Well, it's October again which means it's time for a spooky review. With this being a sequel review and it being Halloween, I'm going to take this review a bit more casually and straightforward. Plus this season isn't even 10 episodes, so there's only so much to cover. By the way, spoiler abound.
Characters/Story.
Another scene has Dracula's vampire Generals just bullshiting around arguing over when and how running water can kill or harm a vampire. The entire exchange is Tarantino-esq in that is doesn't truly have any substantial purpose, but is still incredibly enjoyable. The comedic timing this entire season is down pat.
But there are other aspects and characterization outside of the funny moments that are actually intriguing. Dracula himself is surprisingly still sympathetic and it's one of the greatest strengths. Dracula portrayed as a sad monster is nothing new, it has been done countless times. So for there to be a lot of effort into making it work is appreciated. Throughout the show, Dracula just seems so...numb. Not just sad but outright numb at existing. He just wants it all to end. It doesn't matter how- he just wants it done.
His mission of wiping out humanity is less about revenge and more about committing suicide and taking everyone with him. It sort of reminds me of The Satanic Rites of Dracula, where Dracula creates a plague to wipe out humanity so he can finally die.
I will admit looking on it now, it is a little weird that Dracula actively seeks Death, especially when in the games his entire motivation for becoming a vampire was to defy God and the natural order of death. But it's also not clear if that's canon here.
Dracula spends most of his time in a sitting room in front of a fire. These scenes with him are always intimate, personal and yet somehow, incredibly distant. However, there are those that Dracula confides in, such as Issac.
A new addition this season, Issac is one half of Dracula's commanding force and a Devil Forgemaster, basically, a monster creator and necromancer rolled into one. He was in the service of a priest who viciously beat him when Issac was attempting to learn from the priest's books, simply because he wanted to assist the man who took him in.
This horrendous ordeal birthed a deep hatred of humanity in Issac, including himself as he performs self-flagellation as a means of "cleansing." himself.
His deep-rooted hatred resulted in his alliance with Dracula, who saved him at some point in his life from rival mages. Dracula himself even has an admiration for Issac, one of a few things he somewhat cares about, enough to even prevent Issac from sacrificing his life for him. That same respect is returned by Issac with fierce loyalty, going so far as to kill one of the generals when they got too out of line.
His fellow commander and Forge Master, Hector, bears a similar hatred for humanity. Though unlike Issac, Hector isn't quite as misanthropic. Hector was rejected by society for his necromantic experiments on animals. He hid away to continue his work, preferring the company of revived animals to that of humans. When Dracula came seeking his assistance, Hektor agreed on the condition that a small number of humans be kept as livestock. It mattered not to him in the grand scheme if they were little more than cattle, he simply didn't wish to see a species go extinct.
Of course, Dracula has no such intention. But Hector is an overly idealistic fool who can be easily manipulated. Something picked up upon by our next newcomer.
Carmilla is the main source of conflict this season, causing unrest within Dracula's close associates. She sees right through Dracula and views his goal as petty and ignorant. After all, killing Humanity is not beneficial to the vampires in any way. They need them for a food source, which makes Dracula a problem even for other vampires. Carmilla attempts to sway the battle plans to her favour, claiming that the current strategies are too chaotic (which they are) and would much prefer to have Dracula move the castle to the town of Brăila as a tactical move. In actuality, Carmilla seeks to overthrow Dracula with her own soldiers.
The mindlessness of it all weighs on Hector, who, having no issue with genocide, simply wishes it was quicker. Carmilla exploits this and manages to get Hector to convince Issac and in turn, Dracula, that Carmilla's suggestion is a sensible one.
Godbrand is....not a character I can segway into and that's mainly because Godbrand is here mostly for comic relief, which he is great at. He's the only one of Dracula's Generals to speak and to be quite frank, he has no actual importance. You think that Carmilla is using him to create unrest with the rest of the generals, he even takes the others out on a killing spree against orders. But since all the other generals just stand around his actions are all irrelevant. He's killed off after four episodes with no real bearing of any significance on the plot.
