaded by Hubz on Archive.org. They remind me so much of what they ended up doing for the Link's Awakening remake that I kind of wonder if someone at the company remembered these, pulled them out, and was like "I know how this should look."

There is this really awesome 4 page comic that user Capcom of Metroid Database scanlated and posted in this tweet

Anyway, Hubz has been scanning the Famitsu issues for a while and you'll see a whole load of them but the Family Computer Magazine issues are new: be sure to check both out on his site or user page at archive.org. And follow VGDensetsu and MrTalida on twitter, they post/find/highlight some of the most amazing stuff.

Zelda Manga: Scanlations of The Adventure of Link by Yuu Mishouzaki

After all these years the translation is finally complete! Find them here

These were translated by Jamie/Soupdragon90 and I've attached an image of their credits and translation notes to help explain more. (Flickr won't let me upload text files)

Title: The Adventure of Link

Artist: Yuu Mishouzaki

Publisher & ISBN Info: ISBN4-7966-0191-0 by JICC

First Published Date: 1991/9/15

Approx Length: 203 pages

This was started by Glitterberri for her site

Vol 1, LoZ: www.glitterberri.com/the-legend-of-zelda/mishouzaki-manga

Vol 2, AoL: www.glitterberri.com/adventure-of-link/mishouzaki-sequel

Go there to read volume 1 for the original Legend of Zelda

The first volume was scanned by Kasuto: www.kasuto.net

The second was scanned by me: historyofhyrule.com

I've posted the full volume here simply to make it easier to read. I held off for a long time because I really wanted people to go to Glitterberri's site to the part she was able to finish but it's been a few years, and Jamie did a ton of work to make all the pages match, so I thought it would probably be okay.

Zelda Manga: 600dpi scans of all 3 Volumes of Adventure of Link Game Guide Manga

There's no translation for these yet! That's such a bummer! If you can help out with that please let me know, melorasworld@gmail.com

This is a really fun manga because it pulls of being both a story and a literal game guide. Because of that it offers some really great illustrations for the places and environments in the Adventure of Link. I do think the first volume by Daisuke Shigoto is a bit more inspired than the last 2 by Yuu Minazuki but they did do a pretty good job of picking up where someone else left off. I have no idea for the change, I just know these were in the monthly magazine series Wanpakku comics around  1997-1988. They were collected into volumes but don't even have ISBN numbers.

Volume 1 scans at 600dpi

Volume 2 scans at 600dpi

Volume 3 scans at 600dpi

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link manga Volume 1 by Daisuke Shigoto

Published by Wanpakku Comics

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link manga Volume 2 by Yuu Minazuki

Published by One Pack Comics

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link manga Volume 3 by Yuu Minazuki

Published by One Pack Comics

 

Zelda Manga: 600 dpi Scans of all 3 Volumes of Ataru Cagiva's Link to the Past manga

It feels so good to have good scans of these on the web after all these years! We didn't do it at first because we were worried they would be re-published but that never happened. 

I can't wait to have the old translations on the new pages so they're as beautiful as they can be! I want everyone to love these and that should really help encourage people to want to read them. By the way, if you have really nice editing skills and would like to do that please just let me know so a bunch of people aren't doing the same work all at once!

Volume 1 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

Volume 2 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

Volume 3 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 1
Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 1
The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 1
Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva
Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス
Publication date: June 27, 1995
Language: Japanese
Page count: 192 pages
ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-541-8

 

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 2

Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 2

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 2

Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva

Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス

Publication date: December 27, 1995

Language: Japanese

Page count: 191 pages

ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-522-9

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 3

Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 3

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 3

Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva

Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス

Publication date: May 27, 1996

Language: Japanese

Page count: 191 pages

ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-559-6

I've spent 20 years being told the manga doesn't matter and I'm over it:

I always hear "Why isn't this manga more well known"... "this is such obscure material, that's why no one ever talked about it" etc.

Oh man guys... I really tried and it really shouldn't be.

Cool little fun things like this shouldn't be new to you either. We should have been having so much fun exploring all of this stuff for years now.

