Forum - View topicREVIEW: Castlevania
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2341 |
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The Spanish Black Legend was about 16th century events (the show is set in the 15th century) and, y'know, was about SPAIN, not Wallachia (which is now part of Romania). And that's before getting into the debate of it within the historical community. As for it being a manifesto against the Church, it was somewhat in the games in that the Belmonts were shunned because they fought supernatural entities effectively, but not in a way 100% with narrow-minded views of God and faith. Even after Trevor's time the church seems to take a back seat, mostly because they know it's better to keep their mouths shut and let the experts handle things. Plus this stuff actually happened in the Church. This was decades before the Reformation (the papacy had already had one Borgia in it) and basically every major denomination (Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox) was cartoonishly corrupt. If anything Ellis might have been pulling his punches. |
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Midaro
 Posts: 147 |
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The Church we see shouldn't even look like the Catholic Church and yet it does. Here we don't see a single member of the Church with good convictions. They are all evil and against science. Science is in fact the only salvation, apparently, and Dracula had the answer to it. His bad actions are even justified. Yet the real Church helped people and died to help people and look after the sick opening the first hospitals. Their members protected a lot of scientific books and translated them. There was corruption in the Church at some point, right, but not every member in it were corrupted. Also, the kings, the nobles and servants weren't angels either. There has always been corruption around of some level, but apparently the Church is the only one to blame for all the bad in the world. Apparently, it did no good at all. All that it brought were murders? All it preached was to kill? What about the criminals that demanded to be judged by the Church to have a chance to be forgiven and so be set free? How about the fact that the executions were actually civil and not religious. This tv series is doctrinaire and uninformed, like many others that only help to make presumptions and spread hate. You know by the looks of the characters and their dialogues who is good and who is bad. The viewer doesn't need to think. This anime tells you exactly what to think, that's what the series is all about. If the games portrayed the same view, then they seem to be as bland as the series, a source of presumptions, a sided world in black and white. |
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MajorZero
Posts: 359 |
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Actually, there was a priest who made a holy water and fought against monsters. Moreover, the series isn't anti-religious or even anti-clerical for that matter, it targets religious zealots, people whose interpretation of religious texts is so extreme that it makes other believers sick. I don't know how anyone could misunderstood Ellis' intentions when it was so obviously stated in a dialogue between Archbishop and demon before the latter devoured poor bastard. |
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Midaro
Posts: 147 |
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Belmont laughed at that priest as if he came from another world. If the series did not target cristians he wouldn't have laughed or be surprised, and some of the good priest would have done something and show mercy, but we don't see any of that. The conversation with the bishop proves nothing. The bishop was evil but there were also sentences from other characters claiming that if you don't oppose something then you support it. Something we hear everywhere on twitter and facebook nowadays. Something that portrays all cristians as evil here, because in this series the Church has no heroes in it or people willing to solve the problem but killing innocents. That says it all to me. Also Dracula's wife's words praying to Dracula using Jesus's words at the cross... This is morbid provocation and Ellis is laughing out loud. |
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Rai The Noblesse
 Posts: 77 |
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great series start, cool characters and (often) good dialogues
and great (!) Engl voice acting (for once, must be watched in English (never watch anim8in England, but this is great in engl) just the music could be more epic (but at the start, there where some very short track parts inspired by SNES Dracula Theme track, which is one the best Castlevania tracks ever).., and the animations could be a tick smoother besides that, just wish "adrien" would NOT want "kill" Dracula.., but just want up "stop" him.. 8.5/10 |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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Just like in the games. remember when you'd find the cross items and it'd instantly destroy all the enemies on the screen? When the best weapon was a throwing cross. When the other best weapon in other versions of the game was Holy Water. I would say the games are more about anti-Paganism. if there's anything Anti-Organized Religion is that the original Vlad did many of his own killings in defense of Rumelia from the Turkish invasion, of which there were Crusades to repel them. The 'Church=Bad' can feel a bit played out, especially when thrown into a setting where Church iconography is considered good, or at least better, than Medusa, Frankenstein, and Death. |
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chaccide
Posts: 295 |
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I loved the voice actors in this, not just those you mentioned but also Matt Frewer whose Bishop was amazing. I can't remember when I last heard English voice acting this good. I'm really looking forward to the rest of it.
Now I just have to find anime like this, because my husband is demanding that we watch more like this. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
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Heh, memes being generated
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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First Overwatch, and now Castlevania. TBH, it's starting to look like the West has a better grasp of the 90's anime spirit than Japan does.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6275 |
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spoiler[Yeah at least until Aria Of Sorrow.] 
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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I guess my expectations were set a bit high (probably due to Netflix original, fantasy/comic-genre highlights like Daredevil, Jessica Jones), as I was kind've disappointed. Not to say it was bad, but I'm hard-pressed to say it was good. The repeatedly lackluster animation caught my attention more than I usually expect from a Netflix original, the campy dialogue did more to jar me out've the fantasy than engage me with it, the gore seemed pointless instead've purposeful, and the decision to run just 4 episodes encapsulating no meaningful story arc was downright annoying given Netflix's branding as the "binge our shows" group. I think there also may've been something wrong with the audio when I watched it, as the voice-acting seemed to randomly become quiet, almost as if some kind of adult-language censoring had turned on (though I watch plenty of "adult-language" Netflix shows without that problem...)?
Still watchable, though. As others have said the action scenes were pretty decent, and the voice-acting (when played at normal volume..) did what it could with the campy material. I think the complaints about Castlevania's anti-church sentiments expressed in this thread are off-base. Yes, the depiction of the church in Castlevania is deeply exaggerated, the Church in Castlevania gets by far the largest heaping of one-dimensional blame, and that portrayal does not one-for-one mirror reality no matter which real-world church you choose as model. But it's friggin' middling-quality fiction, not a mirror for reality or a moral guide. |
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 387 |
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The church being corrupt is a fairly normal setup in a lot of stories. I don't really understand why it bothers people one way or the other - it's not supposed to reflect reality...
The biggest problem for me with the church is it was sort of a distraction from our characters. I don't know how it really defines any of them - doesn't appear that any of them really care one way or the other what the church does or says. So when we flipped over to the one demon killing the bishop/pope/whatever he was, I was barely paying attention. Do I care about him? Nope. Do our characters care about him? Nope. Perhaps the only person who might care is Dracula - and he is pretty much MIA after episode 1. Over the course of 4 episodes, the story felt very disjointed since you either focus on Dracula and the church, or you focus on our band of what can very, VERY loosely be described as heroes... |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Watching it now, it's kind of dull and slow for four episodes. Also suffers from typical ugly western design, Dracula might have been the best looking character overall.
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Sailor Sedna
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I never really played much of the Castlevania games (only really knew about them from Angry Video Game Nerd's reviews on them, and I wonder what he'd think of this series now that it's out?), so would this be a good introduction for newcomers to this franchise? I never even knew there would be an OVA, but I did hear there was another animated series being planned to be released on Netflix.
From what I can tell of the meme here, the art looks fine, better than a lot of modern day anime I've seen. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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It probably also cost at least twice of what normal anime do. |
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