#genuinely the image of everyone singing along to the song of awakening lives rent free in my head and is canon now as far as i'm concerned

[marinsawakening]

I'm overall pretty meh on the Link's Awakening manga but I think it did two things really well: the boat scene, and the ending.

The boat scene happens about halfway through the second and last volume of the manga, not long after Link has found out the truth about Koholint. The manga, like most game retellings, changes the story of the game slightly so that it works better in manga format. So rather than Link going straight to another dungeon after finding out the truth, he lashes out, believing that waking the Wind Fish will doom everyone and that the people who told him to do so lied to him. He rejects his destiny (the manga goes way harder on destiny than the game, one of the things I don't particularly like about it) and resolves to let the Wind Fish sleep forever. Instead, he goes to make a raft, intent on escaping the island, and asks Marin to come with him. She agrees to do so.

Everyone gathers on the shore to say a tearful farewell to Marin, who promises she'll return someday, and she and Link set out. At first, everything seems wonderful; Marin and Link are in high spirits, watching some dolphins play, riding the waves, etc. But soon it becomes apparent that... well...

[Image: panel from the Link's Awakening manga showing Marin and Link's raft out on sea, with Koholint looming in the distance. Marin says: "We shouldn't be able to see the island anymore, but there it is..." End description.]

They cannot get away from the island. No matter how hard Link rows, Koholint never gets any further away. They cannot leave.

Eventually, Marin asks a now-exhausted Link to go back to shore. Link is devastated, but Marin remains in a seemingly high spirits. They have a talk, and Link asks Marin why she wanted to leave Koholint. Marin reveals that ever since she was little, she's had the same dream every night: she's in a town she's never seen before, surrounded by smiling faces. It's a nice dream, so she thought that by leaving, she could dream without ever having to wake up. However, she concludes that, no matter how nice a dream is, you'll have to wake up eventually.

Marin leaves after this, but Link remains. The Owl arrives, and they have a talk about destiny and the nature of Koholint. Finally, the owl says this:

[Image: page from the Link's Awakening manga. Panels show the shoreline, the sky and the Owl. The Owl says: "...Dream... The people who you see are actually just like a mirror... The various things that you see... Like this island... Thoughts take on form and begin existence." The Owl continues: "The heart that doesn't want to wake up... and the heart that does want to wake up." For the first part of that sentence, the monsters are shown; for the second part, Marin. End description.]

The Owl asks Link what he'll do. Link begins, saying that when the Wind Fish wakes, everyone and everything will be gone, but then rejects it. He stands up and states:

[Image: page from Link's Awakening. Link stands up and grasps his sword, powering it up. In the last panel, he is crying. He says: "The time that I've spent on this island, I won't forget it. In my heart it will remain for a lifetime! It may vanish everywhere else, but not for me! So... From inside the "Wind Fish"s dream and into my heart... It won't end, it will just change locations..." End description.]

Which is clear set-up for the ending.

At last, after defeating the Nightmares, the Wind Fish appears to Link, the story drawing to a close. As they move to the end, the Wind Fish states:

[Image: two panels from the LInk's Awakening manga, showing the Wind Fish doing a voice over, a panel collecting various moments from the manga. He says: "Yes. But the memories of this island will always remain in your heart. You will always remember this island. This memory will make the world of dreams real." End description.]

Which is ultimately the central thesis of the ending.

The Wind Fish invites Link to play the Song of Awakening with him, and as Link does, it pans over to Koholint and its people, leading to a two-page spread and my favourite panel of the manga:

[Image: two-page spread showing Link playing the ocarina against a bird's eye view of Koholint, with the animals, Tarin, Lady MeowMeow and Bowwow, Felicia (a manga-only fairy character) and Marin singing along. Link thinks: "Ah... Look... Everybody... Sing... Sing the Wind Fish's song... Marin..." End description.]

In which, as the final song of awakening plays and the island disappears, everyone joins in to sing along.

In my mind, both the boat scene and the final ending stand out because they show a keen understanding of Koholint and the game's themes.

The boat scene is a fascinating addition to the Link's Awakening story, in my opinion a very smart move, as it provides a very natural avenue for the manga to explore the nature of Koholint. It delves more directly into the fridge horror of Koholint's existence than most of the game does, to great effect: the initial reveal that you cannot go beyond the horizon, that it is impossible to escape the island, is done to great effect and contrasted effectively with the more light-hearted tone of only a page earlier. Link's desperation to escape anyway, contrasted with Marin's calmer acceptance of the reality of the situation, does a great job highlighting Link's state of mind during this portion of the story, and also does a great job showing he's wrong without directly stating so. Because Marin has already realized the truth Link is still unwilling to admit: that no matter how nice a dream is, you need to wake up eventually. It's sad, but she's ultimately at peace with it, in a way Link still needs to learn.

The follow-up scene at the beach with Marin and the Owl of course addresses and states this more directly, having Link realize the fundamental flaw in his thinking, and moreover stating the lynchpin of the story's ending: that Koholint will not die as long as Link remembers it. After this moment, the story states multiple times that a new Koholint is being built in Link's heart, to be completed after the dream ends. Ending the dream is integral to building it up again, in another's memory.

The ending is, in my opinion, the highlight of the manga. Link is sad, but at peace with waking up, having loved this island and treasuring this memory. Having everyone join in on the final song of awakening was an absolute stroke of genius, highlighting that the waking of the Wind Fish is not Koholint's doom, but in fact, its wish. In the end, it's not just Link and the Wind Fish waking up: it's everyone alongside them, joining in the chorus as the dream ends.

And finally, at the very end, the second-to-last page:

[Image: page from the Link's Awakening manga. Link sits on a piece of driftwood, staring at the sky, saying: "...That such a place... such a place..." He presses his hands against his heart, the edge of his face just barely visible, tears dripping down it, saying: "It... It was real...!" The then wipes his tears, picks up a different piece of driftwood to paddle with, and smiles as he looks up. End description.]

Link cries as he remembers Koholint, but ultimately, the joy of having known it, and the realization that it will always live on in his heart wins out, and he smiles as he paddles into the horizon.

As stated, I'm not this manga's biggest fan; for the most part, I think it falls into a lot of the same tropes and pitfalls of other video game adaptation manga, and in addition I don't like its heavy focus on destiny and believe Marin is a far more interesting character in the game. But it does a fantastic job with Koholint, showing a keen understanding and interesting interpretation of its nature, successfully adapting the game's themes regarding the nature of the dream and its fate into a different type of storytelling. The boat scene, which plays into Koholint's fridge horror and highlights its unearthly nature, and the ending sequence, with its triumphant tone yet unavoidable sadness, are the highlights for me.

And particular, the idea to have everyone on the island join in the final song of awakening was a stroke of genius and is going to live in my head rent free forever.

You can find a large collection of Zelda game manga on historyofhyrule.com, including both volumes of the Link's Awakening manga in both their original Japanese and translated into English; it is where I read it and where I got the panels and pages used in this post from.