Regardless if it's the canon timeline, lords of shadows version, or even the netflix show, one thing is for certain
Sypha's genes beat the crap outta Trevor's

Origami Around
Cosmic Funnies

Janaina Medeiros
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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@theartofmadeline
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
we're not kids anymore.
Show & Tell
i don't do bad sauce passes

#extradirty

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
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Game of Thrones Daily
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

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@nathangraves
Regardless if it's the canon timeline, lords of shadows version, or even the netflix show, one thing is for certain
Sypha's genes beat the crap outta Trevor's
My memes dunking on Netflix Castlevania (2024)
I made the last one just now to prove a point
There might be some misunderstandings here so lemme make it clear, yes I do hate that hack job of an adaptation, thanks for coming!
I spend way too much time on them
behold! A collection of Castlevania little guys!
soooo embarrassing to get obsessed w a specific character when no one else gives a damn. like yeah heres post #574934. heres au idea #26482. heres art piece #9383. yes its all about the same person, yes i am rambling in the corner blair witch style. feel free to shoot me dead for this btw
Thought it was mildly funny that as soon as Soma swears he's gonna reject Dracula's power you can get Dracula's tunic
Why is Hugh looking at me .....
Who's in charge of the dialogues
Aria of Sorrow & Identity
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a Gameboy Advanced game released in 2003, and marks the penultimate end of the Castlevania series’s canon timeline. Unlike the other entires in the series, the protagonist (Soma Cruz) of this game is unfamiliar with the supernatural. He has not been raised to be a monster hunter. Soma doesn’t even believe that monsters exist.
The Soma is tasked by a mysterious agent named Genya Arikado to reach Dracula’s throne room after learning that he and his childhood friend have both been trapped within the otherworldly dimension the castle now occupies. Throughout his trek through Dracula’s Castle, he discovers that there is a prophecy that foretells the return of the evil count. It is on this journey that Soma discovers the truth of the prophecy and of his own identity.
Aria of Sorrow is a game that has a lot to say about identity, about how important it is to know oneself. Each and every character in the game plays into this theme in one way or another, and I will be taking the time to highlight how I believe this theme applies to each of the characters that appear.
Soma Cruz
Soma Cruz (or 来須蒼真 / Kusuru Soma) is a Japanese national (or foreign exchange student in overseas releases). He is currently in his last year of high school and is presumably making plans for the college that he ends up attending in the sequel game. His character bio in the game manual describes him as having a “strangely daunting presence” that others “find difficult to approach.” He is still close with his childhood friend, whose name is Mina Hakuba.
The moment that Soma starts his adventure, he learns that he has a supernatural power referred to as the Power of Dominance. It is a power that allows him to rule over the souls of monsters and use their abilities. It is a power that is unambiguously dark in nature.
It is a power that makes Soma uncomfortable.
Soma begins to feel as if he does not know himself anymore. Who is he to have this sort of power? When he questions Arikado at the beginning of the game, the agent skirts around the question and orders him to head for the throne instead. Every time Soma attempts to question him, Arikado simply tells him that all of his questions will be answered when he reaches Dracula’s throne.
And when Soma does reach it? His whole world crumbles.
Soma is destined to become Dracula. He is the one from the prophecy that has brought everyone he met to Dracula’s Castle.
Even his name is a reference to the inevitability of this fact. The kanji in Kurusu translate to “come/next” and “by all means”. And the kanji in Soma means “pale/blue” and “truth/reality”. Soma is the next Dracula and he is inevitable. This is the cruel reality. “Blue” might be a little odd, but the kanji they used for it (蒼) was historically used to also describe the color green. This is important because the primary colors in Mathias Cronqvist’s design were black and green.
Not only that, but the chaotic being at the heart of Dracula’s Castle begins to actively fill Soma with the very same malicious will that drove Dracula to insanity before him.
(Note, Arikado’s dialogue has a slight mistranslation. In Japanese, he says, 「魔力と一つになったお前には、巨大な邪悪な意思が流れ込んでいるはずだ。」 So, he’s saying “Now that you’ve become one with [Dracula’s] magic, an enormous amount of malevolent intentions must be flowing into you.”)
