Recently, an interview with Tayaka Imamura, the art director of Majora’s Mask, illuminated a pretty interesting fact about the game’s titular entity, giving us a new source for the name Majora. Imamura’s work is hugely influential in the Nintendo sphere. Along with the creation of Zelda characters like Majora and Tingle, he also contributed to the rich artistry of F-Zero and Star Fox, birthing two of Nintendo’s most iconic legacy characters in Captain Falcon and Fox McCloud.
Speaking with VGC in early July, Imamura was asked about his work on Majora’s Mask. When the interviewer mentioned the game’s Japanese title, Majura’s Mask, Imamura’s response included a factoid about the name “Majura” that many people may not have known:
“Yes, that was originally based on my name. I wanted to use the ‘Jura’ part because I’m a big fan of Jurassic Park. ‘Ima-Jura’… that’s where the name came from.”
Tayaka Imamura, lead art director of Majora’s Mask
To hear Jurassic Park listed in the origin of the name is interesting. In the past, we reported that “Majura” was conceived from the fusion of Imamura’s name and the title of a different movie: 1995’s Robin Williams classic, Jumanji. The Jumanji mention came from series producer Eiji Aonuma in an interview all the way back in 2015. It’s a mystery as to why Aonuma and Imamura have a different recollection of the etymology, but it’s entirely possible that both films were influential to Imamura in the creation of Majora, and each of them brought a different one to mind for their interviews.
In the VGC interview, Imamura also elaborated on the hopes he had for collaborating on another “strange” Zelda game:
“Recent Zelda games have taken things back to basics, and I wanted to make something a little bit more unique, with a little twist, in a strange and unique world, like Majora’s Mask.”
I would say he’s not alone in wishing for more Zelda games with twisted identities. In 2019, after the reveal of the then-untitled Tears of the Kingdom, there was a lot of positive buzz when it was perceived that Aonuma alluded to Breath of the Wild’s sequel being “darker” than Majora’s Mask.
The interview contains plenty more about Imamura’s history with Nintendo, F-Zero and Star Fox, and his progress with recent original projects. You can read the full interview here.
