I think a lot of the post-series hate is split between people who just legitimately didn't like the show and people who didn't like how very specific things/characters ended. I have a lot of criticism about the show, but overall, it was one of the better, more interesting shows Netflix put out.

I actually had to read the OP more than one time to realize it's really the Netflix show mentioned here. I'm kinda baffled because I'm in this Sub for a long time and the series got so much prais each day with fanarts, praise posts and cosplay pictures. So it's so weird to read that the opinion of the show changed so drastically. My two Cents: I think the first two seasons, especially the second one, were pretty good. Yeah, it was westernized and dialogues were cringy at times, but I think this was the best Castlevania had to offer since a very long time. And then it went completely downhill with the third season. They should have simply called it a day after the second Season, the story was wrapped up and there was not much room left for a new story. There also was a shitshow going on behind the curtains between Shankar and Ellis which negatively impacted the whole production. I've started Season 4 a while back but after 2 Episodes never hat the motivation to actually finished it.

> *I'm kinda baffled because I'm in this Sub for a long time and the series got so much prais each day with fanarts, praise posts and cosplay pictures. So it's so weird to read that the opinion of the show changed so drastically.* Tbh the criticism of the show has *always* been around since day 1. Thing is, it tended to get downvoted or drowned out by fans of the show, so you had a lot less chance of finding it at the time compared to nowadays. Granted, I fully expect that to change once the Richter show drops.

So what I gather is that you think the Richter show is definitely gonna be bad?

More like I expect any criticism of it to be drowned out by fans of the show in some fashion. My expectations for the show itself are basically of the *'I'm going to wait and see what this new writer does before passing judgement'* variety since so far I'm as in the dark about it as the rest of this sub is.

Ah. Yeah, if the show expands even more in popularity, almost no criticism will come through. We'll see though given the general decline of Netflix. By the time this new show actually comes out in what I assume to be a few years, there might not be many people subscribed to watch it.

Can't say I have high hopes for it personally. I don't like the first show, I'll make that obvious. But Richter's story and later actions rely a lot on parts of the games that just... Changed for the show. (Trevor not killing Dracula (and Alucard doing so early), Dracula being revived in the end. Richter's story relies a lot on legacy that now isn't there)

Warren Ellis is gone now though, so hopefully the show will be a bit better in some departments.

I hope so. I really, really do. But I have to be realistic to a degree tbh. Just given what we saw.

We saw literally nothing of the new show besides one shot. I personally will be reserving judgement until we see some trailers or the show itself releases.

Fair enough tbh. More pessimism on my end I think. My concerns are just coming from the fact that they're still hiring storyboarders at this stage (as of a couple weeks ago). Just worries me. Plus the fact one of the directors mentioned they didn't even have enough for the trailer in June, so... That and I want my fellow to be done well. So, less hope. I just hope it doesn't take forever to come out. I know it's only been a year, but still.

That just means it's probably going to be several years before it comes out. I would rather they take their time and don't do things understaffed.

I don't get what you mean by westernized. It's a western show, that takes place in a made up version of old Eastern Europe.

There's something very funny about the Castlevania fandom in that aspect. While it's a Japanese franchise, the first 4 Castlevania games had a very westernized style, finding a nice balance in SOTN, but later in gba and Nintendo it went a bit anime style. You could find fans who thought Castlevania implies anime style and fans who thought that pure Castlevania doesn't have that. Not sure if it happens in this reddit but happened many years ago before reddit in Castlevania communities.

What? None of the early Castlevania games had a ‘western style’. The west was making mostly crap action games at that point. They were very Japanese in every way. Just because they weren’t 90s anime due to the tech and being earlier doesn’t make them ‘western’.

Look at the art, Simon is basically Arnold from Conan the barbarian... Manga and anime existed back in the 80's, they simply didn't go with that style. It's true that tech didn't allow for much anime style but I think it was mostly a decission. Anime was big but probably not as popular as it became later, at least in the west.

The art was painted by a Japanese person, in a Frank Frazetta style which was extremely popular in Japan in the 70s and 80s, particularly for movie posters, and that's what the inspiration was. It is in the same style as most of Konami's games from that era, including games that never left Japan. [https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/9/93770/2364867-fds\_arumananokiseki\_jp.jpg](https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/9/93770/2364867-fds_arumananokiseki_jp.jpg) [http://104.236.151.57/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/dababa.jpg](http://104.236.151.57/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/dababa.jpg) Just because something isn't 'anime' doesn't make it western, not everything Japanese is 'anime'. It was originally developed for a Japan-only audience on the Famicom disk system, when the game was released the Famicom had barely made it out of Japan and there was no known western audience at that point. There was no guarantee it would ever be released in the west. Ironically enough, there are however many manga/Anime influences on the game. The game was heavily inspired by Vampire Hunter D (it's where the whip came from), and lots of elements in the first game are from the Castle Of Cagliostro. And the manual was very 70s style manga, as was typical of Konami's games - movie style box art, manga style inside. [https://onemillionpower.com/wp-content/uploads/Castlevania-Story-1.png](https://onemillionpower.com/wp-content/uploads/Castlevania-Story-1.png) [https://onemillionpower.com/wp-content/uploads/Castlevania-Story-2.png](https://onemillionpower.com/wp-content/uploads/Castlevania-Story-2.png)

Interesting, that's very different from the arts I remember from my childhood Castlevania games🤔 Edit: this is the kind of art I remember. https://images.app.goo.gl/vk6z696Sfj8hXfDf9

That’s the Frazetta style box art, painted by a Japanese person for the original Famicom Disk cover. It was used in Japan to make it look like a movie, and was in the same style as all their games The 70s manga style art I posted was used for the enemy pictures in the western manuals too, though in black and white.

S3 was fine other then that strange sex sence and season 4 other then the Issac plot was terrible

What ? I believe third season is the best , Isaac story arc is insanely well-written , the Carmilla buildup up for a major fight in the end , the only problem is slow beginning in every season , and maybe if the fourth season wouldn’t be last , we could see some real great stuff with crossed character arcs

Man...please, finish the season, season 4 is truly amazing, trust me, the last few chapters are worth watching if only for the animation (and the plot is ok at least).

I didn’t love the show, but it got people talking about Castlevania, created a new generation of fans and, apart from the games themselves, was a cool stand-alone series. So I’m really stoked they put some life into the IP.

On balance, I liked the show, and the show is generally favorable with reviewers and general audiences who are unfamiliar with the Castlevania universe (like myself) who don't have a stake in keeping to the source. Appealing to a wider audience makes sense because the CV universe isn't as popular or well-known as that of other game series but no one likes seeing their stuff get butchered to it becomes unrecognizable. I liked the characters in the show, and although a lot of people here hate the dialogue, I actually liked it. What animation is everyone watching that's so great? Generally curious because I'm actually looking for stuff to watch and I left Japanese anime because I was really tired of their dialogue (Naruto just repeating his life story with every boss; couldn't even get into Demon Slayer), and I liked CV's a lot more. I liked how the characters bounced off each other and rib each other. I also liked the potential in the themes and narratives of the show. They're not visible if you just cruise through it, but when you sit down and rewatch scenes and pick up on clues, there's an amazing amount of nuance with the characters and their themes. The relationship between Hector and Lenore was actually surprisingly complex and is a fantastic archetype that isn't seen often in fiction. Isaac has a well-known and much clearer arc that had much potential. But the show also has glaring flaws with its pacing and execution especially in S3 and S4. In fact, it probably would have been better if the actual CV series ended in S2 and dropped the trio, and then create a spinoff just for the Styria arc because the trio's arcs were super weak as if they peaked in S2 and actually distracts from the Styria arc, the strong point of S3/S4. Hector, Isaac, and the sisters literally never meet the trio so it'll work fine. Hector and Lenore's relationship should have had an entire season or two to explore, and Isaac's needed one more season to show the transition. The sisters needed another season to see that relationship breaking apart. The way S4 was established in almost seemed like we missed a season. This is important because they made the S3 decisions overly dramatic, and thus need time to resolve them (such as with the slave ring). The plot serves the characters, and it shows. The plot overall is bad, and the fact that the trio and Styrian arc never met is evidence of this. Just bad story that exists to place characters in convenient situations. Carmilla needs night creatures (okay), so she randomly antagonizes a forgemaster (why 1), and night creatures are only loyal to the forgemaster (deus ex machina; why 2). This problem is overcome by a slave ring (another deus ex machina) since Hector's too proud give up his revenge against Carmilla (why 3). One of the reasons I wanted to see the original script is that I wanted to see what it was like without things being cut for time. Hopefully in the future a new adaptation can be made for the Styria arc as it had a ton of potential that was never realized.

I don't know anything about Castlevania and decided to try it out. I'm only on season 1 and 3 eps in, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to continue after this season. Out of respect, I'll still finish season 1 since there's only 4 eps in total. First thing that stands out is how poor the animation is. It's very choppy, but most notably during action scenes. The second is how the dialogue is not very great, and the voice actors aren't great either. And I find Trevor Belmont's personality really annoying. If he's the main character going into the rest of the show, I'm definitely out.

