The Glory of Richter Belmont

some family bloodlines contain someone of great importance within their history be it nobunaga of the yoda clan or genghis khan of eight percent of the world's population and by the same logic even famous fictional bloodlines have something similar as sometimes fate falls into the right place and aligns to form someone of such fame and impact that they shape the future of their bloodline without even realizing it and this is what happened with the belmont lineage and richter belmont as during his heyday the hot-blooded holy hero hastily humiliated hell's hardened hierarchy however his heretically honed hubris helped hand him humiliation [Music] richter belmont is the protagonist of castlevania rondo of blood and hailed as the strongest belmont within the clan likely due to his heritage and his hot-blooded attitude as he demonstrates his raw talent in his debut title completely crushing dracula and his forces though while he might have been the greatest of the belmont he would also bring great shame to the family name when he would reappear in castlevania symphony of the night though before we get to into that let's discuss the meaning behind his name and design so the naming history behind richter balmer is rather simple starting first with the family name belmont if you've seen any of my other castlevania videos you might already know that it's inspired by the french movie actor jean-paul belmondo so much so that belmont in japanese is belmondo now belmondo was a pretty famous actor who became rather popular in japan and went on to influence a couple of other things outside of castlevania such as giving jean-pierre paul from jojo's bizarre adventure part 3 fame his first name he was as influential as he was due to his connection to the french new wave film scene but also his prevailing roles in a lot of action movies like the man from rio and weaken at dunkirk though his given name richter originates from a rather interesting place this being it was selected by castlevania's composer akarapito in reference to his favorite conductor carl richter who besides being known as a talented conductor was also a famed quierest organist pianist and harpsichordis which might be the origin of richter's own multi-talented nature as he's not only the physically strongest belmont of the clan but he was also gifted with extremely powerful holy magic as his family lineage is basically super eugenics and speaking of his family his given name richter also directly translates to the german word for the book of judges which is a term for an old testament bible and given the belmont's connections to the church this seems rather intentional but along with that richter can also just mean judge by itself which might have been the inspiration behind his grandfather's name juiceday which means righteous and altogether they are a righteous judge and on top of that his visual design along with the visual design of all of rondu of blood is assumedly targeting the shonen manga demographic assumingly taking influence from series like fits to the north star and slayers when designing the world and characters within that world and these influences can be seen best in rector's own character design even out of rondo of blood's art style and speaking of richter's design in future entries of the series richter's design would change quite significantly with the most jarring of them being in symphony of the night but that change is actually important to his character's history so before we talk about it let's understand how he got there so richter is the grandson of juice day belmont who prior to richter's birth in 1773 was considered to be the strongest of the belmonts because he possessed immense magical ability and these elements of his grandfather were inherited by richter and came to be known in 1792 during the events of rondo of blood where his girlfriend annette was kidnapped alongside a couple of other women by the sorcerer's shaft in order for by dracula bride which forced richter to confront the dark lord himself and bring peace to the world once again though this belmont journey was a bit different than the ones before as we follow richter's entire progress to castlevania opening not only with richter studying the layout of the castle which technically should be impossible given how castlevania works strange this castle's different than i remember it this castle is a creature of chaos with each rebirth it takes a new form here i thought my mind was playing tricks well there's nothing for it until we meet again but we also get to see richter saving other villages from dracula's influence playing him up even more as a hero to the world but we also experience a playable carriage ride segment instead of just starting at the castle itself along with this the player can take on multiple paths on their way to the main castle itself which demonstrates how handily richter was destroying the whole of dracula's army overwhelming them with his hot-blooded nature and his might which is a little something i like to call ludo narrative kino which is where a game can demonstrate a narrative element of the story through play instead of telling the player directly another great example of this is how the game shows us that richter is one of the strongest belmonts to ever exist with the ability that would later become a staple for all vampire hunters but its extreme power put richter on a whole other level compared to any of the other belmonts of previous titles item crash item crash is a special ability that vampire hunters have where they fully utilize their sub weapons hidden potential through their holy magic and the stronger the native magic the more powerful the person's item crash would become and with item crash richter can spawn in a barrage of thousands of knives or call in a powerful rainstorm of holy water and even create what would become a belmont ace in the hall the grand cross though on top of that richter can also focus his energy into the vampire killer itself imbuing it with holy flames and creating the flame whip he can do this if he has no items to item crash with and with these tools in hand richter decimated the armies of the undead destroying not only multiple of dracula's minions such as bmoth death or even the dark sorcerer shaft himself up to even dracula overwhelming them with his fiery passion and determination while saving everyone he could though his desire to destroy dracula would be in part his own undoing which actually somewhat reveals a tragic portion of richter and of course the entirety of the belmont bloodline as a whole as for most of their lives they're raised to be these hardened warriors of unshaking bravery so much so that their superhuman abilities were feared by people as early as the 15th century but they continued to fight the dark because they felt they were the only ones who could do it and they needed to keep training and making sure their air would be as strong or if not stronger than them because showing any sign of weakness would leave room for dracula to overwhelm them and rule the world the belmont took the weight of humanity's safety solely onto their shoulders and for as heroic and kind-hearted as they appeared because of how unmatched they were in their time when dracula was defeated they ultimately became bored in times of