#beev watches netflixvania

[beevean]

Rewatching NFCV with @woodchipp and @the-crow-binary has been miserable so far.

Not because of them, of course: we all need each other to bear the Peak. but holy shit I forgot how mindnumbingly boring the show is. it's way worse at a second watch because now I know how much it falls apart! We're only at S2E3 as of this post!

S1 is the best season, and even that is largely forgettable, especially S1E3 which wastes 22 minutes of my life to say "here's the bishop. he's proof that CHURCH BAD". But S1E1 may be the best or second best episode of the whole show thanks to Dracula and his performance... and isn't that sad, that the show peaks at the very beginning? The rest of the show is just... Trevor doing his stuff (while the framing mostly makes fun of him), talking, some fighting, and CHURCH BAD. As positives, I still like Trevor's mini-arc in this season, and the vague effort to be faithful to CV3 (Sypha being petrified by a cyclops, falling down a chasm to find Alucard).

S2 is terrible. Yes we're still less than halfway through. I already hate everything.

I hate Alucard becoming a legend to the point that the Wallachians name his Alucard (as in, Dracula's opposite) after only a year - why couldn't he name himself Alucard? Why complicate matters so much? Isaac calling him Alucard, and Dracula recognizing the name, makes absolutely no sense: how do they know about it? Dracula lost contact with his son one year ago and I doubt Wallachian human legends have reached him. And Isaac was in the Sahara until sometime after Lisa died!

I hate Alucard himself. He's a cunt. He does nothing but insult Trevor and the Belmonts without provocation, and it's not funny banter, he's mean! He's genuinely cruel! He hears that Trevor lost his family at 12, and he can only say "lol and lmao I had more of a childhood than you. anyway they were mentally ill and child killers, they sacrificed chickens and hoarded dead cats". And this piece of shit is the most popular character of the show??? he's not even pretty what are y'all seeing 😭

(it's also weird how he's all angsting about killing his vampire father, but he hates the Belmont for being vampire hunters. bro. bro you're also about to hunt a vampire. why are you defending a race of monsters so staunchly. not even a hint of, I don't know, a Belmont hurting him when he was a child because he was confused for a full vampire? Remember that logically, a vampire child is a child turned into a vampire, we have no other indication that dhampirs are running all around the world. I know that in the games he seems fully on board with "vampires bad and me bad for being half vampire", but you have the chance of making it better and you squander it?)

Sypha is also ruder than I remembered. I think she suddenly became more cheerful in S3 and that's why I liked her, but also girl, you keep criticizing Trevor for being rude and not consoling you, but you look at him with a perpetual resting bitch face and insult the Morning Star calling it an "ugly thing"? Why does Trevor even bother with the likes of you? How is Trephacard the most popular ship in the franchise?

I hate Isaac. Oh, I gave him the benefit of the doubt back then, because I really wanted to understand why he became the fan favorite. But now? No, I'm sorry, he's overrated as fuck. He's so damn pretentious, his speech about how he wants a pure world without love is terrible from the lens of him being a Muslim who is devoted to the Devil, and his backstory is so tryhard and historically inaccurate that I almost prefer Hector's past being exposed through voiceover.

Oh, and Hector, I hate his scenes. Because he's actually treated with dignity. He's fine! I actually like the guy! I like the scene where he rebukes Godbrand (who as a character only exists to attract infodumps and to question Dracula) because "I have to work" - he sounds actually proud of his role, if not even competent, perish the thought. Also by reading the scripts online I forgot that he was the one who yelled "you do not question my loyalty!". Which I like a lot? I can hear the real Hector protesting like that out of pride, even if in private he would admit that he disagrees with the bloodshed. And the scene where he soothes the newborn Night Creature... yeah, this character used to be written with respect, and knowing how he gets tortured and disrespected and used for rape apologism by a sex pest hurts even more. Also, in retrospect, the scene where he stares at the fire while reminiscing about the day he set fire on his own childhood home doesn't go anywhere, even as the finale of S3 echoes it :^)

And Dracula, oh my poor man Dracula. He's already being presented as an ineffectual depressed old man spending his time staring at a fireplace, who can't even command his presence in the war room, who allows Carmilla to insult him and Lisa in front of everyone - it's so embarrassing how he gets the Red Eyes of Fury and then he simply... lets her go after he gets the flimsy explanation of "yeah I humiliated you because everyone is asking themselves the same question. I wanted to help <3" girl (Dracula), she's a mere regional ruler, as she herself said??? why do you need her so much that you allow her to do this shit??????? oh but then you posture to godbrand, he gets to be threatened because... he's not relevant to the plot i guess. fucking pathetic. what have they done to my man.

(and I hate Carmilla. but that has never changed. annoying smug ass #girlboss with the charisma of spoiled seafood. her way of manipulating Hector isn't even manipulation, it's just her telling him very plainly what she wants him to do. She and Lenore utterly suck at their job, and they only get their way because muh plot)

And then there's the infodumping. Oh my god these people won't shut the fuck up. Godbrand is like "why should we listen to two humans?" and Dracula dumps twice that he trusts Hector and Isaac for their human nature (which, again, it's a decent reasoning, but it goes on and on and even they should know, I get it). Alucard dumps about the apocalyptic scenario where Dracula wins and rules over a world without humans... but he only describes it as we look into his ugly face, instead of doing something more creative like actually showing what would happen. Hector gets this random flashback-through-sound, shoved there as if Ellis didn't know where to put it in the script; later on he explains to Carmilla the origin of Night Creatures, as if ever remotely matters. Isaac dumps about his jihadist philosophy about how by killing humans he and Dracula will create a pure world. Carmilla randomly reveals her Tragic Backstory after kicking Godbrand down the stairs, another scene I can't stand because it's all about what a #queen she is and how she's better than Dracula. At one point they seriously discuss about the myth of vampires unable to cross running water, which is a moot point anyway because Carmilla resorts to using a zombie bishop to bless the river!! No I will never let it go!!!

(also I love that in the one occasion where Alucard has the chance of describing his childhood, he retells the tale of Lisa meeting Dracula, something we've already seen and he was also obviously told about, not something he experienced himself. They couldn't even come up with another anedocte to actually tell us what kind of mother Lisa used to be. so lazy)

This show is half people sitting in a circle and talking, and half average fight scenes. Yeah at this point not even those impress me anymore. I'm serious when I say that Knuckles' fight scene in Divergence, also animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios, is of a better quality than what the show has offered.

And this is why I'm so reluctant to watch Nocturne. If the best seasons of this highly acclaimed show are so painful to sit through, how are we going to survive a sequel series that not even the fans liked it as much?

[beevean]

We finally watched Nocturne.

... what? No, no endless post this time :P not only because it's just one season. It's just as I expected: it's not as infuriating as its big sibling. (unless you're familiar with the French Revolution coughcough@the-crow-binary)

We only watched the first four episodes so far, and I have already said a lot, so let's go.

The thing I complained the most about, I noticed, was the worldbuilding, mostly how vampires work. The original show "elfified" vampires, only keeping the basic traits "need blood, don't like sunlight or running water, can turn into things like bats and mist". They were portrayed as this ancient rage, one with its own culture (much superior than the dumb humans who forget everything because church bad): they sleep normally, they can eat food if they so wish, apparently they can have sex with zero issues lol, and infamously child vampires are treated as, well, innocent children and not as poor human kids suffering a terrible fate. Trevor even kindly tells us that the reason vampires hate crosses regardless of their faith is because their eyesight is so advanced that they freak out at the sight of geometrical shapes. The only monstruous trait they have is that apparently they have a tendency to go insane and crave power. Honestly, they kind of remind me of Twilight.

And somehow Nocturne manages to get it worse.

Now, yes, vampires in Nocturne bite far more often than in the OG show. I think in that other show we see them doing that... twice? And Carmilla and Lenore lick Hector's blood; then they just drink from their stock of blood à la Drac from SoTN. Anyway, Nocturne is more willing to show them as beasts, so good job. Hell, Sun Thundercat even turns a human!

But in this setting, vampires seem to not even have those few weaknesses they had in the OG show. For a story centered on how Sun Thundercat will bring eternal night to the world because sun is the number 1 obstacle to vampires, it's baffling how easily they can just walk around in plain daylight. Olrox looks out of the window with his face illuminated by the sun. Drolta can literally walk just fine, even without a parasol. @spinningbuster98 kept asking "why don't peasants or slaves just destroy the windows of the places where they know vampires live?" - well clearly they'd be fine!

