To begin with, let’s review what we know about the Minish.  They are a race of miniature people, approximately one to two inches in height.  Adults are unable to see them, and it is said that only good children can see them.  They love to make the big people happy, and they do that by hiding rupees, hearts, and other various items in grass, pots, or other places people might not expect to find such items (suggesting that they are in the other games, but we just don’t see them).  They built the Armos statues that guard the Wind Temple, and presumably every other Armos statue in the series.  Ages past before the start of The Minish Cap, a great evil overtook Hyrule, and the Minish gave the people the Light Force and the Picori Sword to combat this evil; once it was defeated, the people enshrined the sword and held a festival every year to celebrate the Minish.  However, only once every one hundred years can the Minish enter the world of humans.

That’s all okay if you don’t like to think past the established canon, but if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be writing this article.  So let’s get a start on what I don’t like about the canon of the Minish.

Let’s start with the adults’ inability to see them.  I don’t think it’s because they’re unwilling to believe or that they’re plain stupid; I think it’s more likely that the Minish can turn invisible or just hide really well, and they choose just to appear to children because they’re less likely to be cynical and therefore easier to make happy.  After all, they do exist to make other people happy, and I’m okay with that, because I have trouble accepting Santa Claus’s garden variety of elves who scorn the other elves for wanting to be dentists (hey, they need healthcare benefits, right?  You can’t have healthcare benefits if all of your employees share the same job).

Another bone of contention is the Minish’s inability to enter the world of humans but for once every one hundred years.  Now, if all of the Zelda games take place in neat little hundred year intervals, this wouldn’t be that much of a problem.  However, I think that very unlikely, and in either case there’s still the other 99 years or so between visits.  For a race that’s supposed to exist solely to please the other races, they have a crappy schedule.  I would think they would want to be in the human world all year every year, ancient magics be darned.  But we can easily get around this.  Simply redefine the human and Minish worlds, the human world being as we see it, and the Minish world being the world as they see it; it’s the same world, but only perspective change.  But it just wouldn’t be HNS to leave it at that; no, I have to push it further by getting rid of the every 100 year rule (that rule is just too convenient).  Nah, the Minish can enter the human world whenever they please; of course, when I say enter the human world, I mean that they use the Portal Stones, Stumps, Jars, etc. to grow to human height (which I actually still put in between four and five feet, otherwise they just wouldn’t be Minish).  Some of the more powerful ones, your elders like Ezlo and Librari, don’t even need the Portal Stones; they just use their magic to grow.  Well, I’m assuming that the other Minish elders aside from Ezlo can use magic, but it doesn’t seem that unlikely.

But why would they grow to human height, especially if they like to remain hidden from adults?  Well, sometimes you just can’t make people happy when you’re only an inch tall.  Surely there must be situations that require a lot more height than you were born with.  Like hugging a lonely person and actually having your arms circle around and touch each other (you know, a proper hug); crappy fanfics aside, even Hyrule must have the equivalent of emos.

And really, those are the only two things about the Minish that really bugged me.  I can now move on to the Sheikah next month, assuming I can remember to do the research; you know, basic fact checking, that sort of stuff.  If I don’t get around to it, then we’re diving back into the biology of Hyrulean life with the Zoras (pun recognized, but unintentional).