Given that the games didn’t do the best job of fleshing out the entire cast and backstory, there was always room for something else to fill out the world of Castlevania. Enter stage right, Netflix.
Apart from the fact that it dropped seemingly out of nowhere – there wasn’t much build up – Netflix’s Castlevania series was also surprisingly short. With only four episodes at around 23 minutes a piece, it won’t take you long to binge through the whole thing. And Netflix has already commissioned Castlevania for a second season spanning eight episodes, so they’re looking forward to exploring more of the Castlevania universe.
Mikey and Heather watched it when it came out, and on the whole, they seemed to enjoy it. It’s hard to really get too invested though, because the whole thing is just so damn short.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/07/what-we-loved-and-didnt-love-about-the-castlevania-anime/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/egbmhstpuauzoggswicb.jpg” title=”What We Loved (And Didn’t Love) About The Castlevania Anime” excerpt=”Netflix’s Castlevania animated series released over the weekend and has plenty of demon killing, testicle jokes, magic and blood. But how does it hold up as a complete package? I sat down with my coworker Mike Fahey to talk about all the good and all the bad.”]
In a way, it stops before it begins. It’s almost like the filler between two Castlevania games. But maybe that’s kind of what Netflix was hoping for – see if the episodes could work, and then explore a proper anime afterwards.
How did you find Netflix’s Castlevania series?
Comments
7 responses to “Community Review: The Netflix Castlevania Series”
It feels like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which isn’t a bad thing.
oh god… roundabout theme just started playing in my head. Confound you! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
The framework for an interesting and fun yarn is there, I mean it’s not a hard story to tell given how many times a story like this has been told, but I have a lot of concerns over the ability of Adi to tell it well. Pacing was a really big issue with unimportant plot being given the lion’s share of an episode and important plot and character development being rushed through. I also feel like the violence and gore was overdone at times in an effort to be “R18+ AF” rather than because it increased the impact of a scene.
Overall it could have been summed up in a 1 hour pilot episode but now the cast is assembled, Dracula’s castle has risen and whips have been cracked so it’s time to see whether we’re laying bare the miserable pile of secrets that is a man or whether it’s a horrible night to have a curse.
Pacing was horrendous. Out of the 4 episodes, and 80 minutes in total, it felt that over half of it was a waste of time, or completely drawn out to the point that scenes were just adding nothing.
2 episodes of 15-20 minutes could have gotten through the entire story, cut the unnecessary crap, increased the speed and relevance of some scenes and kept me awake.
I liked it enough. The plot is there, the characters bounce off of plenty of appropriate anime tropes, and the fighting scenes are generally great.
It’s no hellsing, sure, but I’m willing to enjoy the ride through the lore of one of my favourite franchises.
The endless crumbling of that one year old crypt was hilariously drawn out. It was the “rotating castle level” of the show.
The Castlevania fan in the house loved it. I had no knowledge of Castlevania going into it, aside from “Dracula” and “there is a castle?” and quite liked it. But I felt like it was really made for fans of the games as it didn’t really explain who anyone was and just jumped into things, I had to ask as we watched. And I did feel like there were too many fighting scenes and not enough story in the last two eps, but that said I enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to S2.
My only real criticism is that it ends right when the story is about to start. I actually spent a minute or two trying to work out why my Netflix wasn’t playing the rest of the episodes.
^ This. I was almost in tears. Moooaaaarrrrr pls.