Topic: Netflix Castlevania Animation: Cast Revealed

[theplottwist]

They do have enemies and other baddies in Castlevania that can somehow cast Holy Powers.
-Possessed Richter (confused human)
-Sniper of Goth (holy creature)
-White Fomor (Demon that mocks god by doing holy chants)
-Holy Armor (infused armor)
-White Armor (infused armor)
-Fallen Angel (flying Succubus that uses Holy Rings)
-Valkyrie and Erinys (flying spirit warriors)
...and more!

It would not be uncommon for an undead priest to be able to cast holy, because of two reasons:
-It's a creature created from Forgemastery (they have holy-elemental innocent devils in CoD)
-Just like Richter Belmont can be confused or coerced, whatever mind is left on this character is made to think they are still doing their Holy tasks.

Lastly, you can see that even though it is chanting and blessing the water, the water is clearly damaging its body, so basically the blessing will eventually overwhelm and exhaust the body, which does happen.

So I don't really see that much of a problem with the bishop and the blessing, nearly as much as I have a PROBLEM WITH MISSING GRANT AND OP ALUCARD!
Having said that, I enjoyed this series for what it is.

I had this one responded but I thought it wasn't needed to add. Well then here it is:

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It was established that the mechanics of Animationvania are not the same as the games. This was made a huge deal of in the first season, when the show was criticized for its depiction of religion. As I pointed above, Shankar had to make a post reminding people of the Bishop's hypocrisy, not to mention the obvious commentary on the show itself -- Bishop couldn't defend against a demon because God wasn't on his side, the demon made it clear that the church itself was abandoned due to his moral failures. Bishop is corrupt and unfaithful, but nameless priest is a true believer and can bless holy water.

Second season then establishes that no, Bishop can't possibly be an Innocent Devil. There's no such thing as "Innocent Devils" here. It's a zombie. A zombie that is somehow more effective than a living priest despite lacking free will and belonging to a man who could not do such things due to being corrupt. "But he was ordained in life" if he was ordained in life and being ordained is the only thing that matters, why couldn't he banish Blue Fangs? What is the commentary here, why defend against criticism with "so and so character represent the faith and so and so character do not" when every character, even a zombie, have the same power derived from real faith? Did those thug priests have the ability to bless stuff, too? Because BEING an unholy being defying God's law by just existing and that was a man who was the leader of those thugs is clearly not a problem. Can I say that Bishop DID then represent faith or not? After all, he's seen blessing an entire lake in one move and as a zombie, pretty impressive feat.

This one ain't flying. Animationvania can't keep getting away with using game logic when convenient, but refusing it when it's criticism. Either "true belief" is necessary or it isn't. If it is, you gotta explain how mind control = true faith (and this one is very, very problematic and sends an even uglier message about religion). If it isn't, then you gotta tell me how Blue Fangs managed to disrespect the Bishop's holy authority and his statements concerning God's presence.

[JR]

In the series, it's hard not to want the bishop and his church goons to suffer horribly. They held all the power, and thus they dictated what was evil and an acceptable target for their righteousness. It'd be hard to argue the villagers and townsfolk even had a choice in the matter, as even the Mayor was cowed into silence by the bishop when he hinted at the potential medical science had and that Lisa might not be as witchy as claimed. And the archbishop straight up taunted Dracula on the anniversary of Lisa's death. So you're left thinking Dracula was a lot more justified in his rampage of Wallachia, rather than it being morally ambiguous at best in the games.

This. They didn't really show many redeeming qualities in humans in general, which made me think, "well, Drac has a point..." when talking about wiping out humanity. Which definitely felt disappointing.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I had this one responded but I thought it wasn't needed to add. Well then here it is:

(click to show/hide)

It was established that the mechanics of Animationvania are not the same as the games. This was made a huge deal of in the first season, when the show was criticized for its depiction of religion. As I pointed above, Shankar had to make a post reminding people of the Bishop's hypocrisy, not to mention the obvious commentary on the show itself -- Bishop couldn't defend against a demon because God wasn't on his side, the demon made it clear that the church itself was abandoned due to his moral failures. Bishop is corrupt and unfaithful, but nameless priest is a true believer and can bless holy water.

