Aria of Sorrow & Identity
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a Gameboy Advanced game released in 2003, and marks the penultimate end of the Castlevania series’s canon timeline. Unlike the other entires in the series, the protagonist (Soma Cruz) of this game is unfamiliar with the supernatural. He has not been raised to be a monster hunter. Soma doesn’t even believe that monsters exist.
The Soma is tasked by a mysterious agent named Genya Arikado to reach Dracula’s throne room after learning that he and his childhood friend have both been trapped within the otherworldly dimension the castle now occupies. Throughout his trek through Dracula’s Castle, he discovers that there is a prophecy that foretells the return of the evil count. It is on this journey that Soma discovers the truth of the prophecy and of his own identity.
Aria of Sorrow is a game that has a lot to say about identity, about how important it is to know oneself. Each and every character in the game plays into this theme in one way or another, and I will be taking the time to highlight how I believe this theme applies to each of the characters that appear.
Soma Cruz (or 来須蒼真 / Kusuru Soma) is a Japanese national (or foreign exchange student in overseas releases). He is currently in his last year of high school and is presumably making plans for the college that he ends up attending in the sequel game. His character bio in the game manual describes him as having a “strangely daunting presence” that others “find difficult to approach.” He is still close with his childhood friend, whose name is Mina Hakuba.
The moment that Soma starts his adventure, he learns that he has a supernatural power referred to as the Power of Dominance. It is a power that allows him to rule over the souls of monsters and use their abilities. It is a power that is unambiguously dark in nature.
It is a power that makes Soma uncomfortable.
Soma begins to feel as if he does not know himself anymore. Who is he to have this sort of power? When he questions Arikado at the beginning of the game, the agent skirts around the question and orders him to head for the throne instead. Every time Soma attempts to question him, Arikado simply tells him that all of his questions will be answered when he reaches Dracula’s throne.
And when Soma does reach it? His whole world crumbles.
Soma is destined to become Dracula. He is the one from the prophecy that has brought everyone he met to Dracula’s Castle.
Even his name is a reference to the inevitability of this fact. The kanji in Kurusu translate to “come/next” and “by all means”. And the kanji in Soma means “pale/blue” and “truth/reality”. Soma is the next Dracula and he is inevitable. This is the cruel reality. “Blue” might be a little odd, but the kanji they used for it (蒼) was historically used to also describe the color green. This is important because the primary colors in Mathias Cronqvist’s design were black and green.
Not only that, but the chaotic being at the heart of Dracula’s Castle begins to actively fill Soma with the very same malicious will that drove Dracula to insanity before him.
(Note, Arikado’s dialogue has a slight mistranslation. In Japanese, he says, 「魔力と一つになったお前には、巨大な邪悪な意思が流れ込んでいるはずだ。」 So, he’s saying “Now that you’ve become one with [Dracula’s] magic, an enormous amount of malevolent intentions must be flowing into you.”)
Not only has Soma had his entire self-image upended by the discovery of his dark power, but he’s now being forced to endure this evil energy being poured into him. The very same twisted human desires that fuels Dracula’s myriad resurrections.
But all hope is not lost. The very chaos that is corrupting Soma is deep within Dracula’s Castle. Arikado tells Soma that he can delve to its depths, and then he will be able to destroy it and save himself.
Soma agrees and tells Arikado that he will fight against his fate with everything he has. He will not let the world define him, he will not let himself be guided by a destiny that he has not chosen for himself. He will not allow himself to become the monster his previous incarnation was.
And so, Soma sets off to tell the world that he is the only one who decides who Soma Cruz is.
But now, I’m going to talk about the rest of the characters and how they support this theme of identity.
Mina Hakuba (白馬弥那) is an 18-year-old high school student and Soma’s childhood friend. She’s the only daughter of Hakuba Shrine’s caretaker and is described as being an extremely friendly person who gets along well with everyone. She ends up in Dracula’s Castle with Soma after the two of them agree to meet up to view a solar eclipse outside her family’s shrine.
Mina’s given name doesn’t have any particularly important meaning (essentially translating to “all the more”). But Hakuba is far more interesting, translating to “white horse”. White horses are important to Japanese Shintoism, usually being offered as the mounts for the kami and being kept in the shrine in a ritual known as horse dedication. They’re offered to the kami alongside wishes, with white horses being associated with a request to bring an end to rainfall.
At first, Mina seems like an unassuming victim in all of this, but if Soma returns to talk to her throughout the game, she reveals that she has a deep connection to this underground world that Soma has no idea existed.