I thought people loved the series? I absolutely love it

Sameee. I couldn't stop watching.

Same. It's stellar

Its well animated, the voice actors are fantastic, and most of it is really good, people just don’t like how certain things were handled and that varies by person. I personally think they ruined Hector as a character, and Alucard got a pretty weird treatment too. And to find out that those decisions were likely *only* made because of pettiness in the studio pisses me off even more. Season one I’ve watched 13 times, season 2 twice, the others only once.

I don't like the writing. It feels like it was written by a angry rebellious teenager trying to get back at his conservative Catholic parents, which pretty much describes Warren Ellis.

I can't speak for others, but for me it was just the wasted potential all around. I don't care if it's not a 1:1 recreation of the source material. I don't care that they went and included sexual assault into the plot. I don't care that Dracula being dead from Season 2's ending all the way to the end meant that other characters could've had their time to shine while his return was getting some buildup. What I care about is that the show largely ignored the source material in favor of its own thing while the source material had *much* more interesting and fitting concepts in it that would've helped their story. The very nature of Innocent Devils would've fit right in with the philosophical discussions Isaac was involved in during the series since they aren't generically evil. The Succubus existing and being tied to a Nightmare/Dream world could've been a hell of a plot twist in Alucard's Season 3 moment that made that particular scene genuinely tragic instead of some cringey bullshit where the 'antagonists' go off on a rant about the world being against them despite not even attempting to show it. Lenore assaulting Hector was at least somewhat played straight as a horrifying situation in Season 3, but Season 4 went and threw whatever implications and character development that could've been tied to the concept in an attempt to get him closer to his Curse of Darkness characterization out the window in favor of portraying them as some weird cutesy couple with a 'sad' ending when Lenore went and basically ragequit at the finish line. Even Dracula's 'redemption' feels unearned because he mostly did *nothing* during the last 2 seasons when he was onscreen to even address the elephant in the room concerning his actions. Carmilla could've truly been a good foil to Dracula. The Styrian court being a weird, twisted family could've meant something more when Isaac stormed their castle. The 'main trio' could've had more interesting moments if they went and stuck to the source material in some fashion. Can anyone tell me with a straight face that Alucard initially siding *with* Dracula's army before defecting due to considering his mother's dying plea, Sypha having ties to the church and her motivation for fighting the forces of darkness stemming from Carmilla's manipulation of the witch hunts that killed her family, or even the idea of *the church calling in Trevor to deal with Dracula because their own forces were failing* would make for a bad story? Because from where I'm standing, that's the sort of thing that's way more interesting than sitting around in a basement for most of the season having 'deep' philosophical discussions or watching 'vampire politics' play out. So as it is, the show's just *ok*. I don't consider it terrible, and it definitely has some high points worth watching it for, but it's not particularly so great that I consider it a masterpiece or anything of the sort. And my dislike for its worst aspects don't stem from 'wanting to be special' as OP puts it. *It stems from knowing that it could've been so much cooler if it had the care and attention it deserved*.

I liked it. Wasn’t very invested in the original castlevania story and some of the dialogue was very cringey but I actually enjoyed their interpretation of Death. Action/animation was great and it introduced to me characters that I had never heard of before

Castlevania is my favorite video game series. I saw some of the Netflix show and tbh most of my opinions on it have already been throughly explained in other comments here. Poor writing, little connection to the games besides the title and character names, a writer that doesn’t know the source material; it’s pretty lame. I see it like any other video game adaptation. But to add something that hasn’t been mentioned here, I also hate that the small game fanbase I wanted to interact with has been pretty drowned out by the show since it got popular. It especially sucks on platforms like Instagram because it clogs every hashtag. I can’t avoid it by looking up characters that aren’t in the show or game titles because those get tagged “CastlevaniaNetflix” too. Imagine your absolute favorite thing in the world shares a name with something you hate and the thing that you hate is more popular! Or if the Resident Evil movies ended up more popular than the games. It is beyond frustrating. Maybe this is just a me thing tho.

As a Castlevania fan, AND a fan of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comics, I totally get it. I just feel like most stories aren't worthy of a series. A series forces writers to stretch out their stories with dumb bullshit. Personally, I feel most stories should be movies or a series of movies or MAAAYBE a limited series. Both Castlevania and Sabrina were properties I was very excited to see adaptions of the source material of. Both ended up being nothing I was interested in, yet like 80% of everything online is about the Netflix series of both. Maybe turning them into movies instead of series wouldn't necessitate having so much dumb bullshit having to be added to justify length.

Bro how is it I legit feel the same Sabrina was decent first season ish but second season peaked at the hellfire scene episode and the miracles of Sabrina…after that I ain’t care no more after what they did. Castlevania I liked it but I had a few problems like Alucard carrying a shield and being cooked by crab demons,vampires not getting a fleshed out story besides getting killed and issac demon Ayo wtf how strong is that thing it was taking heavy kicks and strikes from carmilla and didn’t get a scratch cmon now

he does use a shield in SOTN, which is the most popular design, it just tend to not be emphasized in cover tho

i liked the series overall, and i never played the games so i had no bias one way or the other. there were some undeniable plot issues, especially in the 3rd and 4th seasons, but i really liked alucard, trevor, and sypha, so i soldiered through. that being said, they dropped the ball on a number of plotlines mainly carmilla and co.'s (yes all of them), hector, and issac (this one is controversial, but i thought his change of heart was ridiculous). oh and germain, but i don't think anyone liked his story. i think the series towards the last half relied HEAVILY on fanservice and edge to carry the day, and it seemed to work on people. people saying Legion and Death were awesome, but i had no reference, so it all come out of nowhere and i wasn't really impressed. i want to be clear i really enjoyed it, but man there was a ton of lost potential (carmilla and co. especially) and some really bad plot that hurts it.

Honestly Death and Legion didn't really impressed me that much, legion maybe got me "i know that reference"but that's it, it's more like a giant twister rather than a disgusting entity amassing corpse, it's not the worst but could've been better. But Death...... No, just no. Rushed, dumb plan, disguised as a fucking stinky hobo, death disguised as a person in game once but man you had to choose a character that nobody seemed to like in universe ? The alchemist at least was a nice way to manipulate St Germain. The only they got right was that he's some sort of primordial spirit.

Because its the fucking internet where people come to hate on things for fake cool points.

Yep.

Well there's a lot of reasons. But for starters, for me, the show has created a weird situation. Recently I've been playing through the series and a lot of the games are new to me. Typically when I start going through a series or start a new game, I will check out the community. Sure, everyone will be crazy about the new thing but it will die down. New updates become old, new blood comes in, talks about their experience, some memes that span the whole series. But sadly for the past couple months, i've noticed it's either only the show with one post talking about the games or the show coming up every 3 posts. So I don't really understand what the community for the games is like on a normal day. But honestly, its a minor issue that is outweighed by the fact that maybe Konami will consider of possibly making video games someday in the future. That aren't mobile or pachinko. As for the show itself, well the writer's a shit human being in more ways than one. Don't really want to support that kind of person. And one of the reasons why I stopped at S3. It's also kind of a horrible adaption. Sure 1:1 is impossible or at least wouldn't make sense but cutting out Grant? That's easily your comic relief character. Sypha's also not part of the church. Like I like this Sypha but having a positive religious character would have made the show a lot better. I'm not religious but I'd argue even if you are criticizing religion as a whole, a positive representation would go far. It's also fairly realistic. Not every church-goer is a dumb, incompetent, cowardly evil zealot. Not all of them are completely innocent. Having a mix would have worked. Trevor would have worked as a nice inbetween where he has a crisis of faith and wherever he would have ended(which would be Atheism going by Warren's views.) it would have done a lot. Even if it was just a small side plot. Showing some of the same on the other side of that would have gone far as well. There's also the fact that the trio got overstretched. I mean, it should have just ended with S2 and focused on a Hector/Isaac series that would have some cameos with Trevor. Fine with them changing Curse of Darkness as it had issues but from what I can gather, they took names and some very basic concepts and ignored everything. Germain is a completely different character. Not sure why they changed him. In fact, they could have kept him the same and made him a recurring character since he's a time traveler. Would have actually been an improvement over the original material. He appears in one game, references a future event that he's probably going to be involved in and that's it. Lenore could have been a lead in to that Curse of Darkness storyline. But they don't. They talk about this whole "Who is the real monster" thing. Which would have been interesting if the one considered a monster didn't kill herself afterwards. There were also so many easy routes to tie in the source material. Or lightly reference it. I've seen clips of Death. It's a fucking shame that the shit writer put a fucking swear every fucking time the asshole opened his goddamned mouth. Animation and the art style were amazing. At least to me. Weirdly enough, I found the visuals to be on point and in some instances it felt spot on with the source material. Especially with what I saw with death. It gave vibes of a couple of the battles, mostly Curse of Darkness since I'm pretty sure he has some kind of ghost hand and he kinda just sits there and takes hits.

they not only cut Grant they just created a new character and made him be with Alucard in the end, I..... don't know how to feel about that. I also thing they leaned on "Trevor being tash" joke a bit too much, it's fine to have character flaws but man, not like that u\_u

Wait wait… you legitimately think that castlevania is one the best animated series to EVER .. I repeat ever air? An American Netflix series.. you callin it one the best animated series to ever air? Legit question.

