The Shocking Origins of Ooccoo from Zelda: Twilight Princess

the origins of this creepy yet innocent looking humanoid bird species called the ukah are far more Twisted than you may think the game they're featured in Twilight Princess does a decent job filling the player in on the lore surrounding the species where you learn about their General history and motives but the developers never give too much away where it's never made clear how they were created as a species and why they are so weird I took the liberty to take a deep dive on researching this elusive species and their background is far more strange than you would have thought where their Inception does doesn't begin with Twilight princess's release and actually dates all the way back to 10th Century BC I guarantee that you won't look at these creatures the same way when you're done watching this video so join me as I uncover the mystery that is the ukah before getting too deep in the Weeds on what the Uka actually are I think it would be a good idea to take a look at what the game tells us the first Uka that you meet is named uku who you find in the first dungeon of the game the Forest Temple she informs the player that she's looking for something and wants to tag along with you because she wants to work together she doesn't tell you what the something is that she's looking for but a few dungeons down the line you learn uku was talking about the Dominion Rod that you find in the Temple of Time where the Dominion Rod is the key for uku to get back to the city in the sky to reunite with her people you can actually find uku along with her son aply named uku Jr in almost every one of the mainline dungeons where they work together to be able to teleport link around each dungeon acting similar to the feror wind item from Ocarina time this is interesting because based on their teleporting abilities it's clear that the Uka have some sort of super Supernatural or magic powers which gives us a clue as to who the ukah may be that I'll touch on again later we learn a lot about the Uka from the character Shad who similar to his father has devoted his life to studying this elusive species Shad tells us that the Uka are the closest race to the gods even closer than the Helens after the goddesses created the Helens the ukas simultaneously created their own City one that floats in the heavens and can only be reached by using the sky Cannon based on shad's description and what we see in the city and the sky dungeon it's very clear that these goofy looking chicken creatures are extremely technologically advanced inventing a cannon that can shoot people to the heavens creating a magical Rod that can bring inanimate objects to life and creating a complexly designed floating island the ukah honestly don't get enough credit for how brilliant they actually are it's impressive how they were able to construct these massive fans in towering infrastructure considering their tiny bodies and lack of well opposable thumbs you meet another character during your quest named impaz who gives link the ancient Sky book which is key towards restoring power back to the Dominion Rod to reach city in the sky when she gives link the book she informs the player that the Uka originally invented the dommin rod and gave it to the quote messenger of Hyrule many years ago to allow communication between the royal family and the ukah it's unclear why the communication between the royal family and the ukah stopped but considering the city in the sky literally has a floor falling out right from under you right when you walk through the front doors it's clear that the Uka are going through larger problems than being able to communicate with the surface dwellers so now we get into the part of the video where we cover what the game doesn't actually tell you in picking sources for research I firstly turned to arguably the most well-known Zelda lore book Hyrule Historia on page 187 there's a section dedicated to uku that reads U's appearance is incredibly unique her design resembles the work of artist Amadeo modani Amadeo modiani was an Italian painter and sculpter who worked mainly in France where he was born in 1884 and died in 1920 he had a unique style of art which depicted surreal elongation of faces necks and figures and the uku long neck and face certainly look in place in amadeo's collection of art they both sort of give off that uncanny valley Vibe where I would argue that amadeos takes the crown of being the creepier of the two while hro Storia says that the uku design resembles this art from the early 1900s it is not guaranteed that the developers designed the Uka species to look like one of amadeo's paintings I couldn't find a single one of amadeo's paintings that resembled the half bird half human species that the uku is where I only really came across portraits of humans with exaggerated facial features this makes me think that there's inspiration for the yuku that not even Nintendo are admitting to in their Publications from here I was pretty stumped on where to look to uncover more about the UK's Origins analyzing the games dialogue turned up a dead ends and even reviewing official text created by Nintendo provided me with nothing that was until I came across this image right here this picture was created by MC eer in 1947 and is titled another world 2 this image is is a paradox which depicts a cubic architectural structure with an open Archway on each of the five visible sides of the cube through each of the archways we can see into space but it is unclear which direction is up since each window to the outside shows outer space from a different point of view so it's a very