And special shoutout to Drolta who openly mocks the concept of her being hurt by being in a church. At least in S1, Blue Fangs explained its presence in the Bishop's church by blaming his heinous actions for pushing God away.

Vampires are also shockingly well integrated into society. These extremely pale people, with visible pointy ears and long fangs, can chill around in a nice palace or stroll into a theatre, and no one bats an eye. How? In the OG show, vampires could be in a position of power (see the council of Styria), but they mostly worked from the shadows. Did humans just... accept the presence of these monsters?

(the cross weakness becomes way funnier now. Vampires are weak to the religion they used to believe in, so Annette can ask the help of the Christian God to harm previously Christian vampires. I actually like this. But then this makes that OG "vampires have super freaky eyesight" scene even stupider than it used to be)

Another point for the clumsy worldbuilding. Hey, remember how I complained that N!Hector wearing Hector's CoD outfit makes no sense? Because that's what he could cobble up from his old Devil Forgemaster uniform and it's basically the best he can wear for running through the country and fighting, while N!Hector 1) is still in Drac's service in S2 so you'd expect a more professional uniform from him, like the one worn by N!Isaac, and 2) he very much does not fight, making details like the arm guard and the single glove look redudant. We have a similar issue here: Maria, whose design was taken straight out of DXC, complains in the first episode that her mother is too poor to pay taxes. You can tell that she doesn't look that poor. To make things even worse, in the second episode, Tera is able to offer bread to Annette and Edouard: the French Revolution started, among other reasons, because even bread got ridiculously expensive for common people! So which is it? Is Maria one of the common people, or a well-off young woman who really has no business leading the revolution?

And this... is tied to other problems.

The French Revolution is nothing more than a shallow backdrop for the main plot being the Vampire Messiah being hyped up as the greatest evil to ever evil. You can tell the writers did not care when they cast Vaublanc, a real person who fought against slavery, as a vampire slaveowner. I think. I think you shouldn't do that.

The point is, it becomes increasingly jarring when you see that the main protagonists, the ones who spout the most generic "liberty, equality, fraternity"... are not even French. Maria has Russian origins, and as I've shown she seems to be doing well. Richter is a Romanian who grew up in the US. Annette, who gets to make a super epic speech about freedom, is a runaway from Saint-Domingue. Edouard is a rich opera singer, also from Saint-Domingue.

Oh, Annette.

You know, I want to say something. I'd have much more patience for her abrasive, ungrateful, condescending behavior, I'd justify it as a result of her trauma, if it weren't for how mean-spirited she is and for how no one seems to even react to her.

bruh.

You did that, huh. Richter has been nothing but kind and supportive to you, relating to the loss of your friend and of your mother - this isn't a Trevor situation where you can fall for what the story tells you and believe he's actually rude, no, Richter is on-screen a very nice guy! And you say that? To his face? After he revealed to you that the Belmonts used to do magic but he can't because he lost his mom? Something you should know how devastating it feels? And you THROW THAT TO HIS FACE??

Richter is the one who gasps, by the way. Maria and Tera over there? Nah they're just eating popcorn as this stranger is deliberately hitting Richter where it hurts the most. Thanks girls.

Oh but she's not done!

I know what this is. Look at her, the Stronk former slave who suffered Hardships which inherently makes her more Mature and World Wise, looking down on the two white French people who obviously had it so easy in their lives.

Hey, Ms. Adult. Who's the one who lost control of her powers, leading to Edouard becoming a Night Creature? Richter is too nice to throw that in your face. I'm not :)

Hey, Ms. I Suffered More Than You. Who's the one who only managed to save herself from the plantation only due to magical god-inherited powers? Which is also incredibly insensitive to the real-life slaves who managed to escape with nothing more but human skills and intellect?

Hey, Ms. I'm More Mature Than You Whiteys. Who's the one who needed the help of a rich half-white man to be protected? Not that you even know the concept of being grateful.

Uh, and Tera? You mind chiming in? You mind defending your daughter and your adopted son from this stranger who keeps being rude and disrespectful? No? Okay. She just suggests how to save Edouard, but lets Annette's words slide. You and Lisa can compete for the title of Mom of the Year.

Oh, but this is not a sexism or racism issue. This is literally the same thing as Alucard in S2 being the biggest hypercunt to Trevor, making fun of his traumatic childhood, cruelly mocking his family and his legacy, and treating him like he's nothing more than a failure of a drunkard when the dude has been nothing but a help in fights and gave them access to the vast Belmont Hold... and Sypha always rushed in Alucard's defense because boohoo his depression is an icy well of sadness, he Suffered More Than You!

This is just the writers shitting on the Belmonts, and I am sick of it. Trevor did not deserve this, and Richter doesn't deserve this.

Anyway, characters. I have little to say. Richter is the best one, being reasonably cocky as you would expect from him; not to an insufferable degree, just yeah he comes off as an immature young man who needs to grow up. I like him. Maria is a parody of teens on Twitter talking about seizing the means of production, and I kind of forget she's there. Annette, yeah :) Edouard got retroactively characterized after his death, but I still don't know how to describe his personality beyond "helpful" and "source of infodumps". Tera exists. The abbot is profoundly stupid for allying himself with vampires for the sake of crushing the "Godless" Revolution (there's an N!Hector joke to make here but it's not worth it). Drolta is basically Isaac who slapped a pair of tits on himself and just like that she's a beloved slay queen icon. Templar Agent Stone Mizrak is mere bara bait so far. Olrox... well, so far he's mildly intriguing for being outside of the hero/villain dichotomy. Kind of a tryhard, though, and I still don't know why he didn't just kill Richter.

My last complaint is that it's really boring how they hype up Sun Thundercat as this harbinger of DEATH AND SUFFERING AND PAIN AND TERROR way before we even see her. It reminds me of Alucard exposing how a world without humans would be: just this empty, edgy narration with nothing to show for it. But at least by then we had a taste of Dracula's anger and powers, so this is even worse. You need to try harder to build up an antagonist.

and finally, have the best moment in the whole franchise

BUT, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[beevean]

So, I started to watch Netflixvania, just to get the full context of... well, everything, from its fame to the grievances some fans have with it.

Season 1 was fairly boring, to be honest, but it was also mercifully short, so I don’t have much to say. It establishes the conflict, which is Dracula waging war on humanity due to his grief - and he’s the best part of the season.

Speaking of characters, we also get a good glimpse of Trevor, Sypha and Alucard! Trevor... kind of feels like a Guts halfway through his Black Swordsman-ization? He’s standoffish, perpetually sarcastic, and reluctant to save people, but he does so anyway out of his own sense of morality. He also becomes more heroic after shedding his huge, evil-looking cape. If it’s intentional, I like it. Also, he’s a drunkard, because #relatable. (not even worth comparing him to what little we see of him in CoD, where he’s far more noble and humble while still being a hothead - I’ll throw him a bone and say that it’s possible he could go through character development) Not much to say about Sypha, though, I only took that she cares very much about politeness lmao. I’m not even mad that she’s so powerful, she is canonically OP as hell :P Alucard, on the other hand, comes off as rather smug - he’s even called “floating vampire Jesus”.

(their designs are also good. While I slightly prefer Trevor’s CoD design because I’m biased :P I also like this more macho, gruffier version. He looks ready for combat and for travelling, although it’s a little odd how his shirt looks militaristic. Sypha wins by default due to her game designs being... lacking, but seriously, she’s pretty cute. Alucard is nearly identical to his game counterpart except his clothes are very simplified. Like, extremely simplified :P)

(... and I still think his face is rather uncanny, but hey)

Speaking of designs, I was rather weirded out by how the Belmont Clan became the Belmont House and talked about as if they were nobles. If it’s a reference to Leon, who I know exists in this lore, didn’t he give away his title? Shouldn’t the Belmonts before Trevor be known as “mere” vampire hunters, and gain fame after Trevor defeated Dracula? I know that this show picks and chooses what it wants to keep, and man I will rant about it in Season 2, but if it kept “the Belmont family was excommunicated by the Church”, I don’t understand what making the family noble accomplishes, other than giving Trevor a fancy shirt.

Speaking of random canon changes, Sypha insists that she’s not a witch, but a “Speaker”, which is apparently a nomad scholar. Sypha can just use magic for some reason. I prefer the games’ approach of calling every female magic user a witch, whether affiliated with good or evil.

