Castlevania anime on Netflix

[orlouge82]

Looks pretty good, actually.

 

 

By the way, is that Alucard at 1:03?  Seems like he just popped out of a coffin a few seconds earlier.  Don't think it's Dracula, who you can spot at 1:06 doing some kind of lighting bolt thing.

[LuckyXIII]

All I hope is they include "Vampire Killer" in there somewhere.

[TheChargingRhino]

I have never watched Anime before, but this might be an exception...

Except you have to pay to watch it....

Or "Bloody Tears"

 

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Disappointed at the anime style

but it's written and developed by an American studio and they have a history of actually making anime good.

I'll be watching it. Also, where the hell is @Chernabogue?

[Chernabogue]

Chernabogue is discussing it at the Castlevania Dungeon actually.

Hyped for it, a bit disappointed by the anime style, but hey, it looks super promising.

[HoboKa]

This does look pretty &%@*ing good.  Just creamed my panties cuz #lolhypes. 

[Meteo Xavier]

Looks like shit.

[Gario]

59 minutes ago, Meteo Xavier said:

Looks like *the* shit.

Yup, I totally agree, edited quote that you didn't actually say.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Personally, I really doubt that the music from the game will be included; guarantee it was pricey enough just to license the characters and name from Konami.

Plus, if this trailer is anything to go by, its ultra-serious tone doesn't really lend itself to the generally uplifting/rocking compositions from the game aside from maybe a title sequence — its score will probably be a lot more like Game of Thrones since apparently they've taken influence from GoT according to some articles I read.

[orlouge82]

Pulled a few images from the trailer...

Alucard?

Any guesses about her?  Maybe Maria Renard?

Looks like the big man himself?

 

[MindWanderer]

The plot is based on Castlevania III, so the spellcasting woman should be Sypha Belmades.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

1 hour ago, orlouge82 said:

 

Any guesses about her?  Maybe Maria Renard?

 

That's Sypha throwin' the metal horns, bro \m/

[orlouge82]

1 hour ago, MindWanderer said:

The plot is based on Castlevania III, so the spellcasting woman should be Sypha Belmades.

Ah, cool, I didn't actually know about that.  Meaning that Grant is probably in there somewhere, too.

 

Edit: There he is!

 

[Chernabogue]

Dunno if it's Grant or Trevor. I truly hope they include him as well.

[The Nikanoru]

Looks AWESOME. I'm very excited to see what they've done with this.

The music for the trailer seems appropriately creepy and tense - hopefully this is an indication of the kind of music in the actual show. I wonder if we will hear any of the CVIII soundtrack remixed in this - it would be a shame if we didn't hear Beginning somewhere in there, being Trevor's theme and all.

I'm not sure why everyone is disappointed with the anime style. What's wrong with it? Forgive my lack of terminology, but it seems like they went with a Ninja Scroll-esque approach, which doesn't seem wrong to me... were we expecting uber-CG or something?

[The Nikanoru]

Apologies for the double-post, but there's a bit of new info on this:

According to Wikipedia (so you know it's true), the first season will consist of four 30-minute episodes. Disappointing. I thought there would be at least ten episodes for something like this.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Personally, I prefer it to be a "mini-series" of sorts.

2 hours should be more than enough for a good, animated adaptation of Dracula's Curse that covers all of the story and then some.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

So here's the main theme.

Talk about pathetic.

[The Nikanoru]

1 hour ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Talk about pathetic.

I think the first minute or so is rather underwhelming. I do like it better when it picks up at 1:26 - that part feels more appropriate.

[Phonetic Hero]

Watched it and loved it!  The faithfulness to the Castlevania canon with a bit of added depth was great, and I was kinda surprised at how well it works as an adaptation.  I wish the music would've been more memorable and melodic in keeping with the games' soundtracks, but it fits well enough.
Reeeeeeaaally missed a good opportunity for an emotive Bloody Tears arrangement though...

[orlouge82]

Aw, shit, son, that was amazing!  For anyone familiar with the lore, it's INCREDIBLY faithful.  BUT ONLY FOUR FUCKING EPISODES!!  They'd better keep making them until the entirety of Castlevania III's plot is covered.  Heck, they should keep doing it afterward and do more Castlevania game stories!  They really nailed Alucard, too!  I was worried about how they would treat the character, but it's like they took him straight out of the games!

 

Gah!  Season 2 can't get here fast enough!!

 

EDIT:  Also, I have no doubt that Grant will be in the next season.  They just didn't get to the part where they meet him yet in the story.

[MindWanderer]

13 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

So here's the main theme.

Talk about pathetic.

On the plus side, the composer's name is Trevor Morris.  If that was supposed to be a sneaky Castlevania-themed pseudonym, it couldn't have been better.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

It's good, but not worthy of the excessive praise it's been getting online.

At least not yet. It's a good example of why games work so much better as a TV series adaptation than film. 

But a lot of the voice acting is pretty weak — Lisa's gasping at the start was just pure cringe and the quality of the animation and lip sync is inconsistent. Surprising, given some of the talent.

James Callis absolutely slays as Alucard, though, as I knew he would.

I look forward to season 2, because there is real potential for a great show here. The reason a TV series is better than film for video games, is that you can flesh out the in-between segments of the gameplay a lot more and explore character backstory, etc rather than being reduced to the action-plot point-action-plot point formula of games which afflicts nearly every film adaptation of video games to date.

