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Post by spanky on Jul 21, 2017 11:20:24 GMT -5
I really don't think the "sympathetic villain" thing works for Dracula. I know people like to explore that angle (see also the Bram Stoker's Dracula movie from the 90's) but in the original book he's this cunning, unapologetically evil demon. He leaves hundreds of impaled people outside of his house! I thought everything with Lisa, Dracula and the cartoonishly evil priests was sorta eye rolling. Minor gripe, but I wish the music sounded more....Castlevania-ish?
That being said, it was animated nicely and had some nice action scenes. Now that they are at the point where it looks like they are going to start killing monsters instead of other humans, I think I'm more interested.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Jul 21, 2017 20:13:31 GMT -5
There was a lot about that show that was a bit eye-rolling. Still a lot of fun though.
Definitely could have used some remixes or somethign of the original music.
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Post by Woody Alien on Aug 7, 2017 9:19:26 GMT -5
So I finally watched this series (with the Italian dub, which was nice but Trevor's voice kind of fell flat).
What can I say, I found it good but not excellent for several reasons. Mostly because has a very strange and stilted pacing: while 1/3 of an episode is spent with Trevor punching random peasants in a bar brawl, the whole "training the helpless villagers" part took maybe half of that time despite supposedly being a very important scene of the humans' revenge against Dracula's army. Also, who gives a shit about these so-called Speakers?
And speaking of Dracula's army, I hoped to see far more of the typical CV bestiary instead of some random gargoyle critters, also Trevor fought more corrupt priests (we get it Ellis, organized religion is bad, now move on) than actual monsters and that's no good. Could they have put at least a Fleaman in there?
Also, speaking of Dracula, he's goddam cool and badass but he has too little screen time, well, just like in the actual games, but I hoped to see a little more of him.
Good stuff: Dracula's rampage, the cyclops fight and the Alucard fight, the gore and the overall style and animation that reminded me of the old Darkstalkers series... the Japanese one, not the awful American travesty! Maybe because Drac turning into a fire pillar and a giant flame face reminded me of Pyron?
Also, is it just me, or Trevor with the whip against the big priest with a sword surrounded by a circle of people was a homage to the famous scene of Indiana Jones against the big scimitar guy?
EDIT: the Italian dub censored Sypha's joke about pissing in a bucket and telling Trevor it's beer. Or at least it seemed me so! They made her say something like "he wouldn't know urine from beer" or something like that.
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Post by spanky on Aug 1, 2018 10:49:26 GMT -5
Hopefully it's better than season 1!
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 1, 2018 11:09:12 GMT -5
I don't know whether to look forward to this or not. I really, really hated Season 1 for a variety of reasons I won't go into because it's about a page or two's worth of rants, but I want to believe that this could be better. I don't know if any of the staff has changed, or if production circumstances have improved since last year (the episodes were storyboarded by a ridiculous amount of people for 20-minute episodes, and the show's animation director talked about certain scenes not turning out as well due to not having the time to make corrections to production errors), but I can only hope that things pick up immensely in terms of production quality. Otherwise, I ain't interested.
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Post by X-pert74 on Aug 1, 2018 12:37:52 GMT -5
I absolutely totally loved Season 1, so I'm really excited to see Season 2 when it comes out  |
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Post by Snake on Aug 1, 2018 13:38:26 GMT -5
I'll watch it. I have no expectations. It's been entertaining enough, even if one could nitpick about canon and timeline. I would like to see Grant turn up somewhere, this season.
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Aug 2, 2018 2:12:15 GMT -5
HECTOR
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Post by toei on Aug 2, 2018 3:43:35 GMT -5
I watched the first season a week or two ago and liked it overall. The writing is flawed, both in terms of pacing and content - I thought it was silly how quickly the villagers accepted the truth about the priests and turned on them, Trevor's character arc from Rambo fuck-the-world-attitude to now-I-care was cheesy and contrived, and there are moments when people are just talking in circles. That said, I liked the general vibe of it and some of the action scenes were really cool. Brutal, spectacular and to-the-point. I just think that comic book writer was out of his depth trying to do profound with a dash of Game of Thrones.
I'm not surprised there'll be more. Season one worked more as an introduction to the story, so it'll be nice to have a ten-episode package this time.