I was rather annoyed by how edgy the series wants to be. I could just laugh when the Vampire Killer somehow yeeted away a whole eye lmao, talk about trying too hard. Flying guts don’t shock me anymore, and the frequent mentions of piss are just tasteless for the sake of tasteless. Sorry, Sypha joking that she could make Trevor drink her pee doesn’t make her funny. And I know it doesn’t get better :^)

Also, Church bad. We get it. I browse Reddit too. (and it’s the wrong church to boot!) As mentioned before, the games have a more grey depiction of the Church: the Belmonts have heavy holy powers, but the Church has also done shady things like exiling the clan due to fear, and that’s not mentioning villains like Graham or Barlowe. Point is, “Church bad” is not enough to create an interesting moral conflict.

But who cares, when the fight scenes are the peak of the show? And yeah, I mean it. The animation is good, and becomes great during fights. While the first two Trevor fights were played for laughs as evidenced by the silly music, the Trevor vs. Alucard scene was where the budget clearly went. There was a lot of thought into it, some smart strategies from both of them, and yeah the whole thing was pure eyecandy. (the fanservice is pretty blatant too, and I appreciate the honesty)

Basically, all of this above? Made me feel I was watching a Berserk knockoff, who only took “edge! gore! religion bad!” out of it, and failed to include all the more complex terms like fatalism or determination.

I really don’t have much else to add. The plot... isn’t there! These 100 minutes or so have been nothing but exposition and establishing the set up. We saw Dracula’s origin story, we got introduced to the main protagonists, and we saw that Church bad. And to think I thought the pacing would be rushed based on the first episode, where we didn’t even see Dracula and Lisa’s relationship before she gets executed - we go from Dracula saying that he might like her to her at the stake! I wonder how people felt when this first came out.

Season 2 is where things will get interesting. Not only because many more elements will be introduced, and the plot will move along, but...

I can’t wait to have Words about you two :)

[beevean]

Let’s start with the peak of the show:

Y’ALL LIKE BERSERK?????? WE SURE DO!!!!!! PLS LET US ADAPT IT!!!!!!!!!

no, don’t you touch my Berserk. But this scene is cool as hell. The rest of the season was a marked improvement over S2 and 3, but still hard to sludge through. This post is nowhere near as well structured as my previous ones (and even those were rambly) because I have just... mentally checked out. I think S3 broke me :(

One of the biggest problem of this season for me can be chalked back to one narrative choice: a time skip of six weeks. This was not a good choice, because now we see characters acting nothing like they did in previous seasons, and what should have been character development... just feels like OOCness. Some of the plots also feel rushed, probably because much more screentime is dedicated to fights now.

~

I’m so sorry, Trevor and Sypha, but you really got shafted in terms of story. Again.

Their subplot is the same as S3, helping a village: in this case Targoviste, the same where Lisa was executed. They extremely blatantly lampshade that all this time they did nothing but react instead of acting. Ngl, I skipped episode 7 because my god is their story boring. Yes, I shouldn’t have done that, but I really couldn’t stand it anymore. But I have to mention this scene:

It’s so dumb lmao. This is the best Ellis could come up with to explain why vampires hate crosses. They hate geometrical forms. This is Twilight levels of pseudoscience.

The “swearing rant” would be funnier if Trevor were the only one to swear like a sailor. Oh, Sypha says “shit”? I did not forget how she mused that she could make Trevor drink her pee way back in S1.

I like how Death is foreshadowed, by introducing it as a mythical figure Trevor and Sypha come across. And even better, one of Varney’s first lines: “I was one of Dracula's first loyal followers!” You sure were :D ... well, were this canon Death. It’s not.

I also was genuinely surprised that the Alchemist in the Infinite Corridor was also Death... even though I myself remarked that she looked like she could be Death! Okay, that’s on me for not putting two and two together, but that was cool.

I don’t like how both Caesar and Abraham seem to know Varney out of nowhere, though. Things happen offscreen.

Oh, wait, I of course have to post this video:

muh “at least it’s original”. Anyway, making him a superior villain using Dracula for his own means is an unnecessary change that devalues the original villain even more. But we're used to that.

Speaking of which, Jesus is their short time as the rebis hard to watch.

At least I have nothing bad to say about the Trevor vs. Death fight. Peak hype. Excellently done :>

St. Germain’s face heel turn is well foreshadowed. The Alchemist in the Infinite Corridor tells him that he can still has his morals, etics and soul left to sacrifice if he wants his wife back. And he says that he’d do anything to get her back...

I felt genuinely bad when he killed a librarian because he wouldn’t give him the information that he wanted, and he breaks down crying because he just murdered someone, and he’s starting to fall so low in his quest :(

Aaaaand he gives us this immortal line. Now this is what we call some true writing.mp4.

(I have no idea how Caesar came in contact with him though. Again, things happen offscreen.)

As a positive note, I did like how the second to last fight of the show took place in a clock tower, like in the original Castlevania :) and awww Trevor said "I love you!" to Sypha! Cuties <3 and they're going to have a child! My heart <3

~

Carmilla is back again! More or less. I sure didn’t miss her in S3. I’m very happy with her situation in S4, because she only appears in two episodes :)

She gives us the stupidest, pettiest villain rant she could give us, with the worst possible lead-in.

"Do you think Dracula would have kept Hector in his castle were he dangerous?"

"OH THE CASTLE. I SURE WOULD HAVE LOVED THAT CASTLE. HERE LET ME RANT ABOUT THE STUPID OLD MEN I WANT TO TAKE STUFF FROM. NOW I’M ANGRY AND INSANE OUT OF NOWHERE AFTER BEING OUT OF FOCUS IN S3."

So the villain of this #deep and #intricate show is literally nothing more than a generic supervillain who wants to conquer the world because she wants to, with a dash of good ol’ radfem. Okay. Good writing. I don’t care anymore.

And btw, Carmilla suddenly being wary of Caesar for having “a deviousness in him” and saying that “he could kill” is terribly out of nowhere. Where does this come from? She was the first one calling him puppy and all. Caesar did jackshit in S3. This is a horrible way to fix the mess that has been his portrayal.

(I do like how Caesar himself theorizes that Carmilla is now “overreaching” because being thirsty is a core trait of being a vampire, that's an interesting insight)

And then the bitch dies.

Yes, just like that. Eat shit in hell <3

But still, I’m not 100% satisfied because... she has appeared so little since S2. She did nothing in S3, and then she had her little radfem rant in S4. Why did she go insane out of the sudden? We don’t know.

And I don’t give a shit anymore. She’s dead, that’s what matters! :D

Striga and Morana get a little more focus this time, and the focus is them going like “shit, Carmilla’s plan was dumber than we thought”. Striga even, surprisingly, takes pity on all the farmers she kills in her Day Armor, and realizes that this is what she’d be doing the whole time if she followed Carmilla. Basically, they’d spend the rest of their eternal life fighting humans to keep control, since now they know that humans don’t go down without a fight. Not surprisingly, when Carmilla dies (and they think Lenore died too), they decide to run away and do their thing together without scheming. Go do your thing, girls.

Of course, I always reserve Lenore for later :)

~

If I had little to say about T&S, I really have nothing for Alucard.

Obvious reference to this iconic scene:

I get that you have a watersport fetish, Ellis. Cut that out.

Well, his depression lasts only the first episode, just enough for him to change into a costume that is very similar to his SoTN one, but shirtless because why not. Then we meet Greta of Danasti! Yes, completely unrelated to the one C3 character not included in the show. She’s your typical badass woman who takes no shit from no one.

Nothing to say about his subplot either. It’s boring, I can’t keep up, I skipped episode 7. I really have no more patience. Sorry, man. And the main trio gets back in S4E9, after being separated ever since S2E8! I think that weakened their otherwise touching finale.

Oh, right, and his big trauma over being raped and nearly killed is mentioned in passing conversation as a noodle incident. Greta even lowkey jokes about it.

As I said, it was nothing but fetish fuel for Ellis to masturbate to :)

~

Abraham was the arc I had the second most interest in. This dude is beloved, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. And... I think I cracked it :) but still, even with very limited screentime, he ends up being the best character of the season.

Abraham tells us very plainly (well, to the statue of the defeated Magician) how much he changed... as if we couldn’t tell by his sudden and unexplained care for burying the people too rotten to forge because he sees them as victims, or how he sympathizes with FlysEyes and doesn’t want to see him as a tool (interesting how it’s reserved to the only night creature who can talk like a human... does it mean that the other creatures have human sapience as well?). He reasons himself into an interesting conclusion: he has agency, and he liked the feeling of righteous justice when he killed the Magician, so he will try to change the world for the better. This is a fairly good direction to take his character in! But I can’t help but feel that it contrasts with the cackling Abraham of S3E9. Again, time skip.

