Notes on Castlevania: The Darkening of Blood
By Kurt Kalata

This file was created mostly to explain many of the jokes in
my little comic.  Unless you're well versed in Castlevania and Konami
history, you might not understand all of the jokes.  So, here I am
to reveal all of the secrets.

Page 1:

The title was both a spoof of the subtitles of Castlevania games themselves
and many fan fictions.  It's just entirely generic name that really
tells nothing about how it differentiates it from other Castlevania
labeled things.

Shiori Fujisaki is introduced here.  Some people think she is an 
original character...she's actually the main character in Konami's
extremely popular dating simulation, Tokimeki Memorial.  She's 
essentially the "best" girl in the game: pretty, popular, smart,
the epitome of everything.  On almost  every single piece of Tokimemo related
merchandise, you can see the grinning, charming smile on her face.
And since there is absolutely no sex in the Tokimemo games, she's
also supposed to be very pure.  Screw that, I saw.  I figured it'd
be funny to portray Shiori as an all-out slut.  Heh heh.

Also, when she is introduced, Shiori says "Watasha wa Fujisaki Shiori"
which means, of course, "I am Shiroi Fujisaki."  I realized afterward
that it would be proper to end the sentence with "desu", but I was
too lazy to grab the images of the game and print them out, so I
let them be.  

Page 2:

Just don't ASK me where I conceived the idea of Funkmaster J. ^_^
Well, the whole man-beast thing is obviously an allusion to Cornell
from Legacy of Darkness, but the rest is my goofy idea.

Page 3:

EVERYONE can understand the "sword/whip" joke, but right beneath it
I was supposed to be poking fun at the awkward camera angles in
Castlevania 64 that made jumps much harder than they should have been.
Given that I can't draw in perspective very well (duh) most of the
effect was probably lost.  Oh well.

And face it, Alucard IS the pimp daddy.  He got Sonia, he got Maria
(if you obtained 200%+ that is), and rumor has it he was fooling around
with Sypha (well, no, I made that up, but it could be true!) Pratically
all of the female Castlevania fans I've run across think Alucard is a
hunk.  So there (and for the dense, 538 is the numer of women he's
been with.)

Koitsu, the hyperactive stick-figure-on-a-paper-airplace, comes
from the Parodius series of games.  I just wanted to throw him in
somewhere, 'cuz he's cool (BTW, you're never supposed to understand
what he says - it's all meant to be scribble.)

Page 4:

My personal favorite page, spoofing the villagers from Castlevania 2
that, quite frankly, never made a damn bit of sense.  I came up with
the idea that they were all robots spouting crap.  My favorite
is the "Get a silk bad from the graveyard duck to live longer."
This, my friends, strengthens the importance of the period.

The quotes that the robot starts yammering are from various different
Konami games:

"Uh oh. The truck have started to move": Metal Gear
"Hit Deborah Cliff with your head to make a hole": Castlevania 2
"Ouch! What do you do?": Goonies 2
"This battle will boil your blood": Jackal
"Let's attack aggresively": Contra 3

Page 5:

Ryan McCallister informed me that this page was very reminscent of
the Michael Jackson video Moonwalker, where he danced to blow up
zombies and robots.  This was entirely unintentional, but it works
out well.  Also, the arrows on the left side of the screen are an
allusion to Konami's dancing game, Dance Dance Revolution.

My drawing is so bad, I had to label all of the bad guys.  And 
the "big gun" joke would be better if I could draw (BTW, the parts
of the gun are "Laser", "3 Pistols", "Bazooka", "Flame Thrower", 
"Shotgun", "Spears" and "Holy Water Dispenser".

Page 6:

Most of my patron's favorite page. ^_^ I admit, I'm a bit of an otaku
myself, but it's still fun to make light of us psycho fanboys.
BTW, that image was originally from the Tokimeki Memorial instruction
manual - she was originally taking off her shirt to reveal a 
bathing suit.  I just painted over the bathing suit, and voila, there
it was.  And no, I'm not sending anyone an uncensored image.  There IS
no uncensored image.  I never bothered to draw what was underneath
the black box.  Pervert.

Page 7:

I was eager to finish this off and put it up, so I basically pulled
this ending out of my arse.  It's obviously intended to poke fun
at the number of times Dracula has resurrected and re-resurrected,
despite the fact that he's only supposed to come back every 100
years (oh, that's his watch he's looking at before he disappears.)

That's all there is.  Hope you all liked it!

Kurt