Ya Know What I Think Is Really Sad? Theres So Many Artists Who Have Worked On Castlevania That Either

Ya know what I think is really sad? There’s so many artists who have worked on Castlevania that either don’t get credited, have incredibly little information about them, or aren’t appreciated nearly as much by the fandom as others. It’s to the point where while I was looking up information for this post, Google was only giving me Ayami Kojima as the answer for “who painted the Castlevania 1 cover art”. Which is so sad because! like! I love Ayami’s artwork!!! But she is not the only artist for the series! And I love everyone else’s artwork too!!!!!!!! :(

Anyway, the only information I could find about the art of CV1 and CV2 is that Noriyasu Togakushi was the character designer for the games, as well as for CV3. But I’m not sure which artworks he did for these games. Some sources claim that he did the cover art for the first two games, others (updated just as recently) claim that the cover artists for both games is completely unknown. And I’m not sure if he did the cute little manual doodles and concept sketches either, but I’d say those are probably more likely his since cover arts were commonly outsourced at the time and concept sketches like that seem more in line with the work of a character designer, but I could be wrong. Sadly, many websites have a habit of crediting an artist and then not specifying what works are theirs. And judging by how little information there is regarding everyone involved with working on those games, even the main writer/director, it’s also possible that we might not actually know which works are his.

Regardless, I wanna thank this guy for probably having designed Simon Belmont, the man I draw or want to draw almost every day of my life :)

I hope that the images show up correctly cause I’ve been having some weird issues with images lately. When cropping the image, it shows the correct one, but the thumbnails aren’t showing up right at all on my end. I was initially going to make this a larger multi artist appreciation post, but I don’t wanna have all the images switching for no reason with that many images ugh. So uh yeah ok bye—

I’ve been trying to post something with images for a while now, but tumblr has been weirdly changing some of the thumbnails to be the same as others? Like I had one picture of Richter and one of Maria next to each other and the Maria thumbnail image kept switching to that Richter image randomly, it’s weird. Hopefully when I do make this post I have in mind, tumblr doesn’t pull a sneaky one and change my images on me like that (X_X ;)

So uh, first actual post I guess. This is all random dumps (taken from my instagram stories, so they’re formatted weird lol) of symbols and things associated with Simon. I’ve never seen anyone do this for him before so mwahaha I guess I’m the first >:3c. Sorry if this is kinda just a random stream of words, I’m just getting a bunch of thoughts down and anyone can use this information for theories, art, story analysis, and etc later d(^^ ).

The first one is a bunch of possibility important references, primarily things from HoD, but also a couple from OoE and the Hanged Man Skeletons, which are explained a bit more in the second and third image. There’s a couple details I didn’t have the space for oof (T_T ). If I remember correctly, the Smiling Statue is found in the area where the Hellmont enemies are. I’m not exactly sure if there’s any significance to any of the statue placements, but they’re definitely supposed to be a Carmilla and Simon reference, not sure on who the Sage statue is supposed to be tho. My best guess is maybe Death since he’s the other Simon’s Quest boss lol, but the statue really doesn’t look like him. It’s interesting. The Hero statue is very obvious, Juste gets the little flavor text that “that’ll be me someday” kinda referencing how Simon looked up to Christoper in a similar way (yes, Christopher, he is mentioned in the first manual in Japan I believe, I should talk about him eventually). The whole Hellmont/Shimon thing is nuts and idk why it’s just never mentioned again. Like the name Simon has the ability to be a pun in Japanese on “Death Gate/Gates of Death” which is 1. Badass and 2. Ominous as heck! I also didn’t get to fit in the random family heirloom clock that’s in ghost Dracula’s castle for some reason in HoD, the one that has the nice description of having been “bought on the day your grandfather was born” (not an exact quote word for word but yeah). It feels significant to me idk, why would family heirlooms end up in there? Also didn’t mention the Bullet Tip (called “Christopher’s Soul” in Japan), but that one’s interesting too.

Also I wasn’t able to fit the OoE and Simon’s Quest maps on there so I might make a post about comparing them later :3. That Anna girl could be talking about someone else, but considering the similarities and references to Simon and his games in the rest of OoE (which I also should explain if I can manage to get it all together) it’s safe to assume she’s having nightmares of one of Simon’s fights against Dracula. Which is also interesting in the context that her whole side quests revolve around helping her cat protect her from dark spirits.

I know this wiki isn’t the most reliable source, but I’ve seen other sources that claim the skeletons on the outer wall of SotN and DoS (I believe) are supposed to be a reference to the whip swinging in CV4. It’s really interesting that they’d make a reference to Simon by having the skeletons be hung by one foot like the hanged man is commonly depicted considering the meanings behind that card, but since the position of the skeleton is pretty much the same in both, it’s probably intentional.

