I’ve been playing Zelda games since I was 11 years old and first acquired A Link to the Past under my Christmas tree alongside my brand new Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
That was my introduction to Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce, and so much more about Hyrule and its ever-growing, ever-complicated history. I kept up with the saga by buying nearly every title I could in the series from thenceforth on, all the way through Breath of the Wild (so far).
I’m now reaching the point where fifth grade, and the glorious discovery of my soon-to-be favorite video game franchise, now seems quite a long time ago. Sure, I can rediscover that feeling with the release of a new Zelda game (I expect to feel quite the rush of nostalgic revelation when Breath of the Wild 2 comes out, certainly), but I feel there must be other ways to ensure my love of Zelda remains ever fresh.
The most logical way to do that is to tell others the good news and find new converts to the Hylian way. But long past the schoolyard, when telling your friends about your favorite games was a normal conversation, it’s become much harder in my place of work to slip a few words about the adventures of Link into the talk.
Luckily, I have much easier prospects to target: my nieces.
I’ve written before about my eldest niece and her love of Zelda, birthed primarily from observing my collection of franchise knickknacks and doodads. A devoted lover of all things princess-y, it was inevitable she would find a place in her heart for Zelda alongside the Disney and fairytale pantheons.
But now that she’s 7, I figured it might be time to give her a bigger nudge. She’s still not a big gamer — she loves Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., certainly, but lacks the patience to sit down and tackle a multi-hour, single-player adventure as of yet, making a Zelda game inadvisable. But she is a voracious reader, and she’s found she can easily consume a volume of manga, with their large splash pages of action and less dialogue than an equivalent American comic book.
So, with that in mind, I lent her my box set of Zelda manga, thinking she might page through one or two.
Two days later, she came over to tell me she’d already plowed through four of them.
Suddenly, Zelda was more than just a set of names and iconography to her. Now she knew who Sheik really was, where Link acquired his horse, and the names of the Hylian goddesses. These names and locations were real to her now, in a way they couldn’t be when I just namedropped them while she bashed a couple of Zelda amiibo together.
She’ll probably have the other six volumes I lent her finished in no time and then be ready for more. Maybe, at long last, she’ll be ready to try a Zelda game. If not, well, there’s still time. And I have three more nieces to get hooked on Zelda, given time and patience. And, through their eyes of wonder and youthful joy, I can find my own fervor for Zelda once more, too.
