Creator & Writer: Warren Ellis
Directors: Sam Deats, Spencer Wan, Adam Deats, Amanda Sitareh Bautista
Studio: Mua Film, Tiger Animation
Finished first watch: 14/11/2024
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Castlevania
Ratings:
Easily one of the weakest series I have ever watched. I hate to say that about something so many artists worked on over several years but it's honestly inescapable how poor this series is in almost every department. I'm genuinely confused how it got 4 seasons, especially considering how boring that 3rd season was.
I'll start with the one shining positive from the series, which is its artwork. Every drawing, painting, background and setting in this series is really beautiful. It has a clearly anime-influenced style that looks great and they use it to great effect. I'd say it has a strong visual identity. It even has a clear direction in terms of colour, with everything obviously being shifted towards dark and broody. The designs are also brilliant. Trevor, Alucard, Dracula, the forgemasters, the vampire sisters, all legitly fantastic and appealing designs. Big big shout out to Striga's day armour as well, fucking sick design. Someone clearly loved Berserk on that team. And of course, the castles, laboratories and libraries all felt very grand and wondrous. They did a good job of creating an aesthetic and a feeling of the series's world and it all fit together with the overall dark and sinister subject matter.
That leads onto the most disappointing aspect of the series, which is its animation. It's so upsetting to see such beautiful drawings move so lifelessly, if they move at all. The vast majority of screentime is taken up by super limited animation; maybe just a chin moving up and down as a character speaks, or drawings literally just being slid across the screen. I get that studios and producers want to save costs as much as they can but it made the show feel completely lifeless most of the time. And how much they did it was absolutley eggregious. There was an episode where Isaac talked to a night creature for about 10 minutes straight, with almost no animation to it. And the conversation they had was not relevant in any way to the story (which I'll come back to). So it didn't come across as being savvy and saving costs for the bigger moments; it honestly felt like they were trying to pull whole episodes out of their arses with as little substance as they could get away with. Another thing that I personally dislike and that makes the character acting/posing feel super uncanny is characters' heads being completely side on. Just makes for really flat animation and breaks any sense of immersion.
There were, of course, scenes with significantly better animation quality. But they didn't do anywhere near enough - in my opinion - to make up for the low effort marathons across the rest of the show. That's partly because they were really few and far between but also because they weren't actually that good in themselves. All of the fights generally have lots of quick cuts, rarely show multiple characters on screen at the same time and never show complete, fluid action - it's always the wind up from one angle, then a flip to show the outcome from another. So so so much implied action as well. They had lots of detailed guts and gore (again, great drawings) but it would always be shown after something had already dropped dead. You'd never see the actual slashing and the gore as a clear single shot - and any slashing you did get was very Fist of the North Star. It's really disappointing to watch, because the fights were actually really well choreographed. The characters had cool and unique fighting styles and would usually pull off impressive and unorthodox manoeuvres; it was just a shame that we only got to see it in bits and pieces. Also in the later seasons, you could sadly see the quality of the drawings drop off noticeably in quite a few of these action sequences, which honestly felt like an insult being added to an already pretty bad injury. The later seasons are in fact a consistent disappointment across the board too.
Just watch this clip and look at how stiff and robotic all the animation is. If it's animated at all. This is very standard for the show and what the vast majority of screentime looks like. Watching it without sound really helps illustrate how lifeless it is. Listening with sound on highlights how mismatched the voice acting and character acting are.
Although you can still see how nice the character designs and drawings are - look at Saint Germain's jewellery, for example!
This clip, I think, gives a very fair representation of what the approach to fight scenes is like throughout. It's very cool, dnyamic, stylised and well choreographed. It might be entertaining to a lot of people. But there are so few drawings over such a long clip. And the two characters never really interact. Everything is implicit, which is made to look good but to me, just glosses over a lack of substance. Draw the fight!
