Castlevania Season One
Videogame vampire vulgarity
released OUT NOW! 2017 | sVOd
Director sam deats Cast richard armitage, James Callis, alejandra reynoso, Graham McTavish
The voice auditions for Castlevania must have been fun: “So, Mr Armitage – how many ways can you say ‘f**k’?”.
Apparently Netflix’s “edgy” new adaptation of the ancient vampire-themed videogame franchise was originally written by comic book enfant terrible Warren Ellis 10 years ago, but we wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Beavis and Butt-Head had knocked it out in the mid-’90s. Castlevania is being marketed as an “adult” cartoon, but its OTT violence and self-conscious use of naughty words seem laser-targeted at the just-started-shaving demographic.
Based on the third game in the Castlevania videogame series, it’s set in 15th century Wallachia, and reveals how Dracula unleashes demonic hordes on the place after the superstitious locals burnt his wife at the stake for being a witch (she was actually quite an enlightened woman who was trying to turn Vlad into a pipe and slippers guy, apparently). So Trevor Belmont, from a family of vampire hunters, teams up with Vlad’s lad, Alucard (read it backwards ), and a feisty sorcerer priestess to fight the good fight.
And that’s it. Four episodes of poorly structured prologue to a longer second series next year. Bizarrely paced, with oddly flat cliffhangers, it’s hampered by a Jon Snow-wannabe lead character whose world-weary humour becomes a tedious affectation by midway through episode two. And he’s barely in episode one. The animation style borrows all the cost-cutting tropes of anime, ending up looking like a witless pastiche of the medium rather than a homage. Vlad, bad and tedious to watch. Dave Golder
The series’ design is influenced by Ayami Kojima’s work for the 1997 videogame Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night.