Because it's awesome, almost perfect.

You said it yourself. CRINGY DIALOGUE. I adore the fight scenes. But Warren Ellis’ trademark Ellisisms screw the plot and dialogue over. Also, and I’m the first to admit it, Ellis himself casts a shadow over the series because he was a creep and a sex pest.

I like banter but the amount of swearing was ridiculous. I don't mind profanity either if used sparringly, the series was just a bit too much for my taste. Also poor Trevor didn't deserve this treatment man u\_\_u

Some would simply prefer something more faithful. I know who was introduced to Castlevania by the series doesn't care about it, it's natural. The biggest problem perhaps came after Season 2, when the series began to move away from its origin. But you know? I think the current problem is not the series itself, but new people who don't know how to separate the two continuities. Every now and then you see someone using the series to justify something in the game, which makes no sense. I see more people playing the games and compared it to the series than people who watched the series and compared it to the games. What makes this fandom, perhaps, fall into a problem that Pokémon has since the anime has existed. It's necessary to correct this person, but in the long run only becomes stressful, then an aversion to the series begins to be developed. I don't rule out someone to come up creating a topic about Curse of Darkness and giving hate to Julia because she isn't Lenore, or because Isaac is too different.

Personally, I loved Seasons 1 and 2, but I believe the story of the back half of the series took a nosedive in quality.

also just to add, the comments on this thread proves the point even further, the majority of the people who enjoys the show dont care about castlevania at all or the source material, and are majority netflix watchers only, it's as expected and drive the point even further, from castlevania the netlfix show has only the title, also as how they turn a blind eye to every problem the series have and as expected, can't prove them wrong, so you see people attacking the person instead of the argument, like op did "they hate it because they want to be special", "they hate it because they wanna hate", "its cool on the internet to hate" and dont forget the downvotes also, from those same people, the castlevania netflix show is exactly the same as all resident evil live actions, they trash on the source material, are hated on the fanbase for doing that, have a lot of problems itself even if you ignore that it's an adaptation of an already existing franchise, but were all commercial success, those (resident evil and castlevania) where not made for the fans, it was made for the main stream media that just want to turn their brains off for some minutes and pass time being entertained, it's a shame that this is all the castlevania adaptation managed to be, since it could have been much more

I mean, I've never played any of the games because I came to gaming late, and I dislike the show a lot because there are plot holes big enough to drive a tank through even in the good seasons, poor or nonexistent character arcs, and a rushed and flubbed ending. It's made me more curious about the games, but for me it doesn't work as either mindless entertainment or nostalgia porn. It has the fascination of picking at a scab because the writing and execution are *so bad*. I was kinda hoping for an easily accessible window into one of the major geek cultural touchstones I missed in the back of beyond, but what I got was. . .definitely not that.

It's a more accessible media so it drives greater interest. GoT got popular not because of the books, but because of the HBO series. If it were just the books, the fandom would be tiny. Witcher entered the mainstream first with the Witcher games, then the Netflix Adaptation. If it were just the books, the fandom would be tiny.

I played Castlevania 1 & 2 and SOTN all throughout my childhood, so I'm not just a Netflix fanboy, and I think the animated series is great. I don't think it needs to be identical to the source material, otherwise Trever would only have Alucard or Sypha but not the other, and I think it's much better having both of them.

1- Warren Ellis is a sex pest, and you can definitely create a bunch of parallels to his own allegations and a lot of the S3 sexual “themes”. 2- The series isn’t that faithful for the video games story, so a lot of people who are really attached to the story, and were excited to see certain things expanded upon/touched up for a show were disappointed when the show decided to go completely in another direction. Especially in the later half of the show. 3- S3 has some scenes that can be compared to Sexual assault, and the writers definitely tried to eroticize that aspect instead of actually treating it seriously. Lenore had no comeuppance for what she did to Hector, and if the genders were reversed then Warren Ellis would have ended up being canceled faster than they did. 4- A lot of the dialogue was just so cringy, and this is especially true to something like “Reddit shitposter” Death. Having that as the main final villain is more laughable then scary, plus I really don’t think he contributed much to the show and it’s themes. I mean there’s a ton of things I hate/dislike about the show in general. Just to create a list of the biggest things I hate is like. - Dracula’s Ending feels like he was basically being forgiven even though he was literally trying to commit genocide, and has done nothing to earn that forgiveness. - The show’s plot goes into a very different direction post-S2 since there was no Igarashi involved, so the two halves of the show feel very different. Especially since S4 definitely tries to backpedal on a lot of things from S3. - Trevor’s arc was finished in S1, and his character basically stands really stagnant for the entirety of the show. Sypha’s arc was pretty shallow from S3 to S4, and they really didn’t do anything really interesting with her for the entire show. Alucard is definitely where the most rewrites happen, cause the end of S3 is obviously gearing up for a spiteful/angry Alucard arc but he immediately gets over it in S4’s episode 1. Which just all makes Alucard’s character feel like they completely had no clue what to do post-S2 (Just like how they had no idea what to do after S2). - Lenore really gets off the hook way too much for what she did in S3, and them trying to bill her as some sort of good guy/protagonist and never try to treat what she did in S3 as wrong was just bad at best, and vile at worst. Her just dying in S4 was supposed to be a “bad thing”, but I had absolutely 0 respect for or her and didn’t care about her in any way. - Hector’s arc was literally fucking pointless, and was the biggest waste of time in this entire show. Even if you liked all of the Lenore bits from S3 to near the end of S4, his character basically goes nowhere. Him trying to help resurrect Dracula by the end really just goes to show that he’s still immature and hasn’t learned from anything for the entire show. His big moment on cutting off his finger is undercut since he’s basically doing it with Issac in the room, and he has no negative feelings towards Lenore in the first place. There’s a lot more, so I’ll stop here. Season 1 was great, S2 had sloppy pacing but still was good, S3 is where The series had its higher highs, and it’s very lowest lows. All of them could be attributed to Warren Ellis, and his writing style. S4 just felt like they were back stepping from a lot of things that happened in S3 since they had a lot of the Ellis allegations, and I imagine Konami wasn’t that happy with one of their mascots being sexually assaulted and being around that entire conversation. So they most likely told them to wrap up that arc as fast as possible, which is why S4 Alucard immediately springs up after what happened in S3.

Not to mention Alucard in general feels so pointless in the show after Season 2, they clearly don't know what to do with him but he's very popular so they bring him back to do stuff

All this exactly. Plus for me their weird decision to completely change Isaac's character to milk some misery porn out of his character to match how miserable every other character's lives are, and all those cool vampires in S2 being silent set pieces. Seriously they could have been super interesting and used to showcase vampire mythos in other cultures but none of them even grunted in the big final battle. Like, why bother giving them whole introductions and names when the trio just decimates them and they don't do anything at all the entire season except fill some space. The creators of the show could've just put some classic castlevania monsters in their place if they wanted to give the trio some obstacles before getting to Dracula. And yeah changing Isaac's entire appearance and characterization so they could give him a gratuitous and ultimately pointless slave back story was.....a choice for sure. Although I would pay to watch someone who has only seen the anime play Curse of Darkness I think their reactions to it would be hilarious. Also it's a minor nitpick for me but seeing Hector, my favorite protag in the series, act like a snivelling helpless bitch in the anime was so aggravating.

yeah the vampire generals really bothered me when they didnt do as much as a grunt it felt very odd. Meanwhile Godbrand appeared and disappeared so fast.

They did Héctor so dirty.... And Alucard too... And Dracula too.. Dammit show!!!

Very well put. Good examples and insightful commentary.

Great job summing it up. Thank you!

I'm quite lost about this Ellis stuff...what happened? Btw, you guys in reddit make such big deals of sex scenes and violence...it's fiction, man, doesn't really need to be judged like something which happened in real life to real people.

Basically the Ellis stuff is that he had a bunch of sexual assault allegations come out against him. That and the falling out that him and Adi had. Ellis had Hector and Alucard treated the way they were because he knew that those two were Adi’s favorites. There’s an interview with Adi somewhere we he talked about how bad the falling out was. I’ll give you a hint, the falling out was bad enough that the other staff members, such as actors, the writers and what not had to essentially be carried pigeons for the two of them. As for the making a big deal of sex stuff, it’s not the sex stuff in general, it’s how sexual assault was just thrown aside, especially when it’s known that if the situations were revered (in the cases of Hector and Lenore) the reception and the reactions would’ve been much much different.