Second season then establishes that no, Bishop can't possibly be an Innocent Devil. There's no such thing as "Innocent Devils" here. It's a zombie. A zombie that is somehow more effective than a living priest despite lacking free will and belonging to a man who could not do such things due to being corrupt. "But he was ordained in life" if he was ordained in life and being ordained is the only thing that matters, why couldn't he banish Blue Fangs? What is the commentary here, why defend against criticism with "so and so character represent the faith and so and so character do not" when every character, even a zombie, have the same power derived from real faith? Did those thug priests have the ability to bless stuff, too? Because BEING an unholy being defying God's law by just existing and that was a man who was the leader of those thugs is clearly not a problem. Can I say that Bishop DID then represent faith or not? After all, he's seen blessing an entire lake in one move and as a zombie, pretty impressive feat.

This one ain't flying. Animationvania can't keep getting away with using game logic when convenient, but refusing it when it's criticism. Either "true belief" is necessary or it isn't. If it is, you gotta explain how mind control = true faith (and this one is very, very problematic and sends an even uglier message about religion). If it isn't, then you gotta tell me how Blue Fangs managed to disrespect the Bishop's holy authority and his statements concerning God's presence.

Yeah, I suppose you're right.

[Gaawa-chan]

Bishop

Agreed.  I thought that was unfortunate as well.  They should have just had Carmilla capture a live priest and torture him into submission and then kill him after he blessed the river or something like that.

[Reinhart77]

I thouroughly enjoyed the series, but yeah, little inconsistancies can be an irritant.  One little one that bugged me that was within one scene was when Alucard explained there would still be animals around, just no humans.  But then said how Dracula had a plan to cover the world in endless night, as if that wouldn’t interrupt the food chain haha.  Well, I’m sure there’s a way to make sense of that.

[Inccubus]

The spoiler stuff above is not a little inconsistency, that's a plot hole.

Alucard's comments on Dracula's plan aren't inconsistent.
The eternal darkness would mess with diurnal animals, but they would adapt or die out which is perfectly natural and isn't Dracula's intent either way.

One of the things that bothered me about the first season was the technology angle.
Having more of that in the second season made it worse.
It is the equivalent of midichlorians in Star Wars.
Sucks the mysticism right out.

[TheouAegis]

One of the things that bothered me about the first season was the technology angle.
Having more of that in the second season made it worse.
It is the equivalent of midichlorians in Star Wars.
Sucks the mysticism right out.

What do you mean technology angle? And what mysticism got lost?

[Chernabogue]

Season 3 confirmed with 10 episodes

[Reinhart77]

hoho, moving up in the episode count!

i’m assuming it will take place within the current gang’s lifespan, but who knows, there could be a generation gap.

i’m kind of wondering how dracula gets new forces once his forgemasters are gone (in the game and animation).  does he get new forgemasters or maybe his partnership with Death and other necromancers makes devil forgery unnecessary?

[X]

If the second season finished with Dracula's defeat then by all reasoning the third season will most likely be a lose adaption of CoD.

[Gaawa-chan]

So I've been tossing some ideas around inside my head about how the show could have been better, and this was the outline of what I came up with, for those who might be interested:

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Improving upon Castlevania Netflix

While I really enjoyed CV Netflix, it has quite a few things in it that I am not fond of, so I thought I'd go over how the show could have been improved/written differently while still maintaining its overall integrity.  Note that some of my changes are actually very minor, but I think would still improve the overall product.


* Tone down the exposition; it's all over the place and there's way too much of it.  This is a visual medium; have things that happen speak for themselves.

* The castle is not just a machine.  It is a living, magical/mechanical creature, hence "Demon Castle Dracula" in Japanese.  This was a massive missed opportunity in the show, as they could have had the castle itself become malicious to those plotting against Dracula within its walls, or have it shift around/change form.

* Do not make Fahrenheit part of Alucard's name.  Do not make Tepes part of anyone's name.  Of all the things to carry over from the video games, these are perhaps the strangest.  Lisa of Lupu was fine. Dracula doesn't need a surname; he has titles.  If you really want to make reference to Alucard's goofy middle name, use "Fahren."  I freely admit that this is just a pet peeve of mine but it was really distracting.

