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spell406 · 5 years

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So, a friend of mine basically forced me to watch at least one episode of Netflix Castlevania.

(Disc - I am new to tumblr and had a little problems with posting this thing correctly. Sorry for spam)

So I watched one. And then another. And another… When I finished it was 3 a.m., my eyes were burned out, my brain fried, and my soul forever forfeited, but whatever, who need it anyway.

I am new to the universe, and I know that I am something like 10 months late to the review party, so instead I decided to just share a bunch of thoughts of mine. [UPDATE – Because I am extremely heavy procrastinator and it took me almost two weeks to write this thing I am already at 50% of SoTN right now I’ve finished SoTN by now]

First of all – Castlevania looks like anime, but shares almost nothing common with it. It was a relief, to be honest, as I was a little afraid of show being just another shounen with specific set of clichés and similarities that might quite not bad (or even enjoyable), but I’ve seen them too many times before – better or worse executed – to watch without a mild nausea another Bleach/Naruto in a darker scenario.

I would never demand a fantasy world to be realistic. Like, who would do, fantasy world is supposed to be… fantasy, right? I am fine with lack of realism but I can’t say the same about lack of common sense, and there is a matter of logic that I personally find quite funny. When you are about to fight in close quarters with someone, with both of you lives on stake you’ll want to use every possible advantage. In general there are two kinds of battle armors – first one is focused on providing maximum protection (like typical medieval plate armor) and second one designed to grant freedom of movement especially critical in usually legwork-heavy duels. And here are our “battle” priests in gowns. Gowns, that manage to provide neither aforementioned advantage and downsides of both. Heh. It just bothers me too much, honestly.

I really love the flow of narration; the way that every character including antagonists has its own set of motives and reasons, even Carmilla has her own background that is convicting to justify her bitchery (Well, she has seen it before, right? And Dracula wasn’t even trying to hide his apathy, so why would she like to watch as dead man wages his hollow war)(Is it only me or Dracula shows typical signs of severe depression? Apathy, lack of strength to take any decision, not taking care of himself, loss of interest – even in his own war – well, to be honest he has a good reason to do so).

Animations. Ah, that one is unquestionably excellent, although you Powerhouse Animation guys could have make use of an additional 4-5 fps – from time to time I had a feeling that there is a cat sitting on my keyboard’s space bar, pausing and starting show over and over - it happened something like two or three times. If it comes to favorite scenes – for me, it would be first meeting and fight between Trevor and Alucard. The dialogue and music is so good at reflecting rising pressure and tension between those two – let put oneself in Trevor’s boots – just day before he was rather concerned about getting some food/drink and move on and now he is standing against something that he now considers to be last boss of his life, or perhaps not, he doesn’t even know how does Dracula looks like and he doesn’t seem to be openly aggressive, or perhaps yes, he is obviously vampire and he seems to doesn’t like Belmont name, on the other hand even lesser vampire might be not so easy foe and he is kinda out of practice, and Sypha doesn’t feel like helping out, at least for now… It is all just perfect, and the sound track alone is stuff of legends. (Season 2 OST on Spotify WHEN??”)

Second best would be first phase of Dracula fight – the way which they are team working fluently to not let eachother get killed pleases my inner maniac in best possible way, although the 1 vs 1 part is kinda downgrade - but still ok.

But there is one thing that really stands out in best possible way from things I’ve seen before and that’s utilization of facial expression and body language. Like seriously, this combined with really outstanding voice acting bring interactions between characters to another damned level. (Unfortunately, national translation and voice acting is so awful that I couldn’t bear myself to finish even first season). There are few thing I consider more important in creating credible character than combining overall expressiveness and voice acting, the ability to tell words without actually using any (Finding Ciri cinematic in Witcher 3 is perhaps best known to me example) - and Castlevania does it just soooo good.

