Very nice, I enjoyed reading the poem alongside it. Though I feel that you did a good job capturing the essence that the art stands on its own!
It's very cozy, and I think the view-port border helps with that. I wonder, was that originally part of the composition or born out of matching the tile limit?
The pose and light of the raccoon and leaf make it feel like a proper Zelda setup when the player finds a new item, which is super neat to have that GB DNA in the composition. Though, the diagonal line of elements from the top left to the bottom right gives it more of a feeling of a traditional painting. That's a cool balance!
Thank you for your analysis, the poem is a follow-up. If the feeling wasn't caught at first, I wanted it to help the value I placed on the drawing.
The border is yes and no intentional, there were a lot more lines illustrating the trees in the beta design, but I opted for a dark border, so I can illustrate the light from the lake.
The combinations were something that just worked, I made the characters with more detail so that it would be easier to notice them. But when I finished placing them in the scene I was sure that now all that was left was the rest of the pixel art.