galateus (galateus) wrote in scans_daily, @ 2009-05-17 20:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | creator: akira himekawa, franchise: legend of zelda, in-joke: crack, medium: manga, title: four swords plus |
Four Swords+ part one: "My Anti-Drug is Crack"
At first, I didn't expect or even try to enjoy The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords+ manga. I looked at a few pages out of curiosity and it just seemed so silly and pointless, but...
...somehow I simply could not stop reading. I told myself it's just yet another cheap cashin on the part of a longlived cashcow videogame franchise, yet I can't bring myself to care. I mean, it's a comic about Link! Who is actually four Links! Links who bicker and cry and yell at each other but ultimately learn lessons about friendship and teamwork and fighting over girls, just like a Saturday morning cartoon. And of course despite being in a black-and-white manga, they can only distinguish each other by the color of their clothes, somehow. What's not to love about that? But when I saw there was even going to be a fifth, evil Link as the villain, that was the moment I knew I was hooked. A near-100% Link cast? Can't say no to that.Adapted from the GameCube game Four Swords+ (known in English as Four Swords Adventures), it has art by Akira Himekawa, also creator of many, many other Zelda manga adaptations. Having no official English release (*shakes angry fist at sky*) this unofficial translation is (according to ZeldaLegends) provided by Mariam Dirbashi, scanned and edited together by Beno and currently hosted at zeldalegends.net and onemanga.com.
Now I started reading in the middle of it first, so it took me a while, but I figured out how to tell the Links apart 90% of the time:
Once upon a time, Original Link was happy.
He beat up pirates and wasn't afraid of anything.
But one of his favorite hobbies was ironic foreshadowing.
Since you probably can't tell, the knight scolding Link up above is apparently his father. He asks Princess Zelda to try and talk some sense into that boy:
(I have it on good authority that that last line is more accurately rendered in English as "Well excuuuuse me, princess," but was shortened to save space.)
So for Original Link, life was good. Best friends with Princess Zelda and everything!
Then she got kidnapped by Link's evil doppelganger. Woe.
If only there were a magic sword nearby that could give him the strength of four people!
And so from the body of Original Link, four colorfully diverse heroes were born! With their ultra-super powers, they've dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil!
Little did they know that withdrawing the sword not only breaks the seal and releases the evil sorcerer, it triggers the first boss.
Unfortunately, this particular giant rock monster can only be defeated with the power nothing short of a valuable life lesson in teamwork! can provide.
Ironically-foreshadowed lesson duly learned, they can't help but notice a fell wind escapes the fresh pile of vanquished giant bits.
Dun-dun-dun.
...And that is why 1 = 4.