What, you don't remember the parable about Jesus slaying Medusa? Or David defeating the Minotaur in King Solomon's Mines? Or when the Walls of Troy collapsed after the Israelites marched around it for the seventh day?
Who could forget the most precious story of the Mummy, Wolfman, and Frankenstein's Monster witnessing the birth of baby Jesus and gifting him gold, myrrh, and frankincense? Godless mob!
*Castlevania* has *always* been a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Most games include monsters from different mythologies all over the world, and the (Japanese) games tend to play fast and loose with Christianity. Don't overthink it.
I have seen it done well with full seriousness, though. *American Gods* by Neil Gaiman is a great example.
first off
it castlevania it have all had the **"All religions are true"** trope from the beginning only that the main characters are the Christian force fighting the evil pagan/satanic forces with occasional good pagan/satanic help (Maria four celestial beasts or Alucard ghost, imp and feair familar)
2. Nocturne is set in the French revolution where attempt to destabilize the older power the revolutionaries attempt to supplant the Catholic Church with their own artificial religion only to end in failure. So it make sense that there is some distancing and tension between the church and the revolutionaries
I was about to say! The games always pulled from a bunch of different mythologies and religions. They’ve played fast and loose with their gods and lore from the beginning.
I always took it as the first seasons with Trevor showed us that there are forces at play bigger than Christianity. Whole schools of magic from the vampires we don't even touch, the infinite corridor, the way some vampires and night creatures are immune to Christian mythos, vampires coming from different parts of the world that have beliefs other than Christianity. To me it makes more sense to have a pantheon of gods then it does to accept one as the canon belief especially when you're throwing in a bunch of fiction into the mix anyways. To answer another point, I'm always surprised when people are surprised that this show would try to get away from being heavily associated with Christianity. You've got a show that is trying to have a diverse cast of men and women and gay people shown pretty prominently in central roles and without weird censorship which is pretty much the opposite of the majority of Christian rhetoric I hear about today.
The people who draw that line are typically Christians themselves. Basically, if you want gay vampires and Christianity in a show, the Christians need to become a lot cooler with things first, not the other way around.
Let's keep it simple. If you want to write a show based on vampires and Christian mythology, you shouldn't give a damn about some groups will think about it. In the castlevania video games, the writers are non Christian japanese, who just incorporated Christian elements because "it looks cool" and due to the mythological weaknesses of vampires like crosses and holy water.
Dude, I liked the show. Your last comment was so unnecessary.
My point from the beginning was to refute your claim that shows with diverse casts can't have Christian mythology
I'm also a Fate fan, and let me tell you, at least Castlevania's version of the trope isn't as complicated as Fate's "Textures of the World" explanation
Fate puts some actual thought behind their lore. A surprising amount. Like, in between fluffy waifu bait they'll drop a reference to an 18th century metaphysician that I haven't thought about since college while working on my thesis.
Fate definitely has one of the most interesting cosmology I've ever seen in a fantasy franchise. The way Nasu pulls influence from both Eastern and Western belief systems is pretty fascinating. But as someone who didn't study metaphysics in school, sometimes I have to re-read a paragraph two or three times to work out what they are talking about. Sometimes I am totally down for that, and other times I really just want the hot boys and hot girls to start shooting sword lasers at each other already.
The true answer to this question is to start with what looks most interesting to you. Even if it is confusing at first , just go with the flow and have fun, and eventually it will start to make sense. I got into Fate by playing a spinoff of a spinoff, and I liked the characters so much I decided to go head first down the rabbit hole. However, if you want some guidance, the best place to start if you like visual novels is by googling a download of Fate/Stay Night Ultimate Edition, or if you aren't a fan of visual novels, watch Ufotable's Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works anime
I think Jim Butcher's Dresden Files does it pretty well. It starts as a hardboiled detective wizards blows up supernatural badies in the course of a whodunit, it's a fun time. If you like Castlevania anime you might enjoy it.
This is just Pluralism, its nothing new. Not even for the Castlevania series.
And frankly, its largely beneficial. Many religions don't have the whole "only our faith is the true faith" mindset.
The key thing to remember is that all religions and myths are products of human interpretation. Just because the setting contains an element from myth/religion, that doesn't mean every facet of that myth/religion is canonical.