trippy image to look at the main thing I wanted to point out from this picture though are the creatures with humanoid faces and bird-like bodies that can be seen walking on the walls sound familiar well this is clearly what the Uka from Twilight Princess were based off of in the actual game you can even see them walking on walls of the city in the sky defying the laws of gravity that raises another question though what inspired mcer to create art based on these bird creatures certainly this design is too specific looking to just think of on his own right well to answer that question we have to look at some of his earlier Arts where this another world 2 picture wasn't his first instance of putting this humanoid bird in his art if we go back one year to 1946 we can find a picture he created called Otherworld Gallery which depicts a similar setting to the 1947 variant where we can see the humanoid Birds defin the laws of gravity in space this wasn't the first instance of Ester including this creature in his art though where for that we had to go all the way back to 1934 and look at the work titled still life with the spherical mirror this image depicts the humanoid bird a lot closer where it can be seen standing next to a rounded bottle on a newspaper in a book you can sort of see this with the first two pictures but it's clear with this one that the bird is metallic sort of looking like a manufactured statue in fact this statue actually existed in real life where mcer was gifted it from his father-in-law and made a work of art from it from this we can deduce that this statue that erer was gifted was most likely what led to Nintendo's inclusion of the uku species and Twilight Princess but that brings up a new question if this statue actually existed in real life what was it supposed to represent and where did it come from well we actually do know where esher's father-in-law got the statue he purchased it in aeran which spans Asia and Europe and is located just north of Iran and west of the Caspian Sea also the statue is actually a middle eastern mythological creature called a seor which first appeared in Persian folklore and literature around in the 10th Century BC the seor itself doesn't have one specific form but it generally takes the form of a bird creature and is sometimes crossed between other species such as dogs lions and in our case with the statue that eer was gifted humans what strengthens this connection between the seor and the ukah are the Striking similarities between the nature of the two beings for one the seamor are known to be benevolent birds that are unambiguously female and what is uku a benevolent female creature who helps link on his Quest Nintendo even blatantly gave her a son that makes an appearance in the game true she does steal your Dominion Rod straight from under your nose but she was just trying to get back home with her people so I think that could be excused the seamor from Persian mythology are also known to be very knowledgeable creatures who represent the union between the Earth and the sky serving as mediator and messenger between the two sound familiar in Twilight Princess the ukah are described as having close ties with the gods even having a closer connection than the Helens had with the Gods in game link is even given the Dominion Rod which the Uka originally designed to give to a messenger to communicate to the royal family many years ago the ukah act as Messengers between the Helens and the gods the same way as the seam orgs from Persian mythology act as Messengers between the earth in the sky the seamwork being a mythological creature also fits the role of uku and uku Jr being able to teleport around as if they have supernatural abilities the seamor are oftentimes quoted as having supernatural abilities such as being omniscent beings that know what will happened in the past present and future as well as being able to travel between different Realms of existence and what's the entire functionality of uku and uku Junior and Twilight Princess being able to teleport link around with the same supernatural abilities that the seaorg are known to possess also it's not like Nintendo is any stranger to having mythological references in their Zelda games where a couple of examples include Medusa head being a boss that you have to fight an Oracle of Seasons and the very common higho Enemy being a reference to the Cyclops of Greek mythology even the gly enemy from Zelda 1 on the NES and from tears of the Kingdom Bears a strong resemblance to the multi-headed Hydra monster also from Greek mythology the connection between the mythological seor and the Uka from Twilight Princess does not stop here though let's take a look at a famous Persian poem written about the seaorg from the 12th century called the conference of the birds this work written by a tar of nishapur begins with well a conference of Birds trying to figure out who they will make their King the wisest of all these birds is referred to as the hoop Yes you heard that right the wisest of all the birds sounds extremely similar to our friend uku from Twilight Princess which is a strong indicator that these two may be linked one common observation among fans is that uku got her name based on sounding similar to the well-known kako or cucko animal that you find all over Hyrule you can even Glide with the Uka the same way as if you were holding a cucko while I think the North American localization team did partly base U's name on the CUO animal I believe they also based oku's name on this hoop bird that you see in the conference of the bird's and quite honestly uku sounds more like hooo than it sounds like CUO and