Castlevania

AdmiralMuffin said:
This looks...promising.

Which Castlevania game is this based on?
Click to expand...

Dracula's Curse. You can briefly see Sypha Belnades doing some ice magic and Grant Danasty brandishing his throwing knives. The dude in the fur coat looks more like (Castlevania Chronicles) Simon, but is supposed to be Trevor.
 
Huh, this looks interesting, I hope they don't butcher the franchise......more than it is...
 
The first four episodes of this series were released today, and I enjoyed it enough to bother making a thread.

I had pretty good expectations for this one going by the trailers, but to be honest I underestimated how good it'd be. I liked the degree of faithfulness to the original characters, such as Trevor, Sypha or Alucard - while at the same time making them more fun than they ever were. The dialogue was engaging and lively, and it kept me entertained throughout the more chatty parts. The atmosphere, I felt, captured the eeriness and menace of Castlevania perfectly well. And of course the big standout point was the animation, which surpassed my expectations with some fantastic fight choreography and inventiveness in the use of surroundings and weapons at hand. The Trevor vs Alucard fight was perhaps the highlight, but all of it was just a joy to watch, really.

I enjoyed the character of Trevor a lot. His jaded demeanor made sense for the heir of a house which sacrificed their lives to protect mankind for generations and got nothing but scorn and humiliation in return, which makes his turnaround after meeting the Speakers far more interesting than if he had been just this badass relentlessly fighting against evil from minute one.

Sypha was really enjoyable to me, as well. In the fight against Dracula's monsters and also while they were falling through the catacombs, there was this really cool sense of sync and unity between Trevor and her, and she didn't feel overshadowed by Trevor at any point in those scenes. Finally shipping these two seems to make sense, as they both are cool as fuck and have actual personalities now (*wink wink* Castlevania III *nudge nudge*).

The first episode focused around Dracula was also a really good one, featuring both his more humane side and the weight of his wrath against humanity for in their ignorance taking away his one true love. It gives the main villain of this story a very welcome layer and motivation to do what he does, rather than just out of pure malice or arrogance as a superior being.


To sum up, this is an example of a videogame adaptation done right. By taking the key elements that make Castlevania be Castlevania, distilling them into something more polished without alienating the fanbase and adding their own spin to the narrative in a well-executed manner, they've pulled off something that feels familiar and yet fresh, which makes it an entertaining watch for sure. Although in perspective this is merely the opening act for a bigger storyline, it was a damn strong opening act.
 
Oops, my bad. I didn't notice the other thread.

Something I forgot to mention - I watched this with the Japanese dub. Really solid job in that regard.
 
they were cruel to torture us with only 4 episodes, seriously, just like American/Canada steal an art style and forget to steal the idea with episode numbers as well. I was quite impressed with it and can't wait for them to release another season, I just hope they remember to add more than four episodes.

heck they captured not just the gore and violence but also the bishie! now, that it's stated it's liked, please give us more, surely it can't be that complicated to make more than four, Japanese been doing it for decades now...
 
I was disappointed with this. The first episode was great, but then it was downhill from there with episodes 2 and 3 being dull slogs to get through. Episode 4 recovered a bit with some fun action, but by then I was too bored and disengaged to really care.

The first episode starts out fun with Dracula's awkward meet cute with Lisa. I bought that he'd be drawn in by her and there was some wit and humor to their dialogue. Dracula promising to bring the ruckus in a years time was appropriately stylish and intimidating. The initial attack was fairly underwhelming, but the goat fucking conversation was hilarious.

However, from there it lost me with two episodes that leaned too hard on the over the top religious persecution angle and the idea that peasants are stupid and easily lead. It didn't bring anything new to to the table and I didn't find any of the characters to be interesting enough to care about. For as much time as was spent on talking through the different sides, I didn't feel like the Speakers came out particularly well developed and on the Church side everyone was just plain crazy. It's heavily unbalances. Yes, religion can be used to manipulate and for some very vicious ends, but usually the people doing the manipulating have a bit of savvy and aren't just plain cocopuffs. The bishop or whatever just getting eaten was hilarious. Trevor in particular just comes off as an asshole most of the time. We're supposed to be watching him find the will to be a hero and live up to his legacy, but it was a boring paint by numbers arc.

Another thing is while the animation and action are well done, it was strangely bloodless. Like there are plenty of guts and viscera, but it just looks wrong when the guts come up clean and pink with almost no blood or a finger gets cut off and there's no blood at all.

The fight with Alucard at the end was legit though. Great animation and some really cool fighting. Shame it was such a rough road getting there. The main character literally had to crash through the floor several times to get there before the end.
 
1

It was a great start really. Anime usually judges this kind of backstory not worthy of screen time and would probably just compress it into one minute narration over some stills, then immediately switch to Trevor drinking and running into whatever episode two brings. I really liked this approach, because it really set down the fundamentals of the world without any needless dialogue; it was peak performance world-building and exposition. You don't actually need to have MC on the screen to forward the plot and the world in a meaningful way - so much show nowadays forget that the world doesn't have to revolve around MC 100% of the time.

Each scene felt purposeful and it all contributed really well to romantic, dark steam-punk atmosphere. And it feels really nice knowing from the start what the baddie is all about and what caused his situation. It's definitely better than: *record scratch* Trevor: "I'm sure you're wondering how I found myself in the midst of this demon invasion*

Aside from being a proper introductory episode, I really liked the atmosphere, design, animation, colors... if it really starts sucking next episode I'll be really disappointed because this is the most promising start of this anime watching season.
 
2

Despite this being significantly weaker episode I'm still having fun. I'm very sad they decided to do exposition through dialogue of debatable quality, but there's at least effort to make it seem like it's about people talking to each other. That said, I don't mean constant cursing... which I found somewhat unfitting and I feel it takes away from the atmosphere. While watching first episode I felt like there was a romantic component to it, but I'm not feeling it here at all. For it to work they'd have to have a rose-like language, or at least something on par with Dracula's demeanor, and that's something where Trevor doesn't really contribute. He is an interesting character in his own right, definitely entertaining, but leaves a lot to be desired. I still can't say if he fits in the show or not, but he definitely doesn't fit my image of a noble stripped of his position. I kinda feel like the first episode set a tone which second episode missed completely. Now, instead of poetic with a dark twist to it, it kinda feels just grimdark-ish.

Even though I did not like the way things were conveyed to me, I did like what I got. It was a predictable, although very entertaining development. I liked Speakers, seeing the immediate consequence of episode one, and I started noticing how music is pretty good as well. At this point it's a played out cliche to make Church into root of all evil, but since it's basically a representation of man's "fear of the dark", as Seeker put it, I guess I'm not really bothered by it. It fits the narrative.

Overall, not a bad episode. I still like the series, but some faults became a lot more apparent.
 
A minute into episode three and Trevor falls from the stairs.

It was the most Castlevania-like thing thus far.

Also,
trinket cheesed the boss. For shame!
 
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