The last Chronicles one is kinda based on the assumption that these are rose thorns, but when looking up thorn symbolism a looooot of the specific red rose symbolism kinda started to line up really well. Roses also have a lot of religious significance too so I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to say they were rose thorns. Chronicles is not the first time flowers have been mentioned with Simon in mind however, I couldn’t fit it anywhere, but the Japanese text for the fastest Simon’s Quest ending mentions he “brought full blown flowers in next spring”, just a fun fact tho, idk how to add it into anything here tbh (-w-; ).

What was the most interesting about this dive into random symbols and other details was how often things ended up symbolizing “self sacrifice” and/or “martyrdom”! Usually twice or thrice wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but considering the vague nature of all the Simon’s Quest endings in all versions of the game and the general lack of focus on Simon’s story aspect, it’s pretty cool to see some things that line up like that :O! Also I am thoroughly aware that I might just be looking to deep into things and connecting things and aren’t there, but I don’t really care cause I had fun!!! :3 Anyway, do with this knowledge what you will, hope you guys like it.

First Vocaloid song I remember listening to: “Carnival” by Otetsu

First Vocaloid I recognized as a Vocaloid: definitely Gumi (thanks FNAF MMDs lmao)

Favorite Vocaloid song: ooo that’s hard, “Flower” by UtsuP and “Fear Garden” by Chaa at the moment I think, but I really honestly can’t choose. Too many good songs in the world!

Favorite Vocaloid producer: UtsuP, DaijoubuP, Ferry, Maretu, Kairiki Bear, Wowaka, and PowaPowaP are all pretty tied hmmm too many I suck at picking favorites oops

Favorite Vocaloid: Big Al is my main favorite (yeah I know💀💀💀), but I also like the Zola Project boys, all the Cryptonloids, Gumi, VY2, VFlower, and Gakupo :3 (way more too, but yeah)

Favorite design of Big Al: Definitely his main V2 Standard box art by Ash, especially some of the concept art for that one cause it gives him sharp teeth and pointy ears and I think that’s a cute detail for him lol

Favorite Vocaloid song character: Meta Salmhofer my beloved

Um uh I don’t really have many Vocaloid mutuals or anything yet so uh, if anyone sees this and wants to do it go ahead asdfghjkl bye d(TwT )

Oh geez it left all the other reblogs on it and is now super long aaaaaa idk how to format things on here correctly so they’re not huge :’(

so I have an idea for a vocaloid ask game but I don’t know if anyone else wants to do it

wake up babe, new reason to ditch FANDOM/Wikia just dropped

Previosuly

corporate monster infested with ads which devoured Gamepedia and other companies (feat me on their shit policies, SEO and migration process)

turning entire articles into ads if paid enough

limited functionality preventing admins to even fight vandalism

merging and removing of LGBT+ wikis (and forced domain change for educational [think serious] wikis to "fandom")

official wiki status has no meaning in controlling shit

very much censorship (same good ol' allergy to adult stuff)

gets paid by US Navy to advertise their events (one, two)

Alternative free wiki hostings (aka wiki farms)

Miraheze - started in 2015, non-commercial - no ads and runs on donations, wide array of MediaWiki features, wide array of allowed types of wikis and content, much autonomy for projects, custom domain and private wiki options

wiki.gg - started in 2022 by former Gamepedia staff, limited to video games, accent on involvement of game devs and thus hosting official wikis, has ads for anons (but only of games having wikis here)

Telepedia - started in 2022, limited to entertainment (although might allow other themes upon review), has ads for anons, replicates Miraheze structure

WikiTide - started in 2023, no ads and runs on donations (but also tied w/ premium version called WikiForge), largely replicates Miraheze but has stricter content policies, custom domain option

Other free options I'm aware of are either too limited in allowed content or are very outdated/unstable in technical department to recommend here (or in case of Neoseeker - I'm completely unfamiliar with it, and can't say anything about it), but you still can check them out, alongside paid hostings, on this MediaWiki page.

If you (or your community) are brave and dedicated enough you can go with self-hosted MediaWiki instance (aka independent hosting), like JoJo Wiki (who started on Wikia and succeed at overtaking the SEO) or NIWA wikis. This option, of course, requires funding and technical knowledge, but it's still very much possible.

How to find existing alternative/independent wikis

try to use "-fandom" filter for search query in Google, or use other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo

Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension - it modifies search engine results and performs redirects based on its centralized list of independent wikis; a new indie wiki has to be requested/submitted to get added [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Redirect to wiki.gg browser extension - same as IWB but for wikis moved to wiki.gg (as I understand, works automatically without dedicated listing) [ Firefox / Chrome ]

(simple) Redirector browser extension - in case the wiki is neither on IWB or wiki.gg, and it doesn't filter out search results - only performs redirect on whatever you get; a redirect has to be set manually - see this tutorial [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Fuck FANDOM, support real people, support indie wikis

Hello tumblr 😎 (I am totally not horrified by the concept of starting another new social media account and not knowing the unspoken social rules here yet)