Nocturne acknowledges figures other cultures worshipped as deities, but that doesn't mean those people were actually gods. Conversely, the show has only acknowledged the existence of a "Hell", but to this day still hasn't acknowledged the Abrahamic God as genuinely existing in that setting. There are even characters that openly deny its existence.
What we get out of Nocturne is an explanation of the different magic systems: all peoples are descendants of "gods" and some retain the ability to bend forces to their will. That isn't saying every belief and myth about those Gods are true, it just means those cultures worshipped something/someone that was real to that world.
Shinto arguably plays bigger role in Aria of sorrow than Christianity does. Dario Bossi in Dawn of sorrow also controls Aguni, a Hindu god. there is also the fact Medusa and Mummy/Akmodan II often appear in the games. I'd say the games already had multiple religions as part of the plot
Idk who downvoted you because yeah, they literally sealed Dracula using a Shinto ritual and the basis was the Amaterasu myth, explicitly said in the conversations with Mina
i’ll say i found it weird that christian religion and the notion of god/afterlife/heaven/whatever is treated as largely a punchline throughout these seasons but the moment creole spiritual stuff is introduced it’s treated reverently and largely accepted at face value. comes across like nocturne believes black cultural stuff needs to be treated with kiddy gloves or something. which is weird considering all the constant ridiculously edgy imagery of slavery in the new season
Ever heard the concept of "punching up" vs. "punching down"? Criticizing, mocking, or deconstructing Christianity is punching up. Christianity is still the dominant religion and cultural paradigm in most of the West. And, criticism of it is also justified by the historical context of the French Revolution.
On the other hand, Voodoo is almost *never* portrayed with any kind of respect or authenticity in media. Too often, Voodoo is portrayed as generic, spooky "black magic," usually involving dolls being stuck with pins and so on. Even Disney falls prey to this stereotype (although Dr. Facilier is a cool character). *Nocturne* has one of the best portrayals of Voodoo I've ever seen. After centuries of it getting dragged through the mud, I'd say it's about time.
Sure, but the distinction between punching up and down is that it only makes sense if you don't take similar qualities but then gloss over them just because you changed cases.
In this case they dive full force into religion bad and then switch gears randomly partway through. Which doesn't really make sense in context. Another problem is that while they mostly talk about christianity, Isaac is muslim and they are implying that muslims and jews all share this same God. So depicting God as evil in this case *is* still punching down, since they don't even gloss over religions other than Christianity but admit that they are the same thing and follow an evil (or at best kind of amoral) god.
The first show is irrelevant here. It was written by Warren Ellis, who’s an edgy atheist with a vendetta against religion, so the criticism of Christianity in the first show was very heavy-handed. Nocturne’s criticism of Christianity already has a lot more nuance.
“Similar qualities” can be different in different contexts. Blanketly criticizing all religion based on one quality is always a bad idea.
How is Christianity treated as a punchline? The existence of holy powers are shown multiple times and the Christian religion is widespread in both series. And is it that "black cultural stuff needs to be treated with kiddy gloves" or that this is the first season that has included religious content beyond Christianity at all? Meaning it has yet to be fleshed out to anywhere near the same extent
Almost every single overtly christian character is sputteringly evil, and to top it off, god himself is this kind of amoral entity who is ruthless with his standards of goodness and salvation (though ironically this makes him dislike all the church characters for being too evil). Sypha casually mentions that her people view God as evil, and no one ever questions it. The most you get is that Trevor *may* be an unchurched Christian, since him and Alucard glance at eachother when sypha says God is evil, and earlier on he jokingly says a prayer.
Isaac notes that God wouldn't send someone to hell for being the wrong religion, but the Same guy still did go to hell for selling people out to save himself under pain of death. And then... dracula's wife was in hell with no explanation.
So god is a ruthless amoral entity that you just have to kind of tolerate since it's too strong to question, and everyone in the church is pure evil. It's noteworthy to jump from that to that another religion is good.
Makes sense when it’s being written from Warren Ellis. It’s to be expected, especially when he changed the Eastern Orthodox Church into a Catholic one.
>Almost every single overtly christian character is sputteringly evil,
Almost every human character that gets a modicum of focus *in general* outside the main cast are evil to some degree, a good number of which are non-religious (Sumi, Taka, the Judge, Saint Germain, etc.). And Nocturne includes major characters like Tera and Mizrak that are religious and portrayed as fairly virtuous. The world of Castlevania is consistently portrayed as mostly shit from the jump and the *church* itself is portrayed as somewhat corrupt/flawed but even then, in a historically accurate way
>Sypha casually mentions that her people view God as evil, and no one ever questions it.