uku sort of sounds like a blend between the words hoop and CUO where the oo sound of uku comes from hoop and the C Sound of uko comes from CUO another well-known Discovery regarding UK's name is the heximal color value of 00 cc00 or uku is the color green more specifically it is the same shade of green as Link's tunic in the concept art for Ocarina time since Ocarina time was a large influence on Twilight princess's developments I think the spelling of uku was intentional to look like the heximal color value and the way the name sounds is based off of the words hoop and CUO anyway let's continue with the conference of the bird story to look for other similarities between the seamor and Uka as the conference of birds are contemplating who they want to make their King The Hoop which is actually a species of bird in real life suggest that they go on a quest to find the legendary seamwork to make their leader however the quest that the the hoop suggests the party embarks on is super dangerous and would take a very long time to finish because of the difficulty of the quest many of the other birds were reluctant to accompany the hoop but in the end the hoop was able to convince enough of them to tag along the poem then covers the bird's long journey through different lands where they had to Traverse seven different valleys each of these valleys signify an aspect of self-discovery or lessons that the birds had to learn to overcome in order to be a better version of themselves I won't go over every single one of these lessons but some of them incl include learning to love others and themselves learning to be courageous and learning to abandon their ego many of the birds were not able to make it through each of the valleys because the journey was difficult but at the end of the story we learned that 30 total birds made it to the gates of the seaorg once at the gates the gatekeeper let them through where they discovered a room full of mirrors with nothing else at first the birds were confused about where the seaorg was so that they could declare their King but at this point we realize the moral of the story us non-persian speakers don't know this but seem Mor is actually a Persian word which translated to English literally means 30 Birds where the C prefix means 30 and morg means birds so in the story The 30 birds that made it through the seven valleys literally are the seamor themselves where they can see themselves in the mirrors after walking into the dwelling of the seaorg the goal of the bird's Quest was self-discovery and not to find some Majestic bird the message here is that determination and drive to better oneself can only be found in one's heart and not by some external means in the story The Birds represented humans and all the desires and attachments we have to the world while the hoop represented a wise person who led the birds to purify their souls so what does the story have to do with Twilight Princess besides the fact that hoop sounds awfully similar to uku well since we know the ukah are seamores and seaorg literally means 30 Birds let's count how many Uka we can find in the city in the sky dungeon shall we we have the ukah shopkeeper uku and uku junor in the shop towards the Beginning Upon entering the dungeon we have a patch of two by the entrance door and a patch of two walking on the walls in the large Central circular room we have two more we actually don't have any in the Western Wing of the dungeon but we have quite a bit more in the Eastern Wing where we have three in a small Al Cove three along a long hallway in the adjacent room [Music] three more along another long hallway close [Music] by and then we find ourselves in another large circular room where we have two more on the topmost [Music] level two at the next [Music] level two more at the level below that and two additional ones below [Music] that and well that's all we have in the dungeon 26 seamworks that exist in city in the sky when we were searching for 30 I could have sworn I was missing four somewhere so I decided to use a moon jump hack in the GameCube version of Twilight Princess in the Dolphin Emulator to see if I could find some Uka tucked away out of sight or something but I still found the same 26 I even downloaded the map in and flew around it with a firstperson point of view camera but still couldn't find any more little guys walking around any statues of ukah or anything else out of the ordinary despite me not finding exactly 30 seam morgs and city in the sky you have to admit that it's pretty remarkable how close the 26 that we found is to the number 30 that we were looking for so close that it might mean there's something more to this it almost felt like Nintendo intentionally made the number of Uka in the game a tiny bit less than 30 to give some room for interpretation as to where the remaining four might be after all the fact that Nintendo made the uga's characteristics so similar to the mythological seaorg such as both being Messengers between the Surface and the gods makes me think Nintendo was aware of the seamwork as it appears in mythology and made efforts to model the Uka after it at first I thought maybe the last four Uka were killed I mean by the time link gets to city in the sky there's a giant dragon tormenting the city you would think the dragon wiped out at least a few of them right well based on my research of the nature of the seaorg and how it is depicted throughout literature these beings represent wisdom protection and most notably immortality since according to Legend they cannot die I don't think we can easily assume that four of them just died one possibility is that they could have