Castlevania General

I mean in the case that she's an adorable twelve year old girl kicking copious amounts of demon ass. The humor is that she's a chibi anime character in a horror game.

I'd even defend the book Running Gag on characterization grounds that Maria is utterly not taking any of this seriously and her Skewed Priorities illustrate she's not afraid in the slightest of the monsters around her.

Focusing on her appearance is Age-Appropriate Angst (albeit misguided as we know) when, of course, she should be worried about the people trying to murder her. The dissonance is intentional.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 24th 2021 at 9:25:32 AM

They could have done that without giving her weird and uncharacteristic A-Cup Angst body image issues.

What did they think that game was, Disgaea?

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 12:26:08 AM

True but even then I suspect the hardcore Castlevania fans know she, uh, well grows out of it.

Maria has perfectly normal teenage girl worries because she can fuck Dracula's shit up with pigeons of doom.

And again, how is this exactly the same as her Rondo of Blood self? Last time I checked, Rondo of Blood Maria didn't obsess over older women's breasts.

No, but it is an extension of what a deliberately overthetop RIDICULOUS character she was. Once influenced by the Magical Girl genre where it would be an appropriate character trait.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 24th 2021 at 9:29:14 AM

It's not even an appropriate character trait in Magical Girl anime either. I've actually watched some Magical Girl shows back in my day, and they angsted over a lot of things other than breast size.

Honestly, this is something that's more common in works written by male writers who think that girls obsess over their breasts as much as heterosexual men obsess over breasts.

Edit:

Also, it's unfair to single out Maria as the most anime character in Rondo of Blood. Just look at Richter's original character design — he's basically Ryu from Street Fighter but with a whip. His SOTN self can even do fucking Shoryukens!

TBH, the Metroidvania games really inject a lot of "anime" into the series. The N64 games actually dialed it back by not giving the protagonists any abilities besides their standard attacks, platforming, and subweapons.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 12:36:53 AM

Ah, yes Castlevania Judgement.

That was a video game that existed.

I agree, most of the characterisation was bad. Not just the character designs. There's maybe three designs I thought were pretty cool. And maybe two characterisations.

Carmilla from Judgement was a mixed bag. Her character design was pretty iffy, but her story mode actually gave her a bit of Hidden Depths by having her be genuinely loyal to Dracula in the end. Her ending even muses that her beauty wasn't just skin deep after all.

Circle of the Moon does have her a genuinely devoted follower of Dracula too.

That's like the only other game she has any form of character.

Judgement Maria COULD work as a separate character if they removed her boob obsession

There's no justification for Judgement Sypha tho.

I would've been fine with the boob obession if it actually led to something, but alas.

Yeah, it just turns her into Taokaka Vermillion and its kind of embarrassing. Instead of a potential story about her learning to accept that really bad things will happen (like Evil Richter) or how her untapped potential is just waiting, its just Aeon basically telling her "Hey you'll get boobs too :)" before her ending text quickly mentions Symphony's events.

NVM

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 10:04:36 PM

I like Fantastic Racism Knight Templar church agent Sypha.

Mind you, it'll come off as a "Whaa?" to people who know her from the show.

It's still not a good sign when Carmilla of all people is able to call her out. Though Sypha did point out that Carmilla's the one who instigated the witch hunts in the first place, Carmilla argued back that all she did was give a little encouragement.

One can assume that actually fighting alongside Alucard during Dracula's Curse helped her mellow out.

One could interpret Pre III Sypha blaming everything on creatures of darkness to avoid coming to terms with the all too human motivations behind the persecution of herself and her fellow witches.

It is something of a theme in the Castlevania series that Humans Are the Real Monsters. Humans not only keep bringing Dracula back, they even try to replace him or bring him back when he was finally Killed Off for Real and reborn as an ordinary person.

Heck, Aria of Sorrow even revealed that the true source of Dracula's power is something born from humanity itself, Chaos.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 10:15:27 PM

....man, I'm kinda sick of Humans Are the Real Monsters.

I don't care if it is real life. I'm sick of it.

Like it feels like it renders every person actually doing good in the world meaningless, because just being a human means they are worse then the baby head eating monsters out there.

"But the baby head eating monster must literally eat baby heads to live. It's not being mean about it. But humans...hur hur hur...you sure are awful.''

Of course, I can't fully deny it's a thing. Humans killed Dracula's wife, and he himself was a human before he became a vampire. One who changed himself for very petty reasons, and wrecked the life of his best friend to do it.

But I'm still sick of this trope.

I also take it as something of implied development since every depiction of the III group has them fighting Dracula together. SO one presumes she learned to trust Alucard along the way.

As for Maria, it occurs to me how odd it is she herself isn't the kid trying to prove herself. Since her scene with Richter has her being dismissed as a child and she insists she can handle herself. And in the Symphony rendition of the boss, she'll help him when he's low on strength. I find it interesting to compare how her older self is an impatient woman who snarks at Alucard's bluntness when they meet up.

I mean, it's been a thing as far back as Simon's Quest, where Simon had to put up with townspeople rejecting him and lying to him because of his curse.

What, did you think npc's giving Simon bad advice in that game was a translation issue?

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 11:58:10 PM

I figured it was because they wanted no part of his quest to bring Dracula back (even if it was to kill him again).

They also aren't thrilled about the zombies coming out every night due to the curse.

It's still pretty neat that Ecclesia has a twist on that concept where you need the villagers to get the best ending. And rely on them to get good equipment and items.

I like that Bloodstained really went to town on the idea (pun intended) with sidequests.

Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. If we're going to be bombarded with the worst of humanity, then we need to be reminded of the best.

Cause god knows it's easy to forget about that part.

TBF, the games do have the best of humanity.

Namely, people like the Belmonts who fight Dracula and his servants.

Even if there's always going to be some big threat due to humanity's evil, there's also always going to be someone willing to face it.

Edited by M84 on Oct 26th 2021 at 12:18:56 AM

In spite of how cynical it tends, the show really hit the nail on the head about the Belmonts. Even at their least heroic, their most selfish, Belmonts will protect the weak, even when they don't want to and get no thanks for it. Because evil is very real, and letting it spread without a fight just makes it worse. Trever would rather die for a worthless cause than live doing nothing.

I feel like Judgement is full of Dramatic Irony and if you judge the characters as they are, you miss a lot of its more subtle storytelling. Virtually all of the characters are people who will go through Character Development.

• Maria
• Lecarde
• Sypha
• Shanoa

And so on.

It takes advantage of the time travel element so that we know the people they will grow into. It also provides a rather sad story with Grand Danasty as he's one of the few looking BACK to his heyday and how he's got nothing even though he defeated Dracula.

So Sypha's characterization works well because we know that at some point she overcame whatever prejudices she had against Alucard.

And let's be frank, Castlevania unlike other games, knows that Fantastic Racism is 99% accurate in the reality as a monster is usually going to eat you. Alucard and Cornell are the rare exceptions.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 25th 2021 at 9:52:57 AM