Just to let you know: Henrik Galeen is the fellow who invented the whole sunlight + vampires = unhappy and/or dead vampires device. I thought it likely that Nosferatu was the origin of this cinematic convenience. The commentary track on the DVD has confirmed this for me.
While we’re on the subject…
Konami pretty much seems to have ignored [Sonia Belmont] based on the supposedly bad game she inhabited (good character design and scenario aside)…
Actually, Igarashi wrote her game out of the official canon because he thought it was too far-fetched for a woman to be an action hero during the period in which the game was set. There’s an interview on Gamers where you can find these statements.
Aside from the obvious logistical strangeness here (since when were the Belmonts your average peasants?), Igarashi seems to be overlooking an awful lot of potential for character and story depth.
A woman would have to be all the stronger — all the more of a hero — to hold up against the repressive society of the time, and all of the fear and persecution she’d probably face. The stronger she’d get, the more that people would fear and resent her.
Thus the Belmonts were chased out of Transylvania after Dark Night Prelude/Legends, and thus Trevor/Ralph had to be called back in Akumajou Denetsu/Dracula’s Curse.
At the outset of that game, Trevor is kneeling by a shrine, praying. He could be talking to his dead mother, asking for the strength to follow in her stead.
I suppose an action game doesn’t need to go that deep, however.
I also suppose it doesn’t help much that Igarashi is filtering all of this through his own Japanese mindset.
Note that, as far as I know, Sonia still exists as a character in the official timeline. If so, however, she’s been demoted to little more than Trevor/Ralph’s mother.
He seems to care a lot about the atmosphere and continuity of Castlevania and the few Castlevania games that have had historical errors have all been the ones that Igarashi hasn’t worked on, such as CV64 with its turn of the 20th century biker skeletons.
Now, I really like Igarashi and respect what he’s trying to do with the series. Again, though, this doesn’t seem a necessary change to me. If anything, the storyline seems stronger with her in than with her out. If nothing else, she opens up a lot of intriguing possibilities.
Igarashi makes the occasional vague reference to historical accuracy, but he’s hardly a stickler. Thus the wailing guitars in Symphony of the Night and the classical music in Lament of Innocence (each anachronistic by at least one hundred fifty years — and more like five or six hundred in the latter case). There are all kinds of weird details in Harmony of Dissonance, like phonographs and elevators. The list goes on.
And even within the game’s internal world, Igarashi is willing to break form if it suits him. The “Spell Fusion” system in Harmony of Dissonance serves as a sort of a placeholder in terms of gameplay systems. It helps to explain whence Richter’s and the later Belmonts’ Item Crash techniques originate, while it makes clear what happened to the Belnades bloodline once it merged with that of the Belmonts. (That is, it went dormant until Juste found it.)
So, given that Lament of Innocence takes place several hundred years before Sypha was ever born, why did Igarashi put a Spell Fusion system in the game? Because it makes the game more interesting.
To be sure, he originally wanted the game to be straight out whip-and-subweapons action. That would have made it more accurate. He said that was a little too dull, though. So, with a shrug, there goes continuity.
What I’m saying is that his explanation doesn’t really hold water at face value. It’s a fictional world; you can do whatever you like with it.
It’s a convenient sound bite, yes, and there may be some element of truth to it — but he’s got some other reason. If you go strictly by what he says, basically what it translates to is “I just don’t want a female lead in my series.”
So. Is he just a jerk? Does he have issues with women? Is he gay? (Hell, Soma Cruz might as well be a woman. Maybe that’s how he likes it.)
Perhaps it’s something more mundane — like politics. Notice that he doesn’t include in his official timeline any game produced by either the (now-defunct) Kobe or Nagoya studios. In the case of Kobe, this is understandable. They kind of screwed up whatever they touched, even in the case of the rather enjoyable Circle of the Moon. But Dark Night Prelude took special care to adhere to the continuity established up to that point. So that would seem a curious explanation.
Maybe it’s some other problem entirely. Maybe he just doesn’t like that plot thread. I don’t know. I suppose I can’t, unless he lets something slip.
I doubt he’s written the game off for any really powerful concerns about historical accuracy, though. Nor does the quality issue seem right to me, given what other games he does choose to include (like the two Dracula Denetsu games).
So, as before, that just leaves one to marvel at how strange his statement is.