The story of Legend of Zelda and the warrior Link goes beyond the adventures of Hyrule in what Nintendo video games show. This franchise expanded and reached works such as manga, which tell stories that have not even been told in games, like that of Navi’s predecessor.
As gamers well remember, Navi is a recurring character from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and is a fairy who was assigned by the Great Deku Tree to be Link’s companion on his important mission. Her importance in the franchise stems from the fact that she was the first of many companion characters and assistants to appear in later games in the series.
However, as a report published on the website of Nintendo LifeFor the most part, The Legend of Zelda timeline excludes most derivative sources like TV shows, manga, graphic novels, and the like, though this is not to say that interesting data is not gleaned from these formats.
Meet Emheralda
Images from ‘The Perfect Zelda Fan Book’, a Japanese guidebook for A Link to the Past that also contains a short manga for the first three games in the serieswent viral on the Internet and social networks and revealed who was the predecessor of Navi.
The report says that this is the first time that the pages are available online in high quality and the manga inside gives us a glimpse of Link and a very human looking fairy, long before Navi appeared.
This has never been online before! I just made 1200dpi scans of the “Perfect Zelda Fan Book,” a small guide for LttP with adorable illustrations & short manga for each of the first 3 games. We see Link with a fairy companion before the appearance of Navi: https://t.co/qONWPEo3bW pic.twitter.com/mkAMRsIDp8
— History of Hyrule (Zelda Archivist) ♿✊??️⚧️?️ (@HistoryofHyrule) January 31, 2023
This companion fairy is possibly emheraldawhich has been talked about in other graphic novels and can be seen in two of the three manga found at the end of the guide.
Neither Zelda II: The Adventure of Link nor Link to the Past see the titular hero teaming up with a fairy, but these short stories show that that idea was definitely kicking around at the time.
