As a gamer, there are many franchises that I like. Castlevania isn't one of my favorites, but I do like the series. And it's one of those that I always thought could become a good cartoon/anime if given the chance.
When I heard about Netflix announcing that it would make a cartoon about it, I was...curious. But as we know today, unfortunately, they dropped the ball on that one. It felt like the series was made by someone who barely knew the games or didn't even play them.
A good example of that is already in season one, which is also the best season. Ironically, because there are only four episodes, there is not much they can screw up with that. But yeah, this...this was good! It made everyone think the series was in good hands! And while I did agree, for the most part, I had a question at the back of my mind. A worrying question.
Where the fuck is Grant Danasty?!
He is as much a character of the series as all the others! And yet, he was completely ignored in the first seasons like he didn't even exist. And the only time he was even referenced was to mock him in season three. And why? Just because the writer didn't like him.
Let's let that sink in for a moment. The writer removed an important, PLAYABLE character from one of the games in the series just because he didn't like him.
That's a very bad sign, and it's no wonder the rest of the series was as bad as we ended up seeing.
Now, I want to be fair. This series isn't the worst cartoon I've ever seen, and it's not even the worst thing on Netflix. There is good stuff in it, which is why I think it still has fans. The animation, for the most part, alternates between ok to quite good. There are some good moments between the characters, though those are mostly in seasons one and two. And, the best thing about the series by far is the action.
The fighting scenes are quite good, regardless of a flaw which I will talk about soon (because of a certain mage), but if this weren't called Castlevania and it had even more focus on those action scenes, I do think this would have been considered one of the best Netflix cartoons. But it is supposed to be an adaptation of some of the Castlevania games, and even if we ignore how they ignored Grant, we can't pretend the adaptation was good.
There are problems with some of the characters, but I think I will divide my words by season since some characters do stuff in some specific seasons, which are the things that bothered me the most, especially in the last season. And also some stuff about the plot of the series or the seasons themselves.
So I will talk about those problems now, which obviously means heavy spoilers for the series. If you want to avoid spoilers and want to see what the cartoon offers for furries, which is the main point of my review, then please scroll down to the “KEMONO SCALE JUDGEMENT” section!
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES AND THE ENDING
Season 1: Very solid season aside from the missing Grant. If only I could say the same about the rest...
Season 2: - I imagine watching this series was very painful for fans of Hector. Not only did the series barely use their plot/background from the games here, but they changed it for the worse. So in the games, he betrayed Dracula because he had had enough of killing and didn't agree to Dracula's plans anymore.
In the series, he was easily convinced by Carmilla to betray him. And this is the start of how Hector went from being a badass in the games to a vampire's little bitch until the end of the series.
-They also butchered Isaac's backstory here even harder, plus changing his race to a black guy for...reasons? Was that the only reason why the series treated him with some dignity compared to Hector?
-Here we start to see the problem I was talking about before. Alucard is too powerful, way more than Trevor and Sypha. That makes sense. But the series struggled to "balance" that issue. It's no wonder we have crap like the infamous episode in which all Alucard does is hold that dumb mirror, while Trevor is the one who has to do all the killing, because if Alucard didn't have to hold the mirror episode would be over in less than 20 minutes.
-It's a similar issue with Sypha. The series never talks about how being a sorcerer like her is rare or something. So...why not just get ten sorcerers like her and go to town with all the vampires? In fact, given what we see a single sorcerer can do in this series, and we assume there are others since, again, we are never told being a sorcerer is very rare or other explanation...how vampires are still a thing? Are sorcerers such dicks that they don't bother to kill them at all? You would think a sorcerer or two would have an issue with the crap that Dracula was doing and would want to band together to kill him and other vampires. Just saying xP!
-Let's ignore some other dumb shit like a goddamn UNDEAD BLESSING THE RIVER WTF and go to the end of the season. It's kinda of crazy, but this is the only time the "main trio" barely meets Hector and Isaac.
