What An Awesome Night To Have A Curse: Castlevania Review

By Luiggi Cavanna

Not long ago, I wrote a blog about anime live action adaptations, you should check it out if you haven’t, but you know who has it worst? Video games to, well, anything! This video game curse is well known but we might’ve broken that curse thanks to the new Netflix animated series Castlevania.

Castlevania, for all of you that didn’t have a childhood, is a series of games from Konami starring a lineage of vampire hunters known as the Belmont clan and their battle against the lord of darkness himself, Dracula, throughout different time periods.

There are a lot of Belmonts….. Is that JoJo reference?

There are a lot of games, Belmonts and time periods to choose from, ranging from 1094 up to 2036. That’s not counting the rebooted timeline, Lord of Shadows, or how I love to call it, “the timeline I don’t give two craps about! The Netflix original takes place during the events of Castlevania 3 Dracula’s Curse.

A trip to Dracula’s hometown!? OH BOY!

To me, it is the perfect place to start. Chronologically, Castlevania 3 is the first time that Dracula decided to unleash his evil on humanity, and it was the first time he faced a Belmont in combat. The Netflix original is tremendously faithful to the source material, despite Castlevania 3 being a Nintendo game without too much of a story, but they managed to pull elements from other games in the series.

Like Dracula’s motivations for his hate of humans.

For example, the death of Liza, the catalyzer for Dracula's rampage, was pulled out straight out of Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

The only difference is that we get to see the whole gruesome scene.

If you are a fan of the series, you will be delighted with all the references and attention to details in the show.

I mean, look at this!!

Castlevania, to set the story in motion, did something interesting and dedicated the first episode to introduce Dracula. It fleshes out Dracula's motivations for what he's doing against humanity, and it made us sympathize with him. Given the situation, most of us will say “Yeah! Kill the bastards”, but at the same time the episode does a great job showing us the consequences of Dracula's wrath, with the mutilation of the Innocents, children and babies alike, and it makes us think “This is too much”. 

You would be pissed too.

This was a fantastic episode, and it gave us a great villain, one that doesn’t do evil for evil’s sake but because of the pain that humanity caused him. Also, it introduces our second antagonist, the church. The Bishop of Gresit is indisputably responsible for what has befallen upon the land thanks to his thirst for power. In his quest to cleanse the land of unholy things he burned the wrong person at the stake. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he promptly found scapegoats to pinpoint the blame, like the speakers, I will talk about them later, and the Belmont family

.

This guy!

The following episodes are dedicated to introduce our heroes and to set the events of the next season in motion. Trevor Belmont is our reluctant hero, he spends most of his time just trying to get drunk, trying to forget how his family has been treated despite their service against the forces of darkness, but at the end, he can’t let the suffering continue and accepts the call.

And he just got kicked in the balls

Sypha Belnades, a spellcaster, and granddaughter of the elder of the speakers, who are a group of nomad scholars that only pass their knowledge through oral stories. Finally, Adrian Tepes, also known as Alucard. The son of Dracula that wishes to protect humanity to honor his mother's memories.

Hmm.. something is missing...

 The fight choreographies are excellent and the fact that they recreated fights from an eight-bit game and they managed to adapt them to animation so well show the love they have for the franchise.

Bullseye!!

In the game after fighting a cyclops, you free Sypha from a statue, and that is recreated perfectly here. Before Alucard joins your party you had beat him in a boss fight. If there’s anything that fans love it is when their adaptations are faithful to the source material! This is a video game adaptation, and even though they took some liberties with the story, they gave us what we always wanted.

Alucard literally uses moves from the Symphony of the night in this fight.

I can spend days nerdgasm-ing over the series, but it does have some flaws, but all of my complaints bring me to one point. The fact that we only see Dracula for one episode or that we don’t see much of his relationship with his wife before the tragic events of the series. The lack of character development for Alucard. The fact we haven’t talked about the legendary whip the “Vampire Killer”, and missing characters from the game like Grant. All of these complaints come down to time, the first season if you wanna call it that, is only four episode long!

Hello, there magic user! I guess I don’t need this silly wall climbing pirate anymore.

This show will leave you wanting more and with a bunch of unanswered questions and that’s not good. Fear not my friends because a second season has been announced and let's just hope that it meets the expectation that this first “season” left us with.

Four episodes though!?

Well, there is one complaint that doesn’t relate to the length of the series and that’s the music. Castlevania is known for its amazing soundtrack and you mean to tell me you couldn’t get a single classic in this show? Come on man! Despite those shortcomings, the series was enjoyable, and if you're a fan of Castlevania this show is just going to be awesome for you! So what were your thoughts on Netflix’s Castlevania series? Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Goodbye, for now, my friends.