Not only has Soma had his entire self-image upended by the discovery of his dark power, but he’s now being forced to endure this evil energy being poured into him. The very same twisted human desires that fuels Dracula’s myriad resurrections.
But all hope is not lost. The very chaos that is corrupting Soma is deep within Dracula’s Castle. Arikado tells Soma that he can delve to its depths, and then he will be able to destroy it and save himself.
Soma agrees and tells Arikado that he will fight against his fate with everything he has. He will not let the world define him, he will not let himself be guided by a destiny that he has not chosen for himself. He will not allow himself to become the monster his previous incarnation was.
And so, Soma sets off to tell the world that he is the only one who decides who Soma Cruz is.
…
And he wins, of course.
But now, I’m going to talk about the rest of the characters and how they support this theme of identity.
Mina Hakuba
Mina Hakuba (白馬弥那) is an 18-year-old high school student and Soma’s childhood friend. She’s the only daughter of Hakuba Shrine’s caretaker and is described as being an extremely friendly person who gets along well with everyone. She ends up in Dracula’s Castle with Soma after the two of them agree to meet up to view a solar eclipse outside her family’s shrine.
Mina’s given name doesn’t have any particularly important meaning (essentially translating to “all the more”). But Hakuba is far more interesting, translating to “white horse”. White horses are important to Japanese Shintoism, usually being offered as the mounts for the kami and being kept in the shrine in a ritual known as horse dedication. They’re offered to the kami alongside wishes, with white horses being associated with a request to bring an end to rainfall.
At first, Mina seems like an unassuming victim in all of this, but if Soma returns to talk to her throughout the game, she reveals that she has a deep connection to this underground world that Soma has no idea existed.
For one, Mina has known the witch Yoko Belnades and agent Genya Arikado for years. She’s known Arikado since she was eight years old, and Yoko long enough that she sees her as an older sister. This information, along with most information about Mina, is revealed in optional dialogue. You can only discover it if you take an interest in her and return to speak with her often throughout your playthrough.
If you continue to speak with her, you can eventually learn about the shrine her family takes care of. Soma learns that the Hakuba Shrine conducts rituals that “confine anger and evil intentions” and that they performed a ritual in 1999–the very one that led to the truth death of Dracula.
Mina has been deeply involved in all of these supernatural happenings without Soma knowing. In fact, he barely seems to know anything about the life of his childhood friend. Which makes me believe that Mina has been intentionally hiding her involvement with the supernatural from Soma. What young girl wouldn’t want to talk about the mysterious secret agent who comes over to her house, or the cool older girl who treats her like a little sister?
However, Mina is also one of Soma’s most ardent supporters. When he begins to lose himself to the stream of malevolent feelings, you can choose to return and talk to her. Soma will ask her how she would feel if he “stopped being himself.” Mina’s response is honest.
The person Mina likes is Soma. She could never love Dracula.
Genya Arikado
Genya Arikado (有角幻也) is an agent working for a “shadowy branch” of Japanese National Security. His age is unknown and—… Yeah, okay I’ll cut to the chase.
He’s Alucard.
He continues the theme around identity through the fact that he is actively hiding who he is in order to better move through the shadows. The kanji that make up the name Arikado translate as “existence” and “horn”. Genya is made up of the word “illusion” and the verb “to be.” He exists due to an illusions, with the “horns” part alluding to a more demonic kind of visual. Arikado works in the background, keeping an eye on Soma as he progresses through the castle, only stepping in when Yoko gets attacked and when Soma makes it to the throne room.
Arikado reveals that he led Soma to the throne for his awakening in order to access his power, so he might kill Soma if need be.
But he also tells Soma this:
It was risky of him to lead Soma to the throne, but he believes that Soma can win. The decision to have Arikado supporting Soma is interesting to me, not only because of his connection to Dracula, but because Arikado has always had a—…
Let’s say a complicated relationship with his own identity. He discarded his birth name when he turned against Dracula, choosing the name Alucard to represent his eternal opposition to his father’s cruelty. He felt so cursed by it that he attempted to seal himself away for the rest of eternity.
