Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Manga Review
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Manga stary and artwork were completed by Akira Himekawa. The Four Swords Manga is one of five books released in the Legend of Zelda Manga. Inspired by The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure, for the GameCube released in 2004.
In this story we see an incarnation of Link who is a member of the royal guard. Link does not like to work in a team and often finds himself getting in trouble for the way he completes missions. His father, a noble knight of the Kings Guard, wants Link to be a true knight and work as a team player. One day Princess Zelda has a vision of the skies turning black and the evil Vaati being reborn. This vision turns out to be true as an evil shadow takes Princess Zelda and the Sage maidens. Link must pull the Four Sword in order to fight the evil spirit, who appears to be a dark shadow of Link. When Pulling the Four Sword Link is split into four versions of himself: Green, Red, Blue, and Purple. Each version has their own personality and together they must learn what it takes to be a team in order to defeat Dark Link and Vaati.
Four Swords is filled with much comedy between the four Links. Each one is selfish in their own way, and each has their own personality as mentioned before. Blue Link is hot headed and angry, Purple Link is calm and collective, Red Link is afraid and timid, while the Original Link, the Green one, has courage. This created a lot of funny interactions between them while trying to accomplish many simple tasks. For example, there is one part in Chapter 2: The Fall of Hyrule Castle when the Four Links are fighting a spirit monster. The monster has four arms and in order to defeat the monster they must slice off each arm simultaneously. After coming up with the plan the four of them all go for the same arm then immediately start bickering like siblings. There are many little instances like this throughout the whole book.
A great thing that Four Swords has was the number of Links, because this created four times the action. Link has always been one to work by himself. He has had companions like Navi, Tael, Midna, and Fi but they don’t help him fight off the monsters. It was really cool to see Link fighting side by side with someone even though it was himself. In Chapter 3: Erune and Rosie, the four Links team up to defeat the one-eyed rock, Arrghus. Each one of the Links has their own weapon that they use in battle. As well as team up combination attacks. Himekawa did a great job drawing the characters, monsters, and fight sequences.
One con that Four Swords had involved it being not in color. The Links all look the exact same, so it is difficult to tell them apart. They each wield the Four Sword but wear a different color tunic. This differs from other graphic novels like Ninja Turtles because they wield different weapons which helps differentiate between them. There are times throughout the manga where the reader has difficulty figuring out which Link is speaking or attacking. I like being able to tell the characters apart and know which one is doing what attack. Sometimes the dialogue helps but other times it does not. Other than this detail there was nothing else really that weighed this manga down.
Four Swords Manga is a phenomenal entry in the Legend of Zelda Manga series by Akira Himekawa. Four Swords Adventure was not well received and did not sell well. Many fans have not got to experience the story and the Manga definitely serves it justice. This book is definitely worth checking out.