* Don't have Lisa pass by a bunch of impaled bodies on her way to Dracula's Castle.  That makes her relationship with him come off as very strange.  Make it so that she doesn't actually know all that much about him/doesn't have much trust in what she has heard about him on account of her having a history of being demonized as a witch herself.

* Hector and Isaac have lived in the castle since they were young, and they are both older than Alucard.  Make it so that their powers extend their life-span so they age more slowly than the average human; they have power over life, after all.  This gives them a connection to Lisa as well as additional time to develop loyalty to Dracula (it's also pretty much how it was in the video games, with Hector having gone to Dracula when he was very young).  It would also give Lisa more cause to come to Dracula, if she had heard that there were other people going to Dracula to learn about lost or forbidden knowledge.  Isaac should be closer to his portrayal from the video games, while Dracula's true right-hand would not be Isaac, but a mysterious fellow named Zead/Zobek.  Keep Isaac's strap thing, history of oppression, and zeal, but his weapon should be a spear.

* Make it clear that Alucard was present when his mother said her final words, but had arrived too late to save her/was incapable of reaching her where she was.

* Make it so that Dracula does not return until several months after she has already been killed.  When he does return, he maims Alucard and Hector prevents Dracula from outright killing Alucard, trying to calm him down; Alucard escapes through the Carpathian mirror.  Hector, Isaac, and Dracula agree that they should target Targoviste, where Lisa was killed, and so the slaughter begins immediately and quickly spirals out of control as far as Hector is concerned, with Dracula having them gather the dead of Targoviste to start bolstering his forces.  THEN we have a time-skip.

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* Cut the goat scene.  Waste of screen-time, irrelevant.

* Change "sleeping soldier" to "sleeping guardian." Less catchy, but it is actually on-point, especially if they end up going all the way to the Sorrow series.

* Put more emphasis on the priest who blesses the water in Gresit, in order to balance out the depiction of religion in the show.  Make the scene where Trevor gets the townspeople to turn on the corrupt church members less clumsy.

* Make the demons in the first season more diverse.

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* If Alucard is going to verbally spar with Trevor, it needs to be written with a bit more cleverness.

* Cut the scene that shows Lisa being arrested, as it was poorly written.  Instead, show a scene of her interacting with Dracula, Hector, and Isaac in the castle in order to emphasize the relationship she had with Dracula.

* When the heroes are fighting the demons that are going to attack Arges, they are joined by a fourth person, a cloaked man named Grant Danesti.  Danesti explains that he is the last of his family, a family that fought against Dracula during his attack on Targoviste, and has been hiding in Arges since he escaped from Dracula's Castle where he was been kept as livestock for his forces.  It isn't until they reach the Belmont estate and Sypha lights up the vault that they discover that Grant has been twisted by dark powers, and can't really be considered human anymore.  The group intentionally lets the last demon go in the hopes that it will draw Dracula to them rather than them having to go after his castle, and instead focus upon strengthening themselves at the Belmont Hold.

* Trevor should find a silver cross/stake in the Belmont Hold, and should be keeping salt and holy water around.  Sypha should use lightning magic.  Alucard should use his bat/mist transformations and spells.  Dracula should use the spells he has other than just Dark Inferno. :-/

* Hector becomes increasingly distressed over Carmilla's blatant attempts at manipulation and the slaughter of people, and his breaking point is when a child's body is brought in for forging purposes.  He flees, throwing a wrench into Carmilla's plans.  Isaac chases after him, having killed Godbrand for far less and taking Hector's flight personally because of their shared status as Dracula's human generals.  So, Carmilla instead has her forces abduct a priest in Braila and force him to bless the river.  What she does not realize is that Zead has been keeping tabs on her, and so when the castle arrives at Braila, Dracula has dropped it straight into the river, displacing the water and decimating her forces.  Realizing she's been outmaneuvered, Carmilla flees, but not before Dracula jabs out her left eye.