peace and dracula seemed to take notice pointing out that humans of all kinds have desires even the famous belmont clan and though richter ultimately rejected the suggestion that he had hidden desires for a brief moment his guys cracks do you not have any desires well it is by your desires that you humans prosper and it is your faith which has ruled you and this crack would splinter until five years later richter would lose himself to a spell created by the surviving dark sorcerers shaft and the spell would put richter under a powerful suggestion forcing him to give in to his desires as richter would begin to act on the shameful feelings that he had buried deep within his psyche this being that he wished to face dracula once again as the battle with the dark lord is what he trained his whole life for and was basically all he knew and it's what made him feel the most alive mentioning in his mesmerized state that dracula's resurrection is the only moment where a belmont gets to shine and be a hero dracula rises once a century one chance for each belmont to shine and then we're finished forgotten if i bring him back now the battle can last for eternity and his time has come in past without much fanfare so if he were to resurrect dracula early he could battle the dark lord for eternity the best part about this shift in personality is how you can actually see it purely through richter's design change as he goes from the somewhat battle battle-ready warrior to this aristocrat in the span of five years along with this his hair becomes longer and disheveled showing that he hasn't been taking as good of care of himself as he was when he was preparing to face the dark lord for all those years along with this the long hair and aristocratic outfit connects him to dracula in a sense in a visual way though the spell was lifted by the empire son of dracula himself alucard during the events of symphony of the night leaving richter grateful but also full of shame too injured to assist alucard in his adventures in the reverse castle he sits back on the sidelines and contemplates the future of the belmonts and after alucard defeats both shaft and dracula alongside collapsing castlevania yet again richter realizes that the belmont tradition is something that should end they no longer needed to shackle themselves solely to the mission of saving the world though due to the danger presented by dracula's inevitable resurrection this process would need to be phased out slowly and after learning about nostradamus's vision of the future in the war of 1999 richter took the opportunity to phase out the belmont family till then and began to not only train dozens of different vampire hunters to pick up the slack where the belmonts would be lacking as seen in nocturne of recollection and order of ecclesia but also on top of this he passed down vampire killer a whip that's been tied to the belmont bloodline for 700 years to others outside of his family as he went into hiding and raised his children not to hunt the knight though he didn't give vampire killer without a caveat as to ensure it wouldn't fall into the hands of those unworthy to wield its power richter used his immense magical ability to implant a visige of his essence into the whip itself that one would have to face and defeat to claim the whip as their own if not the whip would violently drain the life force of those who were unworthy of wielding it this way richter could be confident that it would only find itself in worthy hands until the war of 99 also a really cool detail about rector abandoning traditions like this and a metasense this became true for the series itself as castlevania post-richter hasn't had a playable belmont until julius belmont and arya of sorrow along with this rondo of blood was the last traditional castlevania game in the whole series before they moved on to the more metrovania style gameplay richter in a meta sense broke the traditional shackles of his bloodline and he did so because he saw how dangerous it was for the future in a similar way that igarashi saw how dangerous castlevania's formula had become to one of his favorite gaming franchises so he abandoned tradition and created symphony of the night in order to salvage it along with this rector's desire to sever the belmonts from their bloodline mission seems to be intended from the onset of his character as before the project that is known as symphony of the night was completed castlevania had a different game in development this being castlevania bloodletting a game that would feature richter as the lead yet again and bloodletting is an old defunct medical practice in which a doctor would drain a patient of blood in hopes to cure them of their illness or disease and with richter in the remodeled version of castlevania bloodletting known as symphony of the night literally drained the belmonts of all of their duties in order to save the bloodline and i feel like these connections were somewhat intentional i mean richter's always been designed with the belmont clan in mind not only is he hailed as the strongest in the clan but his own main theme is called divine bloodlines and divine bloodlines is actually an interesting piece of castlevania history as it shows the series gradual change over time as composer akrapito wanted to give the game a progressive rock feeling to show the passage of time within the universe itself and thanks to rondo of blood being a cd-based game something that doesn't apply to dracula x the american version of rondo of blood aquapita was able to achieve the goal that he wanted and bring live guitars and drums and mold them with the synthetic beats giving rondo its own unique sound that not only blended well with the art style but the time period it was released in but also gave richter his own unique voice in castlevania one where even in remakes and retoolings of the song the same energy can shine through be it in either harmony of dissonance where richter's theme was slowed down and retooled into the chapel of dissidents theme or when it was completely reimagined with bloodlines bequeathed in portrait of ruin honestly richter is just as iconic as his theme next to simon he's the most recognizable belmont let alone character in the franchise making dozens of cameos throughout the series and through the years he's undergone some design alterations his rondo of blood appearance has been his most stand out appearing not only in harmony of despairs and grimoire of the soul's portraits but also in his model for super smash brothers ultimate richter is in a way the ultimate belmont and the series treats him as such demonstrating all the pluses and negatives that come with that title and if you enjoy this video and want to see more videos like in the future have a patreon at patreon.com not the bad guy patreon is a very helpful tool that helps keep this channel afloat and if you want to actually start defeating dracula yourself you can do so by picking up essential vampire slaying tools and equipment at buy shimano dot com

Channel: Meti『Not The Bad Guy』

Views: 48,552

Rating: 4.9607635 out of 5

Keywords: Richter Belmont, Belmont, Belmondo, Castlevania, Rondo of Blood, Rondo, of, Blood, Symphony of the Night, SotN, Alucard, Dracula, Dracula X, Divine Bloodline

Id: M9Bl8ms1API

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020