Okay, so I'm going to try my best to organize this comment into sections so that I can properly express my ideas.
Canon and Word of God
I feel like this is the most important thing to address, at least from my perspective, and that the other things are more secondary. So I'll go over this, first.
People seem to be treating this strategy guide as canon due to it being made by Nintendo/licensed by Nintendo, but this is a gross oversimplification. In regards to being "made by Nintendo", as I mentioned before, this isn't entirely the truth. The guide is marketed as "The ONLY guide from Nintendo" on its cover. This is because, much like Nintendo power, it is
published by Nintendo of America. Published, not created by. Nintendo Power is not Nintendo/Nintendo of America, and this should be evident from the fact that one of this guide's writers left Nintendo Power to work at Nintendo of America (four years after this guide's publication), alongside the fact that Nintendo of America was not Nintendo Power's sole publisher throughout its run (it went independent at one point, and was then published by Future US until the end of its run, I believe).
The guide was written by Nintendo Power writers, and is effectively a Nintendo power guide, which was then published by Nintendo of America, like the magazine itself. The guide itself even boasts "
...it's the only guide for Majora's Mask that was written by the insiders at Nintendo Power." Nintendo Power writers, not any members of the Majora's Mask team/helped make the game, or higher ups at Nintendo. This information is, by the common definition we ascribe it, not Word of God. This is not information by "Nintendo itself" made to clarify the events of Majora's Mask. It is information from American writers of Nintendo Power, a magazine was at the time published by Nintendo of America. I'm sorry, but this is far too distant from the source material to be considered something that is the official meaning of the game that nobody at Nintendo ever told us, and considering we already often apply a degree of skepticism to statements directly from an author should the source not entirely support them, I can't fathom how this is deemed perfectly acceptable. It is the interpretation of people working for a Nintendo-themed magazine that they published.
If it's deemed more reliable due to being licensed by Nintendo, so are most Nintendo products. The Prima version of this guide was written by people who had nothing to do with Nintendo whatsoever, and is still an
"Official Nintendo Licensed Product". It just means Nintendo has approved and licensed the product. It has nothing to do with canon, and does not mean the product was directly created by Nintendo.
With that out of the way, assuming people for some reason still deem this a reliable source of information able to drastically change the scale of the game, I'll cover what we currently use to support Majora's 3-A tier.
Warping a Universe
The first sentence of Majora's justification reads "Said to
have warped all of Termina, a parallel universe, to the point where
the heavens, space, and time were corrupted." This is a bit misleading, as these are two entirely separate quotes from separate sections of the book that don't exactly go together, so I'll cover them individually. We'll look at the Woodfall statement, first.
This statement reads, "
The water was once pure, but, like everything else in the parallel universe, it has become tainted by the cruel intentions of the Skull Kid wearing Majora's Mask." This statement is used to imply that Majora warped the entire universe on some kind of notable scale. However, nothing actually suggests this, in the guide or in the game. Even ignoring the game for a second, let's look at the guide. The exact wording is that everything has "
become tainted by the cruel intentions of the Skull Kid wearing Majora's Mask". Tainted by cruel intentions. Just as the water has gone from pure to poison, the world is becoming contaminated. People's lives get worse, things look hopeless, the Skull Kid ruins lives wherever he goes due to his "cruel intentions". Not only does this fit with the way the statement is worded, but it's also supported in the game.
The idea that Skull Kid actively warped
everything in the entire universe, or even on the entire world, is not supported by what we see in the game. If we
honestly want to argue Occam's razor, please show me why something that blatantly doesn't occur in the game (everything in Termina being warped) requires less assumptions than a less literal version of the statement that actually aligns with the narrative. The amount of assumptions one must make to justify Majora warping the entire universe is immense.
Corrupting the Heavens, Space, and Time
The next statement has the problem of being even less literal. The exact words are "
Everyone's personal life has taken a turn for the worst, and it's all because of the mischief spread by the Skull Kid wearing Majora's Mask and the influence his cursed guise has on the moon, the heavens, space and time."
The current interpretation of said statement is that Skull Kid "corrupted" the heavens, space, and time, and that this somehow ties into him being a universe warper. This is based on nothing. As you can see for yourselves, the statement just says that the mask has some sort of influence over the heavens, space, and time. It does not say what this influence is, or its extent. It just says it's there. This is very flowery language that does not make a good basis for a tier, because it doesn't actually tell us what we need to know.