“You believe you’re tools of destruction only because this is how your kind has always been used” is a very good line to associate to any Devil Forgemaster, though :) I like to imagine how Hector or Isaac would react to this.

While I still have some issues, Abraham reaches his peak in episode 6. He gives up his plans of revenge on Caesar, which is a shame as I would have liked to see them fight, but I understand that they wanted to confirm that Abraham holds no resentment in his heart anymore... if only that time skip didn’t happen. His fight against Carmilla is the stuff of legends <3 and then there is his long speech about the conclusion he reached from his journey: in short, he wants to live life. And I was touched, I really was. While I’m still irked by the time skip, it felt seriously cathartic, helped by the wonderful acting. Good for him :)

So, what was Abraham’s arc in the end? He’s a man who in the past went through a lot of pain and hardships, but is now peacefully living his life, until a person he deeply cares for gets killed and he’s unable to do anything to save them. Enraged and heartbroken, he sets himself on a destructive quest for revenge against the person who ruined his life, being an ultra competent, badass fighter and kicking ass left and right... but he meets kind people along the way, and he eventually learns to let go of his hatred. He also, after following Dracula for years and considering himself separate from humankind, realizes that he’s more than a tool: he has agency himself. He gains the strength to acknowledge that Dracula was wrong, leave him behind, and become his own person. He finally accepts his own humanity.

Wow, so peak, so raw, what a deep character arc! But... doesn’t it sound oddly familiar...?

Yeah.

I don’t want to hear a peep about how Hector is nothing more than a generic “badass”, if you then turn around and call Abraham one of the best characters in the franchise. All of you who love Abraham? You actually love Hector and you just don’t know it.

I’m not even touching the meta cruelty of taking Hector’s compelling character arc away from him and transplanting it into an OC that pretends to be Isaac, leaving a shell to be tortured in Hector’s place.

That final Abraham monologue touched me, but Hector had by far the most organic character arc, and it deserved to be properly depicted in the show.

(I could also compare his arc to Guts’, since Hector is basically a simplified version of Guts anyway lmao.)

(I will admit, though, that Abel kicked ass here, an excellent use of a very underutilized element of CoD)

Speaking of which...

~

I kept reading that Caesar became a Magnificent Bastard in this season, which absolutely baffled me: him? Magnificent?? No way. I can confirm now that this season felt like a long, long apology letter to how Caesar was written, because he’s suddenly sassy, demanding, has no patience for anything anymore, and came up with a clever scheme to take down the Council. I could actually start calling him Hector now.

By the second episode he’s already seen walking around and setting special stones in cracked walls. He’s depicted, for the first time in forever, in a dignified way, even blackmailing someone to get what he wants in a deal. In episode 6, she cages Lenore and flaunts that he was not to be trusted! He even cuts off his own finger to get rid of the ring, which is a super chad move! Yep, this is a new Caesar, everyone! I should be happy, right?

No. Well, okay, I am a bit, because he is genuinely badass and witty, but... You know what this is? This is the Netflixvania equivalent of that scene in Sonic Frontiers where Tails, out of nowhere, starts crying that he’s “wildly inconsistent” because recently (as in, in games penned by Pontaff) he hasn’t been at his best self. That scene, praised by everyone, was nothing more than Flynn smugly declaring that oh, he has fixed Tails, don’t you worry guys! I managed to make his badass decay intentional! Now, under my supervision, he’ll be the good ol’ Tails you always wanted! And I’m not happy about it, it feels too self-congratulatory and meta.

Lenore, on the other hand, is a brat. She’s childish, immature, always pouting, constantly swearing like an edgy teen girl, and nothing like her clever, elegant S3 self. See, it’s her turn to angst now, that she’s not needed anymore! I wish you weren’t, you horrible piece of shit.

Same for Caesar here. The change from “good boy” Caesar to “scheming sassy boy” Caesar is too sudden, and it happened off screen. Abraham even spells it out for us (because of course he does) that he knows that Caesar had no agency back then and was manipulated, a line so meta that I could see Ellis smiling to himself, and that’s why he holds no more contempt for him; Caesar himself years to make up for him mistakes. The six week time skip! I hate it! Why can’t we see Caesar grow a spine? I would have so loved it!

And then she peaces out in the finale because whoops, turns out that she doesn't like the life that she wanted to subject Caesar to! Remember the enslavement part? I'm not sure you do. At least phrase it like "I'm all alone, I miss my sisters, I've realized that I never did anything good in my life and maybe I never will", not "oh noes I'm in a cage :(".

If I can praise Lenore’s suicide for one thing, it’s how it was foreshadowed in S3, with her talk about not missing the sun as a vampire. That was a good parallel.

And I guess it’s time to address the elephant in the room: Lenector.

This is their first interaction in S4. Lenore acting like a spoiled brat out of nowhere, and Caesar indulging her dick jokes and talking to her as if they were an old married couple already. Later on, she even vents her personal issues to him, and most baffingly, Caesar cares so much about her that he begs Abraham to spare her, and says that he wants to spend time alone with her.

Dude.

What the fuck?

How can you go here when the last time we saw them, THIS happened?

You can’t jump six weeks and go from “I made you into my pet” to this equally balanced, respectful dynamic!

No.

This is horrible. It looks like Caesar just forgot everything that happened. How con-fucking-venient.

And shut the fuck up Lenore I want to strangle you with your hair.

"You were the last problem I had to solve!"

"Yes, thanks again for that." *shows magic ring that enslaves him*

"Oh, shush. You were having fun."

"Right until the end."

I want to stab someone and then set them on fire. Great, let’s all joke about Caesar’s trauma of having a deep moment of vulnerability and weakness taken advantage of! It’s funny! One month and a half is enough to make it into a cute memory, right? Right? :’D

"I think [Carmilla] lied to me."

"Just like Dracula lied to me."

I can’t be the only one who can’t accept this no matter how well written the dialogues are (and they aren’t, Caesar has his good moments but Lenore is insufferable) because I keep screaming “YOU RAPED AND ENSLAVED HIM A MONTH AGO!!!”, right? Well... I guess I am, since Lenector is one hell of a popular ship :\

Look at this blatant attempt to connect them. I don’t know how else to convey my sheer rage.

"I'm sorry for everything you went through" oh like him being tortured by your sisters, you beating the shit out of him, and the whole raping and enslaving? :)

I have my problematic ships. I have quite a few fucked up ships, most of them involving power imbalance because I am weak for that. The thing is that, I like them because they are fucked up, and I don’t ignore that element to make the relationship cuter than it should be.

I never get the feeling that Lenector shippers acknowledge this part - in fact, I’ve seen plenty of people denounce S4 as bad because those two “deserved a happy ending”.

Uhm. No. They did not. Well, Caesar did, but Lenore sure deserved to suffer a little more. I don't buy her changing attitude from vampire enslaver to cute little girl who really cared about Caesar all along.

Oh, but apparently, Lenore never touched Caesar again after she put the ring on him! That's the general assumption, it seems. So that explains how Caesar is so buddy buddy with her :) that’s how it works, right?

So... This was season 4. I'm sorry this post feels so flaccid. While the finale was good, I'm just glad to be done. Watching the show was an utterly miserable experience, and I'm glad I had people keeping me company. At least now I have proper context for this very popular part of the franchise.

Bleah. Lenector is officially in my list of ships that squick me out. Get that away from me, my man deserves better. I'm so glad that in canon he finds two wonderful women who support him and make him realize he's worthy of love :)

~

As a final note, the decision to bring back Dracula and Lisa is... Why? What's the point? It nullifies their tragedy and I'm pretty sure this change fucks up the later timeline. Unless Dracula will just decide to kill humans for shit and giggles after Lisa's death? What excuse will they come up with in Nocturne to include him, if they will? This was just peak "Let's make everyone happy".

[beevean]

Season 3.

Let’s get this over with. Warning for long post, blah blah blah I’m in a smashy mood.

This season is made of four plotlines, of different focus and quality.

