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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Castlevania: Nocturne Series Review
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macattack
Posts: 257 |
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I see someone had a bone to pick with the Richter Belmont Castlevania games and desperately wanted a chance to stick it to them lol
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Hal14
 Posts: 716 Location: Heart of africa |
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Yep. Someone hated those games so much they created a well produced, heavily marketed adaptation that has been critically well received. That dastardly fiend.
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macattack
Posts: 257 |
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I wasn’t referring to the Nocturne series. Read it again.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4597 Location: New York |
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This whole thing reminds me of the four Doom novels that were made in the 90s (not the memed to death comic). The first two attempt to be somewhat faithful to the first two games in providing plot to the setting but by the time the third book reveals the “demons” are alien constructs created as an invading force by aliens called “The Fred’s”, it’s clear the author stopped caring about the silly computer game.
It’s pretty clear we fast forwarded through that when Ellis broke the storytelling engine at the end of the last series and the new writer had zero interest in repairing it. Then Adi Shankar, probably the only person who did want the series to be accurate, was kicked off production and is currently suing Frederator Studios over it. So the people here made a story about the French Revolution and vampire aristocracy without caring about the silly little PC Engine game. If you take it as its own thing, it might be Ok, but as a Castlevania series, it fails miserably, mostly because it lacks the central figure of Dracula and replaces it with stuff that is nowhere near as interesting, even the Ellis version of such. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2116 |
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wasn't Dracula meant to be replaced with Soma Cruz. Then again bringing back the same villain could have annoyed the viewers
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2513 |
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Oh, wow -- surprised to see James' basically copy/pasting my thoughts right out of my head, hah. I was expecting this would skewer the adaptation, since its rottentomatoes' audience score (though not critics' score) is much lower than the earlier adaptation, so far (although, honestly, I think all of the very high scores there seem pretty wildly inflated..), and there seemed to be quite a bit of complaining about it on reddit, with unfavorable comparisons to the earlier series.
From my point of view, I think the artwork is if anything more lovely in this season (it feels weird to say, but I love the use of vivid blue hues this season, as well as basically any scene with water), and, most importantly, the dialogue is much improved. It's still out-of-era quippy and sometimes weirdly terse in places that doesn't quite feel right, but at least the main character dialogue doesn't feel like it was ripped from the hallway conversations of circa the year 2000 angsty high school students, now. God, it's really hard to overstate how much that one change improved my appreciation for the show. Side note: I kind of hate the operatic fellow's singing voice. That and Bathory being intensely 1-dimensional right now are the two things I like least about this series so far.  Hopefully they'll flesh out Bathory a bit in the next season; like, lore-wise, how precisely, did she spoiler[drink the blood of Sekhmet? That sounds like it shouldn't be particularly easy to do.] And, you know, also knowing a bit more about her personal motivations and backstory would be cool and giving her some layers would be cool, too.
Also, man, I assume this is from the original lore, but I'm kind of exasperated that spoiler[we've got another "last of the Belmonts". I realize it's a nice dramatic setup, but, like, c'mon ya'll, reproduce at a slightly faster rate than you get vampire-dead for once, please. Break the last-of-my-clan trope, yo.] |
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groovysunbeam
 Posts: 16 |
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I mean, the writers freely admit they literally don't play Castlevania so I don't think they were interested in respecting it in the first place. They probably didn't 'hate' it either since they're also unaware of it in general, but let's not pretend this show was some passionate love-letter to the franchise. Although "critically well received" is pretty debatable given the marketing and official social media accounts had to delete some Tweets due to the massive backlash from them and even a writer for the series tried to distance himself from everything when he saw it going on Seems a lot of people are upset with the series and it's hardly universally praised. It seems even more divided than the first series where even some of the haters will admit the first 1 or 2 seasons were okay. It's pretty clear there's going to be two camps here of people who don't like it because of it's complete disregard of the games and those who don't care about the games and just want to watch a cool mindless action show, preferably with western writing style rather than a Japanese one for the change. For any fence sitters, I'd say watch the one clip of Richter saying "I was going to say a witty one liner when I killed you, BUT *explicitive* IT!!" and if that looks appealing to you you'll like it, if you find it cringe, you probably won't. Because that's basically a perfect encapsulation of the series. Plot-wise, it has literally nothing to do with Rondo of Blood or the Castlevania characters so you're really just watching an animated show about vampires in the French Revolution. It kind of feels like the Netflix Voltron cartoon where you could tell they didn't really care about Voltron or the robot but they were probably stuck with the IP and had to try to work around it while making their own original show. |
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RockSplash
Posts: 501 |
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Can't there be a third camp? Someone who respects and enjoys the games but understands a faithful adaption would not be very engaging from a writing point of view? I hate this idea that the only people who enjoy Netflix Vania are obviously "fake fans". It reeks of Star Wars fan syndrome. How dare some people like the games, but can see something that takes a new approach?