Dracula generals. When they were shown for the first time I was like “oh boy he has summoned generals, (Generals! Master tactician, the artists of war!) the oldest, most cunning and powerful beasts from entire world, now things are going to get rough.” And how did it turned out? I can understand that Dracula tasked his forge masters with overseeing the war (Although his reasoning was kind of ok, good job Dracula for nominating for executives two people, that knew least about proceeding war) Did they were incompetent so much? Then how did they managed to get their titles, if they were just a bunch of endlessly whining mischief-makers? They were supposed to know how war looks like, and how to do one, but instead they did literally nothing for war effort! If you ask me, that is at least one risen eyebrow. Excluding Godbrand, the only member of council that did anything more than grate his teeth in silent anger, killed some civilians and got taken care of quite effortlessly. Also, Godbrand wasn’t made to be the sharpest knife in a closet, but he still was bright enough to ask himself “What will we do when we’ll win a war?” Also, he managed to notice that there were no real plan to follow... That is +1 to you Godbrand, I’ll miss you my vikingy boi. In the end, if they were meant to be just a background, they did get a little too much of screen time, and if they were not, they got faaaaaar from enough of it.

By the way – not sure if it’s only me but I personally think that Trevor might be keenest (or – at least – not dumbest) of protagonist trio. He might lack classic education, but he is careful watcher (he noticed fresh oil in torch and overall state of Alucard’s hideout), he correctly chosen and quite successfully executed strategy at Gresit square (isolate, divide and destroy) and quite steadfastly shrugged off Alucard bickering (well, most of times). Also, his plan for battle with vampire generals was quite logical – avoid close quarter cause humans are in general more fragile than vampires, and Alucard as frontline. My inner maniac was most pleased.

As I said before, I really enjoy Castlevania’s overall character design but with an exception of bishop of Gresit. There is no reason for his work, I know that he is insane and reasoning usually does not apply to those like him but I feel like there is no reason in villainy (this entire talking about making a God’s own country – well, I don’t buy it), aside of being genuinely baaaaad, which kinda stands out in negative way in comparison to the rest of characters.

To highlight the issue, lets do some roleplaying here:

The night creatures are ravaging the land that you had sworn to protect in unholy war against humanity, killing women, men even your subordinates alike. The citizens are growing restless, and demand taking an action. How do you proceed?

a) Find the last descendant of family known for their prowess in fighting those beasts; but be wary – he doesn’t seem to like you very much after you branded him as heretic, exterminated his entire family and burned down his home (probably with some of aforementioned family still inside it). However, if you nicely ask for help, reverse the curse, apology for making mistake and return the estate it actually might work. (to be honest that could be quite interesting moral choice for Trevor, to help people of Wallachia and let bishop take all glory or decline the bishop proposition and screw people over in the process)

b) You can fight them, you are the Holy Church after all. You have access to unlimited supply of holy water, relics, you have enough money and authority to arm and train people’s militia properly. Your knowledge of those beasts might be as wide as Belmont family, but at least should be sufficient to minimalize the damage. Killing the Dracula, however, might be impossible for you.

c) You spent most of your time on biting, trashing, or looking for anyone to cast entire blame upon; it doesn’t matter who is that poor bastard as long as it is not you. In addition, you…

AAAAARGH I CAN’T CONTAIN MYSELF ANY LONGER! BROTHER, I DON’T FEEL LIKE I AM WICKED ENOUGH! I REQUIRE TO SEE SOME SUFFERING OF INNOCENT TO FEAST UPON! WHAT DO YOU SAY, BROTHER? I CANT HEAR YOU OVER RAGE BOILING IN MY VEINS! WHAT, SPEAKERS? OF COURSE THEY WILL DO RAAAAAARRGARGAJGIOGJIHKBYIUOL

Oh well.

Well, looks like I am done here. By the way, sorry for my English, I am not a native speaker (If I’ve commited any spectacular crime against vocabulary/grammar let me know on priv).

Now I’m going back to rewatching show and torturing SoTN

No TL:DR, just read it if you want, it is not an entire book, you know.

#castlevania #trevor belmont #sypha belnades #alucard

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