Anime Trending had the opportunity to preview the highly-anticipated upcoming series Castlevania: Nocturne, and interview Directors Sam and Adam Deats alongside Producer Kevin Kolde. Castlevania: Nocturne is set in 1792 during the French Revolution, 300 years after the original series of Castlevania, and stars Richter Belmont alongside characters inspired from the video game Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Castlevania: Nocturne launches on Netflix on September 28.
As big fans of the original series, we are super excited to talk about Castlevania: Nocturne! Can you walk us through the process of how you reimagined the cast going from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood to create the story for Castlevania: Nocturne?
Kevin Kolde: So we started with the idea that we wanted to, you know, to do a story about Richter and that time period circling around Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. Those games. The story concept really came from Clive Bradley, the show creator. He and the writers that he worked with really built the story. The idea of the French Revolution came from Clive and we developed and built the characters in that framework in a way that made sense for both honoring what was in the game but also serving the story that we wanted to tell.
Adam Deats: Yeah, I think what’s really interesting is that Rondo of Blood takes place in 1792, and that’s the backdrop for the French Revolution, but the French Revolution never comes up in the game, and so I think that was a natural inclusion, that was like a natural thing to go with.
Sam Deats: Yeah, the funny thing about the Castlevania universe is that it’s you know, It’s the real world that is regular with regular history but with vampires and monsters. So our series has always been a little more grounded, in terms of its storytelling but with the sudden, crazy, over the top stuff and monsters and things.
Actually including historical events and what was happening at the time was something that just made sense not only from a world building perspective, but also thematically when we’re looking at how we want to explore the characters and the things of the story. Looking at the cast and thinking about, “Okay, what kind of background do some of these characters have that supports some of these things.” So I think that was all really interesting stuff when Clive proposed the story and seeing how he was thinking about these things and incorporated them along with the real world history.
He’s very smart, he knows this history very well and I do not. I am an anime nerd and I play video games and I forgot all my history lessons from high school.
So would you say that Clive Bradley was the one who was primarily driving a lot of the historical elements brought into Castlevania: Nocturne? Going through the season, there was not just the French Revolution, there were historical elements from everything that was happening in 1792.
Kevin Kolde: Again, you know Clive is the creator of the show and the lead writer. He worked with three other writers, Zodwa Nyoni, Temi Oh, and Testament, and he had a great story editor, Rachel Wardlow.
And we had lots of conversations about this but from the beginning when Clive and I would talk about the story, it was always very much grounded in the actual history of what was going on. And I think that a lot of the biggest conversations that we had or were having were really about, you know, marrying the fantasy elements with the history elements in a way that would justify the show being a dark fantasy show and not a History Channel documentary.
(laughs)
Sam Deats: Sometimes historical figures do feel like vampires, let’s be honest.
Kevin Kolde: And that was the other fun part of it is to imagine where vampires would be in that world and in some ways even evolving from what they were about in the original series, what their politics were or what their goals were. So it was an inspired choice.
Because we’re leaping into the history of not only the main cast, but also the supporting cast, what were some of the difficulties and challenges aside from marrying certain historic concepts with the setting of Castlevania: Nocturne? Do you remember distinct parts inside the production where it was difficult to incorporate those historical elements, or was there anything that you found that was really fun to look into?
Sam Deats: Personally the Haitian Revolution was something that was really cool to learn about and educate myself on, and there’s a lot of cultural elements in how to portray Annette, and her magic and abilities have been really fun to explore as well. That was a fun challenge, and I know the design team really enjoyed that as well. I think that stands out to me, certainly.
This is gonna sound silly, but it was fun to shift the focus of the architecture in the series towards France and getting to expand towards that with how Mashcoul developed. It’s not like a historically accurate portrayal of Mashcoul. It’s built out and it’s bigger than if it was at the time or or now. That was a fun thing to develop in a direction to go in. There’s more color. We have to explore color a little bit more.