And for all his obfuscation early in the game, it is Arikado who tells everyone the truth of Soma’s situation.
(Looks like Alucard learned something from Maria. A fate like this can hardly be faced alone.)
Yoko Belnades
Yoko Belnades is a witch working for the Church who comes to the shrine in order to investigate the prophecy of Dracula’s resurrection. She is 24-years-old and very spunky. She’s described as quite nosy and is an acquaintance of Arikado. While her first name sounds Japanese, it’s written in katakana. This could mean she was born overseas and thus wasn’t given a name written in kanji. Possible readings for her name are “sunny child” and “ocean child”, with the former perhaps in reference to her sunny demeanor.
Unlike every other character in the game, Yoko possesses no secrets of her own. In fact, she’s candid with Soma about who she is and why she’s here. Rather, it is through her that we learn who these other characters truly are, an unmasker of others’s true nature. She is the one who clues the audience in as to who Arikado really is.
Yoko also warns Soma about another man he meets in the castle, a man by the name of Graham Jones who had left a favorable first impression on Soma. She advises him that he is not who he seems to be and that he is seeking to become Dracula. Soma doesn’t want to believe this, but it is through Yoko that Soma sees the true depths of Graham’s evil when he stabs her.
And, yes, this is an unfortunate bit of bad writing where Yoko is reduced to an object through which we learn about the other male characters’s more defined inner lives. Yoko has no secrets on her own, only what she reveals in others.
“J”
J is a mysterious amnesiac who Soma runs into while exploring the castle. He’s 56-years-old and lost his memory after a traumatic event in 1999. He’s been on his own ever since and works for himself only, though he takes an immediate interest in Soma once he senses that he has dark powers.
J, as it turns out, is a direct parallel to Soma. Both of them came to the castle completely unaware that they have an intimate connection to an exceedingly long feud that has gone on for nearly a thousand years. Soma is the reincarnation of Dracula. And J is the man who killed Dracula.
At the exact moment Soma attains one of his first, true vampiric abilities, J regains his memories. He learns that he is Julius Belmont, the last son of the Belmont lineage.
Julius’s name is Roman in origin, humorously meaning “downy-bearded.” This could be a reference to the fact that he’s one of the only Belmonts with facial hair. However, there is another meaning. Julius can also mean “devoted to Jove”, which Jove being an alternate name for the Roman god Jupiter. Going into detail about Jupiter is far beyond the scope of this post, but it’s pretty interesting.
In any case, Julius is a parallel to Soma not only in having a hidden identity, but in choosing one’s own identity over fate. You see, after Julius regains his memories, he near immediately begins to talk about how defeating Dracula is what he is destined to do (And I’ve hit the image limit so I’ll be transcribing the dialogue instead of screenshotting now).
SOMA: So, if Dracula is revived again, just as it is written in the prophecy...
JULIUS: Then I must destroy him! It is my destiny.
But… if you’ve played this game, you know that Julius does not destroy Soma. Yes, he corners Soma in the area right before the chaotic realm and forces him into a fight, but, he does not kill him.
Rather, Soma’s soul and humanity shines through the haze of Julius’s fear and the legacy he is bound to. Julius cannot bring himself to kill Soma in spite of all of his words earlier. So long as Soma is still Soma, Julius will protect him just the same as any other human.
And perhaps Soma has done little to prove himself to him, but that doesn’t matter. Julius wants to believe in him.
I’ve written a long post about Julius here if you’d like to read it.
Hammer
I’m not going to spend much time on Hammer because he’s a minor character and there’s honestly not much to him. He is 34-years-old and comes to the castle after being deployed by the military. I’ve see websites that say Hammer is an English occupational name that might have been a thing back when people took the name of whatever their job was, but I can’t find proof of that outside random baby name websites. So, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
While inside the castle, Hammer discovers that his higher ups had been concealing the nature of his mission from his unit, who all perish in a presumable monster attack.
This enlightens Hammer to the realization that he has no love for the military and he decides to leave that all behind and become a merchant.
