Forum - View topicREVIEW: Castlevania Season 2
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KutovoiAnton
 Posts: 961 Location: Vladimir, Russia |
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And for some reason, Season 2 still not in the encyclopedia
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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Yeah it's definitely something that should be binge watched otherwise the pacing is a complete mess, jumping around without seemingly doing anything for some of the middle episode. Also don't really get why this was split into 2 "seasons", guessing it has more to do with production than anything, it certainly doesn't bring anything to the show.
Otherwise, it's pretty good, especially the later episodes. This is pretty impressive for a video game adaptation, although I think this mostly has to do with the fact that they're not adapting any specific game and that the game are pretty thin on plot. I am a bit disappointed we didn't get the "what is man but a pile of secret" quote. The fight scene are very impressive, the resolution was thematically appropriate and season 3 (and 4 I guess) looks promising. I hope we get more of Hector, always liked curse of darkness. |
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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Castlevaina is both more and less than the sum of it's parts at the same time and there is remarkably little actually fighting inside the castle than was expected but the last few episodes being so thrilling and honestly moving along with Ellis' natural gift for effective characterization makes it all worthwhile. Through I do wonder how later seasons will go and just how many of the games they will be adapting. spoiler[Considering this version of Dracula already had a complete breakdown over his actions and let's Alucard kill him, it's hard to see him repeating trying to wipe out humanity over and over again like in the games. ]
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TexZero
Posts: 591 |
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Season 1 was essentially a pilot or what the industry often refers to as a six pack. They don't want to go all in on an uncharted product so they hedge their bets and under order so that they can increase production if it's successful or terminate the contract without much headache if it's not. |
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Felicity dash
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Well season 1 was technically suppose to be a movie adaptation that was suppose to come out 10+ years ago. Warren Ellis had written the story, which was essentially season 1. That’s why it’s only 4 episodes. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2350 |
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Yeah, Season 2 is definitely a lot different from Season 1. Here are my thoughts from when the season premiered:
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 spoiler[ 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.] |
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Lann
 Posts: 274 |
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Is it even anime at all?
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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No. It's an American cartoon. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6316 |
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Well makes sense when you realize that line is only ever associated with Rondo Of Blood/SOTN which I don't think this season was adapting. That and the line is overdone. |
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Panoptican
Posts: 160 |
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For season two I tended to err more on the side of less than the sum of its parts. My main issue was how season two did not really feel like a continuation of season one's story. For a good majority of its run time it seemed far more concerned with setting up future seasons rather than continuing that season one story. How much time was devoted to future antagonists who had no real impact on the story of season one and two? I didn't time it, but it felt like much more than the actual story! And while I thought the setup scenes were all well done, I couldn't get over how little the main story and characters were getting developed. The main story scenes that do exist in season two are quite good, but there isn't nearly enough. It's so quick and some scenes aren't really earned. All that to say that these scenes in a vacuum are all relatively good shit. Piece them all together and it's not quite as good. spoiler[The easiest example is episode 7. Damn, that episode is great! Except, as a piece of the overall story it's insanely rushed. I couldn't believe how easy it was for the protagonists to go from the daunting task of defeating Dracula at the end of season one to winning the day at the end of season 2. They mostly just sat around a library all season with some occasional banter and mild character development. After Dracula's weirdly easy defeat it was right back to setting up future antagonists (as it had been for most of season 2). ] Pair all those setup scenes with a much better developed main story and it could have been great. The season needed to be at least twice as long for the main story to have really hit. Twice as long with all that extra time going towards the main story. |
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Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 370 Location: Finland |
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I have to agree with Panoptican. I was really disappointed that this season season didn't bother to develop the main trio any further than the previous one. I wish that the villain side of the story was more than just endless and pretty repetetive dialogue.
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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While flawed, I am glad we're able to debate the merits and flaws instead of something like the recent Deathnote movie, where the debate was just centered around how bad it was.
While pacing was flawed, I worry Dracula may have been too humanized? How does he realistically come back to being scary and aggressive if brought back? As for flaws, wasn't episode 8 rather long? Wasn't an episode of content there!! But the action of episode 7 certainly offset it. I had a great time, overall. |
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TexZero
Posts: 591 |
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The answer to how Drac comes back is through Soma Cruz. If you aren't already aware this is a very weird amalgmation of many story lines that otherwise didn't all come from Castlevania 3 but is from 6 different titles in said universe. Given the addition of the Forgemasters and Carmilla alone it would not shock me to see them add other lesser know characters like Soma Cruz from the DS games in who was the living reincarnation of Dracula without knowing it. |
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MiloTheFirst
Posts: 429 |
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bro, spoilers. I also love Soma's games but that is suppoused to be the last arc's plot twist
also, my biggest problem with this season, aside from having the actual main characters literally sit in a library for over half its run, was how inconsistent the character writing was. first we have the nuanced alucard and griving dracula, then we have the most cartoonishly baddy Godbrand, what kind of believable character says outloud "I want a [expletive] boat because I am a [expletive] viking"? this show was obviously not meant for kids so whats up with the self aware cartoonish comedy? |
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Scion Drake
Posts: 959 |
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What your describing is not inconsistent character writing, what your describing is a Comedic Relief Character which is a character-type that spans every conceivable show. Like your sorta insinuating that only kids shows can have self-aware or over the top comedy which is rather false. |
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