I’ll cop to being, at best, a casual anime fan and an incidental nintendo fan like some sort of goose that got lost on migration and decided to stay for the catchy musical score but I’ve had a thought that’s been making me laugh for like 20 min now:
Replacing any Shonen Protagonist with Legend of Zelda’s Protagonist Horrible Klepto Gremlin and Professional Fightboy, Link.
Doesn’t matter which link beyond “what’s funniest in this particular scenario”. Maybe a specific Link, maybe an amalgamation of all Links into a superpowered multidimensional agent of Chaos. A HyperLink, if you will.
Then plop that bad boy down into the start of any Shonen anime and watch it go completely off the rails.
Juevenile Delinquent With A Heart Of Gold Link (really, could you imagine Link in a middle school setting? not for more than five minutes before he jumps out of the Designated Protagonist Window at the back of the classroom) dives in front of a car to save a small child’s life. Botan, the grim reaper in the form of a blue-haired anime hot chick, comes to explain his peculiar situation, only for him to get up halfway through the speech about Karma becuase he still, somehow, has half a heart left, baffling everyone.
Local Weirdo Link hangs out in a graveyard every night graverobbing Communing With The Spirits, until Some Nerd keeps getting him into weird situations and eventually he ends up on a plane to America to participate in some kind of tournament for godhood.
They get all the way to the third round before anyone realized Link doesn’t have a spirit companion, he’s his own Kickass Sword Dude.
Famously Young Orphan Link attempts an arcane ritual to bring his mother back, only to be confronted with a Manifestation of all Knowledge In The Universe, who then attempts to take his limbs and a sibling. Link, who has kicked several gods and the actual spacetime continum in the dick before, does not stand for this Malarkey
Chronically Ill superhero Toshionori Yagi is looking for someone to take up the quirk One For All and is impressed by the courage of a young maniac attempting to protect the people of the town from a monstrous villain whilst armed with a pointed stick, and takes him on as his apprentice. Link, surprised to be starting with the Triforce of Power this time, is agreeable to this, and attends superhero high school in hopes of locating the triforces of Courage and Wisdom.
Related question: Is Link Literate? I know him through fragmentary playthroughs of Breath of The Wild, the one with the bird, and the one with the boat and I honestly don’t know if he can read.
Professional Monster Ass-Kicker and Sword Collector Link arrives in The Seritei and promptly goes after the Tall Dude With The Elaborate Hair That Monolouges About Power on the assumption he’s found Ganondorf again, and gives Zaraki Kenpachi the fight of his life.
The residents of the Village hidden in the lead poisoning Leaves avoid the blond boy with the rap sheet of misdemeanors a mile long and constant nonsensical yelling, assuming his strange ways are due to the fox spirit the previous Mayor of Murdertown stuffed into his intestines as a baby.
Several Hundred Episodes, a completely destroyed chunin exam and a lot of screaming later, Kyubei comments “No, he’s Just Like That.”
Seto Kaiba, Professional Rich Bitch: “IT’S TIME TO DUEL!!”
Seto Kaiba, about to learn what Consquences are “…What are you doing with that sword?”
The only Shonen Anime Link doesn’t completely send off the rails one way or another is the orginal Dragonball, becuase accepting an extensive and bizzare fetchquest from a random blue-haired chick is 100% in-character for any and all Links.