The easiest way I can describe all characters is by comparing them to Sonic ‘06, which is very, very telling already:

Trevor and Sypha are Sonic, because they do fuck all and, despite being the main protagonists, they’re relegated to a side plot;

Abraham is Shadow, because he was very clearly the writer’s favorite and gets all the cool moments;

Caesar is Silver, because he’s a fucking moron;

Alucard is Blaze, because he might as well be a figment of our imagination;

Lenore is Mephiles, because only a moron would fall for her manipulation (hint hint) and yet fans adore her for reasons I cannot comprehend.

Welp! I could conclude here! But no. This season was miserable, and I have to vent. Strap in.

Trevor and Sypha are written well. Trevor seems to have regained some of his S1 traits such as his love for beer and his cynic nature, but he’s been softened up by Sypha. Sypha is the more idealistic of the two, and she’s genuinely giddy to go on adventures and fight monsters. In retrospect, it's setup for the ending where she gets broken, but in the meantime she's cute and I won't complain. Anyway, they’re really cute together :) “Do you have my back?” “Always” <3

I wasn’t really... interested in their subplot? I completely admit that I stopped paying attention halfway through, and that’s 100% on me, I just couldn’t keep focus and by episode 4 it just became a break from the other bullshittery. It has to do with them investigating an evil cult in a village, which is very lowkey for who should be two of the three main protagonists. Although I appreciated a lot the inclusion of Dracula worshippers, now this vaguely feels like Castlevania :P

One thing bothers me, though. The Visitor nailed under the priory is said to have been created by Abraham. When? Really, when? Not even the Wiki mentions its creation. You can’t just namedrop Abraham like that, I did follow his subplot and I don’t remember that demon. Also how does Sala know about it? Am I going mad?

Speaking of their subplot, St. Germain is introduced! Well, someone who shares the same name, anyway. While the original St. Germain didn’t do much in the game and mostly a very fun boss fight, he was an intriguing mystery. I understand that they couldn’t put a Time Lord in this very super serious series, so I was wary of what they’d do with him, but I can’t say I was disappointed. This St. Germain retains the vaguely weird air about him, he’s eccentric and oddly knowledgeable, but it looks like he means well... maybe. He has the most understable objective of all characters: he wants to access the dimension where his wife is stuck in. And he succeeds at the very end! I also like his Tudor-esque design: obviously he couldn’t look like in canon, so this is a very nice compromise. I know he’ll come back in S4, so I’m curious to see how.

He has some of the worst lines when it comes to gratuituous vulgarity, though. "I am immortal and glorious, and all these other people smell of piss." "Ugh! Christ alive, do you people shit on the grape?". okay.

Very odd that they bothered to include a whole level from Curse of Darkness. More or less, the Infinite Corridor here has nothing to do with the one in the game. It’s basically a long balls tripping sequence that surely costed half of the budget for the season :P

~

Alucard... I don’t know what they did to him. He spends the whole season cooped up in his castle with new characters Sumi and Taka, the Japanese not-twins, because he wants to pass on the knowledge of the castle, and because, well, he’s alone.

(I'm sorry for laughing at "I just got used to say names again", way to be melodramatic sweetie. But okay, he’s Alucard, so I’ll cut him some slack :P)

And yeah, their design is bad in the “not twins” regard. Really, they could have made them more physically distinct if you didn’t want to communicate that they’re related... not to be that person, but, uhhh there’s something unfortunate in two Asian characters being drawn with the exact same features...

Anyway, Alucard’s arc is mind numbingly boring, and no wonder it got the least amount of screentime. I think Ellis simply didn’t know what to do with him after sticking him inside the castle, but it’s not like he could ignore him. He bonds with the not-twins, we even get some cute scenes of Sumi hugging Alucard, the three laughing on the grass, which I understand it’s a consequence of how lonely he felt, that he’d immediately latch on these two stranger harder than he did with his supposed companions in S2. Yeah, alright, I do feel bad for him. I also liked how he seemed proud to give Trevor some honorary descendants by teaching Taka and Sumi the Belmont techniques :) but somehow, all his angst at having killed his own father and being separated from his first friends is N/A after the first episode. A more sensible arc could have been about him coming to terms with his grief and sense of guilt, you know, some character development... instead of adding even more angst for no reason.

Also, Sumi and Taka give us the backstory of Cho, the Japanese vampire that was killed without any fanfare in S2. Yeah, now I’m supposed to care about a random Asian token, because that’s what she was, really. This show is praised for its writing.

And yeah, they’re all good friends until episode 9. Many other fans have pointed out how their betrayal in the finale is poorly foreshadowed. The two starts to insist about learning magic in particular, they share some disappointed glances at each other when their demands aren’t immediately met, and talk among themselves... but the discussion is all about how much Alucard doesn’t deserve the sorry life he’s leading, no resentment at all (nice how it’s a pair of OCs telling us that Alucard wants to punish himself for killing Dracula, not that we would be able to tell). Tellingly, they talk about giving Alucard a “reward” for what he has done...

... how in the fuck could anyone guess that the reward would be a threesome? Or even worse, that they’d try to kill him??? They talk at one point about the broken engine, you’d think that the “reward” would be fixing it! Look at the jump here! From “oh Alucard is so sad and lonely and he’s doing so much for us, but we would like if he did even more” to “hey, what if we fucked Alucard and then killed him? And what if we, before killing him, started ranting about our tragic past that we didn’t actually show?”. Like. Dude. C’mon. I don’t have much to say because at least this is a very common complaint, but. What is this writing.

(I’ll discuss more in detail about the finale later)

~

The Girlboss Council is also introduced! Because of course, the main villain was disposed of, so now the antagonists are a bunch of OCs! Love when adaptations do that <3

(it’s easy to guess, but this interview with Ellis confirms that he didn’t know that he’d be writing a third season, which is why Dracula gets killed early on)

Well, not much to say about Striga and Morana. Striga has an excellent design, because I’m weak for buff women :P but they don’t have much personality beyond the labels that Carmilla and Lenore give them. Striga is the warrior who’s totally on board with Carmilla’s world domination plans, Morana is the strategist, who apparently likes to torture people (not that we see it, of course).

They’re also there for some truly bad exposition. Striga gives us this gem: “Carmilla and [Morana] always see the future and the present, I can't shake the past.” You have had barely 10 lines so far, Striga, I can’t feel sorry for you.

But it’s her girlfriend who gives us some of the worst examples of show don’t tell I’ve seen so far. There’s this, that I've already elaborated upon, and in a later episode, she exposes to us that Carmilla has still nightmares about the Stupid Old Man who turned her. I sure would love to see those nightmares. It's not even Carmilla herself who says this, it's another far less developed OC, much like Taka and Sumi talking about Alucard! Why are they telling us about Carmilla’s supposed vulnerability, when on-screen she’s nothing but the same smug #girlboss she’s been since her obnoxious introduction?

(Carmilla has her own writing.mp4 moment when she goes on a little rant about how “the best thing about humans” is that they can create little humans and are self-replicating food. Lenore even looks uncomfortable at this. Am I supposed to feel disgusted by that, that she’s reducing humans to food? First, yeah she’s an evil vampire, this is their bread and butter. Second, bitch, you just described one of the core characteristics of every single living being. No shit humans can create little humans. Tomatoes can create little tomatoes, wow so fascinating, they’re self-replicating food as well. Also, it was genuinely more impactful when Caesar compared humans to animals to be culled, because there was no malice in his words - that was interesting! Ah, in another timeline, Caesar could have been a compelling anti-villain...)

Also, Carmilla not only has a very minor role in this season (thank fucking god), sitting on her ass and letting Lenore do all the work, but is a total dumbass. This Reddit post explains why better than I could, but I want to add something: “it was intentional” can only justify so far. Yes, I’m glad that I’m not insane and even the writing itself is aware that Carmilla is a stupid visionary (and in true Netflixvania fashion, it gets repeated to us numerous times). But... why should I be invested in an idiot plot? Why do I have to spend my time, two seasons’ worth of time, for a plan that everyone knows to be idiotic? Why should I even care about Carmilla, who not only is a smug untouchable #girlboss, but apparently has no braincells under her scheming façade? They did the same thing with Dracula, repeating ad nauseam that he was shortsighted and insane, even after his death. What is the appeal of yelling at the top of our lungs “OUR VILLAINS ARE DUMB. THEIR PLANS THAT WILL AFFECT THE PROTAGONISTS ARE DUMB. PLEASE LAUGH AT THEM FOR HOW DUMB THE ARE”? If a story is only as good as its antagonist, what does it say about this story?

And yes, I’ll talk about Lenore later.