This wouldn't be an issue if from this point on in the next seasons, the series didn't pull a Game of Thrones, and now we have to divide our focus into FOUR protagonists. But more about this later. I'm bringing it up now because it's insane they did this...in GoT, this works because the cast will eventually interact with each other at some point, so it makes you feel they're all living in the same world and working their way through the same plot. But not here, at all lol.
-I knew it would be hard to balance the fight against Dracula, since in the game we fight him one-on-one, but here it's three against one. Now, the last two episodes before the ending have some of the best fights in the series, and while I do think they could have done even more to make the fight against Dracula better, that was good enough.
What wasn't good was this bullshit about Dracula suddenly being "Oh no, I've become evil, kill me". Not only it's ridiculous for him to come to this realization at THIS point in the game, but the way the series does it, this is the only reason why the characters were even able to kill him. So if Dracula was like he was in the games, those guys would be fucked?
Maybe so, since even Alucard isn't like he is in the games. That Alucard crying doesn't make sense if he was the Alucard supposed to be like in the games. And even here, it's not like he was a 20-something-year-old lad who just killed his father or something. Oh wait...he is?! Like in the games??...huh. But he still acted quite differently there compared to him in the game.
Season 3: - While it could have been done better, Trevor and Sypha are...fine...ish. But it's lame that they became a 100% official couple off-screen lol since that happened in between seasons. But the series has way worse problems than those two, so...
-I have no idea what the heck the deal is with Isaac starting this season. I doubt the writer knew either. Was he setting him up to become an anti-hero or something later? Maybe forgive Hector? Or to even become one of the good guys? Don't know, we never find out even in the next season. So, pretty much all of the scenes with him became a waste of time. It doesn't feel like he had to go through the "events" in this season to...just...forgive Hector in the next season, despite starting this little journey of his to kill him? Instead of, you know, killing the guys that killed Dracula in the first place?!
-Still about Isaac...in the episode where he fights the magician, he does something that just completely breaks the lore that the series shows us about a forgemaster. Now, the series never explains exactly how the power of a forgemaster works, but this episode just ruins the little we know. Why?
Because, out of nowhere and during the fight, Isaac just created a fucking giant demon.
That just shouldn't be possible at all. If it is possible, then...why the fuck didn't he have like 100 of those guys guarding Dracula in the castle back then?! Trevor and his friends would have had no chance! And it wasn't like he needed time or something to create that giant, he made it out of nowhere when fucking running to the tower! Imagine how this would also help when he attacks Carmilla's place later!
So it makes no sense that he can create a giant when he wants! And that means the only way this might make sense is if he can't choose what demon to create, but this can't be either. If that was the case, then...what? He was hoping that he would be able to randomly create a giant back then to cover his ass all the way to the tower?! And if forgemasters can't choose the demons they make from the bodies, why do all of them work in small rooms? This should happen outside, since in this scenario, they can create giants that would destroy the places they were in!
This is a perfect example of how the writer(s?) only cared if the stuff on the screen looked cool, even if it made no sense or even damaged the lore...that he made.
-At least Isaac still had way better than Hector. He started the season as a vampire's little bitch and...ends the season as the little bitch of four vampires. Wow. And fuck that BS about trying to make it go both ways with Lenore. Either she's an evil bitch like her "sisters" or she isn't.
-The only character that I think was butchered or completely changed so much that they should just get a new name for the series, since they barely have anything to do at all with their game counterpart, aside from two certain women in the next series, it's Saint Germain.
Here he's just this wuss who wants to do anything he can to go to the Infinite Corridor, where he somehow got separated from his girlfriend/not girlfriend/plot device, and he wants to rescue her. So...all his motivations and such are about this random woman that not only doesn't even exist in the games, they couldn't even be bothered to make her speak or have her own backstory. Heck, we don't even know her FUCKING NAME. The fandom just calls her "Adventurer Lady" since that's her production name lol.
Talk about a character assassination in this series. I'm not even sure who got it the worst here, Saint or Hector. Actually, the characters from Curse of Darkness are the ones that got fucked the hardest in this series, so no way this isn't a coincidence.
-The whole thing with the judge just became filler in the end. Was that thing that he was a serial killer just a twist for the sake of a twist? Who in the heck cares about something like this for a character that doesn't even exist in the games...
