[TV] Castlevania

[Jtbrig7390]

IMO it was soooo fucken good, really annoyed me it was only 4 episodes long.

[Gully Man]

Just watched this and thought it was great. I loved Trevor's dry sense of humour. The only bad thing was it wasn't long enough.

[Collegeguy]

I can't stand anime at all.

I generally hate anime as well as some might claim.

To me, most of what I could explain to hating anime is the story writing and script.

Later on, I think I found the reason for my hate is westernization of anime and the dubbing. I found the people that whined about this as annoying weaboos when I was younger, but as an adult, I see the problem.

I saw the anime Claymore on netflix, and it had everything that most animes don't. It's clearly ONLY meant for adults. Very dark and game of thrones type drama.

My guess is much of them get turned into child cartoons for teens, and I don't care for cartoons. Same with Cowboy Bebop, probably something I would have liked as a kid, but I couldn't make it past the 4th episode as an adult.

[Gatsbybutters]

I do not like Anime and was expecting Dracula to be shiny and have various Anime characteristics like pink hair or who knows what. But loving Castlevania, I forced myself to watch it.

I was happy until the last episode. Then it seemed like the anime stereotypes caught up. Shirtless, muscles, long hair, vampire. All that was missing was the pink hair and some kind of animal sidekick making remarks.

To few episodes. other then that I liked it.



I tought the same thing.

Someone really needs to play symphony of the night.

[mvaliz]

Someone really needs to play symphony of the night.

When was Alucard "shirtless and muscles" in Symphony of the night? o_O

I saw that and said to myself "Since when did Alucard become a fan of Sephiroth's fashion sense?" :P

[GennGreymane]

The biggest issue with Anime is the dubbing. Some are good (DBZ has good dubbing now a days) some are bad (most), some are okay (Jojo's) but dubbing is a problem/ The scenes are made for japanese, so to convey the same words, japanese may end up being faster, meaning the scene may be faster, and thus the English translated dub speaks super fast without punctuation.

Also Dubbing sometimes just ruins the basis behind characters. Jojo's is an example of this. They try way to hard to make everyone sound super cool, when in Japanese, most of the characters act and sound like wacky comedic people. So a scene that is comical and over the top in Japanese will now be "try hard" cool sounding in English.

[Gatsbybutters]

When was Alucard "shirtless and muscles" in Symphony of the night? o_O

I saw that and said to myself "Since when did Alucard become a fan of Sephiroth's fashion sense?" :P

I thought SoT dropped before FF7. I always thought sephi was the copy cat. They always had a similar look. He just woke up anyway, let the the guy get dressed.

[icausewipes]

I enjoyed the 4 eps and hope for more.

[MrPaladinGuy]

The anime actually started my interest in the Castlevania lore... as to whether or not there's more to it.. I have no idea.

I also recognized some references from many other things too, I enjoyed it.

[Endus]

Since I never played the games, I can't speak for it, but the whole premise of the catholic church being anti-science hurr-durr seemed to be rather weak and just put there to establish the "real" antagonist. So, more of postmodernist bullshit where Drakula can't be villainous for no reason beyond being evil, now he must be wronged in some way ...

Did you WATCH the show? Because they're pretty clear in the opening that Dracula is perfectly willing to stick people on stakes and drink their blood, he's just bored with it, so hasn't bothered in a while. He isn't "not villainous". He's an immortal who's bored and disaffected with people and wants to be left alone, but is perfectly willing and able to slaughter people if he's pushed. And then they kill his wife, which is a big "push", so he returns to "tear every living thing to pieces and feast on their souls" villainy, out of vengeance. Because he never really changed.

It's not "postmodernist". It's just a recognition that even bad people have motivations. Hitler loved his wife and liked dogs. It didn't make him not a monster.

[Dasffion]

Ok, so I watched all of these last night, and all I can say is...
started off cool, and then turned into pretty just looked and felt like an episode from Gargoyles... but with more blood

You say that like it's a bad thing. Gargoyles was awesome.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've never played Castlevania before, but I am aware of the general plot.