~

Abraham has started his character arc! He’s on a quest to create his own demonic army, and he’s in the full throes of misanthropy, but travelling around slowly opens his eyes to the beauty of humankind. At least, this is the intent. The season ends halfway through this arc.

And, well, he wants Caesar dead for obvious reasons. Good thing Rosaly doesn’t exists here :’) but while I understand his resentment against Caesar, he doesn’t spare a thought on the trio of heroes who he fought against. Abraham established in S2 that he doesn’t see Caesar as anything more than a dumb coworker, so why does he single him out? Why does he feel his betrayal (which I would call stupidity but okay) so keenly? Sure, in CoD I also find weird how Isaac isn’t frothing with loathing for Trevor who was the one who materially killed Dracula, but at least his relationship with Hector was more personal, so I buy that he’d feel personally betrayed by him in particular.

Plus, Caesar gets shit on by everyone, so Abraham’s hatred is lost in the general sadism he’s subjected to. Oh, but I’ll get there.

(and funnily enough, Abraham using Dracula’s magic mirror to see what Caesar’s up to is surprisignly faithful to Isaac using a crystal ball in the mangas. Except Isaac’s powers are more interesting because they’re unique to him :V)

There is more focus on Abraham being a Sufi. He repeats it quite a lot of times. The motivation of his villainy is “Mohammed said that Hell will one day be emptied of people”... which is why he uses souls to create night creatures: he’s doing the Prophet’s work. Also, the self-flagellation that I thought was a result of his childhood abuse is also purely religious, and he stopped doing so because he’s too angry and unfocused. Uhhhh... I guess that one sympathetic Muslim villain is more original than beating the dead “Church Bad” horse?

I swear that his dialogue gets so weird. Like this:

Shopkeeper: You're also a man of faith, aren't you? Perhaps a Sufi, I presume. Abraham: Of a sort. My devotion has been a matter of interrogation for some years. And the reparation of my heart is far away.

And no joke I've seen people praise the poetry of this dialogue, while I'm sitting here like... what does it mean? Who interrogated you? Did you interrogate yourself, since you seem to be going through a crisis of faith? What does the reparation of your heart mean in this context? I am genuinely not understanding and I feel dumber the more I try to. Is this why Abraham is hailed as one of the best characters of all time?

His “getting over his misantrophy” arc is... oddly written. I like the captain a lot, he doesn’t take any shit from Abraham, finds him interesting, and gives him some wisdom and hope: he says that humans are both cruel and kind, and that Abraham could use his skills to teach people how to be kind, instead of simply killing them all. He’s a good contrast to Abraham’s insistence that no, no such thing exists in the world. I’m sure that this will become a turning point later on. However, I just don’t feel much for Abraham’s misanthropy in the first place, aside from the fact that Yeah I Get It.

In the second episode, we get a weird moment where Abraham apparently was starting to reconsider his misanthropy after one (1) encounter with a kind shopkeeper, but then one (1) encounter with asshole guards (who understably are afraid of his army of demons) makes him go like “oh no, I was so stupid, thinking humans could be kind! Silly me for going against my better nature!”. And, this feels like it should have come way later in the season? I didn’t even think that the shopkeeper would affect Abraham, his only kind act was giving away the magic mirror for free?

Oh, and it happens in the fourth episode! Again! The exact same setup of the guards not letting him through! And he gets pissy again, even doing the whole “definition of insanity” speech!

“I already made the mistake of expecting humans to make sensible decisions”, “The men-at-arms of Tunis attempted to drive me out because they were full of hatred and fear”, “Why do I keep making the same mistake?” bro you are travelling with a shitton of demons and you’re mad that humans don’t trust you??????? This is not a mistake, this is being a dumbass! I don’t feel bad for you as I should! At least the desert bandits were over the top assholes, but the guards were justified in treating you as a threat! You don't have the same excuse as Caesar that you're a stupid, sheltered manchild!! Am I supposed to think that he's really so alienated from humanity that he can't put two and two together? I get the feeling that I’m really supposed to feel disappointed for him, oh poor little thing shunned by the world for waltzing into towns with an army of monsters :( I think that murdering perfectly reasonable guards because “they’re fucking rude” would fit more a completely unsympathetic villain.

Again, I can’t believe I’m saying this: Caesar did the “anti-villain with a completely alien worldview” thing better! I could tell that he was out of this world, but it made sense for him. I don’t get the same “nah he’s insane” feeling with Abraham.

The more sensible arc would have been him getting to know the best parts of humanity, and then suffering a great loss/betrayal to test his character development: would he understand that humanity is more complex than that, or fall again in his comforting mindset? That would have been interesting. You know why the didn't do that? Because it would have overlapped with Alucard and Caesar’s arcs... even though it would have made much more sense with him, and not lead to terrible scenes.

(random: I genuinely liked the scene where the philosopher-demon talked to Abraham, although I have to roll my eyes at the nth instance of CHURCH BAD... but is there a reason this one demon can talk? Is it because he was a philospher in life, so he’s much smarter than average? This is a weird comparison, but I keep thinking of the talking Grimm in RWBY 8, and how that one could talk because he used to be a Silver Eyes Warrior so a super special case.)

Abraham’s encounter with Miranda should have been a gripping moment. We see, for the very first time, a third Devil Forgemaster! An old, experienced one! She even has the same compass rose that is on Caesar’s vest tattooed on her throat! (which makes me wonder why does Abraham have a different symbol) Abraham relates deeply to her tragic story of being the only survivor of a mass kidnapping and being unable to save her fellow villagers, much like he wasn’t able to save Dracula: this moment actually reminded me of Guts relating to Vargas, to show that he wasn’t only a harcore OW THE EDGE protagonist. She also establishes that Forgemasters can resist the Magician’s powers, which comes back in the finale. Miranda is also yet another intriguing minor character, and you can tell that she’s broken with hatred: she’s what Abraham could become if he doesn’t let go of his guilt and thirst for revenge. I loved it! And the show was, and I still can’t believe my eyes, subtle about it!

... so of course it had to shit on my dinner [cit.] by using Miranda as a convenient plot device: look, the Magician (who we learn nothing about, was never foreshadowed, doesn’t get any characterization) who enslaved my fellow villagers just so happens to have a very big transmission mirror! Big enough to carry your whole army to Styria, sparing you two weeks of riding! Also you might forge new creatures from all those bodies! There you go boy, you’re all set for S4! :D

Abraham is the only main character who comes out of the season unscathed. In fact, Abraham doesn’t go through the pain the others tend to do, outside of his backstory and when Dracula sent him away. Things just very conveniently fall into his lap, even his oh so painful encounters with guards are nothing more than a convenient excuse for him to build his army without looking like a slaughering madman. I start to smell favoritism.

And btw, all those kidnapped villagers? They make Legion! Yay, Legion, y’all like it, right? And ngl, it was awesome, a great interpretation of an iconic enemy. I’d do without the pointless magician, but the whole fight was awesome :)

So yeah. Abraham has the best arc in the season, but only because the other fail miserably. I expected better from him. We’ll see if S4 can still fix things.

~

And then there’s Caesar.

Oh, dear god, Caesar.

This is going to take a while. Grab the popcorn. I have Words. Plenty of them.

This is the poster of the season. This is how they decided to depict Caesar before the season even aired. This is Caesar’s character core.

Did you use to like torture fics? Those fics that were nothing but one character going through hell, whose literary value was nothing more than “I love seeing this character suffer :)”? I sure hope you do, because I did, and it’s still not enough to make me bear this season! I’m not joking when I say that I’ve read better written rape fics!

Under this legendary video, which has become my personal stressball, the first comment is “So basically castlevania is great if you're not a Hector fan”. I disagree. I think Netflixvania is boring if you’re not a Hector fan: if you are...

... actually, you know what? I am tired of comparing Caesar to Hector. I’ve already established how the two have nothing in common besides appearance: this is legitimately bad writing regardless of the character! It’s cruel, it’s spiteful, it’s petty, and it’s uncomfortable to go through, and not in the intended way.

This is why I’m insisting on calling Isaac and Hector different names, as petty as it might look. Every single complaint I’ve seen is all about how they ruined badass Hector, and sure it’s true, but the problems run much, much deeper than that. This is frankly disgusting writing that I wouldn’t accept from a Wattpad fic, let alone from an acclaimed TV series that has overshadowed its source material in popularity.