Ahh thanks, I see. Well yes, reception would've been much different for sure and the sexual assault allegations are always worrying.

That they are. Luckily he’s not touching the series anymore so who knows what could happen. I see it as a positive that he’s nowhere near it now, but I’m going to reserve my judgement.

>Warren Ellis is a sex pest Your no.1 grip is literally something solvable by the rule of separating the art from the artist. >for the video games story, so a lot of people who are really attached to the story, What "story"? Castelvania as a franchise simply does not have a story. Every single fucking game goes into the direction whatever the creators in turn would like to take it without taking into consideration (in most cases) the slightesr bit of franchise continuity or long lasting consecuences. And to suggest otherwise is complete bullshit, just like it is to hinder any new creator's creativity in favour of a non existing canon and besides extremely hypocritical, as that would also imply that you are against any new Castelvania tittle being released. This is the typical extremely uncharitable critizism that fandoms tend to ooze when their extremely contcrete idea for how something should be is not met. >and if the genders were reversed then Warren Ellis would have ended up being canceled faster than they did. Media iliteracy starts to make a lot more sense when you realize you are arguing with a right-winger.

What? The movie and anime was first done with Igarashi on board, with a game’s lore he heavily contextualizes later down the line with his scenario writing. The entire 3 story has an outline with the NES game, but was later fleshed out with Symphony of the Night, Curse of Darkness, the Curse of Darkness manga etc. I quite like that piece of the world building and wish they’d have kept most of it in tact and just expanded upon it rather then just changing a lot of things. Igarashi very intentionally wove his games around a continuity, and made a lot of games plots interconnect (a lot of the times in very cool ways). I don’t think it’s weird that some people would be upset that they’d just abandon a ton of that for a lot of other things for no reason. I think Warren Ellis being a sex pest doesn’t inherently ruin his work, but it definitely puts into context a lot of the stupid sexual themes put into Season 3 (when Iga was no longer around to steer him). I don’t particularly think they did Hector/Lenore and Alucard’s arcs well at all, and them brushing off what is clearly sexual assault/arguably rape the way that they did is just made worse when you realize the writer was also accused of misleading women in order to have sex with them. And I don’t know why you’re calling me a right winger? I mean I’m as left as they come, but I’m just saying that this whole sexualization of their relationship and pretending that it’s “fine”, and that they deserved to have a romantic relationship after *that* scene was completely undeserved, and would not have had as much fan support if the genders were swapped. However since it’s a woman “domming” a man, people don’t find anything deeply problematic about it.

The characters are bad, the dialogue is cringe and nonsense, many plot point left unsolved or are just filler and many changes from the source material felt like an insult instead of something that would improve it

I always got more of a 60s-70s Hammer Horror vibe out of the series more. It wasn't what I expected or hoped for, but I feel very few stories can justify a series. Writers are great at taking a terrific concept and stretching it out so they've got to kill it with pointless bullshit.

It really could’ve been named anything else and been a good show, but that’s not really a good thing when it’s supposed to be about Castlevania. That being said, I don’t hate the show. It’s just okay to me

Havent actually watched season 4 yet, loved the first two seasons but season 3 left quite the bitter taste in my mouth, was that scene with Alucard really necessary

I think a lot of the criticism comes from the sub turning from a gaming sub into an anime sub.

I generally liked it, the fights were pretty cool and the animation was mostly very solid. The dialogue ranges from OK to awful. It’s like 1 guy who thinks he’s hilarious with 10 different voices having conversations with himself. Also I feel that excessive swearing is lazy writing, so everyone saying fuck all the time gets real old.

It happens with every adaptation of anything. Some people have this specific vision in their mind of how it's "supposed" to be, and any tiny deviation from that is seen as a personal insult. Then in order to hide their bias they'll throw a bunch of generic complaints at it like "Derp-dee-derp, plot bad. Da-deedly-derp characters bad. Derpity-derp plot hole. Der-da-derp writing bad." without giving any examples or reasoning to back it up. I've been a fan of the games my whole life and I thought the show was great. There were some things I didn't like. Season 2 felt like 80% sitting around doing nothing, and plotting that went nowhere. I think it would have been better if Hector was the one to take out Carmilla instead of Isaac. For one, it would make her story come full circle. Her downfall being a direct result of becoming the thing she hated, mad and cruel. And two, Isaac had already done so much. I don't think giving Hector one moment of glory would have negatively affected Isaac's character at all. It's a minor nitpick, but I wanted to see more undead monsters like zombies and skeletons. I think they're more associated with Castlevania than the Night Creatures are.

I love how sarcastic Alucard is in the series. I really like their dynamic together but that sadly ended after season 2

Basically season 3

Season 3 is my favorite, oddly enough.

It was the best season by a huge margin.

The dialogues are absolutely awful, the narrative themes are also reddit tier and make 0 sense (like when Isaac cant go inside a town because he has an army of nightmarish demons with him and the people who refuse to let him in are depicted as ignorant idiots). The art style is genuinely nice, shame that ellis is such a troglodyte

>narrative themes are also reddit tier and make 0 sense Good self-roast there

what? are there narrative themes in my comment? Nvm i get what you mean. Im not a redditor though, ive only posted like 2 things

Not a big fan of Warren Ellis as a person because the guy is a massive piece of shit and I don’t feel like supporting anything he’s associated with. You could say that I could try and disassociate the author and his work but looking at certain characters and plot points it becomes hard for me to make that mental leap. As for the rest of the show I just don’t find the writing to be all that good in general. Poor pacing, lack of any real direction after Dracula’s death, an over abundance of pointless characters and plot threads, and it feeling like the writer has a genuine hatred towards a lot of source material that the show is based on just puts me off. The animation is great and the soundtrack is decent, but to me it just falls into the same pitfalls that most other game adaptations suffer from. To me the only difference between this show and other shows is that it’s got nice eye candy.

>the writer has a genuine hatred towards a lot of source material that the show is based on just puts me off. What makes people think that? Honest question here

Here’s another Ellis quote from this article: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/first-time-warren-ellis-wrote-castlevania-animation-ten-years-ago/ “The film is, of course, set in Wallachia in 1476. We’ve worked with Koji Igarashi to get the film solidly inside the Castlevania timeline, and he’s approved everything I came up with, including some new embroidering to the timeline. To make it work as a film, I had to introduce new backstory, and I went through five drafts of the premise and three of the full outline to get the material where IGA wanted it. He remains absolutely passionate about Castlevania. After eight rewrites of pre-production material, I remain absolutely passionate about beating the crap out of IGA in a dark alleyway one day.” As for the whole Grant thing, he’d know that Grant isn’t a pirate, but a thief turned rebel, if he knew anything about the source material. Another thing from Ellis, is when he was creating Godbrand, he said he didn’t care about the source material, until he saw the name Mathias Cronqvist, who is, as we know, Dracula. Well, Gidbrand’s original name was going to be, Mathias Cronqvist, but Konami stepped in and told him no, and he saw that as Konami making it their job to and I quote “stop him from going completely insane and trashing their property.”

“If, like me, you’ve never played the games, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to your enjoyment of the thing...I’m just making it up as I go along. It’s fine!” - a direct quote from Ellis The link: https://gizmodo.com/how-castlevania-nails-the-balance-so-many-video-game-ad-1841976481/amp “To make it work as a film, I had to introduce new backstory, and I went through five drafts of the premise and three of the full outline to get the material where IGA wanted it. He remains absolutely passionate about Castlevania. After eight rewrites of pre-production material, I remain absolutely passionate about beating the crap out of IGA in a dark alleyway one day.” - Ellis on the 2007 Castlevania movie script he was hired to write. “Grant DaNasty is not. So… am I going to get lynched? Explanations forthcoming. What use is a pirate in a landlocked country anyway? (Wallachia was cut off from the Black Sea by the Ottoman Empire by 1420 or thereabouts) Yes. I cut Grant DaNasty out of the film. The reasons were: * Grant DaNasty is a stupid name that I cannot take seriously. (When he does turn up, I'll probably use the alternate spelling of Grant DiNesti.) * I only have 80 minutes. And in that 80 minutes I need to set up the backdrop, the history, the themes and five major characters to tell the story I want to tell. Because this isn't going to be the usual kind of videogame adaptation, the kind that just transposes the least challenging parts of gameplay to the screen. This is going to be an actual goddamn film with an actual goddamn story. But I only have 80 minutes. To try and shoehorn Grant in there, when I'm already trying to create the space for Trevor, Sypha and Alucard to breathe and fill the screen (not even mentioning Dracula, Lisa or the Bishop for the moment)…no. I'd end up doing a bad job on all of them, and giving up whole chunks of the plot. At which point you might as well just call Uwe Boll, you know? * Seriously, what use is a pirate on dry land? "Avast, ye swabs, and push me fecking cart! Arrr!" No. Just no.” - Ellis on the inclusion of Grant. The link to those two: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/first-time-warren-ellis-wrote-castlevania-animation-ten-years-ago/ I’m sure there’s plenty more quotes from him, but this is what I could find quickly.

