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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Castlevania
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FloozyGod
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I agree that the animation, while not horrible, is a bit off-putting. Just because there's lots of movement, doesn't necessarily mean it's "great". Impressive, sure, but not great. Something else to illustrate this concept is Hiroyuki Imaishi's animation. His style involves lots of key poses with very little inbetween movement, but they have so much punch and attitude in them that makes the movement seem vibrant.
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2425 Location: Germany |
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The Killing Joke looked better, stunning for most of the run-time (the changes and 1st act though...
 ) not that Castlevania isn´t impressive for a tv show. The scrips were snappy too. Certainly the best animated show of the year so far but Ballroom e Youkoso will soon catch up. Which begs the question where the show will go next once the longer part 2 concludes, as Curse of Darkness is technically the only other OG timeline game with Trevor. There aren´t too many games with a medieval setting either.
And will Grant Danasty keep his name? The original US VAs are also better than the Japanese ones. A rare occurrence but the Japanese actors are the afterthought this time. |
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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As a longtime Castlevania fan I was pretty happy. I agree with the music, and there were points that seemed perfect to drop certain pieces into (Dracula crying bloody tears, oh come on.. that had to have been made for at least the intro to the song to play for a few seconds). I am wondering if there was some weird music rights issue?
Ellis did his research also, because I remember a blog post from when this project first came up 10 years ago and he said he knew nothing about Castlevania. So, he at least learned enough to to get the points fans would care about without trying to bog it down with to much crap that would make it annoying to non-fans. It isn't perfect but yeah I really enjoyed it and I think anyone looking for something Gothic fantasy to watch would also enjoy watching it. |
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russ869
Posts: 423 |
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Trevor's fights with spoiler[the cyclops] and spoiler[Alucard] looked incredible and are easily the most memorable parts of the show, besides maybe the intro. But I'm kind of surprised the show isn't faster paced. Especially since there are currently so few episodes. I guess they wanted to spend more time establishing Trevor as a drunk buffoon, and get you to care more about the speaker characters. But on the whole I thought the 2 middle episodes dragged a bit (particularly Trevor's brawl with the men in the tavern). Overall I'm still really impressed and excited for this series. I never expected to like it as much as I did.
Voice acting is definitely good, but something seems a little off about the audio mix too. Both in the AnimeExpo panel and on Netflix some lines seemed too quiet to be easily made out. I had to turn the captions on to tell what some of the characters were saying at times. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2223 |
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The animation never really bothered me due to how strong the art direction was and how every frame is dripping with atmosphere. This might as well an unofficial Vampire Hunter D adaptation (no surprise the Castlevania franchise started shortly after the VHD novels started) with how much it piles on the Gothic horror vibes with a good smattering of Berserk due to all the blood and guts.
As for the writing, I feel Ellis managed to find a balance between his quippy writing style while realizing it's not his property and adapting it to a medieval, Gothic horror setting. Most of the snark comes from Trevor, with a bit of sass from Sypha, and the feisty Lisa so most of the cast is played seriously. If they had Alucard making snark then I'd totally be out. Only real quibble I have is the Church being clearly Catholic when Wallachia was a historically Orthodox nation (modern Romania also being mostly Orthodox). Some observations (mild spoilers): spoiler[I love how the first five minutes of the show are essentially an abridged version of Beauty and the Beast staking vampire romance cliches. Instead of taking Dracula as intimidating, Lisa cuts him down and demands he learn some manners. Pity Lisa's part was so small as Swallow does great in convincing you what kind of woman Dracula would fall for and that he would go over the edge for her. The Speakers also appear to be based on the Romani people what with being a nomadic group divided among tribes and being persecuted by the larger populace. Trivia: -The “goat” conversation is a joke about Ellis sharing snippets of his script, specifically snippets involving “goats” -Trevor uses three sub-weapons from the game in the series, the dagger, the axe, and holy water. The absent ones are the stopwatch and the cross -The Speakers getting prophecies from the future is a reference to Saint Germain, a mysterious time traveler that first appeared in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, which is a direct follow up to Dracula’s Curse. -The main demon during the final episode of Season 1 (Blue Fangs) is likely based on the Lesser Demon (Pazuzu) boss fight from Dracula’s Curse -Dracula’s bloody tears is a reference to the musical track in Castlevania “Bloody Tears” -Dracula being a scientist and scholar is a reference to his expanded backstory from Lament of Innocence where he was a tactician and scholar -The lamps and indoor plumbing of Alucard's keep is a bit of a joke as to how the series has been very anachronistic. -Sypha has a Spanish accent as her surname, Belnades, is a corruption of the Spanish surname Fernandez. -Trevor mentions his whip being consecrated, the Vampire Killer being the container of the soul of Sara Trantoul, the beloved of Leon Belmont who founded the Belmont clan as vampire hunters -The statue in Gresit is modeled after Eric Lacarde, a main character from the Sega Genesis title Castlevania: Bloodlines which takes place during World War I. Lacarde wields the Alucard Spear.] |
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epicwizard
Posts: 420 Location: Ashburn, VA |
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I finished watching season 1 yesterday and I thought it was great. I agree that the show has compelling characters and an outstanding voice cast. Definitely worth re-watching!
As for the lack of iconic music from the Castlevania video game series, honestly, I think hardcore fans really need to calm down about that. Sure it would've been nice to include them in the show, but it's not that big of a deal. And I'm not saying this just because I'm not a hardcore fan of the video game series. Sonic SatAM and Sonic Boom lack iconic music from the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series, and I'm not disappointed about that, despite being a hardcore fan.