The season doesn’t waste any time in pissing me off: first episode, and there is already a lot of love put into drawing Hector bruised and bleeding after the march, and we see him naked already, and the animation gets an upgrade to show him eating the rotten bread, or how he’s suffering, trembling on the floor because they threw icy cold water at him. Almost every scene with him has him curled on the floor, wounded, in pain, crawling, beaten up, being treated like an idiot, leashed, being called “good boy”.

And I don’t feel sorry for him.

I don’t care about him because he’s an utter moron - really, Caesar? Threatening a vampire in good health, while you’re naked, weak and defenseless? Revealing to her that your creations are loyal to you only, giving her plenty of time to think about how to overcome that issue? This is just being too dumb to live. “oh but he’s mean to be dumb, he can have flaws!” Again: this guy was a general and a strategist and I’m not letting this go! He even admits that he wouldn’t survive a day were he let free and wow, just... wow. And I don’t fall for this obvious emotional manipulation from the writing. I. Get. It. Give me an actual character to root for, not a Woobie.

And of course, you cannot talk about Caesar without talking about the beloved mommy of the fandom: Lenore! They introduce her as the “cute” vampire lady, the one who loves animals so much that she’d create a splinter for a spider’s leg. Haha, get it, she loves animals just like Caesar! Ship material right there <3 But I’ll leave that topic for S4.

The arc of the season is Lenore buttering Caesar up to make him more pliant, to put it in Morana’s words. Her modus operandi, aside from pulling the smuggest expressions possible and doggifying him (I don’t want to hear “good boy” for at least a year), is repeating ad nauseam “see, aren’t we so nice to you, unlike that crazy Dracula, our plans make sense! Carmilla would have never killed you, she beat the shit out of you because she has a temper! You live now because you listened to Carmilla, so really, be grateful!”. Which is. The exact same thing. He went through S2. He falls for a female vampire shitting on Dracula and presenting herself as the better option. He hasn’t learned a single lesson.

This is the same character who, aside from being a former general and strategist, burned his parents alive, a change that I praised compared to canon. I think that someone who burned his own parents as a child should have a far nastier side. But I guess Ellis forgot in his quest for humiliating a character voiced by Theo James. Ellis used to be praised as a writer.

“Oh but that’s his character! He’s a manchild, he makes wrong decisions, he just wants love! You’re supposed to be creeped out by understanding where this is going!” I’ll repeat what I said about Carmilla: I don’t find deliberate stupidity entertaining. Again, this is the exact same thing he just went through, literally one month prior. And at least back then he retained some of his dignity.

I said it countless times, but it bears repeating:

There was no need to animate his dick in this much detail. This is a level of meta cruelty I’ve rarely witnessed, a systematic stripping down of every shred of dignity down to the last detail. The random “good boy” also doesn’t even make sense to say to a semi-conscious Caesar, but sure why the fuck not, gotta masturbate to the sexy mommy turning him into her pet :)

(this goes to Sonic fans specifically: if you enjoyed Sonic Origins’ cutscenes, or that beautiful Knuckles prologue? Same animation studio. It’s possible that the same people who worked on Knuckles punching down robots in a badass way also worked on Hector’s flopping cock. If I have to be cursed with this knowledge, so do you.)

I don’t feel vindicated when he vaguely talks back at Lenore. At this point it’s almost OOC, especially after his utter lack of spine in S2E8. Oh, look at him snark that he likes his bread with maggots, ooh look at him thinking he can intimidate a vampire (really, Caesar). Does this lead to somewhere? Of course not. It’s all build up so he can lower his guard again.

Also, just to complain about writing again: the more you say “fuck”, the weaker the word becomes. His anger could have been conveyed better in a way that feels less try-hard. This show is praised for its writing.

(I’ll also go there: Lenore ain’t even hot. She’s pretty in a porcelain doll way, like a pimped out Dahlia Hawthorne, but she has no sexy charisma. I don’t see what y’all are seeing. Then again, I’ve seen people thirst over Abraham, who to me is literally Just a Dude, so maybe I have bad taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

(it should have been isaac to call hector good boy don’t @ me you fucking cowards i only stan one kinky horny redhead with a thing for collars)

While I’m here, I’d like to address a common discourse about Caesar here.

I’ve read a lot of posts written after the end of S3 that said the same thing: this is all buildup to something awesome! I bet we’ll get the Badass CoD Hector in S4, this is what this is leading up to! And, well, I’ll talk about the payoff of S4 when the time comes, but even assuming that those people were right... this wasn’t worth it. Nearly 10 episodes of vile torture porn for the chance of a badass moment is too much. It’s like that scene in IDW Sonic #50 where Eggman beats the shit out of Starline in an awesome way: yes the scene is the peak of the whole comic, it’s very cathartic... but to get there, I had to sift through 30~ issues of Eggman being an OOC dumbass, or non existent, and replaced by OCs villains with not even half of his charm who took turns to shit on him. The payoff was awesome in a vacuum... but in context, it wasn’t enough.

Caesar could conquer the whole world in S4, and I’d still feel like the buildup was too much and too cruel.

Well, anyway, Lenore lays the manipulation on thick, but fortunately for her Caesar has no braincells in that thick head of his (great moment when she calls Caesar “a pretty man in a box” to emphasize how powerful she is compared to him, and his only response is “I’m pretty?” - yeah, that’s the only good thing about you, and only because you’re nearly identical to the real Hector), and she randomly gets a very special ring off screen. From a vampire wizard never before hinted at. And she says in one breath “I’m loyal to my sisters, but what we’re doing is wrong and we could flee together :(”, literally the same as Carmilla dehumanizing Lisa one second and then acting concerned for Caesar being human the next. See what I mean?

And then she spreads her legs to Caesar. And Caesar, without any build up, who prior to this episode showed no sign of feeling anything for Lenore stronger than “oh I can talk to her without being beaten to half-death, that’s nice”, falls dick first into her. They literally go from Lenore saying that she wants to flee with him, to them kissing passionately.

Welp, time to talk about the finale.

~

I honestly don’t know what else I can add about it. The whole thing is disgusting and been talked to death. I’ll try to leave my hot takes anyway.

^ me during ep.9. I think I’ll use this reaction image quite often.

I don’t really care about the Trevor & Sypha subplot, but the Judge reveal made me literally laugh. At the last minute, he’s revealed to be a child serial killer. Why? Just because. Apparently because he’s a control freak, and children disrupt order? But it’s so banally evil that it feels so tacked on, just to break the duo. Yeah, Trevor got his badass cynical speech, but it feels unearned. Wow, humanity bad. Much edge, very sad.

But that’s not what we want to talk about, right? :)

For Caesar’s fate, the most “charitable” interpretation that I’ve read is that, in short, it’s what he wanted for humans. Oh, you wanted to “cull” humans? You wanted vampires to turn them into cattle? Well, this is what you would have put them through :) now you understand :)

... it feels lowkey victim blaming to me. Caesar didn’t think the implications of his “plan” through, because he’s an imbecile, that’s true. Had he had a good character arc that went beyond Ellis leaving his gross cum all over the sheets of Caesar being tortured, he could have learned some empathy for human beings. That doesn’t mean he deserved to be raped and enslaved to teach him a lesson. That’s sick.

And to all the people who joke that he got a great deal, being routinely fucked by a beautiful vampire, you’re just as sick and we all damn know that no one would dare to say that were the genders flipped, or were Lenore ugly.

I said it another time, but imagine if a man bragged that he was inside of a woman that he enslaved, and touched her breasts while doing so. Not so sexy now, huh. Good job for making me want to see Lenore as mangled as the gore victims of the show, at least. “I did no such thing! :D” I want to impale you on a chainsaw and shove a dildo covered in salt and shit up your cunt. How in the sheer fuck did S4 manage to convince people that she’d be so cute with her victim i stg the thought makes me want to puke.

For Alucard, remember the random reveal in S2 that he’s a teenager in a grown man’s body? Back then, it justified his jerkish behavior towards Trevor. Now, it just makes this scene artificially more uncomfortable... and to probably justify why he accepts with no hesitation the sexual advances of two people who he considered nothing more than friends. As if that whole sequence wasn’t peak “NOPE NOPE SO MUCH NOPE” enough, now you have to remember that Alucard is mentally a teen. A teenager’s first sexual experience (and bisexual awakening, I presume) is horrid betrayal. Great. Thanks. I’m sure the trauma following this will be treated with the respect that it deserves in Season 4 :)

Also I want you to imagine Alucard taking his time to shove those stakes up Sumi and Taka’s asses to impale them. You’re welcome.

