I'm in complete disagreement with this sentiment, something IGA has been shown to be through the years is VERY humble and the picture you paint about him has him in a selfish and stubborn light which just is not the case. IGA's attempt to create a timeline was from a standpoint of ATTEMPTING to salvage the series into 1 coherent storyline and he did his best to do that by retconing and adding new games into the mythos, none of this ever came from a giant rubber stamp of "this is mine learn to like it" type of mindset you apparently think he had, this all came from a guy who took over the series and wanted to tie in games that before where pretty much standalone for the most part into 1 canon storyline and while Lament if Innocene is by no means perfect there is no disputing its place in the official canon as the beginning of the Castlevania storyline. Fans can make their own headcannon and ignore that if they want but until Konami revives the series and has someone else take over and officially start a new canon or alter the current one THIS is the canon we have for those older games pre LOS saga.
In short I just think you have the complete wrong idea concerning IGA's motives behind creating the canon for this series, interviews through the years if you have been keeping up would let you know this is a guy who loved the series, has been humble and not big headed in the slightest, and only did what he did to try to give fans the most coherent lore he possibly could.
She is stating more than that dude, statements such as these,
Namely the bolded part shows that she is of a opinion that IGA is apparently a selfish man who wants and does things heavy handed and absolutist and feels fans needs to "learn to like it" and as I said IGA simply is just not that type of guy which is obvious to anyone who actually has been watching his work, conduct, and interviews through the years.
I really don't know why some people seem to enjoy taking the harshest possible read on my word choice on this forum, but okay. This isn't exactly new for me here.
To clarify:
I'm a fan of Igarashi. I think he saved Castlevania from inevitable obscurity for at least a decade. He made a golden age out of a shit ton of tarnishing bronze. Under him, Castlevania truly found itself because he brought together the people who would redefine it into its current gothic fantasy identity, like Ayami Kojima and Michiru Yamane.
But the way he did it stepped on a LOT of toes. This was, unfortunately, necessary. As the saying goes, "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs".
By unifying the canon, Iga had set out to make one hell of an omelette, and one of my favorite characters got lost in the crossfire. It's wretched unfortunate, but the price, in the end, was one I was ultimately willing to pay. Because as much as I love the idea of her, Sonia Belmont wasn't exactly handled with a lot of dexterity by her writers and her game was a bit of a mess that contradicted Castlevania 3 a bit, and that's just one thing that Castlevania fans don't ever allow. There are things that just aren't done, and contradicting CV3 is one of those.
So I'm not badmouthing Iga here. I think he was in a position where he'd never have gotten anything done if he'd refused to piss someone off, especially in 2000-2001 as he was readying LoI to be the first step in his grand vision of a Castlevania timeline.
So yeah, I wish he'd rebooted Sonia.
I wish he hadn't stepped on so many toes when crafting LoI even though there was no possible way to do so. I'm human. We occasionally want things we know are impossible.
I wish Lament of Innocence had a more original and essential story (my original point here).
But I don't hate Iga. I pretty much adore every game he crafted in his time as the Executive Producer. Lament of Innocence is, by virtue of the gameplay and music alone, one of the best entries in the series. I'm glad we have it. I'm glad Iga made it.
But it
is his rubber stamp moment. It was the definitive moment wherein he made the series
his.
And we
did have to learn to like it.
That's not opinion. That's documented
fact.
I don't hate him for making a necessary management decision that every showrunner who'd ever taken over from someone else has had to make. So no, I don't hate Iga or his first episode on the job, just like I don't hate Russell T Davies for
Rose or Steven Moffat for
The Eleventh Hour on
Doctor Who, or Disney for
The Force Awakens or
Iron Man 3 even though they are all supremely rough spots for one reason or another.
But Lament of Innocence was definitely and categorically the point where the series changed from one thing into something else. And change is always difficult and often painful.
As for Iga, he's a wonderful man with a lot of passion for his art that I share. I don't think he's selfish in the slightest.
To this day I do not get the ire some fans got from the fact that this or that game is not canon. And every time I ask (save very few exceptions), the ire comes from a misconception.
A game not being canon doesn't mean it "doesn't exist" or that it is "less" than the canon ones. My favorite classicvania is not canon and I don't give a singular shit about it.
Canon is fun because "story", but that's pretty much it. Castlevania's focus is not the story, so I don't get what the big deal is.
Because we get invested in things we like, and we like those things to have value in the greater scope. Cutting a game from the timeline removes its narrative value because it can no longer effectively contribute. Things we want to see built on can no longer be built on. Oftentimes characters we love are doomed to the ash heap of "enjoy never seeing them again,
ever", which has so far been true for Legends.
People get mad about Legends not because they enjoyed the game so much as because they enjoyed the doors it opened. By striking it from canon, there was a very real perception (that has so far been proven right) that those doors have been slammed shut and locked forever. People who were upset about Sonia Belmont being thrown away weren't suddenly and arbitrarily made happy again when Shanoa cropped up almost a decade later
just because we had a heroine again. We didn't like Sonia because she had pixellated titties. We liked
Sonia Belmont, not
the general idea of a female protagonist. Fortunately Shanoa became as or more compelling a character than Sonia. But the equivalence between the two characters and stories that several people on several forums have tried to make over the years does not exist.
So when Legends fans like me get a bit salty, it's because while yes, we can go and enjoy the game at any time we like thanks to the wondrous invention of emulation, we can
never enjoy the version of Castlevania that could have been if it had remained a relevant and connected part of the story. People genuinely liked the potential of the character, and we were upset to see all that cast out. It's less about what is, and more about what nearly and almost was. IMO, it didn't help that Leon wasn't a huge improvement in our eyes, so there was a real sense of "You traded her for
this?!" at the time of Lament's release.
Hoo boy that's one hell of a wall of text I just posted.
Sorry for the long post.
Here's a wall meat for your trouble.