Well, that was a 4 episode season, apparently.
Fair warning before you go any further, there's going to be spoilers and some graphic imagery.
It's no secret that I love Castlevania, chances are you figured that out. Sufficed to say I'm surprised that this thing even got made, it's a bit of a miracle. Castlevania media projects have been in development hell for years. From a horrible sounding feature film which thankfully never got off the ground, and this series which took years to finally get made. Now that it's finally here what can I really say about it? It's...okay. That's probably the best way I can sum it up. Just okay.
Perhaps in someway that can be disappointing to some, as it's neither wondrously bad or particularly fantastic. But let us get right into that.
The series follows Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse, while also adding a bit of Symphony of the Night- at least the bit revealed in SOTN that happened in the past pertaining to Alucard's mother, Lisa. In fact the series starts with her arriving at Dracula's Castle, wanting to learn about medical science. Dracula, of course has a bunch of Frankenstein like equipment in the castle, which is why she's there in the first place. I think that serves a good explanation for their meeting. The series doesn't spend too much time on them which in the end was a good thing as ultimately we all know where it's going, so it hits on the all the points efficiently. Lisa practices medicine, Dracula sorta learns to tolerate humanity, the ignorant church burns Lisa as a witch and she does her spiel to Alucard about not hating humans, Dracula gets pissed off and starts building an army over the course of a year leading us into the events of Dracula's Curse. It doesn't waste time getting the main story going and I really appreciate that.
Next we have our Belmont, and unlike initial reports it is in fact Trevor Belmont, complete with his Curse of Darkness scar. Trevor is basically Jack Sparrow right down to the speech pattern and being drunk all the time. He's out of practice with fighting monsters (Which doesn't actually mean anything in the show) and he isn't liked too well because of his family- the Belmonts having been cast out by the Church for their Magic. The Church no doubt fearful of their power and influence undermining their own. (Corruption and fear mongering of the Church is a big aspect of the show) For the most part, Trevor is one of those reluctant heroes that tries to keep to himself but can't help but assist people, such as a man simply known as The Elder, who Trevor saves from power mad Priests. This reluctant routine goes on until the last two episodes when it becomes clear to Trevor what he must do, shedding the cloak he wore in favor of showing his proper outfit and family crest.
For the record the outfit looks great, a nice marriage of the leather and fur look with a more refined elegant appearance. It's actually somewhat close to Leon's outfit.
The Elder is the leader of a group of people known as the Speakers, a Nomadic tribe not unlike Gypsies/Romani. They travel and help people in need, but are viewed as malevolent because of the Church using them as a scapegoat, often blamed for the horror currently transpiring when in reality it's both the action and inaction of the Church. After Trevor saves the man from two murderous Priests, Trevor learns that the group is there to seek out the supposed legend of a sleeping warrior that lies beneath the town in the catacombs. One of their members recently went missing, the grandchild of the Elder, Sypha Belnades.
Sypha Belnades isn't featured too much, but after being rescued from a cyclops, she assists Trevor during the last episodes when a mob comes after them under orders of the local Bishop. She shows off her ice and fire powers to a pretty spectacular degree. Sypha he has sort of a smart attitude and I see that working well off Trevor in future episodes. Her outfit is damn near identical to the game, so points for that. As you can see from the screenshot above, they also don't dilly around her being a woman, and thank god for that. That's one aspect that doesn't need to carry over and would be far too hard to make believable. Also worth nothing she doesn't have a staff.
The Bishop is a strange character of sorts. At first I thought he was just there to be the instigator for killing Lisa. But he shows up again as the person in charge of the town Trevor and the Speakers are in. He's seemingly taking advantage of the current misfortunes to grab power within the church. But that plot goes nowhere as after introducing it, as he's killed in the last episode... Yeah. It's strange to me that they would not only set that up, but this being the same man that started all this is simply killed off so easily and quickly. It actually makes me wonder if this character will be returning, possibly as a minion or something since that would be kinda interesting for Dracula to use him. On the other hand I can't exactly see Dracula entertaining that idea, not to mention they don't even bother naming the guy.
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| Ladies, men, everyone... |
Oh yeah I also haven't talked about about Alucard. That's because he's hardly in these episodes, even less then Sypha. He confronts Dracula, once, gets kicked around pretty bad leaving a giant scar across his body, has a fight with Trevor, and mentions a what feels like a hastily added in bit about a prophesy that refers to the main trio. That's pretty much it. His characterization during the battle with Trevor did seem off, in that he accentuates his vampiric qualities in threatening to bite Trevor, which is weird since Alucard disdains the side of him. Not that he doesn't take advantage of the powers, that's never been an issue. But biting is something else entirely. Although it does make some sense in context, as he was somewhat testing Trevor, but that also means we don't get to see much of his tru personality before the credits roll.