Moving onto the plot: there basically isn't one. The first two seasons at least have an overarching story of Dracula wanting to kill all the humans and Trevor, Sypha and Alucard (TSA?) trying to stop him. That was incredibly loose, because there was a whole heap of inconsequential nothing that happened in between this. Dracula's war council being summoned and then having in-fighting all had close to no impact on the story at all. Even Carmilla's successful betrayal is kinda just... nothing. Like okay, she becomes the queen or whatever and usurps Dracula but that all just has so little significance. We don't care about Dracula very much (as we've had very little insight into who he is outside of the backstory given in episode 1) and Carmilla is a genuine side character, even after this whole thing. Then you have whatever TSA was up to; finding the library, getting into random night creature fights etc. All very cool and flashy but did very little for the plot. You could remove most of it and still have the same storyline play out unimpeded. Then the last two seasons were just totally unnecesary. The main reason for these characters to exist (in fact literally the only reason Alucard exists) was gone. They then set up these random, regional conflicts that meant absolutely nothing to anyone. Definitely dragged the show out for 2 Seasons 2 Long and in my opinion, ruined any chance Castlevania had at being remembered as decent.
Supposedly significant scenes having very little impact was basically the theme for entire 4-season run, to be honest. For example:
•The final fight vs. Dracula at the end of season 2. Firstly, it comes after basically a full season of people just talking and posturing for a war that might happen; there's no real fuel given to the fight. Add to that the fact that we also never ever saw Dracula engage in combat (other than a flashback in which he kills a bunch of villagers), so we had no sense of how powerful he actually was or what sort of abilities he had. Defeating him didn't feel significant in any way or like any kind of challenge.•You can add to that the fact that Alucard has zero on-screen interactions with Dracula - not even in flashbacks. So the first interaction you see them have is when Alucard arrives to kill him. That makes Alucard's crying scene another one with absolutely no emotional weight.•Why was Death the final enemy? Of course we all understand the concept of death as an entity but he has no establishment whatsoever in the story. Literally appears and disappears in the penultimate episode. We have no attachment to him whatsoever and again, no idea how to kill him nor whether it's a big achievement to do so. Trevor says some shit about some ancient weapon but these things are really not plot relevant and spoken about completely off-hand.It's extra disappointing because the idea of Death being a vampire with an insatiable thirst for human life is a great concept. Even Death's plan to play Saint Germain and bring back Dracula to feed his hunger is great. Was just executed in a really underwhelming way. Plus I honestly don't think I could have been any less invested in Death's analogue, Varney, as a character. Also why bother making it seem like Trevor died for like... 19 minutes? It's a cheap tactic and it achieved very little.
•Isaac literally spends about a season doing fuck all in the middle of nowere - twice. Why does he have such a massive fight with a random unnamed necromancer and why does this need a full season of prep?? And coming back to the earlier point of Isaac's conversation with his night creature: the writers raised some interesting and potentially significant questions in that episode. They suggested that the night creatures aren't just mindless killing machines and that they can experience things beyond their forgemaster's orders. They might even have memories of the lives they lived before being resurrected. Then after that episode, the writers just completely ignored that fact for the rest of the show and the night creatures went back to being silent, brainless pawns. That, to me, is the hallmark of a terribly written and generally directionless show. They would have improved the quality of the end product by not raising these profound questions, yet did it and then ignored them. Whatever their reasoning was, it made for an inredibly disengaging viewing experience.
•Both Carmilla and Dracula are considered villains because of completely hypothetical tyranny. Dracula does hit Targoviste hard once but that doesn't really give sufficient gravity of his scorched earth campaign, for me. And Carmilla's plan to turn humans into cattle is actually never actioned nor even depicted on screen. So again, we don't feel any real opposition or hatred towards her.
•Isaac suddenly deciding to kill Carmilla comes out of nowhere. Yes, she killed Dracula but he spends 2 seasons seemingly pretty unbothered about that, then suddenly switches. Decides he wasnts to kill Hector but then equally abruptly decides he doesn't.
•Similarly, Striga and Morana just decide they don't like Carmilla's plan, even though they were very enthusiastically planning it the season before. There was no turning point, no moment of crossing the line. They just decided to switch up. Then didn't even go to the caslte to see what happened after watching it blow up. Insanely bad writing.
There are probably more examples but I think the point has been made. In general, the show did a bad job of actually having a coherent story that made the events on screen have real significance. They basically relied on the viewers' own sense of morality. In fact the entire show hinges on (what I consider) the most boring and counterintuitively low stakes motivation in fictional stories: the fate of all the people in the world (with whom we have no relationship through the events on screen - if anything we'd be justified in thinking what they did to Dracula's wife was worthy of punishment). To finish it all off, there was of course the cowardly meta self-admission in the final scene, when Lisa turned to Dracula and said "none of this makes any sense". That was a big slap in the face. It doesn't make the show any more enjoyable and just confirms that you knew your story was some bullshit but you put it out anyway. CC: Tenet and Evangelion.
