Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Oracle of Ages Manga


The Oracle of Ages mangas continues the story of Oracle of Seasons. Sadly the lovely Din doesn't appear in the manga except for some short flashback, but overall the story was much more smartly written, so the manga ended up being quite enjoyable as well.

Link became a skilled knight by now and at the behest of Zelda he and Impa go to Lybranna to escort Nayru back to Hyrule for her own safety, because Zelda saw shadows surrounding her. However, Veran takes over Impa's and then Nayru's body and the chaos begins. In the past Link meets Raven, who his ancestor. Link recognized him from a painting in grandfather's house. He's a knight in the house of Queen Ambi, but he also cares for a hidden village, where he brings the innocent people, who where supposed to be executed. And there's this little girl with a sapling, which later gets important and stuff. Well, Himekawa added a lot to the overall story, but it works fine and makes it much more alive and believeable. The time travelling mechanics and effects don't make much sense, but it was the same in the original game, so I don't blame Himekawa for that.

There's also the plot hole, where Veran zips into Ralph's body for quite a while. In the meantime Nayru should have been able to save herself... but oh well, it's by far not as bad as the plot holes in the Majora's Mask manga.

Link doesn't really have a party here, but Raven and Ralph join forces with him to defeat Veran. There's a funny twist, how they got Ralph back into the story. At the beginning Link takes the Harp of Ages from him and says good bye. But he then loses the harp and Ralph finds it in a Magic Shop four hundred years later. I thought that was funny. Also, at the end Link returns to his grandparents only to discover, that there's a painting of himself as a knight from the Queen Ambi times. His grandfather then tells him, that he was named after that Link and that this guy should be his hero. That was kind of funny and a nice conclusion for the manga. The grandparents helped to keep both mangas together, as a prolog and epilog basically.

Well, it's like I said at the beginning. The Ages manga lacks the beauty of Din, while Nayru can be also very charming, she's possessed by Veran for the most time, but on the other hand the overall storyline is much better than the simple "go from A to B"-plot in Seasons.

Now only the Four Swords manga is left, which is a two-parter.

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