-Speaking of filler, damn. They really completely wasted our time with Alucard and the whole pointless drama with him, Taka, and Sumi. Again, was he having sex with both of them just a twist for the sake of a twist, or something, and also make him cry like a little bitch during it? And then he killed them, hinting in the end that maybe he might follow in his father's steps or something...only for the next and last season to do NOTHING with that? Those characters are not even mentioned, not even what they did, or heck, what Alucard did was not even mentioned later to his friends or anything at all in the next season. So what was the point of this waste of time?
Once again, I'm sure that they didn't know what to do with an overpowered character like Alucard, so they wasted him completely in this season.
-So...WHY IS LISA IN HELL?! This doesn't make any damn sense. If there's a hell in this series, then it must have a heaven, and Lisa absolutely deserved to go there. It's so sad that this is not even the worst plot hole, if we can call this that way of the series...
Season 4:-The worst season in part because of the ending, which was bad, but it's exactly the kind of ending one can expect from a series that just ignored most of the lore and backstories of the games to do whatever it wanted. I will only talk about the things that bothered me the most, or I would have to break down each episode, and I'm not going to do that since I still need to do the real meat of this review xP.
-Saint German continued to be a wuss and had a dumb death, but eh, he deserved it. Man, what a waste of good character (if he was one lol) that could even return later in the series, and it's one of the few that it would make sense to. And it is so pathetic, in the end, he died without even being able to do what he wanted, which was to free his walking-missing-plot-device-not-girlfriend thing. Pff.
-Alucard...not only as I mentioned already this season just makes the former season stuff with him a waste of time, but the next series also makes "his ending" a waste of time or a strange plot hole as well. By the end, he and Greta, who kinda of became his girlfriend, share this leadership of this settlement...and NOTHING ever came from it since nothing about this was even mentioned in the next series. So...the settlement didn't become a village or a city or something? What happened with Greta and him? Or is the series barely implying that either he never fucked her or he can't have kids? And not only that, but we barely have the trio reunited together doing stuff, and only at the end.
-The whole thing with Hector and Isaac is just a mess that, in the end, never goes anywhere, making it pointless. And that's not even counting what I already mentioned about how neither of them ever engaged with the main trio again.
Even if we assume that it made sense for Isaac to just decide to forgive Hector...maybe, assuming that's what happened...so? What now? Will Isaac just rule in that castle full of his undead monsters? What is he thinking of doing now? Maybe go after the ones that killed Dracula? Not to mention it's the same thing about Hector, what the heck will HE do now after the whole mess he faced in that castle? We will never know since the series just ended, and we have no idea what those two will ever do. We don't even know the current status of their relationship now.
-Carmilla was fine on her own. Why the heck did they waste time and screen time by giving her those useless sister characters? Do you want proof of how they are useless? How about how they literally walked out of the series after they saw the castle being attacked and could tell that Carmilla was defeated, and assumed the same about Lenore, and they just left, and that's it.
Nobody ever cared that they left the fucking series just like that. And this is after Striga gave us this show of her being badass with her armor and sword, and all, and all she did with that was to massacre some innocent villagers that never had a chance. So in the end, the entire screen time we wasted with those two was just that...a waste of time. They couldn't even be bothered to show up at all in the next series, at least.
-Lenore just killing herself wtf. You have known this castle for years, certainly, it should have hidden passages and stuff like that. If you want, you could just wait for a chance to escape, Hector would be sure to help you. Actually, if he talked to Isaac, maybe he would just let you go one day anyway. Why the fuck did you just killed yourself for? Dumb bitch.
-The two worst things about this season and also the ending. So...Trevor LITERALLY just happened to come across the fucking dagger and the stone by pure chance. He wasn't looking for any of them and just decided to take them with him on a whim. And yet if he didn't do that, he would be fucked since he needed that magical dagger to defeat Death by the end of the series. Wtf fuck that atrocious writing. At least make him look for those artifacts for one episode, just because he thought they would be useful against those monsters or something, instead of just...finding them literally in his path for no reason and just deciding to take them with him. Oh, and the way they teased his death only to give this stupid twist with him alive, thanks to some complete nonsense that we can't take seriously, done by Saint...yeah, so lazy.