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| Strangely no Olrox. |
As for the main trio, it's pretty simple all things considered. Alucard has a lot of reservations in regards to their mission. Alucard more than anything feels shame that someone like his father has access to so much knowledge and could have bettered the world under different circumstances.
Trevor and Sypha have little development. There are some cute moments with them spending time and growing a bit close, though never to the point to where it seems like they're going to be together anytime soon.
As with last season, the VA remains very good. All of the actors do a great job with their characters and that goes for the new cast additions as well. Issac and Godbrand are the standout performances for me, they both have very unique accents in addition to the quality of their voice work. Godbrands' VA of Peter Stormare is certainly well known. While Issac's VA Adetokumboh M'Cormack, has had guest appearances on shows like Heroes, but this is his first major voice-over role and he does a fantastic job. I really hope to hear more of him in the future on other projects as well.
I also do not wish to detract from Hector and Carmilla. Theo James as Hector has an accent I can't quite place which has a nice smoothness that's distinctive from James Callis' Alucard. Jaime Murray as Carmilla has a voice that could be just as terrifying as seductive. (Though they have her be far more monstrous, which I appreciate)
Animation.
One of my complaints in the first season of Castlevania is that the fights felt very stilted, the Trevor/Alucard battle in particular even had a 6-second loop that looked janky as hell. With season two, I was interested in seeing if they had improved upon that and the answer is yes...kinda.There are still episodes and moments where the animation looks flat, some of the running animations are pretty wonky looking. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of time is spent with characters just sitting around talking or walking down a hall. Dracula in front of the fire, Sypha looking at books. Thankfully the dialogue is engaging enough for this to not matter for the most part.
That being said, there are some fantastic highlights of animation. Episode 6 has one of the best sequences when Sypha is attempting to teleport Castlevania. At this point, Carmilla's forces are trying to invade and the castle blinks in and out around the town, at one point even landing in the lake causing a massive wave which basically destroys all of Carmilla's forces.
Episode 7 has by far the best fight in the entire show, it is exhilarating and wonderfully animated.
They give everyone something unique to do; Alucard turns into a wolf and uses his sword hands-free kinda like the Sword familiar in SOTN. Sypha remains to have the most interesting used if her ice abilities to create various spears and making a thin ice wall that slices someone in two. Trevor's is amazingly mainly for the animation on his whip, it's gorgeous.
Massive props to those that had to animate this whip.
And after all that, there's a fight with Dracula which is the highlight of the animation. We'll be coming back to this later in the review, but for now, I want to just say it is so damn good, especially a hand to hand fight with Alucard and his father. It's really well animated, the sound effects they use for Dracula's Punches are just super crunchy sounding, the fight goes room to room, the pacing is good. It is by far the best battle in the series.
I also need to make a special mention for these paintings that show up in the backgrounds. I seriously want prints of these things.
Music.
Lemme just say that the music in Castlevania is nice, it is a nice ambient soundtrack with a nice hint of dread. But I know what everyone was wanting to really find out here; is there music from the games? Yes, but only one track used once, which is Bloody Tears during the battle in the Castle in episode 7. That really is the best place to use it and I remember being giddy as shit when it started up. I still wish there was more, but they did pick the fan favorite and used it the best they could.
Fun stuff.
Gaibon and Slogra show up as monsters.
Pretty sure this is Malphas.
There's a Bone Dragon skeleton in the Belmont hold.
A save die from SOTN.
Dark Inferno.
But...
That feeling of minute magnitude is sadly throughout the show. Dracula gathers a bunch of vampires for his war, but only Godbrand and Carmilla speak or matter, hell even Godbrand doesn't really serve a purpose beyond showing Issac's loyalty. It also seems like a missed opportunity to have bosses from the games be, well, bosses. Which a lack of recognizable creatures is another issue that sadly season two still has. We get a minotaur, possibly Malphas, and Gaibon with Slogra being the most direct. The rest are more generic.
I appreciate the inclusion of those that are here, but even then they all look so bland. They're all blue/black which makes them all so boring. Look at the game sprites.
