Majora's Mask and the Art of Dark Symbolism

you The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask is what I would like to consider one of my favorite video games of all time. Being a huge Nintendo gamer and more specifically a Zelda fan, I was absolutely obsessed with the feeling of endless adventure it brought to me. by its prodigal predecessor ocarina of time, you see that my young man would stay awake every night during the summer advancing endlessly through the Deku tree, the cave of dongho and the belly of jabu jabu, after this followed the forest fire, the shadow of the water and the spiritual temples with their numerous dungeons before heading. to the damned lion's den scaling Ganon's castle to face the great king of evil in his two forms, oh God, what days those were strangely, it would be a few months until my young man would get the revelation that the ocarina of time had a direct sequel. hmm, a sequel, you say now, you see, at this point I was still just a child at this point in my life.

I had a weird but gigantic obsession with Paper Mario and Zelda that kind of took a backseat while I got on with that game, see? This was before the days of online tutorials and I had a whopping zero dollars to spend on a strategy guide so this took a while, anyway once I finally got around to playing Majora's Mask I didn't really understand it , there is a complicated moment. The system and all my things reset to zero. Also, why can't I just save by pressing V like I did before? Seriously, Nintendo, what's going on? I just didn't understand it and it seems that after reading a lot about this, many other people my age didn't understand it either until we grew up.

You see, Majora's Mask is one of those games that requires deliberation and critical thinking, being a far cry from the legendary hero's quest in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask was much more. personal effort to persist in university. I revisited the land of Termina in a nostalgia-fueled attempt to finally master something I had easily given up on a decade earlier, when in doing so I was able to understand what I was supposed to do instead of pressing buttons in dialogue like I used to. doing so had real meaning and being at an age where I could make sense of it led me to a revelation that I hold to this day.

The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask is a

dark

and enigmatic masterpiece. Finding the reason why Majora's Mask didn't appeal to me younger isn't really that difficult, it's complicated, yes the three day cycle really left me scratching my head, confused as to what to do, the start of the game was slow and quite thought out . Besides allowing you to take your true form and go through dungeons, it was also another hindering factor, actually, it was just a hodgepodge of my youth along with these reasons that led me to not want to complete it, so why am I talking about this now ? well my friends, apart from the very obvious and nightmarish moon, the undertones of Majora's

mask

s are very

dark

and creepy, these Hans come from everywhere while you play and everything, every theme, every character's background, every mini story that weaves throughout this overall story is absolutely unapologetically masterful.

We know that the game relies heavily on a skin system, only a few of them - and we'll get to this shortly - are necessary to progress the main story. Aside from the three transformers, there are 21 other skins in total, each of which comes with a unique story. None of the non-story skins are required to complete the game, but are instead completely optional, allowing you to experience a A multitude of side stories that require you to connect and interact with the citizens of Clock Town. This is where the tone is divided between Majora. The

mask

and ocarina of time really become apparent.

Ocarina of Time has you play as a legendary hero of time, giving you the main focus of killing Ganon and saving the princess. The game reminds you over and over who you are chasing and what your ultimate goal is. Majora's Mask is the antithesis of this idea in its entirety, you know how it is at the end of the climatic episode of Ocarina of Time. Princess Zelda rewarded her bond by sending him back to her own time in hopes of allowing him to live out the childhood she had given him. To save Hyrule by doing so, Navi disappeared into the unknown and thus ties him to the search for her long-lost friend.

This is when Majora's Mask begins, instead of being a chosen one. Initially, nothing more than the quiet ambience of minimalist music along with the clatter of hooves hitting the ground beneath us, this in its entirety sets the tone for how the rest of this dark enigma of a game would unfold leaping forward, the silence is interrupted when we are ambushed by Skull Kid we start chasing him before the direct confrontation and he transforms us into a Deku scrub after we advance alongside Tattle, one of the Skull Kids' fairy friends, to finally come face to face with one of the darkest and most prominent characters in this game. the happy mask seller exhibits the biggest and most obvious sign of the rigid tone split between the ocarina of time and the mask of

majora

if i had to choose a central character to serve as an example of this it would be him in ocarina it's nothing more than a happy-go-lucky, I'll be a slightly strange mask salesman who has a shop in the castle town.