The thing about Dracula and Lisa is probably worse than that, though. Lisa aside, they ruined Dracula for sure here with him being all nice and a good dude now. And yet, given what we see in the next series, neither he nor Lisa ever bothered to show up to Alucard again, which is...yeah, this is just terrible writing all around. I don't think I need to go into detail about why having fucking DRACULA alive and now being a good guy ruins Castlevania. And even if we assume that it would make sense for both of them to decide to hide from Alucard forever - which doesn't - this implies that either Dracula is alive by next season and did NOTHING against the villain there despite having the power to do so and supposedly being a good guy now or he somehow died before next season and that also brings the question of how. So yeah...this is a twist that just ruins everything connected to it.
Castlevania is an old series of games, and as such, it has its share of furry characters. However, if you look for it, you will barely find Rule 34 art based on the games. And even less good rule 34 lol. Why's that?
I believe that it's because, despite having so many games, the franchise barely has characters that are furries. After all, most of the games are about the Belmont clan fighting against Dracula, and that's really it. So most of the furries there are the enemies that stand in the Belmont member of that game's way to try to stop him from reaching Dracula.
Over the years, there have been a few monsters that got a bit popular with the furry fandom, but not enough to have Rule 34 art drawn of them or not a lot. And that still didn't change, even when we finally got a few "furry" characters in the series that are the main characters. Or, at least, characters that can turn into furry, quite literally! Like Cornell and Heinrich from the Nintendo 64 games. Or, the way more famous example...Alucard!
He can turn into a company of bats and a wolf in the games, and he does that in the series, but...barely. And his wolf form is pathetic if compared with his wolf form in the games as well.
That is enough to tell you how they really didn't care that much about the furry aspect of Castlevania, as small as it is for the series. After all, if they couldn't be bothered to make Alucard hot and detailed in the wolf form, imagine the rest of the furry there!
Now, we do see a lot of those furry monsters in the series, but at the same time, not enough. Unfortunately, that's because they aren't characters. Just the random monster of the week, our main heroes have to defeat. They don't speak or anything. They only show up when they have to give some action to the series, and then they get killed by the main characters. And that's it.
A shame that they didn't try to make some of them into the main characters. This means that those monsters have to compete with screen time against the main characters, the villains, and that includes the "filler guys" that only exist in this series, like the useless judge from season 3.
It's quite a waste since we do have some ok to "goodish" monsters here. Like, for example, those: https://imgur.com/a/wRQXzyJ
They did an okaish job with Malphas, but damn, they fucked Solgra and Gaibon quite hard...can barely see them and they are killed so fast! But yeah, this is what I mean, for them, the furry are just monsters that exist to be killed, and that's it.
It's such a shame and a waste, too. If they had a furry in their cast as a writer or something, I'm sure that we would get at least one of those monsters as a character, since say Malphas could easily take over one of those "filler" or exclusive to the series villain roles. It would have been great to have some of those monsters speaking, showing us what they think, their wants, needs, etc. But they didn't go there.
Not that I'm surprised. Just look at how they even wasted Alucard here. Not only in this series but in his wolf form. It's boring as fuck, and he barely uses it. If the writers cared for the furry stuff, they could have made more with it, but we would see if he spoke and did stuff in that form, too. I'm sure that Trevor would have some fun questions to ask if he interacted with Alucard in that form! If anything, it's weird as fuck that he didn't ask anything about that after seeing him take that form. It's no wonder that, despite him transforming into a wolf in the series, nobody even bothered to draw him in any Rule 34 art.
So, I can only recommend the series to fans of action in their cartoons/anime. If you're a Castlevania fan, maybe you can enjoy it for that reason alone, despite the butchering or massive changes they did to the lore or characters of the games. At least I can safely recommend season 1 of the series, but anything more than that...
