“Don’t Watch Castlevania Nocturne” says Series SBD on Annette Race Swap

Recently, the first trailer for the new Castlevania series on Netflix was released. Following the first show that featured Trevor Belmont as the protagonist, Castlevania Nocturne will have Richter Belmont and Maria Renard as the main characters.

The new series appears to draw from the game Rondo of Blood for its storyline. However, some fans of the games have noticed certain differences from the games, such as Annette.

Introducing Annette from Castlevania

In the game’s story, Annette is the fiancée of Richter Belmont. In Rondo of Blood, she is kidnapped by the forces of Dracula, leading Richter to set out to rescue her and other women who were abducted in an attack on their village.

Annette has had various appearances in the Castlevania games, sometimes with purple hair, but her main appearance is in the PSP remake of Rondo of Blood, where she is blonde:

This is Annette’s appearance in the PSP remake of Rondo of Blood, known as Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles. Interestingly, this version added Annette as a boss character; she transforms, and players can face her, but this only happens if you fail to save her:

Now that I’ve introduced Annette, watch the trailer for the animated series Castlevania Nocturne and find out where Annette is. Of course, this is if you don’t already know anything about Castlevania:

Did you manage to spot Annette in the trailer? Click below to see how she appears in Castlevania Nocturne:

Fans of the game quickly noticed that Annette looks quite different from her game counterpart in the Netflix animation. And it’s not just the appearance; their stories are also completely different.

As mentioned earlier, in the games, Annette is an ordinary woman who is Richter’s girlfriend and gets kidnapped. According to a description provided by Netflix, this is how Annette is portrayed in the series:

“Annette is a powerful sorceress who escaped from vampire slavery in the Caribbean in the animated series. She then sets out to find Richter, the last descendant of the legendary family of vampire hunters, to help him in the task of preventing the rise of the ‘messiah.'”

Annette isn’t the only case in the Nocturne series; other characters have also undergone visual changes. However, Richter and Maria are the most faithful to the game, at least in terms of appearance. This is Maria in the Netflix animated series:

And this is Maria in the PSP remake of Rondo of Blood.

“Don’t Watch Castlevania Nocturne” – Series Designer on Annette’s Race Swap

Steve Stark is the name of one of the individuals involved in the production of Castlevania Nocturne; he appears to be the lead background designer. On Twitter, someone asked him:

“Sir, have you seen how many Castlevania fans are furious about Annette having her race changed? Original characters are great, but changing the race of established characters should stop.”

To which he replied:

Ao qual ele respondeu com:

“I’ve literally seen like a handful of people angry about it, go complain about something that matters”.

Then the same person asked him: “Why can’t you respect the original material?” to which Steve Stark said:

“Don’t watch the show then, I genuinely don’t care if a very small handful of people are angry we made a character black”

At the time of writing this post, Stark’s Twitter profile is private, so I can’t verify other responses or comments he may have made.

However, I’ve seen some people genuinely irritated by this response. To be clear, there are people who are very happy to have a black Annette (and other black vampire characters in the animated series), so there are two sides here: those who liked it and those who didn’t.

Fans Reactions to the New Annette:

So, I looked for comments from people to see what’s being said about Annette’s case, and I chose the Castlevania subreddit, where I found a thread specifically about this issue.

Many comments in this thread agree with Steve’s statement, so I skipped those and included some comments below from people who are complaining or sharing their honest opinions. But again, there were several comments agreeing with what Steve said.

“After what they did with Alucard and propositally reducing Hector protagonism and forcing it on Isaac, I know they are not concerbed on giving a good story. Oh well…”

“two things

i’m not saying what i think about the race-swapped but, if Annette was black and made white it would matter to people (i’v seen it happen with a RWBY)

and i don’t like that Annette is not going to be a damsel in distress, don’t get me wrond i like strong females in game and shows but thay have Maria so….

i don’t really care tho i’m here for Richter anyway.”

“I mean if you’re gonna extensively redesign an established character regardless of how minor they may be, why not simply create a new character?”

“Annette was a nothing burger before, not much more fleshed out than your typical damsel from the NES era. I don’t mind this change at all. Now, Isaac/Hector… THAT was strange, I don’t understand why that characters even had those names because they are so goddamn different from the extremely well-established characters from CoD. At least Netflix Isaac is good, but wtf, why not just give them different names?”

“The shows and the games are different universes. I can love them both.”