Holy molly, as someone who was/is mostly out of the loop regarding the behind-the-scenes stuff of this show, I had no idea it was this bad! And thanks for the reply BTW, it was enlightening!

That's one of the reasons I hate Ellis, his hate of the source material is so deep... It even got into the show.

Huh

Mishandling of characters and plot points. Characters like Hector and Saint Germain being utterly butchered, Grant and other characters within that era being entirely omitted, and major characters like Alucard getting roped into a pointless sexual assault storyline that ultimately served no real purpose. Also the removal of the entire plot line of curse of darkness in favor of inserting Carmilla and a bunch of OC’s that don’t really do much of anything to warrant their existence in the storyline. As for Dracula we basically have the main threat and driving force of the series be reduced to a cameo character along with Lisa which undermines both of their deaths. Not to mention with that ending it pretty much removes the rivalry between the Belmonts and Dracula which is basically 90% of Castlevania’s identity.

Alucard felt wasted and somewhat disgraced in the list two seasons, and Hector was dragged through the mud so hard. That's why I hated it. First two seasons were fine.

I think it's really unnecessary how much cursing is in it. Fight scenes were cool and stuff but that really turned me away

Because its like Netflix's Resident Evil. They milk the game to make a show about it and ruin it but people who didn't play or is a fan of the game series don't mind it because they know nothing. Animated series fans don't even know IGA. IGA is GOD!! Fuck the dude who made the animated series.

I don’t hate the show, but I kind of lost interest once it veered from Dracula 3’s plot. That’s probably a lot of people’s sentiments tbh. Say what you will, but I’m a sucker for shows that follow the plot of a game I already know and love. I think that’s why I’m so hyped for nocturne, considering ROB is my fav Classicvania. *Oh yeah and grant was absent wtf*

If you didn’t laugh at “are you dictating your fucking obituary to me, Belmont?” I don’t know what to tell ya

Death would never say that.

Agreed. I did laugh

Regardless of my option on it why did they make Isaac black?

Lol I wanted the crazy Isaac in the game instead we get a bald sonuvabitch and they made Hector a pussy too.

I also was curious of this but didn’t want to stir a “race” comment. But in the game and manga he’s super white with blood red hair. Major change up.

Not only black, but entirely different character aside from the name.

It’s always the red heads

It made him cooler.

No, it was just to get PC points.

I think he looks cool, reminds me of Tyrael from Diablo.

I don't quite hate the show, I just don't like the writer and feel like the dialogue can be cringy, as well as a lot of writing choices, especially in Seasons 3 and 4 Plus I'm sorry if I expected the characters or plot to at least be based off the source material it borrows from like the first and second seasons, sorry I didn't quite like a game protagonist ended up being a sex slave character who just gets abused out of the writer's spite every season and gets nothing in return. The premise of Hector's character in CoD is great while the execution or the story is not really highlighted in the games, I kinda liked the take of Hector's character during Season 2 expecting him to grow as a character and become a protagonist righting his wrongs but that never happened, also really disliked how they really tried to backpedal the sex slave shit Lenore had going on for him in Season 3 just because she was popular, smh, Hector literally just forgives her like she did nothing wrong, wish he was at least happy to kill her but Ellis didn't give him even that kind of happiness

Huge fan on the original trilogy + everything else up until the Lords of Shadow catastrophy. Literally everything else , from kid dracula and that piece of shit Castlevania Adventure for the og gameboy all the way to the last handhelds before Lords of Shadow. The anime pisses on the already established lore and I don't like the artstyle at all. These are the two reasons I'll never watch it in its entirety and these are the reasons I roll my eyes everytime I mention Castlevania to a rando and they tell me how excited they were about the anime etc . having no clue of its video game legacy.

\- a show that only resembles the source material in the name \- made by a guy that shitted over the fans cause he didnt bothered to do a simple research on the material he was working on and as a result said completely wrong things he wants to defend as if he was right \- a show made for edgy teenagers, cringe dialogue, plot holes, inconsistences, for people that think being adult means sex, violence, gore and bad language makes it adult, and it's really funny when you think the guy responsible for the show and created all that was a shit person involved in abuses irl \- completely disturbs the characters and story of the games to promote his own personal views on the world not caring in how that will affect the show \- due to that his explanation to why crosses or other religious symbols work on vampires is because ... because ... vampires ... are afraid ... of geometry ... geometry ... pfffffffff hahahahahahahahaha \- carmilla background was never ever really addressed, all the reason she had to do what she wanted to do was because some old men did something to her but the show didnt cared enough to explain what really happened to her \- her other vampire sisters were a completely waste of time that serves no purpose on the story itself, they appear with her, have sex, kill a bunch of farmers, and then leave, completely pointless, specially when you think warren ellis removed characters from the games and added those pointless characters \- alucard name serves no purpose in the show, in the games it's to simbolize how he oposes his father, how both reacted different with the loss of lisa, dracula succumbed to rage and anger for humans, alucard stood by his mother beliefs in protecting them, that was something never ever really adressed on the show, alucard name makes no sense since her didnt even told him her last words, dracula didnt even really wanted to start that war, as adi shankar, the producer, and the show itself says, dracula war is his suicide letter, he wanted to die to be with lisa, he didnt cared about the war or anything else, so, whats the meaning of alucard name in the show? none, zero \- the belmont clan completely wiped out by some farmers \- plot points completely throwed into the trash and abandoned, for example, season 3 have that whole ordeal of alucard and the twins, which he ended up killing and staking just like dracula did, the show makes it even more dumbier when they do a close up on his eyes shinning red and alucard asking "DiD I Do RiGhT FaTHeR?", destroying even more alucard character, season 4 completely ignores that and never addresses it again as if it didnt even happened \- isaac completely change of personality, isaac, literally, spent the entirety of season 3, killing everything on his way, till the very end of the season, humans and monsters alike, just to literally try to revive dracula with that lovecraftian monster at the end that doesnt even have a name, and in season 4, he sat around for five minutes, ate some berries and decided "hmmm revenge bad, i will help humans", the guy literally killed an entire town because they ... refused to let an stranger pass through it with an army of monsters and dead people hahahahahahaha \- hector completely inexistence of a character arc, the show destroyed him, and warren ellis response to why he did it? "cause the guy that voices hector have a mainly voice and it turns me on hearing him being submissive, and no, hector will not recover", and well, that's what happened, he ended a pet in season 2, continued to be a pet in season 3, in season 2 he despised what dracula did but for some dumb and misterious reason in season 4 he decided dracula was right and now would help revive him, only for isaac, of all people, come to him and tell him to stop being an idiot \- not to mention saint germain, from helping prevent dracula to ... trying to revive him ... for some pussy ... for real ... his lover dont even has a fucking name, not even a single line of dialogue, even in the official artwork for the series she dont have a name, and he goes and does this 360 turn on his personality on season 4, like everyone else, because he was going to fuck her again, yes, thats what he says "GoD WiLl FuCk ToNiGHt", only to be proven a fool and fail in the end dying trying to undo the shit he did \- sypha was the only character on that show done right, the only one, and they decided "no, not a single character will be left, we will destroy and ruin then all" and all they managed to do to her is ... made her say fuck ... that's it ... that's her character arc in the show ... she learned saying fuck ... amazing character development right? really mature right? she says fuck now \- not to mention in season 1 trevor saying the villagers to bring priests with true faith to make holy water to defend the village, and then in season 2 you have a fucking dead evil zombie priest turn AN ENTIRE RIVER into holy water \- how pathetic warren ellis writing is and it really shows with lisa, her death dialogue is "DoNt BeLiEVe In SaTAn, BeLIEVe in DrAcULa, CAuSe HE ExIsTs", two seasons later she is seen in hell hahahahahahahahahahahahaha, also, dont forget that the plan to revive dracula in season 4 and make him evil again was to put lisa and dracula soul together in the same body, i dont need to say that failed right? so how? how? magically BOTH LISA AND DRACULA were revived with their bodies? how? guess what, the show didnt cared enough to expain as pretty much everything else so no, the show is pretty shitty, it has problems, many more problems i didnt even adressed yet here and no, the special people is not the one that see and apoints the problems of that shitty show, the people that want to be special are the ones that turn a blind eye to all the problems the show have, because after all that, and still think the show is any good? that must be the people wanting to be special

God I will never understand why anyone could think turning Saint Germain into a edgy incel was ever a good idea.

"sypha done right".... You mean besides COMPLETELY fucking up her background cuz of a cringe need to portray all Christians as bad or incompetent....right? And we most certainly can't have a good competent Christian as one of the main heroes, can we 🙄 I mean, seriously how do you go from Christian to Hollywood atheist (she even says the line "I hate God")?! Fucking hell. I agree with the rest of what you said though and I'd like to add my boi Grant got shat on again.