For one, Mina has known the witch Yoko Belnades and agent Genya Arikado for years. She’s known Arikado since she was eight years old, and Yoko long enough that she sees her as an older sister. This information, along with most information about Mina, is revealed in optional dialogue. You can only discover it if you take an interest in her and return to speak with her often throughout your playthrough.
If you continue to speak with her, you can eventually learn about the shrine her family takes care of. Soma learns that the Hakuba Shrine conducts rituals that “confine anger and evil intentions” and that they performed a ritual in 1999–the very one that led to the truth death of Dracula.
Mina has been deeply involved in all of these supernatural happenings without Soma knowing. In fact, he barely seems to know anything about the life of his childhood friend. Which makes me believe that Mina has been intentionally hiding her involvement with the supernatural from Soma. What young girl wouldn’t want to talk about the mysterious secret agent who comes over to her house, or the cool older girl who treats her like a little sister?
However, Mina is also one of Soma’s most ardent supporters. When he begins to lose himself to the stream of malevolent feelings, you can choose to return and talk to her. Soma will ask her how she would feel if he “stopped being himself.” Mina’s response is honest.
The person Mina likes is Soma. She could never love Dracula.
Genya Arikado (有角幻也) is an agent working for a “shadowy branch” of Japanese National Security. His age is unknown and—… Yeah, okay I’ll cut to the chase.
He continues the theme around identity through the fact that he is actively hiding who he is in order to better move through the shadows. The kanji that make up the name Arikado translate as “existence” and “horn”. Genya is made up of the word “illusion” and the verb “to be.” He exists due to an illusions, with the “horns” part alluding to a more demonic kind of visual. Arikado works in the background, keeping an eye on Soma as he progresses through the castle, only stepping in when Yoko gets attacked and when Soma makes it to the throne room.
Arikado reveals that he led Soma to the throne for his awakening in order to access his power, so he might kill Soma if need be.
But he also tells Soma this:
It was risky of him to lead Soma to the throne, but he believes that Soma can win. The decision to have Arikado supporting Soma is interesting to me, not only because of his connection to Dracula, but because Arikado has always had a—…
Let’s say a complicated relationship with his own identity. He discarded his birth name when he turned against Dracula, choosing the name Alucard to represent his eternal opposition to his father’s cruelty. He felt so cursed by it that he attempted to seal himself away for the rest of eternity.
And for all his obfuscation early in the game, it is Arikado who tells everyone the truth of Soma’s situation.
(Looks like Alucard learned something from Maria. A fate like this can hardly be faced alone.)
Yoko Belnades is a witch working for the Church who comes to the shrine in order to investigate the prophecy of Dracula’s resurrection. She is 24-years-old and very spunky. She’s described as quite nosy and is an acquaintance of Arikado. While her first name sounds Japanese, it’s written in katakana. This could mean she was born overseas and thus wasn’t given a name written in kanji. Possible readings for her name are “sunny child” and “ocean child”, with the former perhaps in reference to her sunny demeanor.
Unlike every other character in the game, Yoko possesses no secrets of her own. In fact, she’s candid with Soma about who she is and why she’s here. Rather, it is through her that we learn who these other characters truly are, an unmasker of others’s true nature. She is the one who clues the audience in as to who Arikado really is.
Yoko also warns Soma about another man he meets in the castle, a man by the name of Graham Jones who had left a favorable first impression on Soma. She advises him that he is not who he seems to be and that he is seeking to become Dracula. Soma doesn’t want to believe this, but it is through Yoko that Soma sees the true depths of Graham’s evil when he stabs her.
And, yes, this is an unfortunate bit of bad writing where Yoko is reduced to an object through which we learn about the other male characters’s more defined inner lives. Yoko has no secrets on her own, only what she reveals in others.
J is a mysterious amnesiac who Soma runs into while exploring the castle. He’s 56-years-old and lost his memory after a traumatic event in 1999. He’s been on his own ever since and works for himself only, though he takes an immediate interest in Soma once he senses that he has dark powers.
J, as it turns out, is a direct parallel to Soma. Both of them came to the castle completely unaware that they have an intimate connection to an exceedingly long feud that has gone on for nearly a thousand years. Soma is the reincarnation of Dracula. And J is the man who killed Dracula.
At the exact moment Soma attains one of his first, true vampiric abilities, J regains his memories. He learns that he is Julius Belmont, the last son of the Belmont lineage.
Julius’s name is Roman in origin, humorously meaning “downy-bearded.” This could be a reference to the fact that he’s one of the only Belmonts with facial hair. However, there is another meaning. Julius can also mean “devoted to Jove”, which Jove being an alternate name for the Roman god Jupiter. Going into detail about Jupiter is far beyond the scope of this post, but it’s pretty interesting.
