– This review contains Spoilers –
A week ago, the magical world of Castlevania returned to our screens. 300 years after the adventures of Alucard, Belmont and Sypha, we find ourselves in Boston, where Julia Belmont, mother of young Richter Belmont, accompanies him on the ship that will send him to France. A powerful vampire known as The Dragon pursues Julia, whom he kills after a fierce battle in front of Richter’s eyes.
A few years later we are in Paris during the French Revolution where the twenty-year-old Richter accompanies Maria Renard, his younger cousin, to meet some revolutionaries. The meeting is interrupted by three vampires who only attack Richter and Maria directly. Richter in classic Belmont nature with his whip and combined with the interesting powers of Maria, who controls some Pokémon-like magical animals, decimate the vampires without any difficulty. Of course, one of them will, before he dies, witness the outgoing arrival of the Vampire Messiah, The Devour of Light. The young heroes will then seek the help of the town’s Abbot, who accepts, in order to determine if these rumors of the “great evil” are true. When they return to their home, where Tera, Maria’s mother, is staying, and discuss the events of the evening, they are attacked by some night creatures from which they are saved as machine gods by Annette and Edouard, who have just arrived in Paris from Saint-Domingue looking for Richter and the Vampire Messiah.
Annette has powers of the god Ogun, allowing her to affect metals and make weapons in seconds, while Edouard is a tenor who helped Annette escape from the hands of the vampire Vaublanc, ruler of Saint-Domingue. Thus completes the company that will stand up to the soon-to-be-departed big bad. Vampires are reportedly gathering from all parts of the world in order to follow the Vampire Messiah into a new world made just for them. Throughout the episodes the characters will come face to face with their personal demons, for example Richter will be asked to deal with the death of his mother when he meets again with the vampire Olrox, The Dragon. The backstories of each character, good and bad, are slowly revealed with each, beyond Vampire Messiah, making the driving forces behind their actions apparent.
But it all seems somewhat superficial, the development of the case is painfully predictable, and every couple of episodes the allegory of “god by machine” is used to get the heroes out of a tight spot.
At the same time, the graphics and animation aesthetic that brings this story to the world lags in many ways. The transition from 2D to 3D graphics is incredibly sharp in a bad way, the camera movements especially in battle scenes shake without any logic, the battles themselves, especially in the last few episodes, feel more like Tekken than Castlevania, and finally, we have the color palette in the environment. The series is part of the Castlevania universe, a deeply murky and dark landscape even in the early hours of the morning, which is definitely present in Nocturne in places. However, in this case we have a lot of scenes, in the majority of episodes, with bright colors, happy nature scenes with blue waters and green forests out of YA anime. I personally felt, while watching the show, that they didn’t know what they were trying to present and that most of it was created for fanservice to the majority of the franchise’s fans. For me, if the story, like the aesthetics, were worked on with the same love, or even a similar budget, that Castlevania was created we would have a worthy product on our screens, but right now the series is lacking in so many ways.
” Source : TheStrangestGamer.com “