Interesting. I'm going to check out the Japanese dub one day and compare the voices. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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As a long time fan of the series since I was 5 years old, I do love the Netflix series. I'm glad that it is rated R because I feel like a PG-13 rating can not work.
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 712 |
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I enjoyed this quite a lot, more than I expected to at least. And part of that may be that I've never played a single Castlevania game, so the lack of game references or soundtrack music were non-issues for me. I pretty much totally agree with this review other than that, though. The story and characters were interesting and entertaining, the art design and direction was great, and the voice acting was spectacular, although the animation felt somewhat stiff and janky at times. Overall, I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of it, whenever that is.
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MajorZero
Posts: 359 |
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I expected it to be a mediocre adaptation of a game that never offered much in terms of the plot (even if we count LoS), imagine my surprise when it turned out to be my favourite action/fantasy animated show in recent years. While the animation wasn't always flawless, I have to disagree about action sequences, stuff like Trevor vs. Cyclops and Trevor vs. Alucard maybe not on the level of, say, Sword of the Stranger, but it is much better done than what you usually see in modern anime.
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Doodleboy
Posts: 296 |
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One of the more interesting things about the adaptation is seeing how people react to Ellis' dialogue and sense of humor. Always enjoyed his dialogue. People swearing in random ways is funny.
Apparently the earlier version of this story would've had some art-direction by James Jean, that would've been an interesting adaptation. Although the art direction we have no is pretty great. Both the character designs and the backgrounds (liked how Alucard's keep looked). It would've been nice to see a Kawajiri version of it, but I guess I still need to see Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. Also wonder if the last fight in the series was inspired by Yutaka Nakamura's fight scene in Sword of the Stranger. The church storyline resonated with me in a people in power being bad actors and unpunished for it way. There's an odd noblesse oblige aspect to the series, particularly because the nobility and intelligentsia classes are the oppressed ones which is a strange reversal. It kinda works in a even if the class aspects kinda don't. Is a world where good actions are punished and bad actors rewarded still worth fighting for? So yeah, largely the same opinion as most of the review. Also never played the games so I was surprised at how faithful the series was afterwards. |
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 360 |
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It was okay. I actually didn't have an issue with the animation, but can I just say that aside from the very beginning stuff with Vlad and the last episode, I was just not compelled by anything there. I think I started losing it at the bar scene where the they showed how edgy they could get by saying the f word 50 times in both a cursed way and a scenario involving a sheep. Even if I supposed that such a conversation was supposed to feel genuine, and trust me, it didn't, all I could think of was what does this do for Belmont's character? Nothing. I don't care about those guys, and I don't know why Belmont cared that he was beating them up. Then there was all that stuff about the corrupt church which quite frankly didn't have a lot to do with Belmont, the mage, or the "surprise" savior. Felt very disjointed (and rather boring) and you could could skip episodes 2 or 3 and actually not miss anything of import. Not a great start, but shows more promise with the newly formed team.
Oh, and I disagree with this being a faithful adaptation if this is Castlevania 3. I sense Symphony of the Night... |
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scriver058
 Posts: 127 Location: NY |
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As was indicated in the review, this is a planned trilogy which you would expect covers Trevor's story through a possible part 3 (or if the 8 part 2 episodes are the conclusion, every 4 eps being a part of the trilogy). But if they wanted to go past that, being that Alucard is involved and that his mother's death is shown here as it was alluded to in Symphony of the Night, maybe there's some hope that that game can get adapted into a future season? For what it's worth, spoiler[Symphony of the Night's story eventually gives closure to Alucard and Dracula's relationship and their shared grief over Lisa's death.] Very much enjoyed this though, it more or less lived up to the hype that everyone around me gave it. |
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neozxtc
 Posts: 24 |
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Can't wait to see this I hope.
spoiler[Alucard faces his own father, who vows to destroy humankind because Alucard's mother Lisa was executed as a witch. Alucard refuses to join his father in his revenge and the two battle. Alucard defeats his father and suggests he lost the battle because he lost his ability to love after Lisa's death. Dracula quotes the biblical verse Matthew 16:26 (in the dub) and learns that Lisa's final words were of eternal love for him and a plea not to hate – or at least harm – humanity. As Dracula vanishes, he asks for Lisa's forgiveness and bids his son farewell. Escaping the crumbling castle, Alucard rejoins Maria and Richter. Maria expresses relief that he escaped while Richter blames himself as the reason for Alucard's fight with his father. Alucard tells Richter, "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," (an attributed quote from Edmund Burke) and resolves to disappear from the world because of his cursed bloodline. Depending on how much of the castle the player has explored, Maria either chases Alucard in the hope of changing his mind, or resigns herself to Alucard's fate and leaves with Richter.] |
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Midaro
 Posts: 147 |
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I never played the games, but the whole script seems a manifesto against the Catholic Church to me. I wonder if this comes from the game or is simply intentional because using a tv series to preach is kind of sad to me. Also the whole white and black points of view, ¿are they necessary? Why do women always have to tell a man "I don't need you to save me"? I won't talk about the anacronisms, because this is fantasy, but enough with the Spanish black legend in games and the american industry. |
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donhumberto
Posts: 807 |
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Loved every second of it. By far the best animated dark fantasy I've seen in a long time (probably since the Berserk films). Looking forward to the second season and, hopefully, more projects like this.
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