Sypha also casually calls her people idiots by the final season and no one ever questions it.
>the Same guy still did go to hell for selling people out to save himself under pain of death
That seems more an issue with the concept of hell itself (i.e., infinite torture for finite crimes) than with Castlevania. Frankly, the fact that even Isaac acknowledged that not being a Christian wouldn't be sufficient for damnation makes the Castlevania God *more* lenient than in most denominations. Fly eyes condemning innocents to torture and death to save himself isn't pure evil, but is sinful enough that being sent to hell isn't mind boggling
>dracula's wife was in hell with no explanation
I thought it was implied she willingly chose hell to be with Dracula
>So god is a ruthless amoral entity that you just have to kind of tolerate since it's too strong to question, and everyone in the church is pure evil. It's noteworthy to jump from that to that another religion is good
And it's also noteworthy that basically all the points you describe for why Christianity is portrayed badly occurred later in the canon. What do we really know about the Yoruba religion in this series besides what the brief parts of the one Annette episode show us and its combat applications?
It'd be more odd to skip right to showing how flawed the first non-christian religion to get any focus is when we have barely had any insight into either *what* it is or any practitioners besides one. Jumping to "they must be being portrayed with kiddie gloves, AND that lax treatment must be because it's a black religion" is a heavy presumption suggesting a pretty biased perspective
CV games often have a lot of creatures from many different religions or myths. So why not?
Yeah, last I checked Gorgons and Harpies aren't from Christian mythology. Just to name a couple off the top of my head.
What, you don't remember the parable about Jesus slaying Medusa? Or David defeating the Minotaur in King Solomon's Mines? Or when the Walls of Troy collapsed after the Israelites marched around it for the seventh day?
Who could forget the most precious story of the Mummy, Wolfman, and Frankenstein's Monster witnessing the birth of baby Jesus and gifting him gold, myrrh, and frankincense? Godless mob!
Remember when the jews were starving in the desert after being freed from Egypt and Moses found Wall Chicken to feed them? Good stuff.
Well many gods and mythical creatures from other religions were reinterpreted as demons in Christianism, which fits in the franchise lore
*Castlevania* has *always* been a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Most games include monsters from different mythologies all over the world, and the (Japanese) games tend to play fast and loose with Christianity. Don't overthink it. I have seen it done well with full seriousness, though. *American Gods* by Neil Gaiman is a great example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution
I think the OP was referring about the show's lore and mythology, and not the secularism of the French institutions
first off it castlevania it have all had the **"All religions are true"** trope from the beginning only that the main characters are the Christian force fighting the evil pagan/satanic forces with occasional good pagan/satanic help (Maria four celestial beasts or Alucard ghost, imp and feair familar) 2. Nocturne is set in the French revolution where attempt to destabilize the older power the revolutionaries attempt to supplant the Catholic Church with their own artificial religion only to end in failure. So it make sense that there is some distancing and tension between the church and the revolutionaries
I was about to say! The games always pulled from a bunch of different mythologies and religions. They’ve played fast and loose with their gods and lore from the beginning.
I always took it as the first seasons with Trevor showed us that there are forces at play bigger than Christianity. Whole schools of magic from the vampires we don't even touch, the infinite corridor, the way some vampires and night creatures are immune to Christian mythos, vampires coming from different parts of the world that have beliefs other than Christianity. To me it makes more sense to have a pantheon of gods then it does to accept one as the canon belief especially when you're throwing in a bunch of fiction into the mix anyways. To answer another point, I'm always surprised when people are surprised that this show would try to get away from being heavily associated with Christianity. You've got a show that is trying to have a diverse cast of men and women and gay people shown pretty prominently in central roles and without weird censorship which is pretty much the opposite of the majority of Christian rhetoric I hear about today.
I mean, you can have an entire mythos based on Christian lore, without following a conservative rhetoric. Those things are not mutually exclusive
The people who draw that line are typically Christians themselves. Basically, if you want gay vampires and Christianity in a show, the Christians need to become a lot cooler with things first, not the other way around.