Good for him.
Graham Jones
Graham is another one of Soma’s direct parallels in that he is a man who has come to the castle without fully understanding who he is. At first glance, he seems like a very affable, friendly 36-year-old man. He claims to be a missionary, which makes him sound like he’s affiliated with the Church, and he readily answers nearly every question Soma has without rushing him away like Arikado had.
He does not make fun of Soma for thinking Dracula is made up, rather, he seems quite eager to share what he knows about their situation. It must be a relief for Soma to have someone finally explain things to him.
Of course, if you read the profiles in the game manual, you would have learned that Graham is the founder of a new religious sect that preaches about apocalyptic events coming to pass. Almost like a doomsday cult—
GRAHAM: I was born on the very day that Dracula was destroyed... so, in short, that means I AM DRACULA!
A Dracula-based new age doomsday cult. How quaint.
Unfortunately for Graham, we already know that Soma is the true reincarnation of Dracula. Soma is the one who gains Dracula’s power and the one who gains control of the castle in the neutral end.
It’s funny, then, that Graham’s name isn’t anything particularly special. The name Graham is Scottish in origin and means “gravelly homestead”. His surname on the other hand, Jones, is most likely a reference to Jim Jones—an American cult leader who lead 918 of his followers to their death.
Graham fits into the theme of identity in that he mistakenly believes himself to be Dracula, but unlike Soma, there is nothing of him that exists outside of that false identity. Graham clings to it with all of his might. Even when faced with indelible proof that Soma is the true inheritor of Dracula, he refuses to accept it and turns himself into a monster out of desperation.
(He also accuses Soma of stealing the power that rightfully belongs to him. This becomes extremely ironic after you discover who Dracula really is.)
Graham’s monster form is quite interesting. He literally looks like a giant womb, as if he is trying to birth himself into the position that he believes he should have been born with. It’s honestly pathetic how hard he clings to a fate Soma has to give his everything to rise above.
It’s only when Graham is on the brink of Death that he begins to understand.
GRAHAM: NO! This cannot be! Does that mean I'm not Dracula?!
It’s fitting that Graham dies here. He centered his entire life around the belief that he was Dracula—he founded a cult on the assumption. It was the basis of entire identity and without it he crumbles. Because without Dracula? Graham Jones has no identity of his own.
Finale
“One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.”
Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)
When Igarashi was conceptualizing the story of Aria of Sorrow, it had a different name in Japanese. Akatsuki no Minuet, or Minuet of Dawn. This is poignant for several reasons. It is the dawn of a new day. The long night has ended and the sun is rising on a world without Dracula.
But why a minuet?
Igarashi stated that he picked that musical term because, “I thought “minuet” matched the story themes better too, as it symbolizes the people who surround Soma and give him support, just like dancers accompanying each other in a minuet” (Aria of Sorrow Developer Interview, 2003).
At the very end of the game, right before Soma has to defeat Chaos, he is contacted by Mina who says that everyone has a message for him. Soma realizes that they must know what he is and declares they must be afraid of him. Mina declares that to be nonsense and everyone gathers around to encourage Soma, with Yoko giving the most poignant advice, a repeat of what she told him earlier.
You are who you are.
And Soma proves all of them right.
After reading this excellently-written analysis by @somacruising of how Aria of Sorrow tackles the theme of identity, I was struck with the realization that it's actually a very predominant theme in the whole series.
The Belmonts speak for themselves, naturally. They are destined to kill Dracula at every resurrection of his; it all started from the falling out between Leon and Mathias, who swore revenge for the later's machinations, and eventually it became simply the reason they are born for, culminating in Richter losing his sense of self after fulfilling his duty.
But it's even more apparent, I think, in the non-Belmont protagonists, who are all more or less people dabbling in dark forces that want to dehumanize them in some way. So I'll try to break it down.
Alucard
Naturally, it all starts with the most famous non-Belmont protagonist that set the tone for most of the following titles lol. Alucard, the Tragic Prince himself.