In any case, Julius is a parallel to Soma not only in having a hidden identity, but in choosing one’s own identity over fate. You see, after Julius regains his memories, he near immediately begins to talk about how defeating Dracula is what he is destined to do (And I’ve hit the image limit so I’ll be transcribing the dialogue instead of screenshotting now).
SOMA: So, if Dracula is revived again, just as it is written in the prophecy...
JULIUS: Then I must destroy him! It is my destiny.
But… if you’ve played this game, you know that Julius does not destroy Soma. Yes, he corners Soma in the area right before the chaotic realm and forces him into a fight, but, he does not kill him.
Rather, Soma’s soul and humanity shines through the haze of Julius’s fear and the legacy he is bound to. Julius cannot bring himself to kill Soma in spite of all of his words earlier. So long as Soma is still Soma, Julius will protect him just the same as any other human.
And perhaps Soma has done little to prove himself to him, but that doesn’t matter. Julius wants to believe in him.
I’ve written a long post about Julius here if you’d like to read it.
I’m not going to spend much time on Hammer because he’s a minor character and there’s honestly not much to him. He is 34-years-old and comes to the castle after being deployed by the military. I’ve see websites that say Hammer is an English occupational name that might have been a thing back when people took the name of whatever their job was, but I can’t find proof of that outside random baby name websites. So, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
While inside the castle, Hammer discovers that his higher ups had been concealing the nature of his mission from his unit, who all perish in a presumable monster attack.
This enlightens Hammer to the realization that he has no love for the military and he decides to leave that all behind and become a merchant.
Graham is another one of Soma’s direct parallels in that he is a man who has come to the castle without fully understanding who he is. At first glance, he seems like a very affable, friendly 36-year-old man. He claims to be a missionary, which makes him sound like he’s affiliated with the Church, and he readily answers nearly every question Soma has without rushing him away like Arikado had.
He does not make fun of Soma for thinking Dracula is made up, rather, he seems quite eager to share what he knows about their situation. It must be a relief for Soma to have someone finally explain things to him.
Of course, if you read the profiles in the game manual, you would have learned that Graham is the founder of a new religious sect that preaches about apocalyptic events coming to pass. Almost like a doomsday cult—
GRAHAM: I was born on the very day that Dracula was destroyed... so, in short, that means I AM DRACULA!
A Dracula-based new age doomsday cult. How quaint.
Unfortunately for Graham, we already know that Soma is the true reincarnation of Dracula. Soma is the one who gains Dracula’s power and the one who gains control of the castle in the neutral end.
It’s funny, then, that Graham’s name isn’t anything particularly special. The name Graham is Scottish in origin and means “gravelly homestead”. His surname on the other hand, Jones, is most likely a reference to Jim Jones—an American cult leader who lead 918 of his followers to their death.
Graham fits into the theme of identity in that he mistakenly believes himself to be Dracula, but unlike Soma, there is nothing of him that exists outside of that false identity. Graham clings to it with all of his might. Even when faced with indelible proof that Soma is the true inheritor of Dracula, he refuses to accept it and turns himself into a monster out of desperation.
(He also accuses Soma of stealing the power that rightfully belongs to him. This becomes extremely ironic after you discover who Dracula really is.)
Graham’s monster form is quite interesting. He literally looks like a giant womb, as if he is trying to birth himself into the position that he believes he should have been born with. It’s honestly pathetic how hard he clings to a fate Soma has to give his everything to rise above.
It’s only when Graham is on the brink of Death that he begins to understand.
GRAHAM: NO! This cannot be! Does that mean I'm not Dracula?!
It’s fitting that Graham dies here. He centered his entire life around the belief that he was Dracula—he founded a cult on the assumption. It was the basis of entire identity and without it he crumbles. Because without Dracula? Graham Jones has no identity of his own.
“One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.”
Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)
When Igarashi was conceptualizing the story of Aria of Sorrow, it had a different name in Japanese. Akatsuki no Minuet, or Minuet of Dawn. This is poignant for several reasons. It is the dawn of a new day. The long night has ended and the sun is rising on a world without Dracula.
Igarashi stated that he picked that musical term because, “I thought “minuet” matched the story themes better too, as it symbolizes the people who surround Soma and give him support, just like dancers accompanying each other in a minuet” (Aria of Sorrow Developer Interview, 2003).
At the very end of the game, right before Soma has to defeat Chaos, he is contacted by Mina who says that everyone has a message for him. Soma realizes that they must know what he is and declares they must be afraid of him. Mina declares that to be nonsense and everyone gathers around to encourage Soma, with Yoko giving the most poignant advice, a repeat of what she told him earlier.
And Soma proves all of them right.