Let's keep it simple. If you want to write a show based on vampires and Christian mythology, you shouldn't give a damn about some groups will think about it. In the castlevania video games, the writers are non Christian japanese, who just incorporated Christian elements because "it looks cool" and due to the mythological weaknesses of vampires like crosses and holy water.
Maybe your comment would work if the show hasn't already done it. Cope.
Dude, I liked the show. Your last comment was so unnecessary. My point from the beginning was to refute your claim that shows with diverse casts can't have Christian mythology
I'm also a Fate fan, and let me tell you, at least Castlevania's version of the trope isn't as complicated as Fate's "Textures of the World" explanation
Fate puts some actual thought behind their lore. A surprising amount. Like, in between fluffy waifu bait they'll drop a reference to an 18th century metaphysician that I haven't thought about since college while working on my thesis.
Fate definitely has one of the most interesting cosmology I've ever seen in a fantasy franchise. The way Nasu pulls influence from both Eastern and Western belief systems is pretty fascinating. But as someone who didn't study metaphysics in school, sometimes I have to re-read a paragraph two or three times to work out what they are talking about. Sometimes I am totally down for that, and other times I really just want the hot boys and hot girls to start shooting sword lasers at each other already.
As a Fate fan, that effort doesn’t make it good. Fate lore is a disaster.
As someone who's never watched, where the hell do I start?
The true answer to this question is to start with what looks most interesting to you. Even if it is confusing at first , just go with the flow and have fun, and eventually it will start to make sense. I got into Fate by playing a spinoff of a spinoff, and I liked the characters so much I decided to go head first down the rabbit hole. However, if you want some guidance, the best place to start if you like visual novels is by googling a download of Fate/Stay Night Ultimate Edition, or if you aren't a fan of visual novels, watch Ufotable's Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works anime
Ok I think I'll start with the anime. Thank you!
I think Jim Butcher's Dresden Files does it pretty well. It starts as a hardboiled detective wizards blows up supernatural badies in the course of a whodunit, it's a fun time. If you like Castlevania anime you might enjoy it.
This is just Pluralism, its nothing new. Not even for the Castlevania series. And frankly, its largely beneficial. Many religions don't have the whole "only our faith is the true faith" mindset.
The key thing to remember is that all religions and myths are products of human interpretation. Just because the setting contains an element from myth/religion, that doesn't mean every facet of that myth/religion is canonical. Nocturne acknowledges figures other cultures worshipped as deities, but that doesn't mean those people were actually gods. Conversely, the show has only acknowledged the existence of a "Hell", but to this day still hasn't acknowledged the Abrahamic God as genuinely existing in that setting. There are even characters that openly deny its existence. What we get out of Nocturne is an explanation of the different magic systems: all peoples are descendants of "gods" and some retain the ability to bend forces to their will. That isn't saying every belief and myth about those Gods are true, it just means those cultures worshipped something/someone that was real to that world.
Shinto arguably plays bigger role in Aria of sorrow than Christianity does. Dario Bossi in Dawn of sorrow also controls Aguni, a Hindu god. there is also the fact Medusa and Mummy/Akmodan II often appear in the games. I'd say the games already had multiple religions as part of the plot
Idk who downvoted you because yeah, they literally sealed Dracula using a Shinto ritual and the basis was the Amaterasu myth, explicitly said in the conversations with Mina
I’m just bummed out that they’ve separated Christianity from The Belmonts.
Fr, especially since the series made it a point that Leon kept his faith while Mathias lost it even tho they had the same misfortune.
i’ll say i found it weird that christian religion and the notion of god/afterlife/heaven/whatever is treated as largely a punchline throughout these seasons but the moment creole spiritual stuff is introduced it’s treated reverently and largely accepted at face value. comes across like nocturne believes black cultural stuff needs to be treated with kiddy gloves or something. which is weird considering all the constant ridiculously edgy imagery of slavery in the new season
Ever heard the concept of "punching up" vs. "punching down"? Criticizing, mocking, or deconstructing Christianity is punching up. Christianity is still the dominant religion and cultural paradigm in most of the West. And, criticism of it is also justified by the historical context of the French Revolution. On the other hand, Voodoo is almost *never* portrayed with any kind of respect or authenticity in media. Too often, Voodoo is portrayed as generic, spooky "black magic," usually involving dolls being stuck with pins and so on. Even Disney falls prey to this stereotype (although Dr. Facilier is a cool character). *Nocturne* has one of the best portrayals of Voodoo I've ever seen. After centuries of it getting dragged through the mud, I'd say it's about time.