Yeah, the first, the first part of Castlevania was very cool but a bit drab in the colors
Sam Deats: I do sometimes miss that gothic architecture, we only get bits of it here and there, so I think about that a lot, but the shift in architecture was fun to explore.
Adam Deats: Yeah, we tried to make sure the show felt a little bit more romantic and colorful in the beginning and then as it goes on, it gets a little bit more desaturated and darker, and that’s a big visual theme of this season that we tried to stick to. The team had a lot of fun playing in that space in the beginning because they had not gotten to play in a space with more color for a while. Everything’s extremely grim, gothic, and run down in previous seasons, so that was a big change then.
Sam Deats: Katie was very happy to be doing the kinds of dresses and outfits and stuff that they wore at the time and doing the historically accurate aristocratic wear that they were doing.
Adam Deats: Lots of powdered wigs.
Sam Deats: Powdered wigs, yeah, everyone’s way more excited about powdered wigs than me, I’m like, “I don’t know.”
It’s the powdered wigs and the ruffles, right? That’s what makes it very fancy and it stands out from the rest of the eras covered for Castlevania, for sure.
Sam Deats: Absolutely.
One of the other things to compare from the previous seasons, Castlevania: Nocturne has a really small number of Night Creatures, but they’re all so uniquely designed that they almost feel like they’re minor characters on their own. Can you talk to us about some of the challenges in conceptualizing the small number of unique Night Creatures used throughout the season?
Sam Deats: So one of the interesting aspects of Nocturne compared to the original series is that with the Night Creatures, the change in design direction was influenced by the storytelling. These Night Creatures are coming from a different place, they’re not being made the same way.
We wanted to reflect that in how they were designed and this was an idea that Kevin, which was to incorporate a little bit more of the human aspect to them. So we’re seeing a little bit more of their humanity coming through than what we have sometimes seen in the past.
We had a large variety, and sometimes they’re a little more human and sometimes much more creature-esque, but now we’re seeing a little bit more of that coming through. Again, it was a story driven decision, but that allowed us to play in a little bit of a different space with them. We still want to occasionally make the nod to the Castlevania creatures and all that fun stuff, too, but we’ve never shied away from making some fun new monsters to go around with.
Adam Deats: There’s elements of this that came through season three of the show, when Isaac is talking to Flyseyes. There’s some realizations there when he was talking to Flyseyes that in some regards carries over to this season.
Sam Deats: We started with a little bit of a trickle of those things, and now it’s coming in full force and sometimes in unsettling ways.
We kind of touched up a little bit about themes of Castlevania: Nocturne specifically about the historical fantasy side of it, the romantic themes. Are there any other themes that you were hoping to convey in the rest of Nocturne? Typically in the previous Castlevania, and especially in the games, it was very much a black and white good versus evil theme.
Sam Deats: Very broadly, there’s a theme of revolution happening obviously, and you see that carry through in the story, in the characters, some of the places and the background of the characters is tied to that theme.
Adam Deats: Yeah, there’s also a mirrored coming of age story happening with several characters. Maria, Richter, and Annette are all learning some things as they get older and they’re all dealing with that growth in different ways. I think that mirroring and the ways that they diverge is a big part of what’s interesting thematically.
Kevin Kolde: On the revolutionary side of things, I think a lot of the characters we’re exploring what choices you’re going to make in your life and when are you going to make those choices, are you going to stand up for what you believe is right or are you gonna turn your back and walk away?
I think that there’s a lot of people having to make decisions and come to a place of what they’re going to do to be a citizen of the world around them. Even Richter early on, when we meet him, he’s not like Maria, he’s not a particularly interested or zealous revolutionary, he’s just hanging out hoping some vampires are going to show up. But he gets like how everyone gets dragged into these choices they need to make.
What were your favorite parts about working on Castlevania Nocturne? Any favorite elements that you wanted to talk about like characters, setting, or action sequences?
