Topic: What part of Rondo is canon?

[theplottwist]

Regardless of Konami's official stance on Judgment, I wouldn't ever take it as a source of canon in any respect due to the nature of the game's "plot" and broad-strokes characterizations.

It's far less convoluted and more logical to consider it licensed-but-noncanon fanfiction as a video game, whether Konami regards it as canon or not.

I don't think we should ignore all plot-relevant information given in this game just because it's a bad game. Also, I don't think it's "less convoluted and more logical" to consider it not canon because it's a bad game. Specially because, when discussing sources for information, this subjective instance of "it's bad therefore it's not canon for me" is counter-productive.

Fact is that IGA himself has stated Judgment to be canon. It's not "nebulous." The game, bad as it is, is still rife with relevant info for many games. Contrary to Nagumo, though, I do believe that the characters were given dish-deep characterizations. But the dialogues still contain interesting/revealing info about the overall plotline IGA set

"bu-but Cornell...?!"

IGA has already stated why Cornell is in this game. It's not that LoD never happened, but that it happened in a parallel timeline. The time-rift, as an anomaly, allows for the timelines to converge, thus Cornell is able to appear here.

Of course this is an excuse for fanservice, but if the explanation is there, I see no reason to ignore it.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

even if it fell flat.

I'm sure Maria'd prefer it bounce instead of fall flat.
If you get my hint.
I suppose you could say it was a rather big hint rather than a small one.
Wow, both of those were quite the prominent hints, weren't they?
*waits*

An entire story mode wasted on a little girl (previously shown to have been strong, determined, resourceful, and tough-as-nails if still playful) fixating on everyone's boob sizes isn't a broad strokes characterization?
There's tons of other stuff in there too, but since we're mostly talking about Maria here, her Judgment personality in general fails to resemble canon Maria in any way that really matters.


And PlotTwist, I don't hold it as noncanon because it's a bad game (it's actually pretty okay), I hold it as noncanon because the very nature of the time rift holds events in an unstable state, and so anything that transpires within is wiped out as the rift vanishes. In more direct language, any meetings between say, Trevor and Alucard would go unremembered by either party, because they only occurred whilst the rift enabled it. Judgment is canon while the events within are happening, but snaps back to a noncanon state as soon as the plot is resolved, because otherwise we wind up with nasty details like characters having foreknowledge of future events (if broadly). Any changes made to the timeline (by the mere convergence of timestreams and future people meeting past people) would by definition HAVE to be wiped out or history as a whole is messed up afterwards. The sheer potential for history-breaking time paradoxes is simply overwhelming.

Hence, Judgment exists in a separate timeline by its very nature because it must, regardless of Konami (or IGA's) official word on the matter.

More on topic, the minutia of Rondo of Blood aren't that important to canon, per say.

I would hold that the way Symphony portrays the ending is the most important aspect, and my interpretation and headcanon for Rondo is as follows:

Richter saves Maria, and tells her to go home. Maria refuses, and insists they work together. Richter won't have Maria in danger, so he... tells her to go home again (because he's a vampire slayer, not a dad). Maria pretends to, and doubles back more or less immediately as soon as Richter moves on.

From here, whichever path the player has Richter take is the canon one (but it can be reasonably inferred that he saved all the hostages, and almost out and out guaranteed he saved Annette at the very least).
Maria's gameplay mode is her journey to catch up to and help Richter (the ending to her mode is non-canon).
As for the ending, during the battle against Dracula's Final Form, Richter rather cocks up and underestimates Dracula's power. However, just as he is on the edge of defeat (illustrated in SOTN's prologue by getting your butt whooped by Dracula), Maria bursts in and uses her magic to give Richter his second wind, allowing him to beat Dracula.

Castle crumbles, Richter gets bodyjacked by Shaft a few years later.

Aaaaaaaaand

Fin.

Everything fits and is relatively accounted for, even if a few niggling details like Dracula's third form from Chronicles fall through the cracks-- they can still be plausibly worked in as they are small details.

[Nagumo]

To be fair it's not like Maria ever had consistent characterisation to begin with. In fact, her character in RoB started out as a parody of Richter essentially. Her scenario was literally: "What if Richter was a 12-year old girl?" Also, all the cutscenes are set up in such way that the NPC says more or less the same lines and then it cuts to either Richter or Maria, the latter reactions contrasting hilariously with that of the former, which is why she is such a funny and cute character in that game. Therefore, I would argue putting Maria in the more seriously toned IGA universe kind of undermined her original charm. Her SotN persona is essentially an entirely different character.

