Majora’s Mask: A Not So “Terrible” Fate

Majora’s Mask: A Not So “Terrible” Fate

Blake Reno, Contributing Editor

I lay awake at night pondering what I could have done better or what more I could have done with the day that’s just passed. My mind races with thoughts of “You should have done this instead with your time” or “What did you even read? How can you forget something you read just a few hours ago?” The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask replicates this feeling in its mechanics and in the structure of its side quests. Link is given three in-game days to save Termina, the land he finds himself in after chasing down Skull Kid in Hyrule’s Lost Woods. This time limit is represented by a clock that appears at the bottom of the screen. It’s always there and you can see the second-hand move. Even time spent looking at the clock feels like time wasted.

 
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The game’s world is preoccupied with endings and death, and it’s not uncommon for people to dislike the game because of the looming time limit hanging over the player. However, lost in the dark atmosphere of the game is that it gives the player something to light the darkness, something that will stay with you throughout every day of the player’s life and through every three-day cycle that Link experiences through the adventure: friendship. From the darkness and anxiety of the game’s opening scenes, to the disorientation of exploring a world other than the Hyrule found in Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask focuses on friendship as the means to save the world.

Majora’s Mask gives you a set of tools in order to find and understand how to help people and earn tokens of their friendship. The Bombers’ Notebook allows Link to keep track of where people are at certain times during the three days. Unlike everything else, such as progress in dungeons or consumable items (bombs, arrows, etc.), which are reset when Link plays the Song of Time, both information from the notebook and items received from the folks Link helps, are retained. This marks the masks that Link receives and the friendships he forms with various characters as things whose powers go beyond what time can erase.

 
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The game gives the player a lot of glimpses of hopelessness. From the very start of the game, Skull Kid “gets rid of” your horse and turns Link into a Deku Scrub (a plant-like being lacking many of human Link’s abilities). In addition, the Happy Mask Salesman who says he can help you gives you a time limit of three days before he has to leave. Everywhere you go, the moon is staring down at you, and occasionally, there are tremors that shake the screen, reminding you that the destruction of Termina (an appropriate name) is imminent. Even many of the game’s characters are obsessed with the moon getting closer to Termina, which makes them want to accomplish tasks sooner rather than later — which is where Link comes in.

First, players tackle the different meanings that the game’s six required masks have. Three of these masks are “transformation” masks: the Deku, Goron, and Zora masks. The other three (Captain’s Hat and Gibdo and Garo masks) have a clear connection with death, as they are all required to get to places in Ikana Canyon, a land in Termina where the dead continue to serve their kingdom. However, the “transformation” masks are also linked with death. The Goron mask is acquired from the ghost of Darmani III, who failed to put a stop to the endless winter that Snowhead is experiencing. The Zora mask is acquired from Mikau, who dies attempting to retrieve Lulu’s eggs from the Gerudo pirates. And the Deku mask is acquired after Link fails to get Majora’s Mask back from Skull Kid, spelling the death of Termina and its people.

 
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Finally, if Link acquires the first 23 of the game’s masks, he can then acquire the 24th by befriending the very bosses he has slain. Once Majora’s Mask’s plan is foiled by the 4 giants, he ditches Skull Kid and retreats into the moon. As Link follows him, he comes upon a peaceful meadow, a sharp contrast to the rest of the game’s landscapes. In it are five children. Four of them are running around wearing the masked remains of the game’s four bosses and the fifth child is wearing Majora’s Mask and sits against the lone tree in the fetal position. This scene recalls the cutscene where Tatl (Link’s fairy companion for Majora’s Mask) and her sister Tael meet Skull Kid. Seeing him freezing and alone during a rainstorm, the two fairies huddle with him to keep him warm. Just as Skull Kid was saved from a cold night alone by friendship, Majora’s Mask is vanquished by the strength of the friendships Link has made in his journey through Termina.

Link uses his friendship with Termina’s people and passes that friendship onto the four children wearing the boss’ remains. For each of them, he gives them masks, then gets to play “hide-and-seek” with them (just like with the Bombers) and gives them more masks upon finding them, at which point they ask Link an existential question about how kind he is before they vanish. If Link befriends the four children, the child wearing Majora’s Mask notes this, saying “Everyone has gone away…haven’t they?” If Link plays with Majora’s Mask, he knows that you’ve given up all your masks and gives you the Fierce Deity Mask, which the game implies is as powerful as Majora’s Mask.

 
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However, the game’s claim that the powers of the mask are “dark” and “bad” are merely implied by the child wearing Majora’s Mask. The child wants to play “good guys” and “bad guys” and calls Link the “bad guy” because Link’s trying to stop him. The Happy Mask Salesman, who had the mask taken from him by Skull Kid, explains that Majora’s Mask was used in an ancient tribe’s hexing rituals. While somewhat hokey, the implication of these final scenes of Majora’s Mask suggest that a mask is only made “good” or “bad” by the actions of the one who wears it.

What’s most powerful about the game is not the looming doom of Termina or the anxiety of having limited time in which one cannot help everyone, but instead the idea that friendship is something that one always carries with them. There’s no such thing as “not doing enough” as a friend. As Link’s friendships and collection of masks expand, he spreads the masks (and therefore friendship) to the Moon Children, and these friendships make him as powerful as the “evil” Majora’s Mask. That’s why the story ends with a proof of friendship in the forest where Skull Kid originally stole Link’s horse. What was a place marked by the beginnings of a dark story is now a place marked by a happy ending and a new friendship. Friendship saved Termina, Link, and Skull Kid, just like Tatl and Tael saved Skull Kid. No matter how short the day is or how long before the world ends, friendship remains.

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