And tragic the prince is. Ever since his conception in Dracula's Curse, Alucard was born as Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, son of Dracula, who eventually changed his name to Dracula spelled backwards to indicate that he will stand opposite to him. He stops being his own person, to become Dracula's antagonist: his birth name is lost to history, as not even his own father will address him as such.
By Aria of Sorrow, he has changed his name once again to Genya Arikado, although this time it seems that his historical name was not lost (Julius and Dark Lord Soma address him as Alucard in Dawn of Sorrow, and Yoko almost lets the name slip to Soma lol). More important, however, is that he has gone as far as change his appearance... and many have pointed out how Alucard went from looking like his mother to looking like his father as a human. Not coincidentally, Aria of Sorrow was meant to be tied with Lament of Innocence.
No matter what, Alucard is stuck in the shadow of his parents.
And this is the crux of Alucard's sorrow. He never asked to be born from Dracula, but he has inherited his power, his title, and his dark nature. Such dark nature is also apparently the target of Shaft and Dracula, who both express their goal to kill Alucard's human side to turn him into a full, evil, vampire, so that he would have no more reason to stand for humans. His love for his mother and his desire to honor her compassion even in her last moments compels him to fight his own father, who is grieving the same woman but opposes her very wishes and nature. The first time he did so, in Dracula's Curse, the pain was so much he had to seal himself away - but it had to be done.
Lisa's last words in Japanese are particularly excruciating:
"Do not hate humans. If you do not forgive humans, you'll walk on the path of your own destruction. Beings from outside shouldn't pass judgment on the residents of this world."
Don't hate those who killed your mother. Forgive them. You don't belong with humans anyway.
Sadly the last part got completely lost in the English translations of Symphony of the Night, where it became "If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm", which is also important, but this original quote informs Alucard's personality as we see it. He keeps people at arm's length, even those who wish to get closer like Maria, and believes that his blood is so cursed, the world would be better off without him. Alucard may be around 600 years old by the present day, but in actuality he has lived a few decades at most, as he buried himself away in fear of being detrimental to the world. Meanwhile, his allies and their descendants remember him as a hero.
Alucard represents the tragedy of family in all of its facets. He represents a duty so compelling, you can't detangle yourself from it and become your own person. He also incarnates a theme that other characters share, but he feels most acutely: isolation from the world. However, on a less bitter note, he also represents the choice to rise above one own's pain and suffering for the sake of others (Dracula is Alucard's mirror, quite literally).
Soma Cruz
Again, if you want a much more detailed and loving analysis of the fur-coated Dracula successor :P I redirect you to @somacruising's post I linked above.
Soma's case is more unique than his fellow dark protagonists. He has lived a perfectly normal life as a perfectly normal, if a little offputing, boy before the eclipse of 2035 that uprooted his very concept of self. He is slowly, but forcibly, awakened as something more than a human. It starts with his Power of Dominance over all the souls in Dracula's castle, allowing him to grow more and more in power. To learn the truth, Soma must fight Graham Jones, who himself is convinced to be Dracula's reincarnation, with three particular souls: the Giant Bat which allows him to fly, the Flame Demon which allows him to shoot fireballs, and the Succubus which allows him to drain energy from his opponent.
In short, he has to literally rely on Dracula's main powers to learn that he is, in fact, Dracula's true successor in the role as the Dark Lord.
And Soma is not happy about it, and not only because Julius comes close to making a furball out of him.
He's scared. He doesn't want to lose himself to the evil will flooding into him, filling him with dark emotions he doesn't understand the meaning of. He doesn't want others to fear him and see him as something evil to vanquish, which sadly happens - Mina expresses her discomfort if awakened Soma talks to her, Arikado confesses he orchestrated Soma's awakening in a place where "he could use his powers" to slow down his corruption, and Julius is compelled by his destiny to strike Soma were he to fully lose himself, something Soma himself makes him promise in the worst case scenario.
But no matter what, he's Soma Cruz, and he knows perfectly well who he is and who he wants to be, and he has no intention of becoming anyone else. It's just a matter of convincing fate itself of the same.
