Who is Navi?

Hey! Listen! It’s time to dissect Navi! I’m sure many of you have dreamed of cutting up this lovable irritant from Ocarina of Time, but now it’s my turn! Navi is the blue fairy that accompanies Link on his adventure across Hyrule and through time itself… but never stops to help out. Many-a player have deemed Navi as annoying, though when I first played Ocarina of Time 3D, the only problem that I had with her was that she never helped, and felt only that she talked a lot. So, without further ado, let’s see why Navi finds it necessary to talk as much as she does.

We first meet Navi not long after the game begins, when the Great Deku Tree requests her to summon Link to him. We then receive a cutscene in which she flies through the Kokiri Forest, greeting everybody she meets and running into fences, before finding Link restlessly sleeping in his home. She pesters him and calls him lazy until he finally awakens. She quickly introduces herself and explains that she is his partner from now on, before hurrying Link along to come and meet with the Great Deku Tree.

Link unquestionably follows her, and is almost there when Mido, the self-proclaimed leader of the Kokiri, tells him to turn around and get himself a sword and shield if he is to see the Great Deku Tree. So, while Link is running around and grabbing those items, Navi continuously reminds him every couple of minutes that he must go and see the Great Deku Tree urgently.

This is where Navi’s major problem comes in. Navi was developed with the intention of giving targeting enemies more aesthetic, and to ensure that the player never got lost or forgot what they were meant to be doing. It is interesting to point out that her name is actually derived from what Nintendo was originally going to call her: Fairy Navigation System. But imagining that she was her own character, as I did with Link, why would she continuously remind Link of his task?

She can’t honestly believe that Link forgets what he’s supposed to be doing every five minutes. But on the other hand, her initial impression of Link is that he’s lazy, and she might not be reminding him of his task; rather, she is encouraging him to keep going, thinking that he might get exhausted at any second and will want to stop.

After Link has bought the Deku Shield and found the Kokiri Sword, then sent Mido off crying, he can finally visit the Great Deku Tree, who requests Link break the curse that has already sealed his fate, and then instructs him to go and see the Princess of Destiny, and telling Navi to stay with Link on his journey. Then, Link goes running off, but Navi lingers to give her final farewell to the Great Deku Tree, and when she did this, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of relationship she had with the Great Deku Tree before his deparutre from this world. Was the Great Deku Tree a father figure to her, or were they simply close friends for a long time? I prefer the latter theory, as fairies have no known method of reproduction, therefore they would have no concept of parentage, and Navi would be unable to see the Great Deku Tree as a father figure, so yeah, close friends for a long time… until now…

And so it follows that wherever Link goes, Navi follows. Upon their adventure, Navi is pretty useless. In battle, she merely floats around the enemy, as if Link couldn’t see the really quite large skeleton that’s trying to kill him. However, Navi does give Link information on the enemy if he doesn’t know how to go about defeating it, which are usually bosses, as Link can just hack and slash at normal enemies.

Now focusing on the main purpose of typical fairies: healing. Free-range fairies restore health, right? So why doesn’t Navi, who has been assigned to Link as a Guardian Fairy, like the Guardian Fairies that the Kokiri have, heal Link? As a Guardian Fairy, it’s her duty to protect Link, so why can’t she just heal him an infinite amount of times? It would make the game unbelievably easy, unless they put a limit on how often Navi could use her healing powers could be used, for example, she could only heal Link three times in a dungeon, and then she would need to recuperate with energy from the sun… like solar-powered Fairies or something.

But this is imagining her as her own character, so yes, why doesn’t she heal Link? If she wanted to live up to the duty that the Great Deku Tree entrusted her with on his death bed and protect the one who will save the kingdom… why doesn’t she heal him? It is also stated by other sources that she felt something for Link, which I’ll get to later, but that’s all the more reason to heal Link when he’s injured… but she doesn’t.

A possible explanation is that Link, as his own character, isn’t supposed to get hurt along his adventure. Obviously, a lot of the injuries that Link sustains in the game would kill him in real life, and it is obviously the player’s error in letting him get hurt, so perhaps that’s it: Navi doesn’t heal Link because he’s not supposed to get hurt, and when he does, Navi doesn’t heal him because it’s her way of saying, “Some super-skilled hero you turned out to be! Suck it up and try to avoid getting hurt next time!”… but then there’s the issue of reviving Link when he’s dead… if she could heal him, there’s no better time than when he’s dead, because he ain’t gonna learn for the next time…

Perhaps, through some odd quirk of biology, the same way that women and men are sterile and can’t create life, Navi can’t give life; she is sterile in that aspect, and she can’t heal Link when and if she wants to, which she most likely does. I find this a much more appropriate solution, even if she would have warned Link beforehand, which she doesn’t, but anyways, moving on!

When Link confronts Ganondorf at the end of the game, Ganondorf channels a tunnel of dark energy around Link, and Navi is unable to help him due to the dark energy. But Ganondorf quickly stops this and begins the battle, and sure enough, Navi is not to be seen by your side or circling Ganondorf, though you can still target him as if she was there, which she should be, seeing as the waves of dark energy have subsided, but I guess this was Navi letting Link breathe a bit, letting him have some time away from her, which was undoubtedly much appreciated by Link.

And then just before Link goes to fight Ganon, Navi states that she’s not going to let anything get in the way of fighting alongside Link this time. There are two things wrong with that statement: firstly, there was nothing stopping her from helping Link in the last fight; secondly, she doesn’t fight alongside him, she once again circles Ganon to ensure that Link knows he is there. And in the end, Link defeats Ganon without Navi’s help whatsoever.

After the fight, Princess Zelda returns Link and Navi to their rightful time, where Navi promptly leaves Link’s side and flies through a window in the Temple of Time. WHY?!!? I have forever wondered this since I first played Ocarina of Time 3D. There are a couple of different reasons given as to why Navi may have left: the kingdom had been saved and there was no longer a reason for her to remain with Link, or that she realised that a functioning relationship between them could never be (I’ll get to that soon), and she left, despite the fact they simply could’ve remained friends. And that’s my real problem, that she simply left without explaining why.

While I prefer the former theory, the latter theory has some merit, and would tie in with why Navi simply left without explaining: she couldn’t explain why she was leaving without putting Link in an awkward position, so she didn’t, she simply left, instead leaving Link in a position of curiosity and sorrow. People have often wondered whether or not there was anything between Link and Navi, and their ideas were furthered by Shigeru Miyamoto stating that Navi is jealous of Zelda, because Navi feels something for Link, but Link feels something for Zelda; and also, even though it is not considered canon, Navi confessing to Link that she loved him at the end of the Ocarina of Time manga.

When I first played Ocarina of Time 3D, I didn’t find Navi annoying, and when playing Ocarina of Time on the Wii, I found her even less annoying, because she wasn’t reminding me every 15 minutes to take a break from the 3D effect or from staring at the screen for so long. But what do YOU guys think? Is Navi annoying as hell, or as pleasant as heaven? Why do you think she doesn’t heal Link, or why she simply left when they were returned to their rightful time? Let me know in the comments, as we remember our friend Navi, forever lost to us. Now I quote the Great Deku Tree:

“Navi… Navi, where art thou?”