"Mr. Miyamoto's love of puppet shows really comes through here."
That's the take from Takaya Imamura, the artist who spent 32 years at Nintendo designing some of the most recognizable characters in gaming history. The man behind Star Fox's anthropomorphic crew and the haunting aesthetic of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has weighed in on the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake's divisive new look, and his read on it is more interesting than most of the discourse surrounding it.
The puppet theater connection most fans missed
Imamura posted his reaction to the remake's new Link model on social media, and rather than simply praising or criticizing the design, he connected it to something deeper in Shigeru Miyamoto's creative DNA. Specifically, Miyamoto's well-documented love of Japanese puppet theater, known as ningyogeki.
Here's the thing: this isn't a random observation from someone on the outside. Imamura worked directly alongside Miyamoto for over three decades. He knows how the man thinks creatively, and his suggestion that the remake's character designs carry the spirit of marionettes carries real weight.
The connection becomes hard to ignore once you see the side-by-side comparisons that have been circulating online. The new Link's proportions, the slightly exaggerated joint articulation in his limbs, and the way his face sits on his head all read differently once you frame them through the lens of marionette construction. Puppet figures are built to be expressive from a distance, with simplified but deliberate facial geometry. That description fits the remake's art treatment almost perfectly.
From Star Fox puppets to Hyrule marionettes
Miyamoto's puppetry influence isn't new information. The original Star Fox was famously marketed using physical puppets built to represent the game's characters, and Imamura was central to that project. Those designs had the rounded, slightly artificial quality of muppet-style figures.
The new Ocarina of Time remake takes that same sensibility somewhere different. Where Star Fox puppets leaned cartoonish and soft, the remake's aesthetic feels closer to traditional Japanese marionette theater: more formal, slightly uncanny, with a crafted quality that sits at an intentional distance from realism. Nintendo itself confirmed the remake is not aiming for realistic graphics, which lines up exactly with what Imamura is describing.
The backlash to the remake's look has been loud, particularly around Young Link's face. But Imamura's framing recontextualizes the criticism. This isn't a studio that missed the mark on realism. It's a deliberate artistic choice rooted in decades of creative philosophy from the man who built the Zelda franchise.
What Imamura actually thinks of the remake
Beyond the art direction analysis, Imamura is simply looking forward to playing it. He mentioned that his last time through the game was the 3DS version, and he praised the remake's color palette and lighting. "As expected!" he added, which reads as genuine enthusiasm rather than polite deflection.
That detail matters. Imamura isn't just commenting as a design critic. He's a fan of this game who worked in the same creative environment where it was born, and his excitement about returning to it carries a different kind of credibility than most takes on the remake's visuals.
The key here is that the art style debate around the Ocarina of Time remake has mostly been happening without this context. Fans comparing it to other modern Zelda games, or to realistic remakes from other studios, were measuring it against the wrong reference points entirely. Measured against Japanese puppet theater, the design language starts to make a lot more sense.
For anyone wanting to revisit the original before the remake drops, the full strategy guides collection for Ocarina of Time covers everything from dungeon walkthroughs to collectible locations. And if you're building out your knowledge across other titles in the meantime, the broader gaming guides hub has you covered.