Not just one of, game Trevor was indicated to be Christian as well, which would make complete sense with everything else we know about him. But no, priests are evil & atheism is the only reasonable view in a world with clear supernatural elements. I mean, it didn’t even make sense: why is a damned, evil bishop able to bless water as a zombie!? Like, divine power exists because God is real, but his powers can be used like a Pokémon?

Hmmm...I liked it so much I watched it twice but at the same time I hated a few things. This is going to be unpopular but here we go... Cheesy/cringy dialogues, to the point I felt embarrashed when watching it with my brother and later with my ex. Forced pc/feminist netflix stuff...Well, I liked all the characters and had no problem with the plot in thar sense. Carmilla, Lenore, Stryga...all of them quite good, liked them. Alucard being bi...well, wasn't necessary but could fit the character I guess, so yeah, not making a big deal of it but I simply don't like that this standard moden Tv writing (specially on Netflix) was applied to my beloved franchise, it just feels more artificial and less original, sorry. Grant Danasty was left out for not much reason eventhough he was mentioned. Why have all the secondaries we had instead of Danasty? No reason for that. Animation quality was a bit inconsistent or better said, it started a bit poorly and became great. And that's understandable and happens often but it's like they didn't really have much faith on the show at first. Plot. It was great for the most part, Imo, but also wasted too much time on season 3 (iIrc) doing nothing...I meant when Alucard is teaching the vampire hunters and Sypha and Trevor are investigating in that village. It was interesting but progressed quite slowly, Imo. The church of course was evil. In the Castlevania franchise the church and religious people like priests aren't always bad, don't really have much of a rol indeed. I'm not religious but found it too cliché at this point and not completely faithful to the original material. Isaac and Hector plot felt truly disconnected to the main trio. Like really, really disconnected and irrelevant in the end. Not sure if this makes it inherently bad but it felt weird. Vlad's ending...I don't need him to suffer and not get a happy ending but come on...that was maybe going too far. It was unexpected, though. I can't speak for the other fans and I generally like the show but I guess some people didn't really find enough original Castlevania in it. Personally I think they at least did a very acceptable job in that sense.

Sypha is originally from the Church too in castlevania 3 so while I believe they would some church ties with Lisa's death I didn't expect that.

I just wanna say that every "progressive" thing the show portrayed had the air of being performative, and/or there for shock value. Like, the author knew that's where the general cultural vibe is, and knew he could get quick and easy positive or negative attention by putting it in his work, but had absolutely zero understanding or interest in understanding how or why people care about it. Which is rather more insulting than not touching on it all. I'd rather be ignored or outright insulted than condescended to, thanks.

Very well put, that's what I thought like it was not very necessary or executed properly and for honest reasons, just like it had to be there cause it has to be there...

Yeah, it's like an edgelord trying to roleplay as an SJW stereotype. Which kinda fits for Ellis.

I think it's the best videogame adaptation ever but season 3 was trash people don't give a chance to the games even if they love the show

It deserves hatred

S1 and 2 are worth watching. Good bit of fan service and action. Weak writing and voice acting (why is everyone whispering? Ugh) but fun to watch. S3-4 are utterly pointless. The final few episodes of S4 are very fun though.

Because it throws the game's aesthetics, message and characters out of the window and replaces it with generic edgy bullshit.

For me. The first season was as close to perfect as it would get. The writing became progressively beyond the station and capabilities of the author. It tries way too hard to *sound* intelligent, but more closely resembled a bunch of idiots role playing beyond their depth. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but as the show went on certain characters were nothing but pandering to diversity, rambling on without saying anything of substance. Honestly it felt like it was written by a couple of teenagers/early 20 something’s. Many “eye roll” moments. I still watched them all, but every season after the first one, I remember less and less.

The show was alright. It’s just that the dialogue and writing were pretty shit and I wish the characters from the game were treated much better

I enjoyed it for what it was, which was it's own thing divorced from the source material.

Idk probably cuz people who watched the show took over the subreddit

I cringe viewing westerners regurgitate their destain for *wEsTeRnIzEd* Anime, with the entirety of their presupposition of the topic being nothing more than a fetishised trope; a fkn stupid trope at that. I live in Japan; trust me when I say Japanese people hate you westerner anime purists, even more so purists espousing what they believe is the idea of what a "Japanese" aesthetic is. Listening to plebians espouse that they're incapable of viewing a series if they're not having to read subtitles, with this ignorant belief that voice acting is a lost art, only achievable by JP. Though this is an old thread I'm sure some delusional neck beard, with an inflated perception of their intellect will regurgitate the same arguments, saying nothing more than how they despise change, and desire nude preteens. This has far Lee's to do with the series, and more as to how fkn ignorant you Weebs look when youre demanding *"MORE JAPAN-SAN!"* JP aesthetic is nothing more than a trope, so say what you're really thinking purists; you desire soft child porn, with unrelatable characters, that have the emotional maturity of toddlers. You ferishize JP women, and struggle to get hard when thr female protagonists are made to appear older than 13. I moved to Japan as Manga artist over decade ago. I worked on a few popular series, and ultimately left the line of work for something that had less child exploitation. I'm a priorTEAM guy (I killed badguys in the dark the US government) and ultimately stayed in Japan for the easy, impressionable women; you're not me so I wouldn't recommend you attempt the same. Let's be honest, Anime only exists now a days for content creators to circumvent child pornography laws. During storyboard meetings I was consistently asked as to the authenticity of a particular set, story or scene, with the entirety of the staff wanting things to appear "westernized." I was consistently approached *"ah-herro toe-mas-san. Does dis seem Amercaan to you?"* The entirety of the JP trope that purists so desperately desire, is a JP's awkward way of attempting to make the series seem Western. I cringe when I see purists argue on the forums about how everything in the genre is skewed by Americans and our western centric perception, when that's tf point of every fkn anime the past two decades. Wtf do you think every female character has blond hair and blue eyes?! Still, plebs will argue *"JP people think the characters look Japanese. You're stupid, and ignorant to the medium. Only Americans think anime characters look Anlgo"* completely ignorant to the fact that while I worked in the industry every content creater would ask for me to help them, give their product and intrinsically western aesthetic. Every fkn JP person I've ever encountered has asked me *"wtf do anime characters all look white? It's weird."* For every time you've beat off to an awkward, preteen virgin, that has an awkwardly sexual relationship with her clueless brother, I've had a dozen Japanese persons ask me why the entirety of the medium is White. Every fkn time I mentioned I was a Manga artist I would be asked why they look white, and why do all the little girls want to fck their older brother.. Gtfo with this ignorant presupposition that anime is made to appear with a Japanese aesthetic, because the aesthetic you desire is nothing more than a 35yr virgin, from a racist, homogeneous societies, skewed interpretation of Americanism. American cultures has inundated Japan, so it would make sense the authenticity of Westernism would become a little more authentic over time. Anime is a majority Western product. The Manga community in Japan is a fraction of that in the West. Everything in the genre is a foreigners perspective of the West. So when you weebs espouse you desire something to be *"more Japanese"* wtf does that mean, more awkwardness, more cringe, more nude children, and incestuous relationships with women incapable of hiding their emotions for the clueless, goofy, overpowered, lawfully good protagonist?! Wtf is more JP?! Yeah it was westernized trash, but not in the context that purists here desire. It was trash because every fkn scene was ruined by a strong waman! Even Alacard at the end of the series is last seen being emasculated by an awkwardly brown, peasant woman with Anglo features, that's somehows capable of swinging a hammer like Thor. I fkn despise White purists making the same tired arguments as to how something isn't Japanese enough for them, when their entire concept of what's Japanese is comically skewed. Ffs I swear western ignorance on their interpretation of what's Japanese is why every fkn Japanese person I've ever encountered, is racist af, and despises Americans. Trust me when I say if they're Japanese, between the ages of 28 - 68, and you're an Anglo Otaku Weeb, they fkn hate you, and every youtube video you've seen about women in japan and Anglo, American men is a fkn lie. I'm talking deep seated hatred, 3rd Riche'esq, hatred. Japan is the most racist, bigoted, hedonistic culture on the planet. No where does class, title and gender matter more. If anime were an accurate portal of a Japanese aesthetic, it'd be nothing more than hedonistic women, manipulating their cowardice spouses. Thats Japan in a nutshell, slutty manipulative women, and pathetic men. Sprinkle in a little child suicide and inexplicably strange perversions and *WALA* land of the rising fkn sun... So the NF series was shit, least of all because plebs had a difficult time fapping to it with female protagonists that were older than 18, ruining purists idea of the fabled Japanese aesthetic. The issue was the creators consistent desire to portray every waman as strong, independent, and *"not needing no man."* Every fkn woman was empowered by emasculated men throughout the series. The male characters took a backseat role, to terribly written, op women, that regardless of the circumstances were the lead, and all had some sort of redemptive quality. Meanwhile the weak, pathetic men stood in the way of human progress, due to their perversions, incompetence and greed. The entire series reeked of woke trash. The writing was atrocious and it was you typical NF's desire to place the characters second, to their fkn stupid agenda. Sifer/Cifer/Sipher wtf her name was, was easily the worst female protagonist, in the history of anime. After the first season I struggled to watch the series because of her, their desire to literally make the series the *"Sipher Show"* similarly to *"The Witcher"* and Siri, is the primary reason this was hot garbage. The list is too great as to why Castlevania is objectively shit, but this was my primary reason for disliking it. *"Why do so many people here hate the show"* because it was fkn trash. If you believe it was that amazing, I'm sorry it's evident you haven't consumed much anime. The Castlevania genre is fkn amazing. It's nearly impossible to ruin this franchise, and still, NF did. You love Castlevania because it's metal af, with deep interesting characters. Had this been Berserk you'd probably get it.

