Why the Anouki Should make a Reappearance

Remember these guys? The Anouki are a race of humanoid reindeer in colored jackets that have only appeared in two Zelda titles: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Despite this, they have always been one of the standout races of the Zelda series, to me. At this time, you might be asking yourselves, “Why? They’re just prejudiced little squirts who struggle to live in peace,”. Well, what if I told you that you just answered your own question?

The Anouki are Unique

All races in the Zelda series can be considered to be unique, in that, they all have their own societies, their own cultures, and they all have very different appearances. The Anouki are no different, in this respect: they have their own society and they have a very different appearance to anything seen in the Zelda series before Phantom Hourglass. But there is another way that the Anouki are unique, because every other race has one thing in common: good relations.

Every member of every other race in the Zelda series gets along: Hylians live in relative peace, a Goron treats another Goron with respect, a Zora has no quarrel with another Zora, the list goes on. Examples of same-species disagreements are few and far between. But not with the Anouki. While they still get along with each other, in both of their appearances, it has been demonstrated that they are a little prejudiced.

In Phantom Hourglass, it is your task to figure out which of the Anouki living in the Anouki Estates is actually an imposter: a Yook who has kidnapped and disguised itself as an Anouki. If you don’t know what a Yook is, I’ll go into further detail about them a little later. By talking to each Anouki, not only do you slowly but surely work out which Anouki is actually an imposter, but you learn that these Anouki do not share the blissful lives of other races. Some of the Anouki appear to have trust only in certain people, for example:

“Yeah, my name’s Fofo. You heard that right. I’m sure ya know this, but the Yook, they do nothing but lie. And Gumo never lies. Just sayin’…”

And then there are other Anouki who clearly lack trust in other Anouki, even if that other Anouki has trust in them:

“My name’s Gumo. Believe me, either Fofo or Aroo is lying!”

In addition to this, Spirit Tracks revealed that the Anouki can also be a little prejudiced toward each other. After Link is tasked with pairing up Anouki to make little ‘squads’ to patrol the Anouki Village and keep out monsters, Link must talk with each Anouki to find their preferences, and this is the result:

“Call me Noko. Listen, us Anoukis only pair up with folks we find agreeable. Me? My biggest gripe is guys wearin’ yellow. I mean… blech! As far as I’m concerned, outside of bananas, nothing looks good in yellow!”

“[…] my real name’s Yefu. […] My partner needs to move freely in the field, so flashy horns are a major no-no! […] And NO, I don’t just say that ‘cause I got small horns!”

“[…] Name’s Bulu! […] I can’t stand Anoukis who grow out their facial hair. They think they’re so great! I mean, who do they think they are! Bah!”

‘Nuff said. When was the last time you heard a Goron complaining about another Goron having a hide that was too rocky? Or a Zora complaining that another Zora’s fins were too long? Or a Hylian’s ears that were too pointy? You don’t, because through some form of black magic, they all get along with each other. When you talk to your friends about others, do they praise the people they are talking about? No, the majority of the time they’ll complain, or point out the flaws in the other people. This is how the Anouki are unique: they feel like real people. They have their preferences and their distastes, just like real people. They trust some members of their society and distrust others, just like real people.

Other races in the Zelda series have rarely demonstrated this sense of individuality in the members of their societies, to the point where I can’t even think of an example. It would be simple to ask that societies have greater depth in future Zelda games, but there are other reasons that the Anouki should be brought back.

The Yook

“We Anouki have got one enemy on this island. They’re the Yook. There was a lot of bad blood between our ancestors. So 100 years ago, we made an agreement. The Anouki live in the west… and those hairy Yook live over in the east on the Great Ice Field.”

The Yook are a race of hairy, bestial humanoids that share the Isle of Frost with the Anouki in Phantom Hourglass. The reason for their disagreement is unknown, but like all blood feuds and arguments, it probably had a simple beginning and then escalated… probably quickly.

Everybody has somebody that they avoid at all costs; somebody they could make up with, but don’t want to. The Anouki’s disagreement with the Yook is an extension of the Anouki’s prejudice, and is akin to the racism in our world in the early 20th Century and earlier.

This only makes the Anouki all the more relatable, and, well… real. We can relate to the Anouki because, as a race, we went through a similar event. The only difference is that Anouki and the Yook are apparently completely different species, whereas White Americans and African Americans are merely different races of the same species (human).

In Spirit Tracks, we once again encounter the Anouki. Despite the fact that the Anouki are from a completely different world (they originated in the World of the Ocean King, which is revealed to be a completely separate realm from that of the Great Sea), the Anouki made their way from Isle of Frost to the Snow Realm in New Hyrule.

“Way back when, us Anoukis lived on an island encased in ice. But one day, someone told us we couldn’t just crash there forever. So we packed up our junk and set out in search of a new land to call home.”

Given the absence of the Yook in New Hyrule, it is implied that the Yook got tired of having to share the Isle of Frost with the Anouki and ‘asked’ them to leave.

It’s sad to see that the Anouki and Yook didn’t make up, as the human race did. But this another way that the Anouki could be brought back in the future: to show the Anouki and Yook putting aside their differences, smiling on their brothers, everybody getting together and trying to love one another right now. Obviously it wouldn’t be the primary storyline of the game, it’d be more of a detailed side-quest, like the Anju and Kafei quest in Majora’s Mask, but it’s still something I’d like to see.

Other Mysteries

And there are other things about the Anouki that could be reason enough to bring them back in the future. The origin of the disagreement between the Anouki and the Yook would be interesting to see, though it would be unlikely, given that a game that explored that would be set before the events of Phantom Hourglass in the World of the Ocean King, where Link doesn’t get reincarnated whenever evil resurges. I s’pose that could be an interesting way to make a Zelda game without Link as the main character, but then it would also be without Zelda, given that she is also not reincarnated in the World of the Ocean King, and therefore it would be more of a spin-off than a game in the actual Zelda series.

A little more about the Anouki as a race could be explained in a future Zelda game. It has been established that the Anouki do not actually have fur coats, and that they are actually wearing colored, furry onesies. And given that they do wear clothes, why do they continue to live in cold environments? Why did they choose to stay on the Isle of Frost after the disagreement with the Yook, instead of going somewhere warmer? Why did they migrate to the Snow Realm in New Hyrule, rather than somewhere warmer? Is it that they require cold temperatures, but cannot find a ‘Goldilocks Zone’, so they stay in the cold and wear fur coats? Or is that it simply part of their culture that they stay in the cold and wear fur coats? Who knows? And while a little mystery is always nice, expansion on unknown details is also nice.

Another interesting little thing is how the smart little munchkins managed to get out of the World of the Ocean King and into the Great Sea, only to later discover the land that would become New Hyrule. It could’ve simply been an accident, or it could’ve been because they asked the Ocean King to find them a new place to live and the Ocean King sent them to the Great Sea, in much the same way that he returned Link and Tetra to the Great Sea at the end of Phantom Hourglass. This is a little more likely to happen, because, though it would, again, only be a sidequest, a game set between Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks is far from unlikely.

To put it plain and simply, the Anouki are a strange and relatively new race in the Zelda series. They are unique and were rather underplayed in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, and there’s really no reason that they shouldn’t be brought back. As a quick tidbit, I think it would be interesting to see a future game that uses Skyward Sword’s art style feature the Anouki, because not only would it give them more detail visually, but it would be a good excuse to see snow in Skyward Sword’s art style. But what do you guys think? Are the Anouki interesting enough to be brought back? Or are they too boring and should remain having only two appearances? Let me know in the comments.