Interacting with him is nothing more than optional and the skins you get from his side quests are ultimately cosmetic more than anything else. In Majora, he wears a completely different Persona and role now that he has knowledge, and with this disturbingly strange power, you make a deal with him, bringing back the mask that Skull Kid stole from him, the same mask that has the potential to unrelenting, unfathomable destruction and He will give you back your life so that you can live once again as a human in the dystopia of Termina. Think about this link. Mina's agreement for her life.

The link is trapped in a dark and doomed parallel universe. The link made a deal with a figurative demon. Each failed attempt to Save Termina in three days results in the happy mask salesman ominously telling us his famous line "You've met a terrible fate, haven't you?" as the world burns hellishly to the ground, but that's the bad end, that's the entrance you encounter. If you do not end up fulfilling your agreement, the ocean, the swamp mountain and the canyon are explained to us as the regions that must be saved to free the deities of each area in order to save the land from ends, so we undertake a quest to ensure that not only us but all the unworthy residents of this parallel realm survive this impending doom looming over us, so we are the newbies in Terminal Clock Town and head out to chat with all the residents to discover What the hell is going on along the way, we encounter a multitude of people having trivial problems that together add up to complement the central theme of this game.

To start, we have the grandmother from the end who is attacked by the second one. kymaro the man who couldn't die the Rosa sisters the dancers who just couldn't do it right Gorman who had all his performances canceled guru-guru the one with the Bremen mask and many many others all these stories add up to a collective feeling of hopelessness and pain and this is from the beginning, we haven't even gotten into the stories behind the transforming masks, when you get the mask seller to end the curse they have placed on you, you can collect the Deku scrub as a Transforming mask, however , this is a stark contrast to the origins of the Goron and Sora masks, as they come from beings who have passed away and been laid to rest or there is a small detail that many might overlook from the beginning.

In this game, when you cross the chasm while trying to escape with gossip, you come across a shriveled Deku that appears to be dead, keep this in mind and fast forward through the game to where you can play the races. minigame with the Deku Butler to obtain the mask of senses and you will notice that the Deku Butler says something that many might miss. You remind me of my son. With this it has become widely believed that the Sun is like this. The Deku scrub we passed up at the beginning of the game, this is further supported when we see him crying next to the same scrub during the end credits.

What if when Skullkid cursed us in the Deku Forum he did so immediately by sucking all the life out of it? an innocent being that leaves him with an indefinite and undeserved death, this ultimately becomes an important addition to the predominant themes we have created for this game, hopelessness, pain and now undeserved death for innocent people in Snowhead, we set out to put the spirit of the Goron leader. darmani, who risked his entire life trying to save Snow Head from the skull, the children curse to rest when they did were tasked with comforting the Gorons. The eldest son has nothing but an apparition of Darmani himself, he once again faces death and pain by leaping into the Great Bay.

They were tasked with saving Lulu's eggs from death and putting the Zora Macao spirit to rest once again. Additionally, these eggs are undeservedly destined to die due to climate change caused by the curse of the skull children, all of which tie into the themes of hopelessness and hopelessness. Death Icona Canyon is one of the most notable examples of how dark Majora's Mask can be, although the entire region is home to the invisible Ikono species, a tribe of skeleton-like creatures that have been overrun by invaders called garo I. Cana was once a thriving region full of life much like Hyrule and has since wandered so far that it is now a dystopian area that is widely known as the home of lost wandering souls and the undead.

One of the strange masks you get in this region is the Gibdo Mask which allows you to talk to mummies and you get it by playing the healing song alongside the Gibdo father of a girl trapped inside probably the only colorful house in the entire area. One of my favorite parts of the entire game. falls within the Romani ranch. I just don't know what it is about ranches and Zelda games that stay with me forever. Romani was the one that affected me the most because in the mission we had the task of dealing with them, how great is this, nothing, nothing gives me anything.

The feeling that I'm in a dark, wacky parallel universe, rather than a big, big fucking alien invasion, was one of the scariest, most adrenaline-inducing moments in this entire game, and it's really for good reason. Throughout the game Romani along with other NPCs would make reference to coming to kidnap cows once a year, unfortunately for us, that day somehow falls perfectly within a short span of three days that occurred in the world of ends, on the other side of the clock city, you will find many NPCs who talk about a certain experience. with them and how transformative it was, this allows us to speculate the possibility that these people were probably experimented on, but wait, according to Romani, aliens came every year to kidnap cows, so what makes you see the beauty of this segment it's the lack of knowledge surrounding If you fail the mission at the ranch, Romani is kidnapped and acts strikingly different from before, almost as if she was in a total fog, was lobotomized, was investigated, or raped.

