Castlevania: Nocturne

Compared to the first one this one disappoints due to the writing. The animation is beautiful, the characters are interesting, but the plot just feels... lacking. Things happen a little too conveniently. The story doesn't feel natural, but rather like some things were thrown in to 'solve' plot problems. Some of the themes and tropes are a little too much modern Hollywood for my taste. It's too much about trauma and empowerment and such. The atmosphere is still stellar though and the world is well built. Also, once it get's going towards the end, it really gets going.

The first one was 10/10. This one is still worth watching, but with lowered expectations.

After the highly unexpected and absolutely gobsmacking brilliant four seasons of Castlevania, we now get a sequel in Nocturne. We can rejoice with the Belmonts back at the wheel, so let's dive in.

Castlevania was a revelation. Instead of getting a bit of nice fan service that stayed close to its rather simple videogame narratives, we were treated with an emotional rollercoaster of a plot that was perfectly paced, dripping of incredible character development and jawdropping animation, that even touched on subjects like depression or life's bigger question. The slow, mysterious build up was just phenomenal, and the blood superb.

Now, although Nocturne does not disappoint, it lacks that surprise depth of its predecessor. The story is kinda cool, touching upon divine Gods and Godesses, and throwing in some ancient myths, but it doesn't have the same brilliant pacing and the build-up is just less interesting.

However, the animation still has the same sheen, and the music is very good, with sound effects being even better. And the characters do have good depth and development, and some really good twists, all helped by the new later setting of The French Revolution.

And that's why it still shines. The 'feel' is very much intact of the original, and the new setting gives it the freshness it needed to be a good follow up. It's just a lot quicker on the action.

So, in short, it's fun and looks great. Let the whip crack for the return of the Belmonts.

This show LOOKS amazing, but the storytelling and dialogue fall short. It struggles to keep an interesting pace and the characters have little to no chemistry that doesn't feel extremely forced. When lines are delivered that are meant to be strong and impactful they instead fall flat and sound cliche. It doesn't help that sometimes this show seems to be preaching to its audience instead of letting them create their own opinions. The animation is still great in most places and the fight scenes are excellent, but the story drastically suffers from my before mentioned points. Some interesting concepts are sprinkled throughout, but they are too few and far between to keep some viewers interested.

I feel like I enjoyed the flagship Castlevania series, especially the earlier seasons, and I'm not certain what happened here. The voice acting is decent - especially Zahn McClarnon as Olrox - and the animation is okay. The storyline is a big whiff at the plate.

My biggest pet peeve is the stakes (no pun intended) are so low: characters seem to be both invincible and never removed permanently from the storyline. After this happens over and over you start to feel like what's the point of these battles if there's never any real consequences. I'm also a stickler for consistency so if you're a mortal and are hit by a goddess.......you should probably die (granted so many shows are guilty of this).

The Edouard storyline is grimacingly bad and at the end of the second season I just started skipping all his scenes, which seemed artificially emo. The storyline jumps all over the place, especially in the second season, and I feel like they really did Erzsebet a disservice. She is such a bland and one-dimensional antagonist, there was a real chance to make her complex and interesting.

Finally, the show should have leaned more into Belmont/Alucard, who deserved so much more screen time than they received, this is Castlevania after all.

I share some of the sentiments with regard to the other reviewers. The visuals are great but the story is lacking.

But seeing as I don't know the castlevania storyline from the game, I don't care if the show is true to the game storyline.

My biggest gripe with this show is just how weak the monsters are. Vampires and night creatures are star wars storm trooper levels of useless. They are just fodder for the heroes to kill, so they have no intimidation factor.

The second gripe is related to the writing, stuff like how when one of the characters goes on a spying mission how they immediately find what they are looking for and are within hearing distance of important conversations. All this while the Vampires which are supposed to have heightened senses cannot detect that someone is following them and listening in on their conversations. That's just hack writing.