Written by best-selling author and comic book legend Warren Ellis and inspired by the classic video game series from Japan’s Konami, Castlevania is a dark medieval fantasy that follows the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepes himself. The voice cast includes Graham McTavish (The Hobbit, Outlander, Preacher) as Dracula, Richard Armitage (The Hobbit trilogy) as Trevor Belmont, James Callis (Battlestar Galactica) as Alucard, Emily Swallow (Supernatural) as Lisa, Matt Frewer (Orphan Black) as The Bishop, Tony Amendola (Annabelle) as The Elder and Alejandra Reynoso (G.I. Joe: Renegades) as Sypha Belnades.
Warren Ellis, Kevin Kolde, Adi Shankar and Fred Seibert are executive producers. Production services are provided by Austin, Texas based Powerhouse Animation with Brad Graeber supervising producer, Jason Williams as producer, and Sam Deats as director.
The series, which is based on Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, only has four episodes, each spanning anywhere from 23 to 30 minutes in length. A second season has already been ordered. The series brings a mature and adult approach to storytelling and the faithfulness of the adaptation, which does not hold back on the level of violence. Season 1 hit netflix today.
Just finished the season. It's crazy good. Fluid animation. Reminds me of Reign: The Conqueror, which was a great series itself. You all will like this once you get around to watching it.
Finally got around to watching the first season now that the second one's coming out. I don't remember a lot of the Castlevania games, but man for fans of the series that must have been great. It took me a while, but + Show Spoiler +
Once the wizard came out, I was like "wait a second, I remember this! Holy shit, does that mean that Alucard is gonna come out? OH SHIT THE SLEEPING SOLDIER!
. Action was pretty good and I really like what they did with Trevor's character. Hopefully second season is just as good, especially around Halloween.
I am still kinda shocked this series is as good as it is. It should be trash that no one invested money or talent into. But somehow they MCUed Castlevania into the best and purest parts what makes it compelling. The characters are fun, with Trevor set to play the humor to Alucard's melodramatic straight man.
It understands vampires fiction has sexual, straight/gay overtones and uses that for pretty great visual humor(watch the last moment of the last fight of season one again). The writers take their time to make Dracula be sympathetic on some level, even if the end result is way over the top that only a man with a floating teleporting castle can really see as justified. A lesser series would have gotten right into the monster killing, but they spend a whole episode on him and his wife.
Netflix has some great Halloween offerings this year across the board.
A lot of people are bitching about it, but I really like the slow burn pacing of Season 2 so far. The extra attention to world and character building is a nice touch.
maybe i will need to rewatch but it was for sure something i was not expecting,specially dracula's plan and then what i considered to be the real end episode was so rushed for conclution.i loved season 1 and was hungry for me,this season i was more lile,oh ok so this the end,i read somewhere that a third season is confirmed lets hope they change the whole direction ..
Watched the whole season. Really enjoyed the pacing, the animation, dialogue, plot, everything. I'm looking forward to Camilla the Blood Queen, as she is being set up to be a major figure int he next season. The two human stooges left something to be desired, but Alucard, Trevor, and the Cipher (not sure on the spelling) carried the whole thing. Was really good.
I mostly enjoyed season 2, but I do agree about issues with the pacing slowing down a bit too much in the middle episodes. While the antagonist plotline meandered around with conspiracy, backstories, and motivations, I didn't like how the protagonist plotline mostly stalled in place alongside all that. Banter and character interactions did somewhat keep that plotline afloat, but it overall felt borderline filler during those episodes.
But when it all gets moving, the show gets back to being sublime. Episode 7 felt so incredibly cathartic with the fantastic music, action, and animation and definitely made the show worth it despite earlier pacing issues.
On October 31 2018 18:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Well Season 3 has been confirmed to be in the works. Also the people behind this are also working on a Zelda series as well.
The screentime and development for the side characters like may feel much better in the context of another season. I personally cared more about Trevor and crew's plotline, and they delivered when that story got moving again.
On October 31 2018 18:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Well Season 3 has been confirmed to be in the works. Also the people behind this are also working on a Zelda series as well.
The screentime and development for the side characters like may feel much better in the context of another season. I personally cared more about Trevor and crew's plotline, and they delivered when that story got moving again.
I have not finished it yet, but I really enjoyed that the creators were not afraid of the slow moment. Alucard's speech about the potential of his fathers to save humanity and his plan to blanket the world in endless night was something a lot of shows would run away from. Alucard is both in awe of his what his father could accomplish and completely convinced Dracula needs to die. It also doesn't hurt that the voice actor is excellent and ads a melodramatic flare to everything Alucard says.
On October 31 2018 18:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Well Season 3 has been confirmed to be in the works. Also the people behind this are also working on a Zelda series as well.
The screentime and development for the side characters like may feel much better in the context of another season. I personally cared more about Trevor and crew's plotline, and they delivered when that story got moving again.
I have not finished it yet, but I really enjoyed that the creators were not afraid of the slow moment. Alucard's speech about the potential of his fathers to save humanity and his plan to blanket the world in endless night was something a lot of shows would run away from. Alucard is both in awe of his what his father could accomplish and completely convinced Dracula needs to die. It also doesn't hurt that the voice actor is excellent and ads a melodramatic flare to everything Alucard says.