Sam Deats: Oh wait. So this is spoiler territory, Dang it! Episode six has got a standout moment from the story proposal that people are going to be really excited about. In general, the episode has a very solemn tone throughout, and we’re seeing a lot of different characters dealing with different things. But they all gel together thematically and then there’s a boom at the end so I think that’s a really cool moment in the season.
Adam Deats: Yeah, I think for me, and there’s a lot of things that I love, I think the opening sequence for episode one, I really love episode six. I think episode three is a really special episode as well, it goes into the background of the Haitian Revolution a little bit and then has Annette’s background. The way that it’s handled, directorially and animation-wise, it’s really special and unique, I’m really excited for people to see it.
Sam Deats: The opera singing moments with Edouard. Sydney James Harcourt did a fantastic job with that and I felt our animators really brought it to life in a special way.
Adam Deats: A lot of things came together throughout.
Kevin Kolde: I’m not gonna pick on an episode. The process takes a lot of immensely talented people to put something like this together, whether it’s Clive and the writers, Sam and Adam and the team at Powerhouse, or casting voice director Meredith Layne, an amazing cast. We got composer Trevor Morris and Trey Toy, all of these. And if I forgot anybody, I’m sorry. I’ve been through a lot of productions over the time I’ve done this and all of these people are an absolute joy to work with.
I feel like we’ve created something really special, and it was amazing to do it, to work with all these people and, you know, I’m just excited for people to experience the show and hope they enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!
Sam Deats: And I hope that a lot of them enjoy it and then we get to make more (laughs)
Please show up within the first month, preferably the first week would be great. (laughs)
I’m sure fans will definitely show during the first week, everyone’s very hyped about it on social media. I think it was super funny from the Twitter post when they finally revealed the concept art for Olrox coming in and he’s our favorite character by a mile, and people are already latching onto him and they don’t even know yet. I can’t wait to see that reaction.
Sam Deats: Right, I’m glad. I’m glad everyone sees how hot he is, good job Katie! (laughs)
And now they’ll get to hear his voice and the story and everything. I think that’s going to be like, “There’s the landing!”
He has that uncanny ability, I’m almost rooting for him like in the first season of Castlevania, Dracula feels like a pretty cool dude. I was almost on Dracula’s side with everything else. I don’t know, I feel like I’m latching on to Olrox.
Sam Deats: That’s one of the things that always makes me enjoy working on the show is how even characters, who are villains or have done terrible things or whatnot, we can still be like, “You’re my guy!”
Exactly! Do you have any other last closing thoughts for our audience? This has been really great!
Adam Deats: Of course! Gosh, I don’t know if I have much, guys. Please tune in ASAP, we would really love everybody to catch the show as quickly as possible. This has been a really interesting journey. I was really proud to work on the first four seasons because I always thought that if I was able to work on a series, I just wanted to be able to work on a series that begins and ends and finalize the story and the fact that we’ve continued despite that comes with a lot of anxiety, but I’m actually really proud of what we ended up with. So, please tune in, and hopefully, you’ll love it!
Sam Deats: We worked really hard, everything is hard. Making animations is hard, there are a lot of drawings, those drawings are really detailed, so I hope that everyone likes that! And, if you cosplay someone, please tag me, I want to see that, that’d be great! I just want to give a shout-out to Clive Bradley, who’s been awesome to work with. He did a fantastic job. And the writing team is fantastic, y’all are beautiful. And everyone else worked on the show and our fans, thank you!
Kevin Kolde: I hope everyone gives the show your chance to experience it whether you like the original series or didn’t like the original series. Nocturne is its own thing, so you should go in with an open mind and I think you’ll be happy with what you get to experience!
Castlevania: Nocturne is now available for streaming on Netflix. For more Castlevania interviews, please check out our previous interviews with Sam and Adam Deats and Kevin Kolde from previous Castlevania seasons!
