New Nintendo

This news just made my day. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the preview for Akira Himekawa’s Skyward Sword manga, but I never expected an announcement for an official ‘Art of’ book for The Legend of Zelda series to come with said preview.

The art book, entitled Hyrule Historia (it’s like Hogwarts: A History!), is 274 pages long. 67 detailed pages are devoted to Skyward Sword, and 70 pages focus on ‘The World of Hyrule,’ which will focus on Hyrule’s history and include a timeline. Additional sections of the book will focus on the evolution of Link’s character design, a catalog of the Zelda games, the Skyward Sword manga, and a few other things.

The remaining breakdown for the book is as follows:

Artwork for the individual games:
Legend of Zelda – 4 pages
Link’s Adventure & Link to the Past – 2 pages
Link’s Awakening – 1 page
Ocarina of Time – 6 pages
Majora’s Mask – 3 pages
Wind Waker – 10 pages
Oracle series – 6 pages
Twilight Princess – 32 pages
Phantom Hourglass – 4 pages
Spirit Tracks – 22 pages

Since the art book will include the 32-page Skyward Sword manga, the book’s announcement, also included a preview of the upcoming manga.

I really love the art style this time around. While the manga never exactly follows canon, it does provide interesting fan excursions. For instance, what’s particularly interesting about the Skyward Sword manga is that there are two Links. The one in the center of the cover art is clearly Skyward Sword‘s Link, but the one above looks like Akira Himekawa’s more recent depiction of Ocarina of Time‘s Link. The preview is basically suggesting that there was a chosen hero before the one in Skyward Sword, a hero in Hylia’s day.

The book will be released on December 21st, 2011 for 3,255 ¥ ($41). Hopefully this book will make it’s way outside of Japan, if not, well there will always be scans to look forward to.

Source Nintendo, NeoGaf