I'm not asking for a one to one adaptation, but would it be problematic to actually have some other colours and detailing? The animation got improved in some areas but the creature designs are still so flat.
Not only that, but there are hardly any monsters at all. Europe should be on fire but the steaks feel so small since Dracula only has two assholes who can shit out monsters, so he never has more than the same dozen at most. Yet they keep reminding us Dracula is building an army when we barely see a squad most of the time. The largest amount we see is during the battle with Carilla's army, which pretty much gets wiped out on one bridge.
As much as I praise the dialogue and shit talking between characters, no one really has any development no one really has any bonds that grow. Those moments are entertaining, but they're fleeting.
We get elaboration of certain things, but no one moves onward from where they were before, no one betters themselves and overcomes a character flaw or weakness. Characters also sometimes explain their motivation in odd ways. Sometimes it can be lamenting to their selves alone where is sort of works but is still weird and other times it's far more awkward with characters asking or stating things unnecessarily. Dracula flat out asks Issac to recount their meeting because he wants to hear it.
Sypha states that Trevor has come so far from his past self- which is normally fine, it's okay for someone to make an observation about another character- but only when that's earned, only when it feels like that character has, in fact, had development. This instead feels like we have 8 episodes and can't have the proper amount of time and progress for the audience to also reach that same conclusion. It is so clumsy.
You can't have characters like Alucard and Trevor be in conflict and then not. Nor can you have Trevor and Sypha share one moment and pretend that's enough development for getting together by the end of this season. There was no turning point or a sensible change of heart presented. They have to go on a journey, learn shit, go through hardships and grow closer. etc. But that's kinda problematic when the main three characters don't go on a journey. Their entire travel consists of the Village, which was the starting point, a campsite, the Belmont estate ruins, and that's it. That's their grand journey. Going on a long trek to Castlevania and experiencing hardships? No. Just three places and then they bring the Castle to them.
As much as I did enjoy the fight scenes in episode 7 it once again feels very low key looking at it as a whole. It's a fucking amazingly animated fight, but how it's executed is wrong and it doesn't work as a finale. Dracula only fires one Dark Inferno, most of the fight is up to Alucard which makes a line spoken by him earlier in the same episode "I'm not alone this time." null.
Really the most help Trevor and Sypha did in the Dracula battle was help reflect the fire fuck ball. The rest was Dracula and Alucard fighting in mid-air until it came down to Dracula ending up in his son's room and having a PTSD breakdown, resulting in Alucard stabbing him with a bedpost.
That scene is so good in and of itself and quite heartwrenching, you have legitimate character stuff happening.
But at the end of the day, Alucard played the biggest part in his father's death. It's supposed to be very personal and it is, but it doesn't sit right with me that even after all that talk about finding something that can take him out, it's a goddamn bedpost that kills Dracula while Trevor did fuck all. No form change, no teleporting, Death doesn't show up. It's so lack luster for a climax and wrong to put so much focus on Alucard. This should have been Trevor's story, his rising up to the family name. Alucard should have emotional moments like the ones we got, sure, it's what's supposed to trigger his depression and his choice to slumber again. But Alucard's story is in Symphony of The Night, this should have been all about Trevor coming to accept his lineage, being at peace with his life, being the first Belmont to kill Dracula. You shouldn't give the story over to another character just because they're popular.
The Goddamn Castle doesn't even crumble, it just stays up, with Alucard, instead of going back to sleep until 1797- watching over it and the Belmont library.
I supposed there is a reason for why the castle doesn't crumble and that's because it's not connected to Dracula in any way, it's not a demonic entity but just a weird looking castle with fringe science/alchemy that makes it teleport.
Everything about this just feels so unnecessary.
*sigh*
I think part of the reason they did this is for more personal touching moments with Alucard, but there's no reason they couldn't do the same scene while having all that other stuff. Have Trevor do more, have Dracula revert back to a humanoid form and still do that touching scene with his son, have Alucard wander the castle and lament of memories there, but then also have the castle crumble sometime afterwards and Alucard taking a slumber because of his guilty conscious. Those sad parts need to have a point after all.