just wandered off somewhere similar to how uku did where he plundered different dungeons running into link before he was able to find his home the four remaining Uka could be off somewhere else in Hyrule inaccessible to the player and quite frankly it's extremely likely that there's hundreds of ukah off living in their own floating cities that we cannot reach in game these possibility are likely similar to How likely it is that in the conference of birds poem there are other birds who went on their own spiritual journeys of self-discovery to find the sea organ themselves in both Twilight Princess and Conference of the birds were only shown a small piece of the world they take place in so in order to recognize the symbolism that exists between these two works we have to look at what each of the two stories presents to us directly from this point I began researching and observing Twilight princess's environments to search for any sort of Clues on the whereabouts of the last four seamor ironically searching for the seaorg in a similar manner to how the birds in the conference of the birds look for their own seaorg and that's where it hit me would if instead of searching for four more Uka and Twilight Princess maybe Nintendo planted four characters in the game that represent having gone through a journey of self-discovery and found the seam workg within themselves and that's when it clicked there are four distinct characters in this game none more and none less that grow as individuals to be better versions of themselves as the player Journeys through Twilight Princess the first of these is our companion midna when you first meet her you're chained in a prison and right off the bat she's actually pretty rude to the player she mocks him mocks Zelda and clearly doesn't trust either of them where her soulle motives appear to be using link as a tool to save her own world of the Twilight seemingly not having a care in the world for the land of Hyrule over time as mid has time to bond with the player this selfish attitude turns to compassion which can clearly be seen following the events of the lake bed Temple Zant makes an appearance and shoves the Twilight crystal in length trapping him in wolf form while also binding minda to the essence of light putting her on death's doorstep once the player brings minda to Princess Zelda in highroll Castle midna urges Zelda to save link putting link ahead of herself despite Mida being on the brink of dying Zelda then surrenders herself to gondor's Magic and Fades away which saves minda in the process as Zelda does this minda begs her to stop again showing an act of selflessness where she wants to put the well-being of Zelda above her own one final act of selflessness that minda performs takes place the very end where upon entering the gate to return back to her world of Twilight she shatters the gate behind her to prevent access between the two worlds she could have just left the mirror intact to try and establish Harmony between the two worlds but deep down she knew that Havoc would be wre again so she closed the gate and say goodbye to her friends for a greater purpose the character growth for midna is remarkable in this game so remarkable that I believe she takes the 27th seamwork spot her journey of self-discovery ended with her exhibiting kindness in putting the well-being of others above herself in fact in the conference of the birds poem one of The Valleys that the birds have the progressor is literally called The Valley Of Love where they learn the importance of loving others in minda's case she learned to love Link and Zelda as her friends over the course of the game despite originally being disrespectful and harsh towards them for the next character that symbolizes the Journey of the conference of the birds we have one that resides in Link's hometown of won Village Colin when the player first meets Colin he is a timid boy who looks up to link but often gets bullied by the other children of oron later on in the game soon after you unlock EPA you witness a cut scene where King bublin rides into kakaro Village heading straight towards Tallow and Beth Tallow makes it out of there in time but Beth totally freezes due to being terrified Colin then comes into the picture and pushes Beth out of the way of danger putting his own life on the line to do good luckily King bublin does not run over Colin where after a duel with the monster link is able to save the child but Colin's Bravery here cannot be understated I mean the kid's what 9 years old old standing up to a snaggle tooth Behemoth even this grown ass man sheepishly runs back into his house after witnessing the encounter with the kids Colin's growth from a timid boy on the ranch fully symbolizes the 30 birds from the conference of the birds where they had to be brave enough to Trek through four lands when they knew the journey would be dangerous and that's why I believe Colin takes the 28th seamor spot the next seamor representative may not be one that you would expect where we have King bublin himself yes a grotesque monstrosity like this can symbolize a majestic bird deep down but ironically this kind goes through arguably the greatest character transformation out of all the NPCs in this game throughout T princess you repeatedly witnessed his evil as he kidnaps children and harms others for seemingly no reason besides the hatred that breaths inside of him it's not until towards the end of the game that you witness this character have a total 180 in terms of attitude where after getting hacked up by link for the fourth or fifth time he speaks to the player and says enough I follow the strongest side that is