1989 The Legend of Zelda Cartoon

Many people around the world are familiar with the game series entitled The Legend of Zelda from the world of Nintendo.  The videogames from this series are quite proliferative on the market.  The basic premise of the games is that there is a male hero named Link who fights over and over to protect Princess Zelda from the forces of evil.  This evil often comes in the form of the wizard Ganon who desires to rule over the magical land of Hyrule.  Ganon repeated attempts to claim the Triforce in order to achieve his evil plans.  The Triforce was made by the three goddesses who created Hyrule.  According to lore within the videogame series, the Triforce will break into three parts if it is touched by a person with an unworthy heart that does not properly represent the three virtues of courage, wisdom, and power.  The Triforce when fully assembled is able to grant the wishes of anyone who holds it, which would allow Ganon to conquer Hyrule for his evil ways.

In 1989, there was a single season composed of 13 episodes of The Legend of Zelda cartoon that was based on the videogame series.  I recently started rewatching the episodes to reminisce of times from my childhood, because I still remember some moments from the cartoon series.

Although I have not yet made it through all 13 episodes, I have already noted some interesting facts about the cartoon series.

Within moments of beginning the first episode, I realized that a very popular phrase from my childhood was in fact derived from The Legend of Zelda cartoon.  It turns out that frequently throughout the series Link can be heard stating the sarcastic comment “Well, excuse me, princess!” to Princess Zelda.  I admit that I loved using that expression myself.  I just completely forgot its derivation!

It is quite obvious very early on in the series that Link’s character was written with a major contradiction to his videogame version:  In the cartoon, Link is a serious jerk.  He is perpetually rude to Zelda, he lies to get his own way, and he thinks that serving to protect just the Triforce of Wisdom and the castle is a waste of his hero time (he’d much rather be out in the word doing what he perceives to be regular hero activities).  The worst part of this in my opinion is Link’s rudeness to Zelda.  He is constantly making inappropriate sexual remarks towards her and trying to force her to kiss him against her will.  At one point Link walks into the room containing the Triforce of Wisdom (which also functions as Link’s bedroom), and he sees Princess Zelda lying on her back in Link’s bed right after she fought off an attack by one of Ganon’s evil minions in the room.  Link immediately attempts a flying leap to land on top of Zelda in bed so he can have his sexual ways with her.  Princess Zelda quickly moves off of the bed in time, though.

I should also mention that there seem to only be two Triforce parts (Wisdom and Power) in the cartoon when even the name of the relic makes it obvious that there should be three.

In general, the writing is rather bad and so is the acting – although the person who voices Ganon does a relatively good job of sounding consistently evil.  For example, Zelda has the opportunity to obtain both the Triforce of Wisdom and the Triforce of Power in an early episode, but she fails to do so because there is seemingly no time to grab the Triforce of Power (and she already has the other Triforce in her possession) since Ganon’s lair in which the Triforce of Power sits is collapsing.  Zelda is literally an inch from the Triforce of Power, the Triforce is floating in air with absolutely nothing preventing Zelda from grabbing it, and Zelda opts to run away at Link’s request.  There is no way that Zelda couldn’t have easily grabbed the Triforce of Power without any risk to her life.  She was even paused next to the Triforce of Power in the process of reaching out for it long enough to have grabbed it perhaps a half dozen times over.

I will grant that the cartoon does have a few plotlines that could have been extremely good and interesting had the writing and acting been substantially better.  There are also some rather cute characters – my favorite is probably Spryte.

Even though this cartoon is not exactly the best cartoon I’ve ever seen, I would love for a new The Legend of Zelda cartoon series to be developed based on at least one of the many pertinent videogames.  There is so much promise for a long-lived, action-packed, adventurous, and interesting cartoon series made from The Legend of Zelda videogames, and I would be right there when the first episode is streamed online!

P.S.  Link is the guy and Zelda is the lady.