“I’m of two minds about it myself. The idea behind show Annette is fine conceptually. Nothing’s wrong with a character having a background tied to Haiti and its history showing up for the plot if it can work. Shit, recontextualizing Isaac’s worldview through the lens of a slave and a Sufi background was actually interesting, so I don’t see why a survivor of something that happened in Haiti couldn’t be interesting too in its own way.

But I was told this was supposed to be adapting Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. And so far it seems like it’s repeating the same issue the last show had where it’s just blatantly making shit up and hiding behind the excuse of “the source material has no story lol” while not even attempting to understand why those of us who want to see a more accurate representation of the source material are annoyed at some of these changes.

So I’m kinda having a hard time buying the argument that what changes I’ve seen so far (even beyond Annette herself) are an overall improvement when it’s building up to look nothing like the story I actually want to see at the end of the day.”

(Below, you can see Isaac in the game and in the series.)

“She looks younger than Maria somehow”

“If you are going to change everything about a character except the name… why don’t you just create a new character alltogheter?

And also, funny how you never see already black characters getting their races changed, huh?”

“I mean, I do kinda see both sides. On one hand, regardless of how much of a role they played, the original characters are the ones that a lot of fans associate with the franchise. On the other hand, they’re fictional characters, not real, and open to interpretation. The people who’s opinion I would be curious to hear from are the people that worked on rondo, dracula x, and sotn.”

“If it doesn’t matter then why race swap her to begin with? Why not leave her as is?”

“Meh. The first show was trash and upon seeing this Nocturne will follow the same path.”

“It’s a complicated matter since if Annette was black and made white, I doubt people would accept the swap this easily.

I’m all for the freedom of the staffs and ultimately what’s important is how good the character is.

But since she is a fighter and does not look at all like the original Annette, why even calling her Annette since she seemingly don’t have much in common with the original? She could be an original character and the character would be the exact same.”

“I mean Annette was only there for like 2 cutscenes. And was a boss if you failed to save her. Not the most impactful character in Castlevania. Same goes for Orlox the only thing he had special was his own wing in the castle and his own equipment. Shouldn’t be that big a deal to anyone.”

“Then don’t get surprised when I pirate the series. These designers or whatever think they are important or something with their “designs” that are just race swaps.”

“They should swap the names of her and the blonde chick. She can still be the love interest, but she’s dressed like an earth ninja or bender and is from the Caribbean. She would have been better off just replacing Annette altogether since it’s such an unimportant thing.

Truly, she’s the best looking chick in the group in my eyes but I feel like part of her design is wasted by having her relegated to another woman’s role instead of being given her own. I would have liked a more localized name for her if anything.

None of this will hinder my enjoyment nor is it worth harassing an a artist over. It’s easy to get worked up when marvel and Disney have systematically used race swapping as a crutch instead of a philosophical step forward but you have to try and aim it at the right people who are for sure doing this for the wrong reasons.”

“I almost never like it when source material is messed with. I am still salty after all the disappointment I experienced from films like Doom, Silent Hill, and Resident Evil (live action). They literally took the source material, butchered it and produced barely mediocre pish.

I often ask a question like “was this change necessary?” like when I saw Nemesis in one of the live action Resident Evil movies and they made him actually a good guy, I almost puked.

They race-swapped Isaac and I also didn’t like it, simply because it makes the show incompatible with video games’ lore. Instead of staying true to the already established lore and adding their own story elements to it they just started making unnecessary (in my opinion) changes.

That being said I think they wrote Isaac as a character very well, no doubt about it.

I just hate how they mess up already established lore.

Downvote me all you want, call me a racist, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t like messing with the established source for no good reason.”

“I don’t really care about race swapping, but if it is so important to these creators to have equal representation, why not create their own IP to do it? Castlevania and its characters are well established.”

“Just make an original black character, bruh. I quite hoped to see most of the games’ designs reimagined going forward, as I liked the previous series. But reimagined is not really overhauled. I don’t think just raceswapping existing characters does them any real justice and respect, opting to alter them to suit creator’s needs and ideals instead of deconstructing the original work, but it’s debatable in case of adaptation. I just hoped for her design to be more in line with the original. Not really offended or anything, I just liked the old one more, personal bias.”

“I love Rondo, but Annette was basically a nothing character. If they have good ideas for her, and want to explore her with an identity different from her original depiction, I’m all for it. Better to do something interesting with her than have her be generically frail and pretty and then die (or be saved, but that’s less exciting)”

“I will reserve judgement until I see the show for myself. Isaac was by far my favorite character of the previous show.

That said, we are now entering the territory of some of my favorite games, so I find myself very defensive in terms of how one treats the source material.”

So, considering Steve’s advice, will you be watching the series or not?

via: Reddit

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