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Post by shelverton on Aug 4, 2018 6:03:28 GMT -5
I enjoyed season 1 for what it was and is kinda pumped for season 2!
Had Konami been a company that made, say, video games, I could totally see this animated series being made into a game, probably handled by someone like Platinum.
But Konami is not about that.
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Post by toei on Aug 4, 2018 15:03:59 GMT -5
I enjoyed season 1 for what it was and is kinda pumped for season 2! Had Konami been a company that made, say, video games, I could totally see this animated series being made into a game, probably handled by someone like Platinum. But Konami is not about that. You mean you're not looking forward to a pachinko adaptation? |
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Haruka
Junior Member
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Post by Haruka on Aug 5, 2018 3:37:02 GMT -5
I don't know whether to look forward to this or not. I really, really hated Season 1 for a variety of reasons I won't go into because it's about a page or two's worth of rants, but I want to believe that this could be better. I don't know if any of the staff has changed, or if production circumstances have improved since last year (the episodes were storyboarded by a ridiculous amount of people for 20-minute episodes, and the show's animation director talked about certain scenes not turning out as well due to not having the time to make corrections to production errors), but I can only hope that things pick up immensely in terms of production quality. Otherwise, I ain't interested. I wouldn't mind reading your rant. |
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Post by spanky on Aug 5, 2018 7:50:11 GMT -5
Yea, same
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 5, 2018 16:07:05 GMT -5
...I really, really hated Season 1 for a variety of reasons I won't go into because it's about a page or two's worth of rants, but I want to believe that this could be better... I wouldn't mind reading your rant. Fair enough. I wrote this on a couple of other forums about a year ago, but I've decided to expand on and add a couple a points that occurred to me since originally writing it. Also, it's a big 'un, so I'm gonna consign it to a massive spoiler, just so folks browsing this thread aren't unexpectedly assaulted with a big wall of text. Let's get started! Before I begin, let me make it clear that I'm not really a fan of CastleVania. I have huge respect for the games, but I've not yet played one that endeared itself to me in any way. I'm bringing this up because whatever I'm about to say isn't born from some bitter fanboyism masquerading as critique. Unless they strongly invoke comparisons to the point of being unavoidable, I often look at adaptations as their own thing, and I did the same with this show. So whatever think of it is entirely on its own merits (or lack thereof), and nothing more.
To be blunt, I think the Netflix CastleVania series is pretty terrible, and for a lot of reasons.
The Content: When the show was first announced, one of the show's producers (Adi Shankar, most well-known for his involvement in the Bootleg Universe; a series of darker fan-films based on pre-established properties) went on record to say it would be, and I quote, "R-rated as fuck". Aside from being a bafflingly immature thing to be declared by a grown man meant to promote a thing, that phrase set off alarm bells and I began worrying that the show would be crammed with gratuitous gore, disgusting spectacles or subject matter, and basically all manner of nonsense for no other reason than to appeal to teenagers who think that kind of shit is 'mature'.
I'm aware that CastleVania is an action horror series, and wouldn't lend itself well to a family-friendly adaptation without severe sanitation (at which point, we'd have a modern equivalent of the infamous wimpy jock version of Simon Belmont seen in Captain N). I happily agree with that, but I feel that the show could have gone in a better direction in terms of content than where it ended up going. In the first episode alone, bloody bat fetuses fell from the sky, demons flew in and disembowelled children, and a drunken man in a pub talked about shagging his goat. This was all within the span of about five minutes, and it was done with such reckless abandon that it felt like it was done for no other reason than to shock audiences. (And that's not even getting to nonsense like Trevor whipping out a man's eye - more on that in a bit.)
It was exactly as I feared: instead of depicting gruesome or disturbing imagery sparingly like the best of both horror and non-horror media (the ending of Evangelion Episode 18, Clemens' death in Alien 3, the fight against Gygas in EarthBound), the Netflix series just revelled in being as unrelentingly disgusting for its own sake. However, it doesn't even realize how quickly that ceases to affect the audience and simply results in them getting bored with the needless carnage. If you want effective horror, you're not gonna get it here.