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2341 |
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-Dies laughing- Going from 100 to 95 is not very big. It's a series trademark so thank god they haven't dropped it. Cursing is fun. Anyway, show was pretty good and hopefully they announce Season two soon. Animation is great, fight scenes are exciting, and characters get a lot to chew on. And yeah, my only beef is that Erzsebet is nowhere near as compelling or intimidating a villain as Dracula was (though that might be by design). Definitely went some places I didn't expect lorewise. It's kind of bonkers how this show was the one to kickstart an adult animation movement in the West but I can't complaining with stuff like Devil May Cry and Captain Laserhawk coming out. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 125 |
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spoiler[Soma is Dracula. He's the reincarnation of him. The villains in Aria and Dawn are either trying to corrupt and turn him evil or kill him so someone else can inherit his legacy. ] They did try to adapt the American "Castlevania" name for Aria in Japan, maybe to signify the new era of Dracula as we know him being gone and also to make it a globall brand name, but it wasn't well received by the fans in Japan so they went back to Akumajō Dracula pretty quickly. But the plot of those games still involves Dracula and his legacy. It's always about Dracula. Anyway, I have to admit I'm one of the folks not keen on the Netflix show. The first series wasn't my cup of tea either, but Nocturn just seems to take all the worst aspects of the original show and turn the dial up to 11 excessive swearing and needlessly edgy dialog and sex scenes. The whole "the Belmonts must always be humbled by their magical sidekicks" nonsense just really highlights the disdain for the source material these people have. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2513 |
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I'm surprised you felt this way; I remember the original show's dialogue as much edgier and more out-of-era expletive-and-quip-saturated than Nocturne. For example, there's a scene in season 4 (I think?) where Cypha actively complains that Trevor has made her a person who swears a lot, and she proceeds to chain 11 random curse words together to make her point. It was definitely still present in Nocturne, but it seemed to me they went out of their way to use it more sparingly. Last edited by NeverConvex on Mon Oct 02, 2023 1:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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BluesPro
Posts: 99 |
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I take it you haven't seen much of the reception besides this one review, where people are pointing out how it's an ugly mess with wooden performances that also maintains Adi Shankar's trademark cringe-inducing dialogue. |
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Hal14
Posts: 716 Location: Heart of africa |
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If you referring to stuff like "Wokelevania" then yes I have been looking at reviews and reactions. When I meant critically, I was referring to critics so my bad. But even ignoring critic reviews i'm not taking 'woke castlevania' complaints seriously. And the adaptation complaints that frame this as a personal attack on game fans are also eye-roll inducing. This adaptation absolutely has it's issues** but the vocal minority of detractors aren't worth considering. **Issues I had: -Bartory is underdeveloped and too 'hammy'. -I like the haiti revolution stuff, but i feel it has overshadowed the french revolution setting. -Cussing has been toned down but the quippy dialogue is still hit or miss. -I'm mixed on Eduoard singing, i like it's narrative role but not the singing itself. -Personally, as a Nigerian, I found the yoruba magic stuff to be off-putting. Not insensitive, just... uncomfortable (for a lack of a better description) But Overall, I thought it was a good show. Definitely not mindless action, although the fight scenes were great and visually impressive |
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Dark Mac
Posts: 321 |
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Personally, I like Trevor and Sypha more than Richter and Maria, though future seasons could help make the new mains better.
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Gan Gan
 Posts: 3 |
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Reference to this deleted tweet, yes? 
It seems the director of the show was very unhappy about it. 
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