For fans of furry stuff, though, it's quite hard to recommend this one. The furry creatures only exist as monsters to be killed in the same episode they appear! And not a single one of them is a "character" unless you count Alucard, and only for having his boring wolf form, which he barely uses.
So, for those reasons, I believe that Castlevania from Netflix Seasons 1 - 4 deserves a...*turns around and points dramatically at the cartoon* A TWO OUT OF FIVE OF LOF IN THE KAMIKAZE SCALE!!! This time it was more about quantity than the quality of the furry, even if a few were good. But since they only exist to be killed when they show up, this one isn't even close to being a three in the Kamikaze Scale! That's sad because if they changed some stuff, like giving main character/villain roles to some of those furry or at least making a good wolf form for Alucard that showed up a lot more than maybe this could get a three!
The best furry character this time is...ehh...I guess the werewolf we see in the first episode of the third season? But all of them are quite wasted in this cartoon.
The "kemono in the refrigerator" this time is...this will depend on your opinion, since so many furry characters they screwed up by either barely showing them or not even having them appear at all. To me, the worst case of this "trope" is Alucard in his wolf form. Not only do we barely see it, but his design is so boring and lame compared to it in the game.
Aaaand that’s it for this one! Hope you guys enjoyed reading this review. Please don't hesitate to leave your comments and opinions about it, and also about Castlevania, the Netflix series seasons 1 - 4, if you happen to have watched it or maybe wanna check it out thanks to this review xD. I want to leave those journals as a place where people can discuss the respective things being reviewed here!
They butchered it... I can probably pass a few things as artistic liberties..but the writers has an agenta. Anti-Christian and a bit misandrist to say the least. And they changed everyone's backgrounds to make it fit. The whip and the Belmonts were SUPER nerfed, as in they were supposed to be supersoldier-level in strength and ability while being in the faith (despite their excommunicated status), the whip was the ULTIMATE weapon against the Mistake of Creation (vampirism brought about by flawed alchemy (a flawed bastardized human version of how God created Creation)) and ANYONE associated with them. Sypha was a witch/magic user that was part of the Church. Grant a ruler of his domain (i think). And Alucard a stoic dampyr with a grim mission.
I had no problem of Dracula dying the way he did, in fact, i liked it, (gives emphasis on how much Lisa pulled Vlad away from the dark and into the light, tho she would have gone to Heaven instead(similar to how Marie was in Lord of Shadows)). Tho his death SHOULD of unleashed a catastrophic curse to plague the land (Like in Curse of Darkness) and reviving Dracula would be "creating" something akin to "Inner Dracula" from LoS 2, where he would be the 100 years evil that the Belmonts would fight.
And "Soma" would be the "Vlad" that Lisa saved.
I can go on forever on how fucked the anime was, some acceptable changes, others are flat out disgusting. They had utter mountains of gold material to weave a fantastical adaptation and they ignored and butchered it.
Nocturne.....just remember my claim of agenda above.
They butchered it... I can probably pass a few things as artistic liberties..but the writers has an
I wish I could pass all of the bad stuff as artistic liberties haha. But yeaaaaaah...I think most of the Castlevania fans agree they just fucked up and very hard.
If they were setting up for the Souma stuff, MAYBE it would work but nah. The way they did it just fucked up even the future games. It just doesn't make sense as I said in the review for Dracula to be alive, "nice" and ignore the evil stuff in Noctune.
Yet, I would be willing to be more forgiving about that cartoon if at least they used the furry characters better but we didn't even get a good wolf Alucard out of this mess ;w;
I wish I could pass all of the bad stuff as artistic liberties haha. But yeaaaaaah...I think most of
Yeah......i tried not flat out saying "utter WOKE garbage" because i want to give it a fair shake. Its just good animation with bad story telling and an overt message.
The evils of Dracula were ignored, that was the biggest mistake amd a missed opportunity of that Soma-setup for a future season. The furry aspect was already lost cause at that point.
Nocturne is UTTER garbage beyond redemption and should be killed with fire and acid. Good grief, was the agenda layered hyper-thicc on that.
Yeah......i tried not flat out saying "utter WOKE garbage" because i want to give it a fair shake.
