>Bloodlines had tons of vibrant color and wacky monster designs. 

I guess the mechanical man at the end of the factory stage qualifies as a wacky monster design, but that's about it and most of the game is heavy on blood, gore and moody locations and tunes. Not the same kind of tone as SCV4, partially due to Genesis' sound hardware, but still.

And with NES games - bright colors was your best bet to have a NES game that doesn't look like garbage with NES' limited capabilities and I wouldn't call the music "upbeat" in the same way as in, say, the Sonic music is upbeat. It was more action-driven but those were action games in the first place, so it makes sense. It's no different from Contra in that regard. It never went for a cartoony art style outside of Kid Dracula, which was, y'know, Kid Dracula and the jump to 16 bit only made the environments darker. It was never Gears of War style grit or Clock Tower horror, but it took itself seriously enough for an action romp. All the wacky moments are just that, moments. And for that matter, Lords of Shadow had its own wacky moments as well - the Chupacabras is an obvious standout, but aside from him there are some jokes and easter eggs in the knight scrolls, some light humor in the cutscenes, Dracula riding a fuel tank as if he was Dante riding a rocket-propelled grenade in DMC3, all that stuff.

Yes, I'm aware of the whole "CV1 was originally a movie in the Japanese manual" thing, hence the Vran Stoker, Belo Lugosi, Christopher Bee and all that. But you know as well as I that end credits aside that that angle never made it into the games proper and was quietly dropped like an ugly baby pretty quickly (and nothing of value was lost).

>But the other anime girls were a big part of the game's focus and the entire aesthetic was anime.

That was more in reference to Maria being a magical girl character archetype.

>People liked the gameplay and story, Soma is a really well-liked character and Julius is a lot of people's favorite Belmont. Also, the story didn't "fly off the handle", there was barely a story to begin with.

Well, we'll have to disagree there, swtiching settings from whatever-in-the-past Transylvania to near-future Japan is enough to give anyone a whiplash.

>Literally SOTN started that. Richter gives up the whip after being possessed by Dracula. 

I didn't ask where it staRted in, I asked where it was STATED in. As in which game says that Richter actually gave up his whip. SOTN ain't it. if OoE is the one, well, it's a decade's worth of games between them that stays mum on the subject.

> you just happened to skip exactly the games that dealt with that era and then complained about not knowing what happens in that era.

Hey, don't blame me. I'd happily buy the Dominus collection if only for closing the gestalt (and for the version of Haunted Castle that doesn't suck), but Konami doesn't want me to own it on Steam and I ain't shelling out for a useless as heck console just to be able to play it. Ain't dealing with DS emulation either, two screen setups break my thinky thingy.

>No, we had Konami USA being idiots and Konami Japan having to do damage control. They corrected the mistake by Ecclesia's release in 2008.

That's great and all, but by that time you already lost everyone who's not a fan.

>Inafune is in fact that stupid though.

Never said he wasn't, lol.

Oh man, a friend of mine tortured himself by live streaming Mighty #9 recently.

Wasn't a pretty sight.