On the subject of this powers; Alucard never actually uses any during the fight. He teleports once but that's from his sword, and yes it's the sword's ability because Alucard leaves a red outline just like in SOTN. The series has a lot of nice touches like that.
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| ↓↘→ ⬛ |
I do find it odd that Alucard has his sword, I assumed he would have been more fists and spells for this series until finally getting his gear from the castle, which might partly happen since he doesn't have a shield, vest or cloak. Although I think most of that has more to do with the fact they didn't want to animate so many layers on a single character. Noticeably Alucard's coat is much longer here than in the games, possibly to have that flowing quality and make up for the lack of said cloak.
Right, so getting to the things I liked. Generally speaking they do a great job tying everything together. Expanding upon Sypha being from a group of Gypsy like beings works really well. The atmosphere is good and disturbing just enough, a bloody crib being the most disturbing it gets. I like that Alucard's confinement is something of a local legend. Going from Lisa's death into the events of Dracula's curse works wonderfully. I don't even mind drunkard Trevor-if albeit it's a story I've seen time and time again. Not mention there was great references such as Trevor throwing an axe, Dracula crying bloody tears, and the aforementioned teleporting of Alucard. These are all very good things and you can tell a lot of love and respect for the franchise, and that means so much to me no matter the work.
The voice acting is also pretty dang good and surprising to me since I'm not too familiar with the cast, at least as voice actors.
Dracula is voiced by Graham McTavish, who I actually am familiar with as Charlie Cutter from the Uncharted series. He does not at all sound like Charlie. He has a good balance of suave and sadistic which really works great for Dracula. I'm really looking forward to see what he can pull off when he really gets into it.
Trevor is voiced by Richard Armitage, who you might familiar with from the Hobbit movies or Hannibal. As I stated earlier the voice and character is basically Jack Sparrow. Drunken but not slurred speech, same sort of spaced out delivery, etc. That does get dropped when Trevor goes cold turkey near the end of the season and his voice starts to sound more sober, but I don't have much to say about it beyond that it works and I like the choice.
Alejandra Reynoso voices Sypha, and she was the biggest surprise for me, mainly because I had absolutely no idea who Alejandra Reynoso was. (Apparently she did a lot of Winx Club work) but the accent also threw me off. It's this vague Eastern European accent. Sort of Russian, Polish, Hungarian. I really like it and it fits the character well, also makes her stand out from most of the British accents.
Then there's James Callis as Alucard. It's decent enough, bringing a nice calmness to some degree, but again he's hardly in the series. I think this was good casting and look forward to hearing more, but I can't speak much about it. Heck the Bishop, voiced by Matt Frewerhas, has more lines (and he does a great job sounding mad with power).
So problems with the series. Some of the animation is stiff, especially during action scenes. Which is weird because the styling in terms of detail is somewhere between The Last Airbender and Attack on Titan, yet it lacks the fluidity of either of those shows. Hell the fight between Alucard and Trevor has a 20 second loop of animation like a Hanna Barbara cartoon. Thankfully that's about at bad as it gets and it never sinks to say, He-Man and OG Thundercats levels of lazy. But it's still awkward.
Some things are also a little rushed and repetitive. I think every single episode mentions the Belmonts being cast out by the church for magic and how bad things always happen where they go. Look, there was a weird and huge exposition dump in the second episode about all that, I don't need to hear it again and again, that time could be spent on something else. Another oddity is when Trevor confronts one of the Priests that harassed the Elder Speaker, he does so in front of the entire village population which at the time was trying to hunt him and the speakers down. Trevor points out all the corrupt stuff that has occurred under the Bishop's order, and this leads to the villagers out of freaking nowhere to kill the priest solely on the testimony of a man who is largely feared and mistrusted, and is being helped by a witch.
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| Much like the games, there's a lot of falling down pits. |
Even more minor things are some unconfirmed aspects that simply worry me. Again, to be clear the following is very speculative stuff that worries me.