Thankfully, Soma happens to have strong, reliable allies who also don't wish him to change. As strong and terrifying as he is, Julius reveals that he held back because he could still sense Soma's spirit within. And by the ending, they all talk to Soma through different dimensions to remind him that they care about him and they know that his newfound nature doesn't change who he truly is.
One note must go to Dawn of Sorrow's bad ending. Here, Soma does incur the risk of losing himself and becoming the Dark Lord at the sight of Mina being killed. The one thing that can stop the corruption is if he equips Mina's own talisman, which slows down the corruption. Symbolically, their mutual bond is the only thing that can save Soma from his own tragic fate. Dracula may have lost himself in his grief and disregarded Lisa's wishes, but Soma still has a chance to save himself.
Soma represents, therefore, the breaking of a toxic legacy you have nothing to do with anymore. In a way, much like Alucard, he parallels the Belmonts and their own struggle with their shared destiny. (although, sadly, we are not privy to how Julius feels about the curse of his family ending with Soma.) Soma is also helped by the bonds he has forged with his friends, and their reassurances that they can still see the true goodness in him.
Hector
I think I have talked for a lifetime about Hector. And I will do it again :P
Hector is, admittedly with reason, often compared with Alucard. They're both fairhaired pretty boys with a personal connection to Dracula who gave them his dark powers but chose to rebel against him because they didn't vibe with genocide.
However, the pivotal difference lies in their relationship with Dracula. I said in his section here that Alucard didn't choose to be born from his father, but is forced to bear that cross. Hector, on the other hand, is the opposite: he chose to serve Dracula, and so everything that follows is his responsibility, but he's also in control of it.
Hector sought sanctuary in Dracula's castle, when the human world shunned him. There, he learned the forbidden alchemy of Devil Forging, which requires Dracula's own essence, and quickly climbed ranks due to his talent. He was even the favorite compared to Isaac, a privileged position... on paper. But when Lisa was executed and Dracula ordered him and Isaac to aid him in mass slaughter, Hector regretted his involvment in it.
He realized that, for all of his praising and being favored, he was just a tool of destruction against people who didn't deserve it. Hector may be rough around the edges and more self-centered than Alucard, but he still has a strong sense of justice. And so, much like he chose to enter Dracula's castle, he chose to leave it. Without any plan, ready to die, but it was important to him to leave Dracula's realm and set foot in the human realm where no one would use him anymore. Thankfully for him, he's found by Rosaly, who is endlessly gentle with him and his trauma and sees him as nothing but an odd, but kind man - the first person who likes him for who he is and not what he can do.
And then his past catches up with him in the worst way.
Isaac destroys his human life in front of his eyes, fanning the flames of Hector's anger and forcing him to dance to his tune. In particular, Hector has no choice but to be dragged back to that past he had fled: he has to learn Devil Forging all over again for the sake of his revenge, and as he says, he would do anything to achieve it. He even goes so far as to dig back the armor with the Devil Forgemaster crest on it, which temporarily marks him as an enemy in Trevor's eyes. This act of corruption is deliberate, and much deeper than Isaac's own desire to humiliate Hector. The former General was planned to be so consumed by his hatred and murderous impulses, later revealed to be fueled by the Curse, that he would literally be emptied of his soul and make room for Dracula's own, serving as a vessel. Hector was, in short, expected to lose his very self to evil for the sake of literally becoming his old master.
Thankfully, much like Soma, Hector can rely on at least one ally: Julia, put in the uncomfortable position of having to help the man who wants to murder her own brother. She reminds him of Rosaly (both in the sense that she appeals to her name and the sense that she looks a lot like her lol), which is enough for Hector to snap out of his rage and realize that the all-encompassing fury that had guided him all this time wasn't even his. He cries, and he's quite literal about it, "this is not me": we see hints of it in game, in how soft he is with Julia alone versus how belligerant he is with everyone else. This one spark of self-awareness, born out of his love for Rosaly and growing fondness for Julia, is what allows him to pull back from the mire of hatred Isaac and Zead tried to drag him into, while Isaac himself is so blinded by his rage that there is no other fate for him but become the tool for Dracula's resurrection.