Alucard was great. I mostly took issue with the vampire court plotlines where some of the story beats felt kinda repetitive and with a lack of urgency. The backstories and character development for Isaac and Hector were good, but I wish they showed them being more involved in guiding the war effort rather than mostly meander around in place for a few episodes, especially after Dracula gave them a big intro as important generals in the first episode.
I was also excited. But then you watch it and you have to sit through cringe like "Imagine an empire ruled by four women! Vampires, sisters, we have a scheme!".
I was also excited. But then you watch it and you have to sit through cringe like "Imagine an empire ruled by four women! Vampires, sisters, we have a scheme!".
Pity.
Personal tastes differ I didn’t find it too offputtingly cringey, although wasn’t a huge fan either.
At least from what I’ve seen of this world Dracula wasn’t exactly bent on keeping the sisterhood down and it seems a very might is right domain in vampire land.
I was also excited. But then you watch it and you have to sit through cringe like "Imagine an empire ruled by four women! Vampires, sisters, we have a scheme!".
Pity.
Personal tastes differ I didn’t find it too offputtingly cringey, although wasn’t a huge fan either.
At least from what I’ve seen of this world Dracula wasn’t exactly bent on keeping the sisterhood down and it seems a very might is right domain in vampire land.
I just couldn't get over the fact that it was such a heavy-handed way of doing this... And the Martin Luther King reference didn't help it at all.
Overall the season was OK. Can't wait for the next one as this one was pretty much just a setup for things to come.
The biggest flaw of this season is really that none of the stories matter to one another at all (thematic resonance, sure, but that's it). That and the pacing is glacial (this could easily have been another 6 episode season or even 3 episodes of a 10 episode season 4), which kind of shocked me given how expensive animation is.
I can only assume they knew they had the fourth season ordered. Still definitely a worthy watch for the last two episodes.
I was also excited. But then you watch it and you have to sit through cringe like "Imagine an empire ruled by four women! Vampires, sisters, we have a scheme!".
Pity.
You could look past this if their story was at least compelling. IF. But what we got was some side story with uninteresting cliche characters that didn't drive the plot or character development. Throughout all of season 3 I couldn't figure out what was the point of the Styria scenes. + Show Spoiler +
beyond enslaving Hector. Which does not require an entire season.
Season 2 started to go off the rails, season 3 felt like watching the resulting train crash.
the betrayal of alucard made ZERO sense. i could see it coming and hoped i was wrong, but the motivation they gave made NO SENSE. the castle can't move. so the kids think he's lying and kill him? WTF????? i guess theyre trying to turn him into a villain in season 4
Just finished it. The only storyline that felt worth watching was Isaac's. I didn't -hate- Sypha / Trevor but certainly a lot more could be done with them as characters. Styria line was fairly clichee and boring, and the Alucard line was completely terrible. Like... his visitors have what could be an interesting backstory, but none of them have a believable motivation for anything that they do. I feel like I understand Alucard dramatically less than I did heading into the season, and not in a way that makes me want to understand his motivations more.
On March 12 2020 15:22 Fleetfeet wrote: Just finished it. The only storyline that felt worth watching was Isaac's. I didn't -hate- Sypha / Trevor but certainly a lot more could be done with them as characters. Styria line was fairly clichee and boring, and the Alucard line was completely terrible. Like... his visitors have what could be an interesting backstory, but none of them have a believable motivation for anything that they do. I feel like I understand Alucard dramatically less than I did heading into the season, and not in a way that makes me want to understand his motivations more.
Totally agree with all of this. The whole Alucard plotline felt really forced. I like him enough as a character where I'm still okay watching it play out, hopefully it will pay off in season 4
I like the Trevor and Sypha stuff, and I liked the thought of the Alucard stuff, though Im not sure if I think the reversal was done with enough build up given what actually happened.
The vampire sisters were a predictable and boring story line and I mostly dont care what they do so long as one of the aforementioned Trevor, Sypha, or Alucards make them go boom in a violently spectacular violent haze of blood.
Id be sort of okay with a season JUST being the Trevor and Sypha stuff, the end of their story was well placed in my opinion, the sort of thing I super didnt see coming and definitely "got me" insofar as that sort of thing can really get me.
Binged it all. A nice conclusion, and fairly good pacing throughout with the exception of one or two episodes. Overall, I'd say it's definitely better than Season 3, and probably better than Season 1. Not sure if it's better than Season 2, though. Had some weird technical problems (e.g. audio mixing, some bad VA recordings, some frame-y animation) that I'll chalk up to the pandemic, but nothing too bad. A few odd macro level script choices. Some spoiler thoughts below:
Everyone living happily ever after is a nice change of pace. And yes, Lenore dying is Hector's happily ever after, she's a monster and this season was too kind to her. Did I miss Isaac in that last ep or was he only mentioned by Hector? While I enjoyed the vampire sister storyline for giving Isaac a finale, it felt a bit too separated from the main trio's story for me. I guess Hector gave some runes to Germaine? Kind of baffled me the entire Saint Germaine bad reveal was IMMEDIATELY after he met Alucard. Can't help but think in another draft of the script the final bits were after they reached the castle. Worked alright, but still just a weird choice.
Very good final season to a very good show. Icing on the cake for me was when they mentioned stuff from Peter Watts' book Blindsight with some vampire scientific explanations.
EPT
