The Super Mario Super Show had an episode of Zelda on their Friday shows and in their 52 episode run meant we got a 13 episode The Legend of Zelda animated short. While it was part of the Mario cartoon its normally packaged as its own series and I think that’s fine, now these are not full episodes as it’s only 11 minute shorts since it shared the airtime with Mario but it was still pretty cool that they sneaked a Zelda cartoon in an unrelated one. The show is rather infamous for being bad but is it really? Let’s take a look back
This show as made with a lot of love and I think in some cases more thought was put in it than the Super Mario Cartoon, you have to remember that this show started production before even Zelda II came out so all it had to base itself off was from the first game. That first game doesn’t have much of a story or characters to work with and even the Super Mario cartoon had at least two games to work with. Many of the things they made up for the show such as using magic, partner fairy, horses among others were all eventually featured in future Zelda games so you can even say that they were visionaries for the franchise. Granted you can argue these are all Fantasy tropes but they’re all a big part of what Zelda is now and they weren’t in the first game.
The show even has its own 80s style opening/intro to make it feel special with music from the game and not only enemies but also ideas for plots also taken out of the game. Not all the episodes were 100% related to the games and they took some liberties on many of them but while a few misses none of them are truly awful. In fact I can confidently say that no episode is bad since even the most boring one is helped by the fact that they’re only 11 minutes long so it’s over before you are even completely annoyed so the runtime helped the show not become a drag.
Now the infamous Excuuuuse me Princess is meme is overdone online, yeah he does say it every episode and sometimes more than once but it’s not that noticeable since most of the times it’s just done with rather quick and not a huge distraction. Only in a few occasions is it prolonged. And thanks to the internet meme as old as the internet it’s rather entertaining when he does it. It’s especially great since Sprite who follows Link around like Navi has a huge crush on Link and doesn’t want to Link to get that kiss.
Overall I think the show had a great 13 episode run and while it didn’t have an actual ending we do get an episode where Zelda shares her interest in link and kisses him even if not intended to be the finale. I don’t really know how I’d feel about a new Zelda cartoon as I like Link to be a silent character and I’d definitely not want to see a live action Zelda show either. There was a failed pitch for a movie a while back which I’m sort of glad it didn’t actually happen.
The most important part is that this wasn’t the last we saw of Zelda and Link as they did crossover in two episodes of Captain N. This obviously takes place in the same continuity as the show and it features a more mature Link and Zelda than the ones featured in their actual show since they’re badass here and it provides a nice “what happened to them. Not to mention this puts it in continuity with the Nintendo Animated Universe.
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