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shekkyishere
Reviews
Castlevania (2017)
Underdeveloped Characters, Poor Pacing
Catslevania is a show that has so much potential to be amazing, but falls just short of being so. Starting with the good things about castlevania: the animation is amazing, and the background paintings are beautiful. The art is overall very pleasant to look at. Additionally, the sound track is great, and I love the gothic horror type setting.
Now onto the bad parts of Castlevania: the characters in Castlevania need work. Trevor, the protagonist, is undeniably two dimensional, and so is his partner, the magician Sypha. But, this is to be expected as the show is based on a video game. These two characters are allowed to be 2 dimensional. However, it is important to the plot that Dracula and his son Adrian are fleshed out characters. Dracula and Adrian are a little bit less 2D than Trevor and Sypha, but their motives and personalities and relationship as characters is seriously underdeveloped. When Dracula was killed by Adrian, I found myself heavily questioning what the emotional weight of this scene was supposed to be, as it was hard for me to feel anything. Perhaps some more backstory on Adrian as a child would have helped, or even just more interactions between the two. In addition, a lot about Dracula felt unexplored. Many questions went unanswered; such as "why did Dracula try to viscously murder his son after beating his head violently into the floor, but save the life of a man who he barely knew (Isaac)?" "Was Dracula actually avoiding feeding, or had his powers just grown weaker?" And "how the hell is Adrian in his twenties when his mom looks in HER twenties???" I mean, I know he grew fast, but come on,,
Aside from the poor characters, Castlevania's biggest flaw is that it has nowhere to go in season three. The conflict between Dracula and Adrian was the backbone of the series, and acted as the major conflict. With Dracula dead, the series feels lost, and there is seemingly no central conflict or even storyline. The characters just go about their everyday lives, doing things. There is the potential conflict of vampire ruler, Camilla, but I find it difficult to be interested in her as a villain, or even a character. Camilla is simply evil to be evil. She is two dimensional and lacking interesting motive. I honestly don't care if she takes over the humans or gets killed by Adrian and crew at this point. The show simply fails at making me feel emotionally invested in a plot involving Camilla.
To be completely honest, I think the show should have ended at season two. The first two seasons weren't great, but they were pretty good, and despite the flaws in characterization and pacing, I would personally recommend watching them.