* After crushing Carmilla's forces with minimal effort and almost no losses on his part, Dracula changes track and immediately warps the castle near the Belmont Hold, re-asserting his control over his now cowed forces.  He then sends Zead out of the castle to make sure that there are no Belmonts running around, and orders his army to prepare to attack Arges, not Braila.  Because the castle has warped not once, but twice, and Isaac was chasing Hector, Isaac has been left behind, and cannot return to Dracula in time to help him.

* Zead is able to enter the Belmont Hold with almost no effort, and he attacks the three with almost no warning.  Sypha and Trevor don't take him too seriously as an opponent initially until they see how worried Alucard and Grant are, and find themselves fighting for their lives against a single opponent who seems increasingly less and less human, until at least, Zead reveals his true form; a reaper of souls, loyal to the King of the night.  Sypha is ultimately the one that subdues the reaper.

* The four of them then take on the castle itself, with Sypha focused CC'ing the forces that were to attack Arges while the other three narrow in on the major players.  Grant kills the most of them, being enraged by the vampires who abused and mutilated him.  But Dracula is not among the forces, and so the four let Alucard take point as they make their way through the demon-infested castle to the throne room.  The fight plays out somewhat similarly to how it did in the show save that Grant is also there and Dracula uses more of his magic, including teleportation, fire pillars used in tandem with his horizontal lightning spell from SC4, Demonic Meggido, and Ghost Chaser. No thanks to all the fist-fighting.  Wtf was that? :-/

* Alucard only takes Dracula on solo after Dracula knocks Sypha and Grant out a window and claws at Trevor's face, clawing out one of his eyes.  When they come to a halt, Alucard can't bring himself to kill his father, and Trevor stakes Dracula from behind.  This does not kill Dracula.  Instead, Dracula calls upon the font of chaos that runs through the castle and shifts into a demonic form, and begins using Dominous Hatred/Fatal Ray, Demonic Meggido, and Delta Spark.  The fight ends when Trevor uses Grand Cross.

* The castle disappears when Dracula dies.  After Trevor is fairly well-healed, he gifts Alucard with the Belmont Hold.  They re-seal the hold with Alucard inside, who goes to sleep.  Grant, Trevor, and Sypha make their way to Braila in order to see what damage the chaos there left behind and help.

* Carmilla, infuriated by her losses at Braila, rallies what little she has left and begins to lay siege to Braila in order to replenish her vampire forces.  Hector uses the devils he originally forged to attack the Belmont Hold against Isaac, sacrificing them in order to escape and go into hiding.  Isaac searches for a way to return to Dracula's castle, only to find out much later from a revived Zead that the castle has fallen... but with some work... it and its master might rise once again.

Anyway, just some thoughts...

[Reinhart77]

Looks like Adi Shankar might work on a Legend of Zelda animation.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/filmschoolrejects.com/the-legend-of-zelda-tv-series-coming-from-castlevania-producer/amp/

I wonder how this might effect future season releases of Castlevania.  I’d of course love if they kept pumping out new seasons for a decade.  But I guess I wouldn’t mind if we got a Legend of Zelda season 1 instead of a Castlevania Season 4.  Finish up Trevor era CV with season 3, take a break with Zelda instead for a few years, then come back with the next generation of Belmonts.  Sounds nice.

Edit:  After reading the original article, it might be a bit presumptuous to assume Legend of Zelda is the game they’re working on doing, though it would fit.


New topic:  Had fun reading this discussion on season 2:  https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-anime/2018-11-01/.138921

[Aiddon]

So, non-spoiler thoughts: still pretty freaking awesome. Season 1 was just an intro as this is where things really kick off and manages to make something really compelling. This should not be as good as it is; with the history of game adaptations this should have been boring at best and a disaster at worst. Instead, Ellis, Shankar, and Deats made something spectacular and unique. It'll be interesting to see where Season 3 goes. Anyway, now to spoilers

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This seriously wrecked things in spectacular fashion. A lot of it is pretty much Dracula's show, displaying his central importance to everything and the machinations of his court. You have the two misanthropic humans who detest their kind in different ways, the hedonistic Godbrand, and the disruptive, greedy Carmilla. It also shows how Dracula, despite being the king of vampires and claiming to detest humans, seems to be very distant to vampires. He doesn't really have a high opinion of them, in fact having deep-seated contempt for them, looking at them to be a bunch of animals driven by hunger. Just look at how Carmilla genuinely does not understand why Dracula married Lisa and why he's enraged over her death because of how emotionally inept she is

Despite all that, he's still the biggest guy in the room. His dressing down of Godbrand and the final battle in particular really show the only reason anyone gets away with anything in his court is because of his extreme apathy. If this guy had proper fire in his soul it wouldn't have even been a contest.

