Origins of the Fierce Deity and Majora’s Mask

In anticipation of Majora’s Mask’s 10th birthday tomorrow, here is another one of our classic Majora’s Mask articles. This article is a little bit lesser known as it came during a period of time when this site was still very young. Enjoy the read!

The following article is only a theory, and is not meant to be taken

as anything more than that. It only reflects the opinion of the writer,

and not ZeldaInformer as a whole. That said, enjoy the article!

Before dwelling into the analysis of the events of Majora’s Mask, let’s recap some basic info regarding the final boss fight against Majora. The

fight takes place inside the moon which was summoned by the Skull

Kid while he was possessed by Majora’s Mask. In the moon Link finds

himself on a gigantic plain with a single tree in the middle and

children playing around it. All the children look identical save for

wearing different masks. The masks they wear are from the four bosses

that Link defeats through the course of the game. When speaking to a

child, the child teleports Link to an unknown location to play a game

with him. With these facts in mind it is time to move to the first part of the article.

First

thing which needs to be taken into consideration for this part of the theory is

Majora’s psyche. Majora is unlike most generic villains. The entity’s

actions are being driven by lust for power or world domination. Upon

closer inspection it becomes clear that Majora has a rather playful

nature and looks upon everything as a game. The second crucial fact

which now makes the Fierce Deity mask different from all the other

transformation masks in the game is that all the other transformation

masks originated from a living being, they all embody someone’s spirit.

That is not the case with the Fierce Deity mask. As a matter of fact,

the mask never even existed. Furthermore, the scene on the moon, the

plain, the tree and the children, nothing of that was real. It was all

a product of Majora’s mind, and the fact that the children were playing

on the moon supports this statement because of Majora’s personality.

Although

there is no specific statement in the game which proves that the scene

on the moon is not real, there is plenty of evidence. First of all,

even though you lose your masks to the children on the moon you regain

them all once you return to Termina. On top of that, the surrounding of

the plain with the tree is shrouded in mist which strongly suggests a

dream like atmosphere. Obviously the fact that there are four children

playing around a tree inside of a moon spawned by an ancient relic also

goes in favor of this theory.

Let’s move on and look into the

psyche of the children. When children play, especially with masks, they

usually pretend to be someone or something else, most of the time that

which the mask represents. The same principle applies here. The

children on the moon were pretending to be the four bosses whose masks

they were wearing.

This also shows why the last kid was not

playing. It is because of Majora’s Mask, the very mask the child is wearing.

Unlike the other masks, Majora’s Mask doesn’t represent anything so the

kid can’t take part in the play. This is also supported by the actual battle against

Majora’s Mask where Majora takes several different shapes – none

of which can be defined as any normal creature.

When Link

arrives inside the moon he plays a game with each child in which he has to

change into a different form. This can be interpreted as playing along.

The children want Link to play along and in order to do so he has to

put on a mask and pretend to be someone else.

Children of young

age usually don’t have a fully developed perception of right and wrong

so it is only natural to assume that the kid wearing Majora’s Mask

would see Link as evil and hate him because he plays with all the other

children but ignores him.

When Link finally talks to the kid, he

wants to play a game of tag with him. Due to the reasons mentioned, the

kid makes Link the bad guy and gives him the Fierce Deity mask. In

Japanese the deity of the mask is called Oni Link. Oni can translate

into two things, one of which is “it” in a game of tag and the other

“demon”.

The conclusion that can be drawn is that the Fierce

Deity mask never existed. It was all just a product of Majora’s mind.

It was created solely for the purpose to surface the dark parts in

Link’s heart and to make him appear as evil because Majora saw him as

such due to the reasons mentioned above, and because Link opposed

Majora throughout the game.

There is however, one issue which might blow the above theory apart. One of the gossip stones in Ikana says that “the Fierce Deity Mask is somewhere in this world”. This naturally goes against the idea that the mask was merely a figment of Majora’s imagination, but the thought is still interesting.

The

first thing to note regarding the Majora’s Mask is that the ancient

tribe which is mentioned in the game did not necessarily create the

mask. They were only known to have used it. The creator of the mask is

completely unknown.

Going by the premise that the scene inside the

moon is nothing more than a memory brought to surface by the mask it

can be assumed that at the time Majora’s Mask was nothing more than a

harmless object. Given that that is true it can be concluded that the

memory originates from the kid who was wearing the mask at the time

when the event originally occurred.