The animation itself was hit or miss: the opening and Dracula's fire in the first episode was great, and Trevor's fights in the second episode was good, but everything else was rather stiff and sometimes disjointed. The facial animations are quite bland as well, and some frames were rather undetailed (notice Dracula's face in the first couple minutes). The compositing was hit or miss as well, with early scenes like the burning scene and Dracula's initial attack being seamlessly, but I definitely remember the scene with the 3D CGI gears not being so composited well. I am NOT A HATER of 3D CGI; I love 3D CGI... when it's used well. Ufotable, Kyoani, Polygon Pictures, and Bones are excellent users of 3D CGI. Perhaps season 2 will have a budget increase? Ofcourse it will; it's going to have double the episodes that's going to be double the budget, but I meant the budget for each episode would be increased proportionally so we could possibly get more fluid animation that's consistently on model, and perhaps more investment in the photography department (which handles compositing).

Looking on Wikipedia, I see five studios listed, making it rather difficult to ascertain who is primarily responsible for the animation itself. Perhaps blog.sakugabooru will enlighten us?

When it came to the voice work, Richard Armitage's nonchalance, James Callis's calm demeanor and sarcasm, and Graham McTavish's fury were the standouts for me. I particularly liked Trevor's line about people's ignorance allowing tyranny to thrive, and Alucard's joke about Trevor's "tactics" during their confrontation.

The opening music is nice, but the rest of the series' soundtrack was bland and unmemorable, as is typical of western soundtracks. I could not pick out any leitmotifs nor interesting melodies in any of the tracks, and none of the climatic moments had (from what I could remember) accentuating music. Outside of the OP, there was nothing worth opening up Youtube to listen to. I don't know if this is typical of Trevor Morris' work, but it disappointing. In this case, it seems that having access to music from the games would have definitely been preferable, even if they were instrumental/orchestral versions, but there may have been licensing issues.

As for the series itself, it was clearly meant to test the waters: there's no "adult" animation of this type (as in, NOT comedy ala Simpsons/American Dad/South Park) in the west, so Netflix was trying to figure out whether or not there was demand for something like this (which is yes ofcourse, because otherwise R-rated anime like Fate, Attack on Titan, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, FMA:B, Hellsing and so forth be so incredibly popular over here).

Plot wise, the first episode was an enthralling start, then the pacing slowed somewhat when the focus was placed on Trevor in the bar. I felt it would have been more impactful if the staff had gone the Berserk (1997 version ofcourse) route of introducing the audience to the protagonist by showing him hunting down demons and being badass (ie, being an active protagonist introduction) as opposed to starting with him waiting for something to happen to him (passive protagonist introduction). That said, showing Trevor as a nonchalant drunk was pretty interesting. The pacing slows down to a bog when it's just a bunch of exposition with the Speakers; at least Ufotable made their obligatory exposition entertaining or VERY interesting. Overall, the four episodes played out like the standard adventure-anime opening arc. Mixed feelings, but a definite thumbs up, and I'd absolutely watch more. Hopefully this encourages Netflix to port more anime over (AND ACTUALLY SIMULCAST IT!) and fund more western animation in this vein.

[RobertoCarlos]

Well that was a treat. Look forward to the next 8 episodes. It felt like vampire hunter d and ninja scroll were huge influences which is cool. Hope this show does well

[Jotaux]

New season was released today!

- - - Updated - - -

Since I never played the games, I can't speak for it, but the whole premise of the catholic church being anti-science hurr-durr seemed to be rather weak and just put there to establish the "real" antagonist. So, more of postmodernist bullshit where Drakula can't be villainous for no reason beyond being evil, now he must be wronged in some way ...

I mean do you deny that the catholic church was anti-science? Dracula's wife was just lucky she didn't say the earth revolved around the sun.

[slime]

Man these were such good 8-16 bit games. so good. wtf happened to video games.

[RobertoCarlos]

oh snap forgot this was coming out same time as red dead.

Woot, epic first season.

[Graeham]

I enjoyed the first season. I've watched the first three episodes of the second season and it seems pretty solid so far. I can't watch the other five episodes until Monday since I'm going on a trip today...

[Astalnar]

I mean do you deny that the catholic church was anti-science? Dracula's wife was just lucky she didn't say the earth revolved around the sun.

The levels of ignorance... How about you actually read a book before you decide to spout some more nonsense?

[Jotaux]

The levels of ignorance... How about you actually read a book before you decide to spout some more nonsense?

Well you seem pretty ignorant of history.

[Fahrenheit]

Season 2 was pretty good. Binged the whole thing the other day. They set it up for a season 3. Surprised Grant didn’t show up at some point. They had he rest of the Castlevania 3 crew there.