In the discussion about identity, Hector represents agency. Hector chose to free himself from Dracula's yoke, and he had the strength to not become a vessel. Hector seeks freedom from anyone who wants him to bow, while also yearning for love and respect: admirably, even when it was perhaps safer to stay in a gilded cage. Furthermore, he also represents atonement from one's mistakes, as in, becoming a better person than what you used to be, even if you have to pay the consequences of your mistakes.
Shanoa
The last protagonist of this list and of the entire mainline series has perhaps the most bittersweet story.
The Shanoa we get to know is an empty shell of her former self. After a botched ritual, she loses her memories and emotions, and has to relearn how to use her unique power of absorbing Glyphs. Shanoa only knows her name, that she can only trust her master Barlowe, and that her purpose is to do whatever it takes to vanquish evil. And that is all there is to her. No matter how often Albus prods her to smile or cry, she cannot do so. She is, even more so than the others, little more than a blade - and she calls herself such, proud of having been raised with the sole purpose to defeat Dracula. Or so she thinks.
Sadly, Shanoa never quite regains her former self in the events of the game: only at the very end, she finally expresses emotions, but her future is uncertain. This means that we only see Shanoa at her lowest, at her most vulnerable, at her most dehumanized.
In the bad ending, if she has only pursued the path Barlowe has traced for her, she discovers that she was used and lied to - as she's tricked into using Dominus to resurrect Dracula, giving away her life. This is what would have happened to Alucard and Hector, and we finally see it in all of its uncomfortableness, as the player is even forced to manually select the Dominus glyphs and activate the union. Thus Shanoa dies as a tool, discarded after fulfilling her purpose.
But that is not her fate. She can choose to go out of her way and save all the villagers of Wygol that Albus has captured, and this is important. Now, the canon explanation as to why this makes the difference is that the blood of the villagers, descendants of the Belmont clan, bound Albus' soul to Dominus, allowing him to reveal that Barlowe lied to Shanoa. But symbolically, it can be read in another way. By repopulating Wygol Village, Shanoa rebuilds its community: the game heavily encourages you to interact with villagers and do their sidequests, and while this is certainly useful to buy more items, it also fleshes out Shanoa herself. She doesn't like to flaunt herself with dresses and jewels, as you would expect, but she has a strong liking for cats, as she can rescue them and even talk to them in Felix form. When Daniela asks her to draw sketches of her favorite places, Shanoa is not only good at it, but it's implied she likes it.
These small hints of personality are crucial to humanize Shanoa, and the only way to do so is to form bonds with the villagers, who accept her as she is but also see her as a girl in need of help. In short, this sideplot has all the hallmarks of a person breaking free of a cult, even if indirectly.
And finally, you can't storm into Dracula's throne room and hit him with a Dominus in the face first thing. In-universe, it's because Shanoa had made a promise to Albus to not use Dominus unless she really has no choice. Shanoa is asked to not needlessly discard herself for the greater good, and only by abiding that promise to her brother she survives.
Perhaps the character most ravaged by her lack of an identity, Shanoa represents the need for a community, and to find your own personhood outside of the toxic environment you grew up in.
Soma: You! You're the guy who ruined my life!
Mathias: But I'm your past self
Soma: Precisely
Who would hate the other more: Soma, looking at the man who thought a good way to cope with his wife's death was becoming God's enemy; or Mathias, who learns that he's fated to reincarnate into a rude Japanese teen who goes around wearing bell bottom jeans?
Shout out to Morris Baldwin. My man walked into Dracula's castle with a knife and two kids, and just at the sight of him, Dracula had flashbacks. Genuinely though, what was his weapon? He's drawn with a knife, but I also like the Vampire Survivors approach of this old man who would just beat the shit out of Dracula.
MY SHAYLA❤️🥺
The implications of Belmont's curse being Trevor's first next appearance utterly tickles me, simply because I know hector and Julia are sitting somewhere, aged 53 and doing the medieval equivalent of rolling up the blinds and turning up the radio
CASTLEVANIA: BELMONT’S CURSE
A new official Castlevania game from the developers of Dead Cells is coming in 2026 🦇