So a little backstory here: People who would link to my site on most of the big Zelda forums, back around 2002-2006, wanting to discuss some of the really cool and relevant topics found in the manga or gamebooks, would get their posts deleted and told not to bring it up again. "Zelda manga isn't a real Zelda topic," "Don't link to her site, it's not a real Zelda site and not relevant to Zelda discussion" they said... as they would discuss the Valiant Comics and cartoons. My site and this subject matter was effectively banned from being posted about or linked to on many of the major Zelda sites and Zelda forums. It was serious gatekeeping. When people would recommend my site be nominated for awards, they were told it wasn't allowed. Back in the early days Zelda Wiki wouldn't allow links to it or info from it, saying it wasn't really relevant content and that I hosted material still in print (I did not. In fact I worked hard to get it brought out officially in other languages.  No, really, here is Himekawa talking about it recently) while the site linked to other sites that continued to host other still-in-print works or US comics. It was weird times. I have a lot of webmaster friends that will vouch for how bizzare it was and how accurate this tale is. Anyway. Because of this continued gatekeeping we have absolutely missed out on so much. It was all kind of hushed away, a collective "we don't talk about this seriously in regards to the series," mood settled over much of the community.

I am so tired of pretending it doesn't matter simply because, historically, some people have been so loud and hostile towards anything they don't personally like.

Look, maybe you just don't like the manga. That's fine! Oddly, I'm not a giant manga fan either. I'm an art fan. I've just come to realize, in my 30 year long obsessive quest to find rare Zelda art material, that it's absolutely incredibly interesting in the context of the series. It's actually important. Maybe you would feel this way too if you spent some time on it. But why should you, you ask?

Why should we consider manga relevant to the creative development of the Zelda games? Especially if you don't really like it? 

Because someone likes manga. A lot. Enough that that's what he left art school wanting to do. Let's look at who that is:

Why is how he feels important?

It's not like his love of exploration as a child affected the course of the series or anything either...

I can't imagine why a guy who obviously REALLY likes manga, and grew up in a culture that is surrounded by comics to a vastly greater extent than most of the rest of the world, would check out manga based on his games, especially after he had only made 1-2 Zelda games... Come on! Seriously? I mean, everyone always wonders why Link has hot pink hair in LttP. It's a question that's gotten asked non-stop for decades. Everyone ends up saying Link had pink hair because it needed to share the exact pink with the rabbit, which by the way doesn't even share the same pink, but you know... it could never be because there were 2 years of really good monthly Zelda manga magazines on the shelves where Link had hot pink hair: in 1986-1988, well before LttP was released. So... why isn't that a consideration for you on that topic? Because... manga is just that invalid to you (or those before you) as a creative source of inspiration? Should it be?

Seriously: the burden of proof should be on the people who claim there is no way it could matter. Go to and art school and ask all the people there how they feel about that claim. Or a game dev studio and do the same. If you don't know anyone with extensive knowledge of both, feel free to ask me though and I can get you a shit-ton of responses for you. But I don't really even need to and neither do you because:

Let's look at whom else may have read some Zelda manga and had it create everlasting waves in the Zelda series...

"This guy? If I don't like manga then why would what influences him be important either," a great number of people have apparently muttered.

Well, let's see what he has to say... From this source I uploaded in 2005 

-----

Eiji Aonuma: In Ocarina of Time, as in most Zelda, we have created a large number of tribes, like the Goron who live in the mountains or the Zoras, people from the water. For the episode "The Wind Waker”, when we chose to situate the action in the middle of the ocean, we immediately felt the need to create a race that can move through the air. During long trips offshore, we needed faster characters capable of transmitting information to Link. It was at that moment that I remembered Watatara clan, you had invented for the adaptation of "Ocarina of Time." In short, I digress a bit about the initials but we are inspired by your work to give birth to Rito Race, creatures that are half-man half-bird that can move very quickly with their wings.

-----

Nagano (Himekawa): Frankly, we would be so happy if the creative Nintendo could learn from our manga to realize their games! To participate in the development of a Zelda, even indirectly, we would be mad with joy.

Eiji Aonuma: Well I can tell you, you’re already a great help! I've seen guys in my team who for a little help from mental exertion were taking their break by reading manga Akira Himekawa (laughs)! You have a knack for telling wonderful stories to us that is very useful. I, for example, I love your adaptation of the title "Four Swords Adventures". Yet, the content has so much more to do with then the original. In the original, four Link’s have the same expressions and the same reactions. Once they are passed in your hand, one will be impressed by how you came to give so many different personalities to each Link. You really did a good job on this subject, which is undeniable. The pages are yet in black and white but you can easily divide each Link by their given personality.

-----

Well. Huh. ...maybe... hop on this train because it's obviously fun and relevant. Or, at least... Stop gatekeeping? You don't have to enjoy manga or gamebooks but you're preventing people from discussing and discovering the history and context of the series by continuously dismissing it.