The Writing: The show is written in the same manner seen in too many other shows or films: an overly serious tone that wishes to depress the viewer with 'heavy' themes, only broken up with Joss Whedon-esque quips from Trevor or one of the other characters to provide moments of 'humour'. The different tones don't play off of each other well; it feels like writer Warren Ellis felt that he had to do a 'funny scene' at this point, with no regard for comic timing or the context in which the scene happened. It's hackneyed writing at its most blatant, and it makes me groan with irritation every time.
The characters themselves, though well voiced, are as one-note and predictable as you can get. Trevor is your typical roughed-up hero who stays out of things until he decides not to. The Bishop is the same misguided religious nut who believes the word of God allows him to do whatever (again, more on this in a bit). Sypha's the grand-daughter who wants to get out and make a difference. The Elder of the Speakers is a wise old man who exposits background information and is hesitant to abandon people in their time of need. There's nothing wrong with using old character tropes (they're tropes for a reason), but there's nothing interesting going on here. There are dopey 60's sitcoms with more nuanced characters than this show.
What drives me up the wall more than anything, however, is the dreadful use of screen-time economy: this is a principle where you try to get across as much as you can while saying very little (Mad Max: Fury Road and Perfect Blue are very good examples of films that use screen-time economy effectively). That doesn't happen here; every conversation feels like one-note exposition that has nothing to interpret beyond what the script is literally telling you, every scene goes on for 5-10 minutes when it could have very easily been done in half that time. The end result is that it feels like very little happens in each episode, even though it feels like an eternity. It belies the fact that Warren Ellis is a comic book writer, since that kind of expository dialogue can work far better in comics than in animation.
The Religion Nonsense: As an adaptation of CastleVania III: Dracula's Curse, a game that didn't have much plot to go on due to it being from an era when heavy storytelling in NES action games was almost non-existent, it makes sense that the Netflix series would try to add in more material to further develop the world and characters (and maybe add to the running time). However, the way in which Ellis sought to do so for these four episodes is not only incredibly tired, but arguably goes against one of the core principles of the main games.
While Dracula is ostensibly the villain, the Church (and by extension, the Bishop and all their followers) are treated with much more disdain and hatred. They are viewed as the enablers of all the terrible things happening to the people, they were the ones who banished and disgraced the Belmonts, they are the ones who cause the majority of conflict in these episodes. Hell, Trevor clearly doesn't have much problem brutally maiming or killing them, seeing how he manages to whip a man's eye out in the second episode!
You might ask what the problem with this is. Well, besides it being a blatantly hackneyed move to look sophisticated ("Look, it's medieval times, but the Church are just as bad, if not worse, than demons! Isn't that so deep?"), it feels very wrong when considered as part of the CastleVania mythos. Forgive me if I'm wrong with this, but I'm fairly sure that you never fight ordinary humans in any of the games. If you do, they are corrupted humans who have chosen to work with Dracula and are clearly beyond the point of no return.
This speaks to a point discussed in the intro of Symphony of the Night (or the ending of Rondo of Blood), where Richter and Dracula debate on the inherent nature of humanity.
Dracula has a cynical view of humanity, believing that he is no worse than the faiths and gods that keep people going. However, Richter has a more idealistic take, that this faith is just one of many strengths that drives humanity to keep surviving and to keep getting better. In this exchange alone (and hell, even in the English localization's exchange, where Dracula compares his theft and enslavement of mens' souls to that of all religions), there is more depth on the nature of humanity and faith than the insipid "religion is bad, ain't I so edgy" nonsense seen throughout this show.
You're not supposed to fight humans; you're meant to work together to fight the demons and monsters to live for a better day. And to have an adaptation in which people are shown constantly fighting each other, where they would be just as shitty and misguided by their respective faiths with or without demons, feels inherently wrong. I assume people want to watch CastleVania to see a Belmont fighting demons, not whipping the eyes out of religious zealots.
The Animation: When it comes to TV shows and films, most people tend to think that the script and the acting are the most important elements when analysing and critiquing them. However, they forget to take into account that those are not the only elements that exist; there's the visuals, the use of sound, the editing, post-production, and more (each of which contains at least ten other elements that all play off each other to create the film/show that you are watching). What I'm getting at is that there's more to a show than just the script, and those elements need to be as strong as they can be to really make the show work, or they feel wasted.