Early in the first episode it's said that the castle is capable of moving, which is true to the games since the Castle itself is a living creature and can appear wherever Dracula wants it to. But in one instance when we see it rise from the ground, it focuses on some gears as if it was less Dracula's Castle and more Howl's Moving castle. That's...that's a stupid change if that is indeed the case. In fact, there's a weird focus on Dracula having steam power and electricity. Sure, Dracula can have those things out of the time they normally appear in, but it's a minor part, it's a piece of the castle no different than the catacombs or clock tower. The castle is a cluster of many different things and different eras. Some steampunk mechanization is fine, a tin-can robot swinging an axe would be fine, but not the whole castle. I'm hoping the show doesn't go in that direction. None the less, even Alucard's lair is, for some inexplicable reason, covered in pipes and Edison style bulbs. Hell look at his coffin:
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| And bulbs are literally the extreme opposite of candles. |
What this season was so short I do not know, but maybe that was the point, to test the waters before they went forward with anymore. Makes sense, a full season is typically around 13 episodes, and this and next season would make 12.
In any case these 4 episodes do make me want to see more if only for the potential it has. However, the episodes are clunky in certain aspects, and while by no means bad, the series needs to do more in season 2 to iron out the stuff that makes it so uneven and poorly paced. I actually feel a little bad about reviewing this because there is very little to talk about. Not to mention it's always easier to point out the flaws than it is the really good aspects- that being even harder when there's not a lot to go on. There's nothing majorly wrong with Castlevania, but it's issues are numerous which itself can build into a much bigger problem if they are left unresolved. Its positives, while there, are mostly relegated to "this could be good/better if I see more".
As of now the best I can say about Castlevania is that it's incredibly adequate for the 92 minute pilot it clearly is. I think Season 2 will be the determining factor in how the show should be judged.
With that said, here's what I want to see in Season 2 of Castlevania:
Smoother animation and more clever combinations of power/abilities.
The former is pretty obvious, but the latter is something the first season does decent and I want to see more of it. For example; Trevor uses the Vampire Killer as a tension line for Sypha to shimmy across to a ledge. At one point a bucket of water is tossed in the air and Sypha freezes it, causing it to shatter and rain down shards on monsters.
These ideas are quite clever, though some could be thought out more, such as during a battle in the village where Sypha creates ice walls to make a choke point, allowing Trevor to dump Holy Water and Salt on the ground causing harm to the demons...except all but one has wings, so the plan doesn't make much since and shouldn't work. Good idea, but nonsensical in it's application. Could've added a dome over the walls, I guess.
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| If only we could somehow fly above the wall. |
Actual Creatures from the games/or folklore.
This one surprises me, but there's not many monsters from the games featured in the 4 episodes, just generic bat demons, a Hellhound like creature with multiple eyes and The Cyclops, the last one being the only recognizable creature.
Castlevania Music.
Gimme all the music you can fit in this show, seriously. Season 2 needs to start with Beginning.
Castlevania 3 has a fantastic Soundtrack, so the idea of hearing some of those recreated here makes me giddy. Much like the monsters, I'm actually surprised there wasn't any tracks played, though that might again be the result of this being a test.
To be honest the Music in show isn't bad, but it's pretty uninspired. Nothing really sticks out to me.
Missed opportunity to do an opening text crawl with Prelude, too. I've always wanted the track to be used as an opening, since the first 15 seconds sound reminiscent of an old Universal logo. (Plus a text crawl explaining the Belmonts would've been a lot less shoehorned than the exposition dump in episode 2)
But they don't just have to be limited to 3, after all there's no reason they could throw in Tragic Prince for Alucard or The Theme of Trevor if they really wanted.
Character development.
Okay this one is fairly obvious, a bare minimum for any work of fiction, but I have some things to say about it and the potential for backstory. You could go into what Trevor's training must have been like, Alucard's childhood, maybe even Dracula's relationship with Lisa. Although if it comes down to it- and it may with only 9 episodes, I'd rather have character interactions in the present rather than too much dealings in the past. Which yes, you can intertwine the two; characters perhaps relaying this information resulting in relationships between them, and that is how it should be handled. If need be Trevor and Sypha should be the only ones with this focus on developing a close friendship, perhaps even creating contrasts with Trevor and Sypha with that of Dracula and Lisa. Alucard can remain mysterious and it work for his character, the same holds true for Grant should he be introduced in the next season. Trevor and Sypha are going to end up in a relationship, so that needs to be the main thing to deal with. Alucard, and even Dracula and Lisa, will have plenty of other opportunities for backstory should they ever get around to Symphony of the Night.
And that's about all I have to say about Castlevania. All four episodes are up on Netflix, give it watch there's certainly no harm in it. Hopefully Season 2 will be a lot better and address the concerns I have and we'll have a great series. Thank you for reading.
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