If this is used because Majora having some kind of influence over these things means he actively controls/warps them on a major level, this is blatantly false. Anyone who has played Majora's Mask can tell you that the central conflict of the game is able to occur because Majora cannot counter Link turning back time. He demonstrates no time based powers whatsoever, nor any defenses to it. This is what allows Link to save the giants and not be wiped out along with the rest of Termina at the end of the first three day cycle. Majora has no link to time, so using this as further justification for universal reality warping/control over the universe would be sketchy at the best of times.
Also, to respond to Kep, who said, "
So Majora being vulnerable to time-based ablities somehow means his powers are not capable of influencing time, even to a limited extent"; basically, yes. If he shows no control over time in the game, has no time based powers, and time itself is used as the primary weapon against him within the story, Majora first must show in any sort of capacity that he has the ability to actively or passively influence time in any meaningful way. If he actually can, and this influence does what essentially amounts to nothing and changes nothing whatsoever, this should not be further used to try and justify universal reality warping, as we have no idea what his influence over the heavens and space is, or how potent it is.
Alternate Reality
The final piece of evidence used for Majora's tier is that his moon dimension is referred to as an
"alternate reality", which means the same thing as "parallel universe", and therefore Majora's dimension is universal in size.
On its own, something being described as an alternate reality or some variation of such has never been enough to suggest actual universal size, on our site. This is because the terminology is so vague and can mean anything the author wants it to, and does not have to denote universal size. If we're judging it as universal because wikipedia says this, "
there is sometimes an additional connotation implied with the term "alternate universe/reality" that implies that the reality is a variant of our own, with some overlap with the similarly-named alternate history", then I would like to further point out that Majora's realm does not fit the definition of alternate reality, as we know it. That would more closely apply to Termina, which is an alternate reality to Hyrule. A similar world with a different course of history, and similar characters playing different roles. Majora's world is, as described in the guide, "
Hazy and surreal like a dream, the world that they've entered is a vast and eerie playground for masked children." Said world is then warped into four separate dungeons, and finally into Majora's boss chamber. This is nothing like a traditional alternate history. Again, we've always required actual evidence as opposed to simply assuming universal size when it comes to artifical/pocket realms created by characters. This should be no different.
Also, in response to Kep, who said, "
...So what? This is no different than the writers using "Hyrule" to refer to the planet, even though the planet is called Earth. It's just identification. This is both out of context and irrelevant to the scenario we're debating."
Kep, I don't get where you're coming from, here.
You claim calling Clock Town a "parallel world" to Hyrule is just identification, and that it doesn't matter/is out of context. Clock Town is repeatedly called both a world and parallel world because it's just a simple way to describe it. That's my point. It is just a simple way to identify it. The writers are not suggesting that Clock Town is a planet or universe, nor that it's the entirety of this actual parallel world. We obviously know it isn't. Calling Majora's world an alternate reality is just another form of identification. It is not meant to suggest the actual alternate reality/universe as listed on wikipedia, where it follows an alternate history of the world we know. If Majora's world was in any way like Termina or Hyrule, I would completely understand where you're coming from, but it isn't. Hell, even if they just flat out used the term "alternate universe" I'd be more comfortable with this, as the intention would be clear. But I can't accept the phrase "alternate reality" as proof of universal size for something that we have only seen as containing a field and a sun (before any of Majora's alterations). We don't do this for any other franchise, especially not when it's an artificial realm created by a character without any further explanation as to what it is.
Outlier
This last one didn't really pop into my head, but I figured I'd address it because Kep mentioned it.
"
And just to set things straight, none of what I said above means that outliers aren't a thing. Statements that are irreconciliably beyond a verse's tier would be rejected under the "Outlier" basis, still."
I am curious as to why you think this wouldn't apply, then. Going by what you said, this could very easily fall under "Outlier", even if all of this was considered 100% canon.
This is a 3-A feat coming from a verse where, aside from the literal gods who created the world, the highest feats are High 4-C. Of those, there are three. One for Majora, one for the
strongest incarnation of the main villai (except for when his weaker version is holding the next thing on the list), and one for
something considered the most powerful artifact in the verse. Remove Majora and there are two. From my understanding, this is being scaled to the Fierce Deity (obviously), as well as the Triforce, which by extension means it's scaled to Ganondorf at his peak, Demise, Skyward Sword Link, ALTTP Link, AoL Link, ALBW Link, the Master Sword, Four Swords Link(s), and Cia. Might be more I forgot.
Because all of these characters are now so far removed from what gave them their tier before (only the Fierce Deity has any sort of comparison to Majora), what specifically makes this exempt from being a clear outlier, even assuming everything else is fine? Just figured I'd ask since you brought it up.
tl;dr
I feel as though a multitude of factors render the reasons behind this upgrade unfit to be used as the tier justification for so many characters. Also sorry if I omitted a sentence or two, somewhere along the line.