ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Castlevania: Nocturne co-showrunner Kevin Kolde and directors Sam & Adam Deats about the Netflix anime adaptation. The trio discussed the differences between Trevor and Richter Belmont as well as the show‘s unique time period. The series is now available to stream on Netflix.
“The gory and gothic adventures of the Castlevania franchise continue with an exciting new setting and their highest stakes yet,” reads the series‘ logline.
Tyler Treese: Kevin, Castlevania: Nocturne is exciting because we have Richter as the protagonist instead of Trevor. What about Richter makes him such a compelling protagonist to lead this follow-up series?
Kevin Kolde: There are a bunch of things that were exciting for us about Richter. One was his age. He’s younger than Trevor, so obviously we’re looking for a character that’s not going to be Trevor 2.0, so Richter’s age was important. Same with the time period and Richter’s upbringing, which were of interest to us. But also Richter, in gaming culture, is probably the most well-known Belmont character.
Adam Deats: He’s a character that has a lot of history to him that makes him very compelling and interesting, just as a gamer and a Castlevania fan. That made it very exciting for us. I think that Adam and I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for us playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night when we were just little kids. So that’s certainly made it exciting from a nostalgia perspective.
Sam Deats: I think it’s interesting that not that many people played Rondo of Blood because it came out on PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM² System and did not have an American release for a really long time outside of the Dracula X SNES version. But a lot of people played Symphony of the Night. If you played Symphony of the Night, you remember that opening sequence, as well as the meme with the dialogue of the opening sequence too — shout-out to the writer of the dialogue there, Jeremy Blaustein — it’s iconic. So I think that, because of that, Richter is also kind of iconic.
Sam, I love the French Revolution setting for Castlevania: Nocturne. Can you speak to having that as a backdrop with the characters being revolutionaries? How exciting was it for you to have that history tie-in?
Sam Deats: I think it was most exciting to do something that was such a departure from the original series, hopping forward in time and now dealing with the politics of the time and stuff were so different from what we were doing before. It was just a nice refresh. It’s also been fun to actually brush up on my history lessons a bit. [Laughs]. That’s been very, very exciting, learning everything about the period — the historical figures at the time, along with everything that was going on in Saint-Domingue, it was very fascinating. It’s just been a lot of new things to play around with and to learn about, both from a story and a visual perspective.
Adam, Richter is very cocky at first, but he’s still maturing. He’s coming into his own. Can you discuss where he starts the season and his growth throughout?
Adam Deats: He starts at a low point. He’s just a child and experiences very real trauma very early on and has to go to extended family and survive that. So a lot of his character is oriented around the fact that that’s following him around and he has to deal with it a little bit more directly than he expects to. I think that Trevor’s life in previous seasons is a bit different than that. He’s very much a reluctant hero, and in this case, this is a lot about growing up. I think that’s a bit of a coming of age story in some respect.