It's just that currently, there is almost no development of the relationship between Lisa and Dracula and as such, it's hard to give a shit when she dies. It's literally just "hot blonde is willing to forgive all of the impaled corpses on your lawn, move in with you, collab in your studio and start a family in two minutes" — still waiting on that one, myself. 

[orlouge82]

Maybe it's getting as much praise as it is because of how incredibly difficult it is to translate video games to movies or TV series.  It's not just "good for a video game adaptation."  It's good on its own.  You don't have to have knowledge of the source material to enjoy watching the series, although such knowledge certainly deepens one's appreciation of the series.

This type of adaptation should be used as the model for any future video game adaptations.  They integrated major (and minor) plot points of the game and the series' lore in general without making it appear shoehorned in.

Sypha is freed from stone by the defeat of the cyclops that imprisoned her, just like in the game.

Trevor fights with Alucard before the latter joins, just like in the game.

They also made reference to Sypha's appearing to be male and confusion about her gender, echoing the confusion about her gender in the early years of the series.

The series also managed to include elements such as salt and holy water as weapons (and included references to throwing knives and axes) without it feeling over-the-top, non sequitur fan service.

And turning the church hierarchy into villains was an incredibly smart (and historically accurate, since the church was such a politically powerful, yet often corrupt organization throughout that period) move.  Dracula is at his most compelling as a villain when he's a sympathetic character.  Symphony of the Night had such a great story because of the family drama between Alucard and Dracula, and Dracula is a far more engaging villain when you understand his motivations for why he's doing what he's doing.

Finally, the inclusion of advanced technology as a defining aspect of Dracula's Castle was a great move by the show's creators to explain the presence of such technology in the original game.  Had they not addressed this early on, they would have been either forced to deal with it when the characters were actually progressing through the castle, at which point it would have been much harder to explain and would have seemed a lot more forced as an inclusion in the show or just exclude the element from the castle entirely, thereby making the visual elements of the series more disconnected from the game.

At the same time, while Dracula clearly has this otherworldly technology (otherworldly to humans at the time, anyhow), he's also capable of magic (as if Sypha) and there are clearly references to his powers coming from "Hell," so the ties to the video game lore remain intact.

In short, the fact that the entire series wasn't composed of non sequiturs is an amazing achievement, mostly because of how many elements of the original game and game series would appear as such if directly translated into a story-telling medium intended for mass consumption (for reference, see the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film).

The creators of the show did a masterful job translating the series to TV, and I can't wait to see what else they come up with.

 

[AngelCityOutlaw]

1 hour ago, orlouge82 said:

Maybe it's getting as much praise as it is because of how incredibly difficult it is to translate video games to movies or TV series.  It's not just "good for a video game adaptation."  It's good on its own.  You don't have to have knowledge of the source material to enjoy watching the series, although such knowledge certainly deepens one's appreciation of the series.

This type of adaptation should be used as the model for any future video game adaptations.  They integrated major (and minor) plot points of the game and the series' lore in general without making it appear shoehorned in.

Sypha is freed from stone by the defeat of the cyclops that imprisoned her, just like in the game.

Trevor fights with Alucard before the latter joins, just like in the game.

They also made reference to Sypha's appearing to be male and confusion about her gender, echoing the confusion about her gender in the early years of the series.

The series also managed to include elements such as salt and holy water as weapons (and included references to throwing knives and axes) without it feeling over-the-top, non sequitur fan service.

And turning the church hierarchy into villains was an incredibly smart (and historically accurate, since the church was such a politically powerful, yet often corrupt organization throughout that period) move.  Dracula is at his most compelling as a villain when he's a sympathetic character.  Symphony of the Night had such a great story because of the family drama between Alucard and Dracula, and Dracula is a far more engaging villain when you understand his motivations for why he's doing what he's doing.

Finally, the inclusion of advanced technology as a defining aspect of Dracula's Castle was a great move by the show's creators to explain the presence of such technology in the original game.  Had they not addressed this early on, they would have been either forced to deal with it when the characters were actually progressing through the castle, at which point it would have been much harder to explain and would have seemed a lot more forced as an inclusion in the show or just exclude the element from the castle entirely, thereby making the visual elements of the series more disconnected from the game.

At the same time, while Dracula clearly has this otherworldly technology (otherworldly to humans at the time, anyhow), he's also capable of magic (as if Sypha) and there are clearly references to his powers coming from "Hell," so the ties to the video game lore remain intact.

In short, the fact that the entire series wasn't composed of non sequiturs is an amazing achievement, mostly because of how many elements of the original game and game series would appear as such if directly translated into a story-telling medium intended for mass consumption (for reference, see the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film).

The creators of the show did a masterful job translating the series to TV, and I can't wait to see what else they come up with.

 

You've essentially parroted, in a lengthier post, my statement about why TV is better suited for a video game adaptation than film.

This has actually been achieved before — The mid 90s adaptation of Fire Emblem, in its two episodes, was easily just as good as Castlevania and for the same reasons.

It's not that Warren Ellis has conquered a huge mountain in making a good TV series out of a video game with serious subject matter and lore while hitting all the beats from the game — it's that he's one of the few who's bothered to do it.