It's fair to say that Netflix's Castlevania: Nocturne had a tough act to follow, coming so soon after the conclusion of the Warren Ellis-penned original series. For the most part, it succeeded, offering a bunch of new (and returning) characters and a whole new setting: the French Revolution.
Showrunners Clive Bradley and Kevin Kolde have been speaking to Animation Magazine about the forthcoming second season of Nocturne and have elaborated a little more about its backdrop.
"Rondo of Blood, the first of the games that it draws on, is set in 1792, in the middle of the French Revolution," says Bradley when asked what sets Nocturne apart from the original series, which took inspiration from Castlevania III and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. "So that seemed like a good place to start."
Rondo of Blood, in case you didn't know, was released on the PC Engine CD-ROM in 1993 exclusively in Japan. Despite this, it has gone down as one of the best entries in the Castlevania series and would produce a direct sequel in the form of SotN. Rondo made its Western debut on PSP as part of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles in 2007 and forms part of the PlayStation-exclusive double-pack Castlevania Requiem.
Bradley adds that world events at the time have had an impact on the narrative of Nocturne in both seasons. "Telling a story of the struggle for freedom was kind of the point of departure. The most radical thing that the French Revolution did was abolish slavery several decades before it was abolished in the U.S. The reason they did that was because the slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue had risen up and were in the process of throwing out colonialism, so I wanted to tell that story too. Grounding it, as far as you can with a story about vampires and monsters, in the history was part of what we were trying to do."
Kolde adds that Rondo of Blood's cast gave the team a solid point to begin with. "Richter is a much different character than Trevor. Richter is 19 and has none of the real-world experience that Trevor has. He’s got the traumatic start with his mother in America, but after that he’s gone back to France with Tera and Maria and has lived a sheltered life there, dealing with the occasional vampire. For him, it’s a story about understanding his family legacy and understanding what it means to fight for something and believe in it, so it’s a different journey for him."
We've already had our first tease of what Nocturne's second season will look like, and it would take a significant mishap for it not to live up to the already lofty reputation of the Castlevania animated series so far. But for Bradley, getting to work with Konami's characters in the world of animation sounds like it has been tremendously liberating.
"To have told the story on the scale of this, with the French Revolution and all the fantastical creatures, if this were live-action it would have been expensive," he says. "As a writer, you’re given a sandpit to play in that is much bigger than it seems to be. The equivalent thing in live-action would be off the scale. It’s so much fun to be able to have the limits so wide."
