Cognition Dissemination: Aria of the Solar Eclipse
The United States just experienced a rare solar eclipse, an event that you couldn’t have possibly dodged any mention of considering the strong heads-up from news broadcasts and brands. Chances are someone you know outside the internet mentioned it, if they didn’t watch it themselves. It was cool, yes, but this whole thing has had me thinking about Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, days before the event itself occurred. There are several good reasons for this, besides being a game in what is — was — one of my favorite gaming franchises.
The Aria of Sorrow intro and story crawl confirm that Dracula was defeated for good in 1999 by the Belmont Clan, with his powers being sealed into the social eclipse. A prophecy says that Dracula’s reincarnation would come to the castle to inherit his powers, though it never specified precisely who that would be. Chief among the main characters is protagonist Soma Cruz, a Japanese exchange student being accompanied by childhood friend and daughter of a priest Mina Hakuba. Both are transported to Dracula’s castle during the solar eclipse. Soma eventually realizes that can take the powers of several enemies within the castle to a limited degree to use to his advantage, as if he’s stealing their souls. And his childhood friend happens to be named after a central character from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Mina Harker). Isn’t that something?
Castlevania games have never had the best storytelling, but the setup for AoS was at least cool enough that I think about it intermittently. The recent solar eclipse really brought it to mind, alongside how we’re quickly approaching the year in which the game occurred in 2035. It’s even better that a solar eclipse is indeed set to occur in Asia in September of 2035. Kudos to the developers for doing the research and not making up some fictional date for a mere potential eclipse.
I’ve written at length about how great of a game Aria of Sorrow is, something I hammered through despite my older work on this blog from over 15 years ago being a bit rough by modern standards. It’s a good time to point out how it still holds up as one of the best games to release on Game Boy Advance just weeks before its 21st anniversary. It’s nice that the game has been preserved through a great port in the Castlevania Advance Collection.
Considering the powers Soma learns, it’s no surprise that a number of them are references to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, well before JoJo references became popular with the faithful anime adaptations that started in 2012. This certainly wasn’t the first Castlevania title to include JoJo references (consider the “Ora Ora Ora!” that Juste Belmont could perform in the preceding Harmony of Dissonance), but it’s the title that cemented them.
The art design also stuck out. The characters themselves were dripping with, well, drip. Character designer Ayami Kojima either felt that 1970s styles would come back in style in the 2030s, or that Soma Cruz would rock it regardless of whether it was en vogue. This is shown through Soma’s hairstyle, the black turtleneck shirt, bellbottom jeans, and slick shoes. The long coat with the fur collar isn’t 70s, though it is cool. The slick suits on Graham Jones, Aluca… Genya Arikado, and Yoko Belnades are cool too.
It sure is a shame that this didn’t hold up for the sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, which represented a significant step down in terms of art direction despite its superlative gameplay. This was also reflected in the new characters introduced, who all adopted a more cartoonish appearance to target the younger audience that made up the bulk of Nintendo DS players. It, to no surprise, didn’t end up working.
Aria of Sorrow remains worth thinking about because there hasn’t been a Castlevania game like it since, nor has there been another Metroidvania game like it, with more of them respectfully seeking to establish other aesthetics and vibes. It would be neat if another Metroidvania-style game took place in a near or slightly-distant future that feels more grounded than other sci-fi and Cyberpunk settings. I don’t have the slightest bit of faith in Konami making another Castlevania game like it, if they even green light or make another game in the franchise outside the occasional mobile game. Since IGA and the crew are making independent Metroidvania (or IGAvania) games, and a Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night sequel is reportedly in development, I’m hoping they’ll make a good spiritual successor to AoS in more than just the soul stealing.
I’m not exactly confident that they will, so you can bet that it’s worth cherishing just how unique Aria of Sorrow was and remains among the Castlevania franchise and with overall video games. It’s especially worth discussing when we just had a solar eclipse, at least for all the nerds who compare real-life events to those that happen in video games.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