all I have ever known he has the guts to stand up to his master Ganondorf and even though he has been beaten down by link over and over again he doesn't resent link and actually gives him a small key to help him on his quest to save Hyrule he doesn't let his ego get the best of him where he gives link a key to progress even though he didn't need to do so and could have just walked away this concept of not letting one's ego get the best of them is actually the focal point of one of the valleys that the birds in the conference of the birds poem have to progress through to get to the seaorg where in the story that Valley is called the valley of Detachment so for these reasons I believe King bu takes the 29th seam work spot but who takes number 30 I had a hard time trying to figure this out one character that initially came to mind was Princess Zelda as I mentioned earlier she surrendered herself to Gondor magic and Faded Away saving midna in the process this is undoubtedly a selfless thing that she did but she's a good character the whole story and does not undergo any sort of personal transformation similar to the birds from the conference of the birds or similar to midna Colin and King bulin who I mentioned previously I also thought maybe the last seamor metaphor could be the hero's shade who teaches link sword techniques the hero shade is actually the hero of time from Ocarina time in Mador mask who teaches Twilight Princess Linka techniques in order to pass down the lessons of his life this is nice of the hero shade and all but similar to Zelda he doesn't really undergo through any sort of self-discovery transformation where during the entire game he's very static and just teaches sword techniques we don't get to see any side of him that exhibits any unsatisfactory personality traits towards the beginning of the game or anything so after doing some more thinking I figured out the 30th and final seam workers right under our noses being able to be controlled by our game inputs the entire time link the hero of Twilight link is a bit of an oddball out of the four characters that symbolize the seaorg because he is arguably the most Bland character personality wise and is basically a blank slate where his personality is pretty much up to the interpretation of the fans there is one key feature that makes the link stand out as a seaorg though and that lines with the item he finds in the Temple of Time the Dominion rod as I stated earlier the seamwork from Persian mythology represents the messenger between the Earth and the gods and what is the Dominion Rod a communication device between the Helens and the ukah AKA seaorg who are known to have close ties with the gods so in Twilight Princess link is literally a messenger between the Helens and the gods because he is the wielder of the Dominion Rod making him a seaorg in a quote from impaz of hidden village she even says hey that Rod is that the Dominion Rod ah could it really be are you the messenger to the to the heavens among the legends of my clan there is a story from the time when the ukas still maintained contact with the royal family yes it is said that a mysterious Rod was handed down from the people of the sky and it was called the Dominion Rod the rod was only to be carried by the messenger to the heavens when the royal family needed to communicate with the ukah but there is a question that remains unanswered though if midna Colin and King boblin all experienced self-discovery of their own similar to the birds in the conference of the birds then why is link a blank slate with no personality the whole game and seemingly does not go through any sort of self-discovery of his own well we already know that Nintendo intentionally makes link a blank slate in his games so that the player can project themselves onto our protagonist to get more immersed while playing so I think Nintendo giving link the Dominion Rod declaring his seamwork status is a message that the seamwork is inside of us the player as we play Twilight Princess we are tasked with defeating bosses solving challenging Dungeons and puzzles all to grow as individuals undergoing our own journey of self-discovery in self-improvement as we watch and learn from Mida turning from arrogant to compassionate Colin from timid to Courageous and king bulin from Evil to an ally of the Helens so the final seamwork hidden in Twilight Princess was inside of us the player all along so that's the shocking origins of the ukah from The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess let me know what you all think about the ukah in the comments and let me know your own theories regarding the origin of uku I would love to hear them I actually think I may be the first person online to publicly make a connection between the seymor from Persian mythology and the Uka from Twilight Princess which is honestly surprising because the similarities are so glaring also as a disclaimer a lot of what I presented in this video is just a theory where it's not even known if Nintendo is even aware the Uka are based on the mythological Seymour creature I just analyzed the facts and presented in this video what I thought made the most sense but anyway I think that about covers it since you made it to the end of the video that clearly means you enjoyed watching so go ahead and click that subscribe button to not miss out on future videos like this I have dozens of Zelda video ideas for the future so make sure you don't miss out I'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Offbeat Drill

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Id: Nn1rKFNrmL8

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024