The animation has been the selling point of the first season with the narrative mostly there to provide a semblance of meaning to the imagery. The animation was vivid, fluid, and captures a sense of place while the narrative is a miss-mash of themes that Ellis thinks are adult and textbook trope writing that is typical of most comic book writers. The imagery still remains strong, but some of the dialogue is horribly stilted and the fight scenes with their emphasis on pointless animal brutality were grating.
FIRST THOUGHTS:
It has a bit of that juvenile, grim for the sake of being grim, bloody nonsense about it. It’s not bad, it just revels in how grotesque it can be at times. When it works, it’s a compelling story of grief and loss, of examining your own history and family legacy. But all too often it’s content to wallow in the blood and extremity for the sake of extremity.
The writing is a mixed bag. Dialogues are mostly made of dull expository monologues and tragically unfunny humor, while being constantly over the top and coming from really clichéd characters. But the lore is somewhat fascinating, keeping the climax for the penultimate episode is something I always like and I think that the overall structure, with the good guys doing nothing and the bad guys moving the plot, constitutes a nice choice. Plus, I like that it's moody, slow, never in a hurry to please with action. Visually, it's also a mixed bag: backgrounds are often beautiful, while the characters are atrocious and the action, when it kicks in, is quite good. Overall, it's an interesting adaptation and a decent animated show, with a nice crescendo, some very good moments and a good voice cast. It takes a couple of (quite boring) episodes to find its strides but then It's fine.
S3 will be eventful for sure!
Such a let down after Season 1 :-(
Such a let down after Season 1 :-(
Review by mystericrowBlockedParent2020-05-17T17:26:32Z
#Review
After the short but successful first season, Castlevania came back with a second season that exceeded all expectations with a thrilling, action-packed and emotional series filled to the brim with incredible characters and some seriously dark themes.
One thing I loved about this season was how much it focused on Dracula. Being the main villain of the series, his presence in the first season was oddly sparse, only featuring in the pilot episode. However, in this season Dracula is given as much, if not more, focus than our heroes. The writers develop into a villain who wants his revenge on humanity for the atrocities they've committed, but doesn't give a crap how. He's beaten down and depressed, yet still continues to be the most powerful man (well, Vampire) in any room. We also get a look at his War Council and more of an exploration of Vampire culture, something I found especially investing.
On the other side of the coin we have our main heroic trio of Trevor Belmont, Alucard and Sypha. These characters get some incredible development, with the writers providing long, thoughtful exchanges between the characters with some genuinely poignant moments. Trevor's backstory and family also get explored a lot more in this season, a plotline I found incredibly engaging. However, all of this development for our heroes comes at a cost, as their storyline isn't the strongest when it comes to the overall plot. These three characters spend almost the entirety of the season in one location and, while this allows for some very strong development, it's not a very engaging storyline and doesn't feel like it has the forward momentum that the rest of this season does.
The penultimate episode of this season is easily the best, bringing all the best things about this show into one explosive episode. This is a show featuring incredible action sequences, and this is easily the best of example of that so far. The different fighting styles of our main trio make for some very interesting combos and attacks, while the unique nature of their opponents makes for a fight fraught with tension. We also get to see Dracula at full power near the end of this season, as it is absolutely awesome.
The animation is much improved over the already stellar animation of the last season. It swaps out the radiant red hue of the previous season for a more cold, blue one. The action is a lot smoother, the character designs a lot more interesting and crisper, and the landscapes a lot more detailed.
Overall, Castlevania took everything great about the first season and multiplied it by ten to give us one of the most bad-ass and investing animations of the past few years. Very rarely does a show come along that successfully manages to balance thrilling action sequences with slow and deliberate character building, and the fact that this is a video game adaptation makes it all the more impressive.
Best Episode: For Love
Worst Episode: War Council
Overall Rating: 88%