-----

A special shoutout to Mike Damiani, TSA, The Silent Assassin, for being "that guy" and to the massive numbers of people in the community who continued to support him even after these shows of extremely toxic behavior directed specifically towards women and "non-canon" content. You absolutely gave him the power to create an incredibly hostile environment. He posted so many rants like this on his Zelda page, ZHQ2/The Hylia:

(Context for what he's saying here: He was mad at me for refusing to remove an image of 2 adult men kissing from my site (he equated being gay to being a pedophile. I do not know why he thought he had the right to dictate what I had posted on my site but he got very serious about it and sent dozens of messages trying to explain it. Which I should still have catalogued on my first forum's backup. Hey, what can I say, I'm an archivist at heart) and for pointing out that the gallery "he scanned" was actually just my scans. He was stealing from, and then bashing, some of these other sites too and had been called out. He ended up doing this kind of thing to a lot of people in the Zelda community. until I guess he finally just burned all his bridges. But sadly people chose to support him as one of the biggest community leaders for years rather than draw a line at his clear and upfront damaging behavior.)

Though 80% of the people pictured here are awesome.

When I went away due to the gatekeeping, my health, and Mike's barrage of attacks, the site was down for a bit and when I put it back online (while still very disabled) it was not indexed well for newer search engines. For years the community had been discouraged from linking to these works, shouted down and shamed for talking about it because of stuff like that, so this content just became obscured. It's that easy. 

This has been your intro into the early history of Zelda fandom and why you probably don't know about content that's been online for 20 years.

-----

Anyway, with all that bullshit out of the way, as very clear tale about why I'm not going to just meekly pretend I'm not be excited about this stuff anymore like I use to, I'll probably start making short posts showing some of the fun ideas that first appeared in the various volumes of Japanese manga, gamebooks, and novels and I'm fucking psyched about it!!

Like as teasers: this amazing point Mak brings up one about the Imprisoning War and the split timelines, this incomplete one of mine about a lot of the firsts in the Ran Maru manga, and this little thing from the LttP manga that reminds me of Fi.

The manga, gamebooks, and novels are clearly a part of the history of Hyrule. If you have hang-ups about why you feel otherwise, question those. To start: all you need to do is look at what traditionally inspires creative minds working in the industry.

Edit: *cough* Miyamoto was probably never creatively influenced by manga *cough*

I got a better scanner, here's the difference:

In the menu you'll find my scanning guide and from it you'll see there's a link to a more in-depth scanning guide. It links to a community written guide for Gaming Alexandria. They scan some stuff for the Video Game History Foundation. Anyway, my little Canon Lide 300 was great, but it maxes out at 1200dpi and so it starts showing small remnants of compression artifacts at that level. Really wasn't the end of the world but considering I want these scans to be the final time anyone has to rip apart these books, I want to really go bananas with doing it right. 

Got this guy based on the recommendations of that group, which doesn't break the bank but isn't cheap either. Epson Perfection V600 is for sale for about $250. The Canon Lide 300, which I still do like way more than the similarly priced Epson V19, is around $110, (if you can find it, it's also an older machine.)

It makes sense there would be a quality difference, the higher end Epson is deep. It has room for better equipment, it goes up to something like 9400dpi- for god knows what reason. Reading molecular structure? To flex? It kind of sucks if you have a small space like I do, because the scanning bed isn't any bigger than my little Canon, but whatever, I just have to keep my desk more free of clutter. Here's the size comparison:

But, more importantly, here's the image comparison. This is at 1200dpi and zoomed in at 600% and all adjustment features have been turned off for these with both scanners. I do all my adjustments post in photoshop (Please keep in mind Blogger may add some compression too, this is just a rough example)

Left, Canon Lide 300, $110. Right Epson V600 $250. No adjustments and zoomed to 600%

Same image as the comparison above with un-adjusted colors from Canon Lide 300

Same image as the comparison above with un-adjusted colors from Epson V600

Here's an image, for no real reason, (it was my first test image so I just have it sitting here) showing the different scan sizes, It was done with the Epson V600 if you're curious.

Thanks for coming to my nerd talk

EDIT: If you're in default profesional mode, like you don't have presets you're importing or calibrating yourself, then every time you do a new preview in professional mode you have to hit the reset button to turn the color correction off. (You don't have to do a new preview with each scan so it's honestly not a big deal, but I mention it because it will catch you off guard.) You can see the change in that icon on the left: You don't want the arrows touching the sphere. Look at the pink post-it note to see how much that auto correct burns the image.