Review of Castlevania

Note: This will cover the whole series

Now that I got my warmup with Arcane out of the way, it’s time for a review about another videogame adaptation I actually wanted to write, the Castlevania series based on Castlevania III, bits from Symphony of the Night, characters from Curse of Darkness, Simon’s Quest and Rondo of Blood, and elements from Lord of Shadows, but not really adapting any of those titles.

I find it important to clarify that, as many fans of the franchise didn’t like the cartoon because of its many differences with the videogames. Again, the show is based on the IP, not an adaptation of it.

The second thing to clarify is that the series is not anime, or at least not in a traditional sense in the West. It’s based on a Japanese IP, and has a Japanese dub, but was mainly produced in the US, by American studios, and its original version is in English. Part of the staff that animated it did work on anime though, so that’s why it is included on some anime databases, but technically speaking that would make it an anime-inspired cartoon at most, despite the label Netflix uses to classify this show with.

Even though I said that, the series can be compared with the likes of Hellsing for its vampire hunting and religious elements, or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for similar reasons, plus a similar narrative of a family fighting off vampires or people influenced by them for generations.

The series takes place in 15th century Romania and follows Trevor, a reluctant hero belonging in the long line of the Belmont family of vampire hunters, doing what he was trained to do more because of things happening around him than he willingly jumping into the action. That is my way of saying that he kinda bumps into the plot than moving it on his own.

The other main characters, the elemental mage Sypha Belnades, out for protecting her close ones and as payment for being rescued by Belmont, and Alucard, son of Dracula and thus the one character with emotional stake in the series, are thus more interesting than him.

As for the antagonist himself, we see him being feared yet wanting to live his life on his own, slowly falling in love with a human woman and thus becoming more accepting of them, before turning against them after being accused of being a demon and his wife of being a witch, and getting attacked.

The production is very good. The artwork is constantly solid with no quality drops, the character designs were fairly updated from the videogames but more or less kept the essence from the originals, the style is both anime inspired but also fairly grounded. The backgrounds are also done well but kinda limited on this first season, and the special effects are overall good but the weakest part throughout the whole series. The motions are good but the show did not get to show off much on this first season.

I can’t say much about the audio department, it wasn’t particularly remarkable. Good sound effects and typical epic, fitting soundtrack I guess, the opening was very short, simple and boring though. I struggled with the voice acting not because it was bad but because of the accents which made it very hard for me to listen to the original version, so I switched to either Japanese or Latin American Spanish, both of which were good, and had some differences in script from the original.

The first season was very short, clearly just to see how well it would be received and to form the main team and present the series, but it is overall fine for what it is, I rate it with a 6/10.

The second season has some silly comical bits here and there to show the dynamics between the two male leads but it is mostly more serious, and starts to develop the main romance of the series, while also and more importantly advancing the plot. The pacing is not the most engaging, as it takes several episodes of planning and magical stuff for the heroes to find and attack the villains, but having the villains’ castle being hard to approach makes it more believable in my opinion.

Obviously you can’t have an entire season with just that, so this one focuses a lot on the side of the bad guys, introducing characters and elements from Curse of Darkness and showing differences amongst them in personalities, loyalty, bloodlust, ways of fighting and hunting, and a betrayal taking place underneath. We also see the main villain remembering times of peace and what his loved one would have wanted, as well as having a sort of emotional reencounter with his son, mellowing down basically, and thus partly responsible for the internal conflicts between his followers.

The action was incredible this season, with the differences amongst the fighting styles of the main trio against Dracula’s army, with Belmont and his whipping, Alucard combining super strength and flying swordsmanship, and Sypha and her mixed elemental magic. The problem is probably the pacing, as the built up fight happens in a very fast manner, the battle choreography and animation were great, it just happens very quickly.

The final showdown is more drama oriented than action oriented, and although that might have disappointed some viewers, I appreciated this approach and its build up throughout the whole season, which even has a sense of closure and catharsis at its end, despite the story remaining incomplete.

The production went up a notch on this entry, with the improved motions and special effects for all of its action. The characters introduced in this season, such as Carmilla and Isaac, were redesigned from the videogames, and honestly for the better, even with the raceswap that was done to the latter. Hector looks almost the same as he does in Curse of Darkness, but he was tremendously changed as a character. I wish he was more like his original self, but even as he is, he is fine, and the others were done far better than in the videogames.

I think there were some short musical references to the soundtracks of the videogames, but I otherwise didn’t notice many differences in the audio department.

As a whole, this season was a bit faster, had more of a plot, looked into the characters more, and had very good action and production. It's a notable improvement over the first, and the best season overall, so I give it something between a 6.5 and a 7/10.

The third season was a step back in quality all around. More static and with a bit more questionable CGI, thus worse special effects, plus the newly introduced characters don’t have very interesting designs, thus the visuals are worse as a whole. As usual, the audio department didn’t feature many major changes, though at least half the season is quieter and more monotone, thus it is the worst in here as well.

The story takes an actually interesting approach, as it bothers to tap into the aftermath of the ending of the second season and what the “new” antagonists plan to do, as well as their backdrop stories. Unfortunately the actual plot is very talky, very slow, does not progress much, focuses a lot on secondary characters and places that won’t matter much in the next season, making it feel like it’s on sidequest mode for most if not all of its duration.

It also falls for the usual with Western adult oriented cartoons, there’s need for sex to be on screen to show that the series is indeed adult, while the scenes provide nothing to the plot. To its credit, one sex scene was about a character manipulating another and turning him into her slave, even if somehow the audience has seen it as romantic, and another one was just an excuse for some people to try and kill a major character. But nonetheless, none of them felt justified to be there.

A weird thing about this third season was its theme exploration, as themes of feminism and patriarchy are introduced through the backdrop story of the main villain, and although explaining a character does not equal to justify them, in this case it felt like this particular character was being victimized, while otherwise being horrible and a big threat to humanity as a whole. Dracula was decently and shortly explored, this new villain, not really.

As a whole the third season was by far the worst one in every way, worse visuals, the most boring audio, little and very slow plot, and the writing and theme exploration weren’t really there, so I can’t rate this one higher than a 5/10. Meaning, it is still not really a bad season.

As the fourth season starts, you notice the necessity of the stuff shown in the third season. Although there are some inferior, boring, slow and mostly uneventful episodes, for most of its duration, it’s dedicated to the action, showdowns and epilogue of the story. Slaves turn against masters, villains are overpowered in epic fights, Alucard completes his character arc and unites people for safety and eventually even battle, and even a secondary character from the third season sort of develops and gets a catharsis. Also the last episodes are almost fully dedicated to a big battle against many demonic creatures, and even death itself.

It would be the best season if not for the actual ending, filled with a short and a bit disappointing final battle, plot armor to save a main character from a certain death, and even some previously dead characters being revived out of nowhere for a forced happy ending and even going against the whole point of the series in a way if you ask me. So yeah the actual finale was pretty bad.

Which is a shame because it was otherwise doing fairly well and even the production went back to being slightly better than the one from the previous season, minus some weak special effects here and there.

As a whole, this season could have been the best one if not for the actual finale of the season and the whole series, but it is still worth the watch and better than the previous entry, so I give it a score of 6/10.

As a whole, the Castlevania series may not be as well put together and exciting as the rule of cool anime I compared it with due to pacing and ending issues, but otherwise connects its themes with straightforward action fairly well, maybe aside from the third season, so I think it’s worth at least a one time watch, as long as you don’t expect it to be a direct adaptation of the games.

6/10