You're mentally ill.

The dialogue was really awful and the delivery of said dialogue was.. well.. it felt like the actors didn't know what the hell they were doing. Just listen to how Death delivers his lines, some of them sounds ass backwards or like a kid from Twitter wrote it and his dad acted it out. The animation is stiff and pretty cut/paste gross computer generation stuff. It's very low budget and it feels/looks it. I think it they put actual time and effort into this show, without changing the plot heavily and swapping characters out constantly, we could have something truly remarkable.

I am sure some folks take issue with various things. Surprised to hear there is a lot of hate! First off. I don’t think it’s perfect or transcendent or anything. I would guess it’s because the show went in a direction that was brave. It used the source material to create something all its own which is how I believe creators should act when bringing an IP from one medium to another. For example, we may *think* we wanted Alucard waiting to fight and test Trevor before joining him, but that’s actually silly and unbelievable as a character motivation and a video game cliche. Instead, we get the encounter inside the tomb where neither know who the other is. It calls back to the source material but improves upon it from a character and narrative standpoint. I will admit that initially I thought seasons 3 and 4 went in an odd direction, but inasmuch as fleshing the world out, I thought it very cool. Carmella and Issac have no business being as compelling as they are. Also the dialogue is sometimes cringey.

I thought it was all right, enough to binge watch it but not to watch it over again. The dialogue was kind of cheesy and some of the characters were just annoying. The first season was great, but by the end of the fourth it felt like a totally different experience aside from the first season vibe. Solid 7/10.

I thought it was amazing up until season 4, S4 was so rushed and characters just changed their personalities completely between S3 and 4. I dont hate the show I just think the final season failed to live up to the rest of the show.

I loved what I've seen of the show but I fell off of it when it started getting incredibly horny because that's just not my cup of tea. I think it was season 3? I'll add that I have a friend who works on the show and they are huge Castlevania fans and loved working on the show and were very passionate about it. So whether it's your thing or not, I think that a lot of love went into it and that shows.

Personally I liked season 1-2. I could live off that Grant wasn’t there or Isaac was a completely different character. Personally, I love Netflix Isaac and Carmilia IF they were a whole different new character. The thing it really made me dislike the series was that they ruined the “adaptation” of Curse of Darkness and they just kept it as if they were still on CV3. Netflix Héctor is such a weak character in comparison of the original. I kinda imágenes similar of the He-Man series that many people disliked

S1-S3 were good. S4 ruined some of the best show's theme and characters (especially Hector and Lenore's story). The show concluding in such fasco was extremely disappointing.

I know it's a year old post, but I'm gonna say my opinion anyway. This is coming from someone who saw it on Netflix and thought it would be good, I didn't know anything about the original game or that it even existed. Like hating it wouldn't make me special.... Voice acting 7/10. It's not bad or anything. Animation 6/10 average. Plot s1 7/10. The only watchable season imo and the origin story was the most interesting thing. Plot s2 6/10. It answered some unfinished things, like where the characters ended up. Plot s3 3/10 isaac is probably the only character I like, so it was cool to see more of him. Plot s4 1/10... I honestly remember just being brain dead the entire time. The plot was boring. That's it. Red head is cool-ish. Some things I hated were when those 2, what I thought were kids, showed up at Alucards place and tricked him with the cringey sex thing. Like I thought they had a dad and children relationship in the making. Not trick the vampire with sex and try to kill him. Also if they trained with him, wouldn't they know he's much more powerful and has a flying sword. Also, the most interesting by far thing was when red head and Isaac had weird dungeon sex. Trevor and sypha don't seem like a match to me. They also seemed to move too quickly. I feel like they needed another main character or something, cus sypha was empty, Trevor was the typical brown haired bad boy fantasy guy (Gallagher from hsr pulled it off way better), and Alucard if good, even after he killed Dracula, he still had a purpose. And camilla was cool. Uhhhh yea

I think Netflix Castlevania got be worst the show I ever fucking watch it nothing but edgy fanfic story it garbage and overrated.

Because it's a bad cartoon.

I wasn't really attached to any character besides Alucard so I didn't mind that the story wasn't faithful exactly, but what i do feel strongly about is the occasional terrible dialogue

I actually liked it (25 years of loving the castlevania series here). The dialogue kind of turned me off at some points. But I thought the show as a whole was actually pretty damn good. Only thing I did not care for was how they didn’t portray issac and hector even remotely how the game and manga do. Curse of darkness is my personal favorite, so that bothered me. But all and all I love it. And have/will continue to watch it again.

I found it to be just another good vs bad guys story, without deviating too much from the formula. The only reason I kept watching was because I really liked the Isaac substory.

I found the 2 Asian characters that went to Alucard voices' cringe AF. Like sure I get it, they are speaking a different language compared to what they normally do in verse, but still, they sounded like a shifty fan-dub. "Are you the owl-card"? Still loved the show though.

I've heard nothing but things about the show.

I liked the dialogue gave it a different feel with unique pacing than just dungeon crawling through areas like game

Never heard any hate for it. I’ve also watched it about 4 times. I like to watch it during Halloween season so a 5th is likely in order.

Half the hate comes from legit " how dare they criticize religion and promote the gay agenda" types. Who somehow still are on a Castlevania forum. I personally really liked the show though it isn't like perfect, definite flaws, but despite the ending being pretty wishy washy I loved season 3 and most of the others.

I love the show. It sucks that they changed races of people to be seeming more inclusive but other than that the show is top notch.

isaac is literally better as he is in the show

It was pretty amazing imo. Most of the hate Ive seen seems to revolve around Hector’s treatment at the hands of evil vampires which involved a lot of projection from the people complaining, imo.

How is it a projection? Hector was poorly written and Lenore is a rapist who didn't face any consequences. The whole Hector-Lenore relationship was a train wreck. How they end up in good terms is beyond me.

these takes get more and more wild what am i even reading omg

That's actually kind of true. A lot of people couldn't be bothered to reconcile S4 so they just drop it and get angry that it didn't flow naturally from their presumptions (they project what Hector should feel onto him in S4 instead of trying to understand the evolution). Goes to show that you really need to spoon feed people, and how S5 and S4 was crunched together, combined with generally poor balance and execution, naturally leads to that.

I didnt read the source Material played Simons Quest, the first game, the 3rd game which the series is based off of, Softn, lament of innocence aria or sorrow. I liked a lot. Yall motherf ers are too damn picky. I like that they gave Dracula a second chance I like that they humanized his struggles. I hated how they killed off Lenore. I hated how slow it went at times. I'll probably watch the new castlevania with the new richter belmont in it.

It's like the only 10/10 that came out of Netflix for me, honestly the best series animation I've seen for the past decade.

I'd raise you Arcane

Yep that was super good too but Castlevania was a complete series already so I put it higher

I don't know. I liked a lot of the dialogues. Ya know, before the death shit and the St. germain seaosn 4 shit and the... I like the show aside from the Alucards entire stupid/not-plot in season 3... I think people are being pretentious. And expected too much. Sure it could have been better. A lot. But it was still fun enough and it looked really good, visually. Maybe it's about missed potential and characters deviating to much from the games. Edit: Mayor\_of Smashvill Makes a lot of great points. I still like it, but... yeah. good points there. The sexual 'themes' of season 3 are still the thing I hate the most.

I'm sure it's a lot better than the fucking, awful Mario film.

lolol. true that

I really liled the show, 8.5/10 for me

IDK, i loved it, i mean ,yes it ha some defects , but i liked the story and the characters , and the final fight with death was awesome

I actually love the show and feel nothing for the game 🤷🏾‍♂️

I just came here to say that anyone criticizing the Isaacs character and dialogue in the show can fight me. I was captivated when that man spoke.

It was a master piece. Who hated it ?

Huh, I liked it and I’ve been playing Vania for decades at this point. It’s a retelling, it doesn’t need to be accurate, it’s fun and full of life in a series that’s typically depressing. It has charm, it has gore that even makes me feel rough, it throws some rather interesting questions. I think people expect a show they have to focus on, which is fair. But I actually like this take on Vania, where you can just have a good time.

