Castlevania is a Netflix original, American adult animated web television series based off of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse a Japanese video game from 1989 that was developed by Konami. If you can’t guess by that video game title, the game is about vampires with Dracula as the main antagonist. The animated series was written by Warren Ellis, and directed by Sam Deats and Ryoichi Uchikoshi.
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM SEASON 1 AND LIGHT SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2
Okay. You’re still reading at this point so I assume you either watched Season 1 and 2, or you don’t care about spoilers. Truthfully, I try my best to avoid them (obviously I can’t really avoid them for season 1) but there will be some characters and items I have to talk about that weren’t in the previous season. So again, I’ll do my best, but read at your own risk.
Now, let’s recap real quick: in Season 1 Dracula’s human wife, Lisa, was burned at the stake for her science being perceived as witchcraft and Dracula went a little crazy afterward and decided all humans needed to be eradicated from the Earth. We were introduced to Trevor Belmont, the last on the Belmonts, a family renowned for their centuries of hunting vampires, and alongside Trevor we have Sypha Belnades, a powerful mage, as well as Alucard, the son of Dracula seeking to stop his father from his descent into genocide and madness. At the end of Season 1, Trevor and Sypha had just found Alucard and convinced him to join them, rather than face off against Dracula alone again (because the first time he got his ass kicked pretty hard).
Alright, we good? Good. So in the very first episode we are introduced to a number of new characters working with Dracula. The vampire warlords from across the world have come to serve Dracula in battle, but it is made immediately clear that they aren’t actually that supportive of the idea of killing all the humans (it’s not sympathy. They just want to keep them around for food) and that they are displeased with Dracula’s lack of strategy and order when instigating battles. The most outspoken of the vampire warlords is Godbrand, a barbarian vampire who is loud and brash. The vampires also don’t like that Dracula puts the decisions in the hands of his 2 most trusted advisers, Hector and Isaac, who are ironically humans that hate humanity. Hector and Isaac are special though, they are Devil Forgemasters, humans trained in dark magic who are able to resurrect the dead and create demonic creatures.
Godbrand, Hector, and Isaac are important, but it is the vampire mistress Carmilla who serves as the catalyst for the season. It’s obviously right away that she’s untrustworthy and has much more than the extinction of humanity on her mind.
While Dracula’s castle is arguing over philosophy and battle strategies, Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard are searching for a way to locate Dracula’s Castle as it moves sporadically from place to place. They decide to investigate the ruins of Trevor’s family home where there may be some information or tools hidden by his ancestors. And he is totally right. They find a magic mirror that can locate the castle, but more importantly (because its freaking cool) Trevor finds Morning Star, a powerful whip to fight against vampires.
This season is more heavily focused on the happenings at Dracula’s castle more so than our trio of heroes. There’s a good reason for this as the trio is mainly searching and researching while the vampires are destroying villages are arguing with each other. Plus, Hector and Isaac are probably the most interesting characters of the season. Both of them have some pretty good reasons for hating humanity and they aren’t afraid of the vampires in the slightest. We do get to see Isaac kill some and it’s pretty fantastic. What’s most interesting about them though is their differing mentalities.
Though they are both cold, Hector does have a soft heart. He doesn’t want ALL of humanity killed, but rather basically kept as pets/livestock for the vampires. On the other hand, Isaac wants humanity erased from existence. Even with all this development of new characters, we still get a lot of relationship growth between Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard. They start to feel like friends (and a bit more than that between Trevor and Sypha) as opposed to 3 people joined together by a cause.
There’s a lot of action this season, lots of monsters to kill and humans being hunted. One of the best things in general about this series are the fight scenes and the magic. The fighting almost seems like a mix of slowed down and skipped animation. It’s hard to explain but its beautifully done. We get to see Sypha use several new spells, the ones in battle being the coolest, but mostly we get to see just how powerful she is. I mean, I knew she was strong but holy crap. I don’t want to spoil it but know there are 3 different occasions where she does something epic.
The season ended bittersweetly, but it was not disappointing. In fact, it already set the stage for Season 3 with some new villain additions and possibly some new protagonists (if they keep sticking closely to the games).
OVERALL SCORE: 9 / 10
