Akira Himekawa recently announced that the new Legend of Zelda serialization they teased back in July is based on Twilight Princess. The name may be familiar to fans of the Zelda series and its manga adaptations, but who is Akira Himekawa, really?

As it turns out, Akira Himekawa is actually a collaboration of two female manga artists, who go by the pen names A. Honda and S. Nagano. Among their other works, Himekawa has written several Zelda stories inspired by installments in the series.

These two extremely talented women have chosen not to reveal their real names, and information about them and their work can be hard to come by (in English, anyway). While rummaging through the internet, however, I found some amazing scans of an interview with Himekawa published in a 2005 issue of Nintendo Dream magazine, courtesy of the fantastic people at History of Hyrule and complete with a nifty English translation.

In the interview, Himekawa discuss their work on the serializations with Eiji Aonuma, producer of The Legend of Zelda series, and the unique challenges inherent to adapting the video games to a manga format — for example, keeping the traditionally silent protagonist’s dialogue true to character.

“Another thing which I like in your manga is that Link speaks as players imagine he speaks,” Aonuma says, “although he does not say anything in the game.”

“At the beginning, there was a ton of pressure,” Nagano recalls. “We thought, if the reader thinks, ‘This isn’t the Link I imagined!’ what will we do?”

Fortunately, their depiction was spot on.

Another neat tidbit, shared by Aonuma, was that the Rito tribe from The Wind Waker was inspired by Rouro, an original character created by Himekawa for a bonus story included in the Ocarina of Time manga. The interview, while a bit old, is a lot of fun to look over. Be sure to give it a read.

With the nature of manga as a storytelling medium necessitating some additional content and allowing for considerable fleshing out of the characters, we’ve already gotten to experience some fun (and sometimes heart-wrenching) twists on the games we already know, like the depiction of the four Links in Four Swords Adventures (or that Volvagia was Link’s pet and he had to KILL IT T_T).

In the same vein, a Twilight Princess manga will undoubtedly delve much deeper into the relationships depicted in the game and give even more personality to the diverse cast. (Oh please oh please fulfill a young girl’s dream and let their be a romantic ShadxAshei side story.)

I’m personally hoping for more on Midna’s back story (so much potential there), more personality for Zelda (didn’t she seem particularly flat to anyone else?), and some more initiative for Link (his motivations for helping Midna were vague at best). But whatever the end result, I can’t wait to see the finished product and the direction Himekawa decides to go.

You can learn more about Akira Himekawa at their official sites and social networks:

Thanks for reading.