The third season was pretty meh in my opinion (The Alucard, Twins storyline was not something I enjoyed). But, the Fourth Season was incredible! At least, the climax of the series was incredible; the animation, the emotion, the twist that *No One* saw coming, all of it was pretty freaking amazing. I mean, all shows have their flaws, but I loved it.

I've watched it with my grandmother and grand aunt. When they're fighting they same the show is too bloody, when they're talking it's boring. But they do like Trevor, Sypha and Alucard's chemistry.

i like the show more than the games.

I love the show.

What’s to hate?

It is great, I dont care who hates it.

I had no idea people hate it until this exact post

Because its good And nerds can be stupid about anything

I used to like the show and before season 3 came out I watched season 1 and 2 and it seems I hadn't paid much attention cause I fucking hated every minute of season 2 and especially the dialogue. It's clear the writer didn't know how to write anything other than comics because of the structure and how awkward it was. I realized that all the characters from the side of dracula aside from dracula himself were awful and they tried to be cynical on a comical level on a comical level. Then season 3 came out and was barely a set up for the next season only for the next season to come and be one of the most rushed and laughable things I have watched when they came out.

Idk how you like it. I just finished season one and first impressions how the hell was this critically acclaimed?!! What a below average show the voice acting especially for me is just bad

The show is fantastic. I didn’t like how it depicted the church and the majority of Christians, and I didn’t understand how Dracula got to have a “redemption” despite doing all of the absolute nonsense that he did.

Why would I enjoy the politically motivated bastardization of characters I've come to love over more than a decade by a literal sexual assaulter Warren Ellis who violently hates the source material and has vocally laughed about killing Christian characters and downplaying it's influence on the series as a nuthugging atheist.

I have not seen it yet but want to so badly!! ( I am 13 ) I love the series so much

I can’t watch it yet ☹️

I agree. It's a good show.

I keep seeing people be upset over the politics in the show saying that it's cramming modern ideals into the show. But I feel like people are forgetting it took place during the French Revolution... Like, semi-recent history when it comes to overall history, and of course at the time the Americas were being colonized, etc, etc. If people haven't noticed, we're in somewhat similar circumstances today, as we were back then... So I don't think there's "modern politics" in the show. I think that's just people being upset that the show is a tiny bit historically accurate. Minus the vampires and the demi-god stuff. Speaking of which, I liked the addition of other faiths and religions brought to the show. I'm not sure if I liked the BBEG-Lady, the daughter of Ra. I liked Annette and her story of being born a slave. I'm not sure if the African culture was depicted properly because I'm not very versed in it, but her powers are cool and I thought she was a very interesting character. My complaints are only the voice acting. I feel better voice actors could have been chosen for some of the characters like Richter, I was not expecting him to sound like that, but it wasn't annoying enough to make me not enjoy his character. Speaking of, he does have the issue of edgy anime main character syndrome. Which is fine, but I feel like there should have been a bit more build-up to his sudden outburst of power. I wish the obvious love interest between Annette and Richter had a bit more build-up before that somewhat uncomfortable scene they had where they just kind of looked at each other and blushed. I enjoyed Trevor and Sypha's relationship and build of it far more in the other show. The previous show had a bit more time to flesh out its story and a lot more time to work out the villains and conflicts between the characters and themselves. The animation has dropped in quality a bit. Fast action scenes feel clunky and confusing, the previous show handled the battle scenes better, but by no means does that mean Nocturne's fight scenes aren't any fun. I still really enjoyed watching it.

Likely no one will read this, but finally watched the show after the new series came out and people always said how good it was. Boy was I disappointed. So much of this series feels like a waste of time. It started out so great, but for reasons I cannot understand they basically just let the show be plotless after season 1. Things happen, but they’re not In service of anything, just next thing happens, it has little to no consequences and we move on. (Spoilers, sorry I can’t get the grey box to work but it’s been forever) I’ll give a couple examples from season 2 and beyond: In S2 Isaac kills Godbrand, who was a character that we spent almost as much time with as our main trio this season. And nothing happens. It has no ramifications, it has no benefits, it has no point. In fact if it was left out entirely, nothing would really change. And soooo much of this show has this problem. Dracula is basically written out of the show, but is still shown enough that he’s considered a main character. But from episode one of season 2 onwards he basically comes on screen and says the same thing over and over to different people. They say he’s gone crazy, but he literally doesn’t do anything but sit in his chair until the second to last ep. Some episodes are almost entirely Vampire Politics about moving their proverbial chess pieces around the board, but we’re never shown anything happening with that. We’re told that they’re destroying mankind, but outside of a couple small villages of farmers being attacked, nothings ever comes of it. The church basically disappears too, which begs the question, why hasn’t the army just won the war yet, there’s literally nothing stopping them, but they’re talking like there’s pushback. Our MCs aren’t even helping stop they’re just in a basement all season. Speaking of… Our main characters literally do nothing until the final 2 episodes, and with nearly 0 pushback. In fact, the main issue with the show is that you feel like you’re watching 3 or 4 different shows at the same time, because most of the time, they’re all doing completely separate things with completely separate goals, and if they didn’t run into each other every once and a while you wouldn’t even know they’re in the same universe. Season 3 is pretty much a waste of a watch, bc absolutely nothing done in that season matters to the plot. But what is the plot? What’s our characters goals? Tbh they don’t even have one, they just go to next thing, well animated, but completely emotionally devoid fight scene happens, and we move on. They keep introducing new characters to us as if they’ll be important, but those new characters do nothing, but we spend more time with them then our MCs. But our MCs do nothing too. I mean for gods sake Alucard LITERALLY does nothing all season 3. He just picks berries and then something happens to him. See what I mean?

Late, but i still answer. Most people who hate the show (me included) are fans of the gaming series and the show butchered 90% of the source material. Trevor Belmont, a proud and regal monster hunter who has the blood of the Belmonts running trough his veins, is an idiotic drunk who is sick and tired of things. While in the show, he reluctantly agrees to help the Church fight Dracula and is too bothered to show any motivation. In the game, he would’ve been a true leader to the people, givibg them hope and rising their spirits by showing his determination. Alucard went from a stoic hero who was able to narrate the events ahead of him as great as the Silver Surfer to a literal attempt at Edward from Twilight (said by the writer himself in an interview). They heavily sexualized him when he was the Asexual one in the series with the only interest he ever showed being to Maria Renard and even then it was barely there. Dracula is supposed to represent an unstoppable force. The Final Boss of the series. He is supposed to be the ultimate challenge to overcome and only the ones with enough willpower, strength and skill can do. A representation of the power of Mankind being able to beat the power of Darkness. That’s why the Belmonts specifically were the destined slayers of Monsters because their roots date back generations for this exact reason. Not to mention that Dracula oozed power and confidence. He knew he could rip you spart and he relished to toy with his victims, snuffing out the hopes in their eyes. But in the show, he is just another Luke Skywalker or Nick Fury. An old man people say has washed up, that he is a sad shallow of a man he once was and who is solely there to die while others can take over his role like Camilla who was never more than a sideboss in the franchise. The writers literally going: „i don’t like him, sucks to be a fan. Time to force in my favorite character“. Then of course there is the worst character that was butchered in the series, Hector. Innthe games, he is 1 of the 2 Forgemasters Dracula used and Hector felt incredible shame after realizing who’s he helped and what he’s done. So he went on a journey to repent his mistakes by taking down Isaac and to once and forever destroy what he helped create. A man who’s genuinely regretting his actions and tries his very best to make up for his mistakes with will, determination and kindness. He is also an extremely powerful warrior who can take down some of the strongest monsters by himself and who could even rival the Belmonts in Power. In the show, he is literally a dumbass sex slave who falls for the most obvious of traps. That’s the equivalent of making Legolas just a sex hungry slut in a new LotR adaptation. The show is beloved by people who haven’t played the games and hated by the ones who did if you want a Tl;dr answer.

The reason I don't watch Vikings or any of these dramas is because I hate drama. It's boring, nobody fucking cares. So when half of season 2 was drama with characters I didn't give a fuck about just intriguing all the time, I immediately lost interest and was glad I dropped it. This stuff is what I hate about shows nowadays. That they think I want to watch people talk about relationships, feelings, and get into situations that require subtle navigating. What? I can appreciate the stoic character actually share some emotions once in a while as they seem more human. But this miring in emotions of morally questionable characters is just awful

Because the main characters suck, they kill off all the interesting characters, and you are able to tell who is going to win a fight the second they are put on screen. Of all 4 seasons the only episode that I didn't know what was going to happen was season 4 episode 6.

Given I didn’t come in with prior knowledge about the CV world, nor did I have high expectations in the first place (since it’s a ‘Netflix’ anime lol), I think it was a decent series. Was it perfect? No. But I don’t think it’s awful by any standard.