Moving on: storytelling. I've said this about so many shows now but Castlevania had very little storytelling to do, because there was so little story. You can't use any clever plot devices if there isn't anything clever in the plot. You can't use a visual metaphor to represent fuck all happening. Equally bad was the pacing of the show. There so many long stretches of nothing happening, then big ticket events would happen upon you so abruptly. All that talking didn't even build any tension nor expectation. Again, this was made even worse with later seasons. You're just spending ages watching characters have boring conversations about absolutely nothing, then suddenly all killing each other. You could maybe consider this standard, does-a-job kinda storytelling but the show then draggs down its own score with its constant need to tell rather than show. It made the the viewing experience mind-numbing for me. Two quick examples off the dome are the realisation that Zamfir had gone crazy and Greta saying that she was starting to like Alucard. Like please trust that your viewers can connect dots in a straight line based on what you have shown them on screen. In fact, rely on that to build up to your big flourishes significantly better!
I also have to mention one of the sequences in season 4, when Alucard and the villagers are fighting off night creatures in a forest. That was genuinely terrible TV. It kept cutting back and forth between the fights and dialogue and it was so unclear whether the journey was progressing or not. I felt like I was having an aneurism watching it. I honestly expect the explanation for it to be that someone put the shots together in the wrong order in the final edit.
Also not sure if this is the proper place to mention this but the script for the show is seriously bad. Like really, truly terrible. None of the lines come across as clever nor even thematic. They also just throw in random swear words; I'm guessing that's to make it clear it's aimed at adults but it's so forced and awkward. It honestly sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old who's just been told they're allowed to swear but only during drama lessons. Not natural whatsoever and just adds to the overall very stiff and honestly quite cringey dialogue. I can't think of anything that could have undermined Saint Germain's character story any more than "I get to have sex again". Without a doubt one of the worst lines I have ever watched.
Visual directing might just get a pass as okay. Some cool poses, cool shots, as I said good choreography of the fights at least. Consistent visual style and good, clear framing. I just have to call it visual directing, because there wasn't any real storytelling to mention.
I think I've said enough in the above to cover my thoughts on Castlevania's characters. Mostly very bland, especially Trevor and Sypha. Nothing remotely interesting about either of them. Trevor is the irresponsible, rash boy and Sypha is the organised, brilliant girl. We've seen it 100 times. Not to mention their romance has no substance to it whatsoever. They just suddenly become in love. Alucard probably has the most significant journey, as he goes through loneliness and lack of purpose once Dracula dies and the TSA team splits up. But that didn't really do anything. The rest of the cast is woefully dull. Honestly, there isn't a single good, well-written and interesting character in the entire thing. Maybe Lenore but that would be me being incredibly generous.
I'll admit, I came into watching Castlevania with some high expectations, given how liked it is and how many clips seem to pop up across the internet. I won't hold the resulting disappointment against the show but even then, it's undeniable how bad the series is, at least in my opinion. I also note that it seems to have opened the doorway for a bunch of similar animated Netflix series (e.g. Blood of Zeus, Tomb Raider). I'm glad to see more animated series and movies, of course, but I honestly hate that this incredibly stiff style of limited animation is becoming so common. Again, won't hold that against Castlevania - I'm already scoring it low enough - but just worth mentioning as not my favourite trend across the industry.
I'm sincerely sorry to have written this review and can only hope that if any Castlevania artists ever read it, they undersand that it's written honestly and with respect for the ways they have to work on animation these days with tighter and tighter budgets and deadlines. But I'll say it outright, I did not enjoy the series and I blame the executives responsible for it.
Some more random thoughts:
-The Isaac vs. Carmilla fight did feel really cool. Even though Hector's secret passageway was some bs (and not even necessary), the staging and overall execution made it feel pretty epic.
-I laughed my ass off when Alucard got his dick sucked so good he started crying. Felt that shit, especially since he was living every bisexual weeb's dream of getting with two kinky japanese siblings at the same time. I know the animators put their heart into that scene.
-Bloody Tears during the Dracula fight was really cool. Wish they'd built up to it more by maybe having motifs throughout the music across the rest of the series.
-Broader point, I'm sure there were lots of little easter eggs in the series for fans of the game and maybe even the Metroidvania genre. That probably contributed to its success and I'll admit I'm an ignorant neutral in that regard.
