#akira himekawa

Nintendo: We’d like to promote A Link to the Past to an American audience through a magazine called Nintendo Power. Do you think you could serialize a cute and silly comic, maybe in full color?

Shotaro Ishinomori: What if the monsters of the Dark World were not monsters at all, but people just like us? How can Link justify fighting them, lest he become a monster himself? Will he doom their world to save his own? No matter what he chooses, how can he spend the rest of his life knowing that such a terrible decision was placed into his hands by fate? How can Zelda live with knowing that she had no alternative but to drive her hero to violence? What choice would you have made, dear reader? What choice do any of us truly have?

Nintendo: We’re planning to release Twilight Princess on the Wii U, and preorder sales haven’t been great. Do you think you could adapt the game into a shonen manga with a lot of child characters, maybe like you did with Four Swords?

Akira Himekawa: If every Zelda is a reincarnation of the same person, then it stands to reason that the Zelda in Twilight Princess has inherited her memories from Ocarina of Time. She still loves the Hero of Time, who remains in a state of prolonged undeath so that he may continue to protect her. When his role is finished, Zelda must allow him to pass on, knowing that she can never see or touch him again. In the same way, the Hero of Twilight must allow Midna to return to her realm. Despite the hardships of their journey, Link and Midna have always come back to one another and even visited each other’s dreams, but now they must break their connection entirely. True wisdom and courage rest in the ability to deny your own desires and do what’s right for the other person, even if this hurts worse than any injury received in battle.

Nintendo: So for Breath of the Wild… maybe we’ll stick with an official art book.