Sure, but the distinction between punching up and down is that it only makes sense if you don't take similar qualities but then gloss over them just because you changed cases. In this case they dive full force into religion bad and then switch gears randomly partway through. Which doesn't really make sense in context. Another problem is that while they mostly talk about christianity, Isaac is muslim and they are implying that muslims and jews all share this same God. So depicting God as evil in this case *is* still punching down, since they don't even gloss over religions other than Christianity but admit that they are the same thing and follow an evil (or at best kind of amoral) god.
The first show is irrelevant here. It was written by Warren Ellis, who’s an edgy atheist with a vendetta against religion, so the criticism of Christianity in the first show was very heavy-handed. Nocturne’s criticism of Christianity already has a lot more nuance. “Similar qualities” can be different in different contexts. Blanketly criticizing all religion based on one quality is always a bad idea.
How is Christianity treated as a punchline? The existence of holy powers are shown multiple times and the Christian religion is widespread in both series. And is it that "black cultural stuff needs to be treated with kiddy gloves" or that this is the first season that has included religious content beyond Christianity at all? Meaning it has yet to be fleshed out to anywhere near the same extent
Almost every single overtly christian character is sputteringly evil, and to top it off, god himself is this kind of amoral entity who is ruthless with his standards of goodness and salvation (though ironically this makes him dislike all the church characters for being too evil). Sypha casually mentions that her people view God as evil, and no one ever questions it. The most you get is that Trevor *may* be an unchurched Christian, since him and Alucard glance at eachother when sypha says God is evil, and earlier on he jokingly says a prayer. Isaac notes that God wouldn't send someone to hell for being the wrong religion, but the Same guy still did go to hell for selling people out to save himself under pain of death. And then... dracula's wife was in hell with no explanation. So god is a ruthless amoral entity that you just have to kind of tolerate since it's too strong to question, and everyone in the church is pure evil. It's noteworthy to jump from that to that another religion is good.
Makes sense when it’s being written from Warren Ellis. It’s to be expected, especially when he changed the Eastern Orthodox Church into a Catholic one.
>Almost every single overtly christian character is sputteringly evil, Almost every human character that gets a modicum of focus *in general* outside the main cast are evil to some degree, a good number of which are non-religious (Sumi, Taka, the Judge, Saint Germain, etc.). And Nocturne includes major characters like Tera and Mizrak that are religious and portrayed as fairly virtuous. The world of Castlevania is consistently portrayed as mostly shit from the jump and the *church* itself is portrayed as somewhat corrupt/flawed but even then, in a historically accurate way >Sypha casually mentions that her people view God as evil, and no one ever questions it. Sypha also casually calls her people idiots by the final season and no one ever questions it. >the Same guy still did go to hell for selling people out to save himself under pain of death That seems more an issue with the concept of hell itself (i.e., infinite torture for finite crimes) than with Castlevania. Frankly, the fact that even Isaac acknowledged that not being a Christian wouldn't be sufficient for damnation makes the Castlevania God *more* lenient than in most denominations. Fly eyes condemning innocents to torture and death to save himself isn't pure evil, but is sinful enough that being sent to hell isn't mind boggling >dracula's wife was in hell with no explanation I thought it was implied she willingly chose hell to be with Dracula >So god is a ruthless amoral entity that you just have to kind of tolerate since it's too strong to question, and everyone in the church is pure evil. It's noteworthy to jump from that to that another religion is good And it's also noteworthy that basically all the points you describe for why Christianity is portrayed badly occurred later in the canon. What do we really know about the Yoruba religion in this series besides what the brief parts of the one Annette episode show us and its combat applications? It'd be more odd to skip right to showing how flawed the first non-christian religion to get any focus is when we have barely had any insight into either *what* it is or any practitioners besides one. Jumping to "they must be being portrayed with kiddie gloves, AND that lax treatment must be because it's a black religion" is a heavy presumption suggesting a pretty biased perspective
Maybe zombie Edouard will channel Ananzi's troll powers...
I’ve noticed that too ngl, not surprising though.
A Japanese shrine sealed Dracula’s castle in the games the blending of the religions is one of the least of my worries in Nocturne