The writers of Judgment obviously wanted to go for RoB incarnation personality-wise, so they tried to write her like without understanding why she worked so well in the original game, hence boobs. It was bad writing but I can understand the angle they were going for. So it's more like a failed attempt at recapturing the charm aand wit of her original characterisation rather than a "broad-stroke characterisation" unless you focus only on a specific characterisation she didn't receive until later.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

To be fair it's not like Maria ever had consistent characterisation to begin with. In fact, her character in RoB started out as a parody of Richter essentially. Her scenario was literally: "What if Richter was a 12-year old girl?" Also, all the cutscenes are set up in such way that the NPC says more or less the same lines and then it cuts to either Richter or Maria, the latter reactions contrasting hilariously with that of the former, which is why she is such a funny and cute character in that game. Therefore, I would argue putting Maria in the more seriously toned IGA universe kind of undermined her original charm. Her SotN persona is essentially an entirely different character.

The writers of Judgment obviously wanted to go for RoB incarnation personality-wise, so they tried to write her like without understanding why she worked so well in the original game, hence boobs. It was bad writing but I can understand the angle they were going for. So it's more like a failed attempt at recapturing the charm aand wit of her original characterisation rather than a "broad-stroke characterisation" unless you focus only on a specific characterisation she didn't receive until later.

I can see what you're arguing, but I just can't see it in-game.

As for SOTN Maria and RoB Maria seeming like two separate characters, people's personalities change CONSIDERABLY between the ages of 12 and 17, and I imagine getting kidnapped by Dark Priests and their monstery minions would only exacerbate that, so that part I can let slide. I imagine Maria in SOTN was both more serious as a part of past trauma and attempting to seem more mature and lady-like to Alucard because she fancied him.

Teenagers, huh?

[BLOOD MONKEY]

Teenagers, huh?

huh

[Nagumo]

They just changed her from a gag character into someone who was not, age has nothing to do with it. Naturally IGA understood the worldview of RoB and SotN clashed with each other so he changed that with DXC, such as tweaking Maria's character. But it's not like they were being consistent in that regard either because Judgment happend.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

They just changed her from a gag character into someone who was not, age has nothing to do with it. Naturally IGA understood the worldview of RoB and SotN clashed with each other so he changed that with DXC, such as tweaking Maria's character.

All that means is her role in terms of gameplay changed from plucky comic relief to a more narratively based character. That's not unusual at all in this business. And again, you can reasonably explain like... 99% of her more serious tone with coping with past traumas, mixed with some seriously accelerated mandatory growing up (she's grown up fast because she had to, which isn't that unusual in the real world).

Maria in SOTN is an anchor to the events of Rondo, not the tone. Furthermore, she's that because the only other possible heroic anchor, Richter, was too busy being "mua-hahaha" mustache-twirly evil. She's also probably one of the best and most realistically executed examples of a character growing up between games I've ever seen to be honest, although her original English voice made her sound... 30ish and not 17.

Given the context of everything she's seen, endured, and lived through at the age of 12, I think the fact that she did anything besides turning into a blubbering, shrieking, paranoid mess of PTSD is actually kind of amazing. That she turned instead into the brave, well-spoken, capable, courageous teenager we see in Symphony of the Night means that little girl was able to do some serious healing. I would have preferred to have her present in SOTN with a much dryer wit and sense of humor (a realistic coping device for people who have endured serious psychological trauma), but the version we got was still 100% believable from what we know about the world she inhabits, the family she is a part of, and the events she endured.

So maybe she does seem like a wholly separate character in SOTN. That's altogether expected, because that really is what happens to children who suffer when small and grow up-- you really can't compare how they were as children and as they turn out as young adults and find a whole lot of overlap.

[Nagumo]

The thing is though is that the tone of the world IGA built around his own Castlevania games differed from the one in RoB. The events and characters of the game still ended up tied into his universe but only through a filter so everything shares the same feel. The point of DXC aside from introducing RoB to western audiences was to tweak it so it fitted more seamlessly in the larger framework IGA had set up. The script was altered to tone down Maria's personality to make her more consistent with her later appearance. This post-hoc revisionism I feel strengthes my point that Maria's different characterisations shouldn't be justified through narrative, and it's frankly pretty silly because of the tonal clash. It's one of the reasons I personally prefer to see RoB and DXC as separate entities.

[Super Waffle]

Next question:

What exactly was Iga's involvement in RoB? He got a "Special Thanks" credit in the game's credits, but thanks for what?

[Shiroi Koumori]

For play testing. His soon to be wife was working on RoB while he was working with Tokimeki Memorial. He loved CV so much that he sneaks in during breaks to play the game. Something kinda like that from my memory.