And the animation in the Netflix series is more than wasted. Sure, the characters look 'detailed' and 'on-model', and some of the backgrounds look pretty good, but it's so uninteresting. The character designs are bland and have too much detail for them to be animated well, and the animation itself is often stilted, mediocre and lacking in soul. There are a couple of decent scenes (the fight against the Cyclops in episode 3, and the fantastic title sequence, both animated by animation director Spencer Wan), but for the most part, it feels like the animation was done by a series of drones who were told to serve the script and character designs, and little else.
This isn't helped by the incredibly lacklustre visual storytelling. Every other shot shows the characters in 3/4 profile, making most shots feel very repetitive. When characters are talking, it shows them talking without trying to do anything interesting in terms of visuals. It ends up making the already long exposition scenes feel so much longer, because there's nothing going on beyond seeing pictures of people talking. This right here was what killed the show for me; I can get over the needless 'R-Rated' nonsense, I could have tolerated the boring script and hackneyed tone, but this show is just so goddamn boring to watch! It reminds me a lot of DC's animated work since Batman Beyond, in that you have to like the script or characters to enjoy them, because there is absolutely nothing else of interest.
Being on Netflix: One of the things that has consistently baffled me about the series is that the first "season" comprises of what would otherwise be a four-episode prologue introducing the general setting of the series. I bring this up because it was supposedly not planned to have a second season until the day it aired, which begs the question of why they made four episodes setting up a series that may never have come to pass. And if there was always a plan to do more episodes, why did they rush these episodes to be out at this specific time instead of just waiting until the rest of the episodes were done? (And they were rushed; storyboards were done by about a dozen people per episode, even though they're only 20-odd minutes long, and there wasn't enough time to correct certain sequences so that they were free of sudden jittering and 'pops'.)
It's not as if Netflix is constrained by seasonal broadcasting schedules like TV networks (at least, to my knowledge); they could have just decided to delay the show until all the episodes was done, and then put it out whenever they felt like it. It's just ridiculous, because all there's been to look at for the last year or thereabouts has just been this four-episode prologue. Imagine if Nickelodeon aired the first three episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but then announced that they would have the rest of the first season done in about a year and a half. Well then, why don't you wait until the whole show's done and air those first three episodes alongside them?! My only guess is that 2017 marked the 30th anniversary of the first game's western release, but that game was released the year before in Japan, so there's no real anniversary to celebrate. It doesn't make any sense.
I don't know what's going on with the production of the series, but that was a dumb decision to make, and one that paints the show in a much worse light than if those episodes aired alongside those from the second "season". Shows take a while to get started, and only having what is ostensibly an extended pilot to watch for over a year just makes the show look terrible.
Other Thoughts:
This show is not an anime. Netflix calls it an anime, but it's not an anime. It doesn't have any degree of involvement from Japanese staff or animation studios; instead being a typical American show where the majority of the creative work is done in the States while animation duties are either done in-house or farmed out to South Korea. It may be inspired by the character designs of Symphony of the Night, but that doesn't mean it looks like an anime. There is no "anime" style, and anyone who says otherwise has clearly not watched enough anime to know that there are too many different styles of character design, artstyle and aesthetic for there to be a common look for an entire sector of animation. It's certainly not paced or directed like anime, as I've discussed when it comes to visual storytelling - I'm not even kidding when I say that there are Japanese children's shows from the 1970's that have a much defter hand at storytelling and directing than this one.
The music is dreadful. It's the kind of boring electronic Zimmer-lite arpeggios that've been popping up in every hackneyed show or film since at least Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's awful and forgettable, and the fact that CastleVania is a series known for its often great soundtrack just rubs salt into the wound. I don't care whether or not they use tunes from the video games; I'd rather they just have good music that creates a mood and sticks in the mind than just another wall of noise.
Because this is a Netflix show, you could argue that you don't have to pay anything to watch the show if you've already got that subscription. To that, I'd say that there are many better animated shows you could be watching on Netflix. Whether you want to stick to "anime" (Cowboy Bebop, My Little Witch Academia, Space Dandy, Gurren Lagann) or just animation in general (Steven Universe, Animaniacs), there's a lot of shows that have more going on and to enjoy than this series. You can watch it if you want, and if you enjoy it, that's awesome. But I can't stand it, and I can only hope that the second season picks up immeasurably (or has a better production schedule, if nothing else). |
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