As for why the castle isn't connected to Dracula, I have no fucking clue. One guess is that it's meant to illustrate that Dracula technically isn't using magic but like a super ancient warp drive to sort of drive home a religion vs. science aspect that's present.
But this show is about mythical monsters so that doesn't make sense. My other guess and the far more sensible one is that they wanted a reason for Dracula to need forge masters. After all, the castle itself would be full of monsters and actively producing them otherwise. Although they could have also thrown in a line stating that Dracula had sealed them away when Lisa started to better him and that they're still dormant because it's been so long so that's why Hector and Issac are needed, so whatever.
All this to me harmed the show for me. Looking back, I can forgive the lack of significantly satisfying development for the main cast and even some of the other stuff with enemies and just oddities. I can be okay with almost this entire season consisting of people talking in a castle and people taking in a library. Because I was entertained with witty lines, I enjoy Godbrand and Carmilla, I enjoyed the changes and backstory for both Issac and Hector. But by summoning the Castle, by having Dracula fucking die in the most asinine way, the story of Castlevania 3 is over. This is it, this was what we got, there's no "Well maybe next season they'll venture forth and maybe some familiar faces will show up." the story is over and this is it. Anything afterwards is going to be a whole different tale.
Stuff like this really is the grand crux of Netflix's Castlevania. There are so many good aspects about it, great characterisation for those that had little in the games, funny as hell banter, Issac and Hector were legitimately interesting, little details like children vampire skulls in the Belmont collection were small yet fascinating concepts I never thought about.
But at the same time, there is a lot of questionable choices, changes and discrepancies that weren't needed, characters that do nothing. The show has great individual set pieces and moments but fails when it comes to the bigger picture.
While I do think it would be easy to put all the blame on budget and possibly Netflix rushing production, I think the possibly bigger problem is that they're likely still going off of the movie script. See, Warren Ellis wrote a script for an animated Castlevania movie about a decade ago that never came about and the script was later reworked to fit into a series format. With that in mind, it suddenly explains a lot of the issues and limitations. Because if the events that occur were supposed to in be within an 80-minute runtime, it makes sense that there is a lack of grandiose, that Grant and many monsters would be omitted, that they would have a scene of summoning the castle because you wouldn't have the time for a journey. A lot of these choices would make more sense in a one-off movie.
So what we're seeing is probably the film script stretched out really far with some additions that they were able to fit in and it does not work at all.
I did not want to come out of this review by dragging the show through the ground, I was having so much fun with the show initially. I only see the pulses of a great show, I see so much I enjoy. At the end of the day, this show came apart for me. Season 2 improved on some of the issues the first season had, yes, yet it also shot it's foot off in the process.
As for another season... I dunno. It doesn't look like it's going to be following Curse of Darkness' plot given the events we've seen here, which is fine enough, the plot of that game was very bare and generic. Basically, in that game, Hector was someone that worked for Dracula for some time, quit during the events of Dracula's Curse, Lost his powers, lived peacefully with his girlfriend until she was accused of being a witch and burned. Hector learns Issac was responsible for the mob and this leads to a course of revenge. Again, that would not work here and I'm fine with that being tossed out because quite frankly Curse of Darkness doesn't make a lot of sense in the first place and a change is justifiable.
However there isn't really getting past the fact that with next season there isn't going to be a Dracula and to be perfectly frank, the loose ends shown in the seemingly tacked eighth episode aren't really a hook for me. I don't care about Hector working for Carmilla, I don't care that Issac is raising his own army of monsters, I don't care what Alucard is doing or Trevor and Sypha possibly getting wrapped up in a battle between Carmilla and Issac. Besides, if Dracula can be killed with a bedpost, no one else is gonna be a threat. I'm indifferent to this show going forward. It's best advantage is possibly having a script with a series in mind from the get-go. I'll probably watch it, but if anything were to happen with the show, it is of no huge loss to me. This season chose to wrap up the story of Dracula's curse in the worst way possible and it will remain a massive stain.
You know, the castle in the games doesn't crumble when you fuck up and get the bad ending. Might explain a bit.
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