The beauty of this game is that we don't know that it is like a phenomenon that is as mysterious to us as it is to the characters in the game and this was done to make us feel something that is absolutely incredible. However, I couldn't make any of these connections or even had the will to do so as a child. Even if he did, he probably wouldn't be able to understand them once again. Majora's Mask absolutely requires deliberation and critical thinking, as everyone knows, many theories have been made over the years about the dark undertones of Majora's Mask, of course, of course, we have the theory that Link is dead was created by Matpat, among others, around the ties that were lost in childhood and whatever.

However, I really want to share a general theory that I think could be even darker than this, what if Link accidentally becomes the villain in the end? who is trying so desperately to defeat, if we can remember, at the end of the game, the link defeats Majora's Mask and the land of ends is saved once all is said and done, the words dawn of a new day here on the screen They imply that everything is fine. and the land of ends will live in a peacefully good ending, if you turn off the game here and leave it at that, then this is absolutely the case.

However, I want to draw your attention to something if we go back to the moon portion of the game just before Link enters the room to face the final boss, we are rewarded with the Mask of the Fierce Deity. This is only rewarded to us if we have completed all of the mask quests in the game, however it has a surprisingly apparent trade that grants Linkan unfathomable power. so much so that even he is able to defeat Majora's Mask with just a few hits. With this in mind, let's digress here and think about all the other Zelda games in the lineup, none of them allow you to continue an ending with any item you can. you've reached the final boss or immediately before, instead everyone backs you up before the final boss fight.

If you ever feel like loading the file again, we should remember that Majora's masks' entire perception of time is completely different from any other Zelda in The Alignment remember how I mentioned that Link made a deal with the mask seller. A figurative demon. The Mask of the Fierce Deity is his reward, as it is awarded immediately before Link reaches the final stage of his quest to keep his share of the deal. Basically, this reward is now evident. unfathomable power himself and now the ability to live forever now wait a minute ability to live forever where did that come from so if you turn off the game with the screen of the dawn of a new day, it's over Turman is saved and everything is peaceful and prosperous if you continue playing although you willNotice that she still has the fierce deity mask and time has reset again, this ultimately leads me to believe that all the work that went into her to keep hers in the deal for the seller of masks was in vain and the sordid capture in the fine.

The impression of his agreement to get his life back was to be banished to this doomed hell filled with residents who are entrenched in pain and despair due to the many struggles that come with it, although the obvious difference now is that there he will forever be immersed. in an endless cycle. of dealing with his problems again and again and again and again forever and ever and even worse, all of this is happening during the three worst days of his entire life while death literally watches them from the sky . Termina was always destined to die. even in the name terminal terminal and everything dies and everything is finite the link was simply interfering with the natural order of things forever trapping everyone in a world whose time is up you can't cheat death and at the end of the game it is breathing links neck waiting for the moment he decides that his good intentions are no longer worth it when this moment comes and death can finally take its due course link made a deal with the devil's mask

majora

doesn't end with link leaving ends does It doesn't end at all for a game rated E for everyone, we definitely have a treasure that is gloomy, desolate and disturbing, although it is not terrifying.

The legend of Zelda Majora's Mask carries a sense of mystery that is packed with

symbolism

. No matter how you look at it, hopelessness, despair, impending doom, and death have been woven into the many stories that are present in this game, and unfortunately, a lot of it can be easily overlooked if you don't stop to take it all in. with this being. said and too close, it's almost impossible to miss the irony surrounding the extremely prominent healing song that towers over everything else in the game. The song itself is the very basis of Majora's Mask and has the sole purpose of representing in theory something that is positive, however, in reality, it is clearly one of the most haunting scores you can play on an ocarina, as I mentioned before. .

The game is made entirely to make you feel the strong emotions of each character until the end, when we can finally move on and put an end to clammin II that brought us this golden child, all the intertwined stories that we have experienced through the many side quests from Woodfall Snow Head Great Bay, I canna Canyon and Clock Town. They end up coming together as a collective whole and it's in this moment in this small moment during the carnival that everyone can experience the brief feeling that maybe just maybe there is a glimmer of hope in this dystopia after all.