The excitement around the recent release of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D is still burning bright. Falling right in with this, Nintendo Dream - a Japanese, Nintendo Power-like magazine - published an interview with Eiji Aonuma about Majora's Mask 3D in this month's issue.
They start off with a rather interesting question, asking Aonuma where the word “Majora" came from. His response was unexpected, to say the least:
Imamura, who made the design for Majora's Mask, invented the word by combining characters from the movie title Jumanji and from his name Imamura.
So there you have it; without Jumanji, we most likely would not have Majora's Mask as we know it today. Keeping the thread of name origins, the interviewer then asked Aonuma where Termina got its name. This had slightly more expected beginnings:
Termina is a terminal, right? As it means a place where people come and go, terminal became Termina.
So it seems Aonuma had the idea of Termina being a temporary place that one simply passes through, like a terminal; though considering the apocalyptic tone of the game as a whole, it probably isn't a coincidence that it's only a couple letters short of “Terminate".
Moving on, the interviewer brought up a mask owned by the Happy Mask Salesman that bears resemblance to the pattern on the mirror shield. Aonuma had this to say:
That's right. The mask came first. When the Mirror Shield was being designed, we wanted to have some kind of pattern for the reflection. Having said that, it was hard to come up with a pattern for the shield. We clearly couldn't make it like the shield from Ocarina of Time as the shape is too detailed and it wouldn't fit the image of this game. But the Happy Mask Salesman is carrying a mask which has a face of distress, so wouldn't it be interesting to use that one? Therefore, the Mirror Shield was born from what was previously a mask of Happy Mask Salesman.
What do you think of this? Are you surprised by anything Aonuma revealed? Sound off in the comments below.
[source nindori.com, via nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 16
I never understood the face of the mirror shield, and after this explanation I still don't.
Wait....how does Jumanji give the idea of the Majora's Mask? The board game was cursed....so I guess that was the inspiration for that....but what about the name?
@Artwark
It was just the word 'Majora' which was taken from Jumanji, not the entire idea.
@Artwark I believe it could be taking the start of 'Ju' from Jumanji and putting it between Imamura so it would be Ima MuJura (it is written Mujura in Japanese).
Kind of thought Termina's name could have been derived from the other meaning of terminal - "forming or situated at the end or extremity of something." Seems to make sense, given the story of the game.
Interesting article.
An unexpected tie between Legend of Zelda and Robin Williams. Pretty neat.
It would be cool if Termina is somehow captured within the Wii U Zelda Map
Termina in Italian is End I think. So yeah, end of the world for Termina.
So that is how Termina got its name. It is always cool learning about the little details and how they happened.
The Game Theorists did an entire series on Majora's Mask and origin-type stuff for it. I highly recommend anyone who's a fan of the series check it out over on Youtube.
( But remember, it's just their theory. A /game/ theory.)
@Dreamz Or more accurately put, a hypothesis.
@Artwark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1iv1Ws5XU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etogQoNoX1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKSMIqADJ-s
It was obvious that the name Termina came from the Latin terminus. It was, however, less obvious where they got Majora from. It's not as if they made up a new word, so it's a bit puzzling to hear that they got the name from an amalgamation of two completely unrelated words. I always assumed they just took it straight from the Latin, though the meaning was still not clear.
Termina means something like "[it] ends" in Spanish.
Also, kinda like "Terminus" from Asimov's Foundation series, too.
@Mogster
Perhaps Robin Williams inspired them (for his work in the Jumanji movie) as The Legend of Zelda Inspired the name of Robin Williams' daughter, like Nintendo giving a small tribute since they probably knew he was a big fan of the series.
So that's where the name Majora comes from. Fun to know!
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