It's also neat how they're clearly going into Curse of Darkness territory with the status quo at the end of Season 2 (and Season 3 is happening, Richard Armitage is doing voice recording right now: https://twitter.com/RCArmitage/status/1058027258181492737). Now to see what they do with that and beyond just Trevor's generation.

Speaking of which: Leon. LoI (or at least some version of it) is canon. That portrait is an almost straight rip of Leon's official artwork from the game. That's definitely one story I want to see adapted because it provides so much context for the series. It showed that the Belmonts' battle with Dracula wasn't just about hunters going after a powerful vampire, but a lot more personal than that. That's the kind of stuff that redefines the series.

The high point is probably Episode 7 which is basically a Dragon Ball Z fight. The second Bloody Tears lit up that's when you knew this was Castlevania. Also neat, someone actually compiled a BUNCH of references found in the library alluding to the games.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/1830098975

And they hid wall chicken in Episode 7. It's when Dracula and Alucard burst into the dining hall.

[Flame]

you guys have mostly talked this to death but ill give a few words for now.

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It was good. Glad there were more episodes, the ending felt rushed and i'm not too sure on what they did with Alucard, its kind of a big deal for him to go to sleep and come around again for symphony. Im fearing that Alucard will be involved in future Castlevania adaptations if there are any, because he's got that kind of spotlight stealing power.  The generals were a waste of space, I think GodBrand is literally the only one that ever talks. The rest look cool, but serve no purpose but filler. In fact that whole subplot of Godbrand convincing them to go out and slaughter a town means absolutely nothing. It goes nowhere. Would have been nice if Dracula disciplined him for disobeying him, and you still couldve had him get killed by Isaac. In fact that doesnt go anywhere either. isaac still goes with hector's plan, and Godbrand is forgotten about, and the generals job hard to the trio. we didin't need them. having just carmilla and MAYBE Godbrand as underlings was fine but the rest were filler. Dracula doesnt need "Generals" when he has an army of faceless generic vampires and two literal monstermakers, who are established to have complete loyalty and obedience of their monsters.

also, I'm not too sure on a zombie priest blessing holy water. Honestly. probably a weird detail to get hung up on, but I'm still gonna call bullshit on that. the moment you become an unholy abomination of the night you kind of lose that, regardless of being an ordained man of the cloth. It wouldve been I think, much better if that was the point, a corrupted priest blessing the lake causing it to become unholy water, and therefore allowing the vampires to cross it.

It definitely felt a bit too symphony of the night-y at points, but I get kind of why that is. they're just cramming those elements in here because waiting and hoping to get to a SOTN adaptation when youve got the prime materials for the pickings? im not surprised they did it. Even if it sort of bothers me that while well done- the final death blow feels like less of a team effort and just Alucard.

thats all for the moment.

[Shiroi Koumori]

I viewed this season with the mindset that this animation is an alternative universe and in the point of view of someone who just heard of Castlevania (unburdened by the canon lore that we know). Well, with those frame of mind, I'd say, this season is good.
I love Alucard as the show stopper (but really, it should have been Trevor). Sypha is great.
I watched this with Japanese audio and English subs, because JP VAs. I still laugh with the reality that Ryotaro Okiayu is Trevor. Shinichiro Miki as usual is awesome.

But viewing it with the canon lore in mind, yes, I'm happy with the Easter eggs, but there's more left to be desired.
Then again, I'm reminded that this is an adaptation and not the canon lore, so yeah, a good season with a cliffhanger ending for COD season 3. I wonder if they'll make a season for Rondo and another for SOTN? I really want a SOTN season.