When the scene originally

occurred, Link didn’t interfere so it’s plausible to assume that the

scene remained the same, with all the children playing, except the one

wearing Majora’s Mask. It is also highly probable that the same scene

happened over and over again, each day anew. It is safe to assume that if the situation did play out like that, the kid with Majora’s Mask became jealous, sad, and angry.

Throughout

the Zelda series there have been numerous occurances of people leaving

emotional trails or parts of their aura on objects, like the telepathic

tiles in A Link to the Past through which Link could hear Sahasrahla.

Another indication of personal auras is the fact that people changed

into their true form when they entered the dark world, the form being

dependent on their character.

If the child did indeed leave an

emotional trail on the mask, it is highly unlikely that those emotions

could have spawned an entity as powerful as Majora so it is most likely

that the mask was simply discovered by the ancient tribe some time

later and they, for whatever reason, amplified that power and gave

birth to Majora. Whether they amplified the aura of the mask out of

curiosity or for some goal, and whether they gave birth to Majora by

accident or not, cannot be proven due to the lack of evidence or any

mention whatsoever.

Another possibility is that Majora existed

within the mask even before the child got the mask and it was merely

feeding itself off the emotions of the child. In that case the creator

and origin of Majora’s playful nature remain a mystery.

It is

also worth mentioning that the reason why Majora did all the

devastation to Termina, and perhaps even to other worlds unknown, is

simply a cry for attention. This would be only natural considering that

the child didn’t get any attention from the other children.

Although

many of the things suggested here seem farfetched, when looking at it

from a psychological aspect it becomes plausible. Majora’s Mask is

nothing more than a toy which embodied the emotions of a child

hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. The story mentions that the

tribe who used the mask was ancient, suggesting that the mask is even

more ancient than the tribe which used it.

Majora’s Mask is the only Zelda game in the series in which you can repeat boss

fights in dungeons. This fact, together with the premise that the scene

on the moon is only a product of Majora’s mind, suggests that the

bosses and the rooms in which you fight them aren’t real either. It is

most likely that Majora itself shaped the bosses after the four masks

the other children wore. This would mean that the children on the moon

didn’t wear the boss masks because they look like the four bosses, but

the four bosses look like that because the children were wearing those

masks. Another possibility is that the boss masks are also

transformation masks and the giant whom you freed in the temple simply

puts on the mask again and plays with Link again.

Taking a

closer look at the five children on the moon it is evident that they

resemble the Happy Mask Salesman, who is known for his weird nature.

Even though the Happy Mask Salesman, Link, and the Skullkid are all

from Hyrule, they don’t have a mirror image in Termina. The Happy Mask

Salesman is known to move around rather fast and he knows quite a few

things one would not expect from a simple mask salesman. He showed Link

the song that helped him regain his old form back and he is also the

only person who knows anything about the Majora’s Mask, and he seems to

know quite a lot.

Furthermore he mentioned that the mask is very

important to him and that he has to leave in three days time. The first

assumption one would make as to why the mask is important to him is

simply because it is a rare artifact but it is likely to be more than

just that. Also, the fact that he has to leave exactly on the day when

the moon crashes is not likely to be a coincidence. Last but not least,

the Happy Mask Salesman appears in front of Link moments before a game

over with the words “You have met an ill fate”.

The most

probably conclusion is simply that the Happy Mask Salesman isn’t human.

Not being human in this case doesn’t refer to the races human and

hylian, but rather as being supernatural.

All of that opens up

the possibility that the kid under the tree in Majora’s memory is the

Happy Mask Salesman. That means that there is a good chance that it

was he who created Majora’s Mask. That would explain why the kid under

the tree looks like him but it opens another question – why do the

other kids look like him? There are several possibilities for this. One

being that they might have been brothers or it could be that after all

these years Majora forgot the faces of those kids, or it simply doesn’t

want to remember so it’s portraying them like that.

None of the two possibilities have any in game proof but they are both possible. If

the first case was true then it would contradict the statement that the

Happy Mask Salesman is a supernatural being. If he is just a normal

human then it is quite possible that the kids on the moon are his

ancestors which would also explain why he knows so much about the mask

and how he could find it.

But again it is possible that his

ancestor is only the kid under the tree and that the other children are

portrayed like it for the other reason mentioned above.

It

should be noted that most of this theory is based on psychological

analysis and has little canonical proof. Whether or not the designers

thought of it in such details will probably remain a mystery.