And of course, this episode completely smashed any notions that this show cares about good representation :)

First of all, funny how this hardcore show has no consensual sex scenes. Trevor and Sypha are obviously sexually active, for example: even Berserk, the king manga of rape and misery, depicted Guts and Casca’s first time together in a sweet way. Just saying that it would have probably made these two scenes slightly less jarring.

Alucard has been confirmed to be bisexual! Yay! The proof on-screen is rape by deception :D that’s how we show attraction to men, right? But I mean, this is the same show who wanted to improve a gay-coded character by making him love his own abusive master as a boy :) no unfortunate implications here, no siree.

And also. I haven’t seen this take around. But it won’t leave my mind.

It can’t be a coincidence that Alucard and Hector, two of the most delicate looking men in the series...

(well, Hector may be beaten by the likes of Juste and maybe Leon, but he’s considered pretty even in-universe. Alucard is the undisputed #1 bishonen of the series, of course :P)

... are also humiliated to the point of being emasculated.

Yeah, I didn’t use the term ukeification lightly regarding Hector in my S2 post.

(yes, I have heard that Ellis put Alucard and Hector through this torture because they were Adi Shankar’s favorites, and the two were arguing at the time so Ellis decided to be spiteful against him. I can’t find a source for this, but if it’s true... It doesn’t help his case one bit.)

They get raped by deception, they get used, they get betrayed, they get traumatized, they get kicked when they are down. And for what? Fetish purposes. Was it necessary for Sumi and Taka to bed Alucard? No, they could have caught him in his sleep. Their sex scenes are drawn in obscene detail, almost like a hentai, and while I normally don’t oppose deliberate Fan Disservice (keyword: deliberate)... spoiler alert: they get over their traumas relatively quickly in S4. Looking at you, Caesar dear. Goddamnit, when will I stop ranting about this character’s writing.

They got put through something so cruel because they are pretty. Feminine-looking, dare I say.

Can you imagine Trevor going through this? Or Abraham? Or Richter in Nocturne? You probably can’t. Those are manly men, thank you very much, and they aren’t attractive when they cry, when they are beaten down, when they are dehumanized.

Same exact logic yaoi fangirls have been using to turn a male character into an uke ever since the genre was invented.

Great representation there, guys.

I’m sick and have no more words.

[beevean]

Part two! Continues from here. Finally, we can talk about the real stars of this season, Hector and Isaac! Who

...

fuck I can’t do this.

After some discussions with @woodchipp​, I’ve decided to call them Caesar and Abraham respectively, because my brain cannot accept that I’m actually watching the same characters that starred in hit game Curse of Darkness, and my thoughts quickly devolve into gibberish. I choose Abraham to, well, keep the connection with Isaac, to emphasize how Isaac as a character was named after his own cruelly symbolic death (because he’s more than “that weird fetishy guy”, he’s a genuinely tragic villain and this is where I will perish i stg), and because in the Bible Abraham nearly killed Isaac and what am I if not a spiteful bitch? :^) Woodchipp chose Caesar because it means “thick head of hair” lmao - and it fits, because while Hector is both pretty and a badass, Caesar’s cute, soft looks are pretty much the one worthy thing about him.

*sigh* I’ll get there. I so will get there.

(this, btw, was decided before we discovered that Caesar’s little zombie pug was named, in fact, Cezar. The coincidence was too funny to drop. Caesar is also pretty much a shell of a dog, after all :^) )

Is this childish? Maybe! But you’ll understand. I’ll just slap the salt mine video on myself and go on.

Anyway, Caesar and Abraham. I have Words, as promised. As a final warning before proceeding, this post is somewhat image heavy.

I start with the mother of all nitpicks lol: Caesar and Abraham are not Devil Forgemasters, just Forgemasters! And I never realized how silly this sounds until I found a clip in Italian, because in my head, I kept adding “Devil” before it. Admittedly this is more of a translation trivia than criticism, but I wanted to get this out of my chest. In the Italian version of CoD, the term was Forgiatore Diabolico, which is a nearly perfect translation, although it could also sounds like the forgemasters themselves are devilish. Still, close enough, I can tell that this profession 1) deals with creating, and 2) is demonic in nature. But Forgemaster in the show is just Fabbro Mastro, which is the perfect translation of the word, and it’s just unfitting! It means Master Blacksmith, and how am I supposed to get from it, and from simply Forgemaster, that these two are glorified necromancers?

And yeah, that’s what they are. And I don’t have much of a problem about it, tbf. In the game, Hector and Isaac can... well, I have no idea, Hector can deadass nullify Dracula’s curse with his powers which is straight up OP and nothing like what was established before. Isaac also says in the first cutscene that they can create devils from “a wisp of conjured matter” (English)/”a bundle of magical power” (Japanese), whatever that means. As a game mechanic, Hector infuses life into stone statues embedded with gems, which is what makes the most sense to me. In the show, Caesar and Abraham use special tools to put a demonic soul into a corpse: the former uses a warhammer to really drive home the forging part, the latter uses a knife because it’s quick and efficient. I appreciate that they gave us a more definite visual image of their powers, and it still works the same purpose of building Dracula’s army, so okay.

(it does cause a small plot hole later on - how did Caesar learn as a boy that he can resurrect corpses by using a tool, by accident? We see him using two coins in a flashback. What kind of incident could have lead to that? In the manga, Hector doesn’t seem to have control over the animals he attracts, so it makes more sense that he accidentally discovered his talent)

Speaking of things that make sense, Caesar and Abraham’s introduction also gives an explanation as to why they’re still human, while defending them from Godbrand who doesn’t want to defer to two humans: were they vampires, they’d be “driven by thirst”, and probably act selfishly. Since they’re humans, it proves that they’re there because they’re 100% loyal to Dracula, so loyal that they’re willing to harm their own kind. Vampires see humans as livestock and don’t really understand them: Caesar and Abraham’s hatred is far more personal, and drives them better, just as much as Dracula’s own hatred. Well, in canon leaving Hector human was a big fuck up on Dracula’s part (in fact, has Dracula ever vampirized anyone in canon? I only know Annette if you don’t save her in Dracula X), but the logic is sound for now.

Aaand this is ruined by Caesar’s very first line being “Godbrand, you’ve never met anything that you didn’t immediately kill, fuck, or make a boat of”, because writing.mp4. And this is going to be the peak of his character :^)

Deep breaths. I think I need to talk about Abraham first, since he has far less issues. And he’s fine. When I forget who he’s supposed to be, he’s a decent character so far. He’s soft spoken, melancholic, so convinced that love doesn’t exist in this world, to the point that he basically thinks that love and humanity are inversely proportional. His mentality is a little hard to understand, but that’s okay, I will probably get to know him better in the future. I like how he hides a cold heart under his gentle personality, but it doesn’t come off as a façade. He’s also shown to be a force to be reckoned with, as he can kill Godbrand with fair ease (I’m not going to guess how strong Godbrand is, I hate powerscaling). I would say that he’s smart, but after his justification for going with Carmilla’s plan, no, not really.

He lacks charisma, though: he’s way too subdued, serious and quirkless, and most of his dialogue is “muh loyalty, muh love, muh purity” without much that makes him entertaining - I’m not asking for him to approach Isaac’s level of fun, that’s too tall of an order :P just something to make him stand out. Considering how popular he is, though, and what little I spoiled myself with, I have the faintest of hopes for Season 3 and 4.

I think one of the reasons he lacks charisma is the utter lack of any relationship with Caesar. The two are strictly coworkers. Abraham looks down on Caesar, and Caesar barely acknowledges his existence until he’s asked to manipulate him. Abraham even acknowledges that he thinks that becoming friends with Caesar, a human, would be counterproductive in a war against humanity, which... why? I am with Caesar, the two are Devil Forgemasters before being humans, and being allies would actually make them stronger and, y’know, less prone to manipulation, wink wink nudge nudge? I can guess that the two will become friends by Season 4, but it feels like missed potential.

Of all the things I expected him to have in common with Isaac, a connection to pain was low on my list. Abraham self-flagellates as a result of the abuse he suffered as a child and to “discipline” himself, which I took as a mild connection to Isaac’s masochistic outfit (we only see Isaac harm himself once in Prelude to Revenge and probably as a result of his growing insanity, but him being tattooed from head to toe and the random piercings on his abs and bicep suggest that he might like pain a little too much - the subtext became text in the show, basically). Considering his concept art with the vaguely BDSM outfit, I wonder how similar he was supposed to be, and what lead his character to be changed to this point.

Like Isaac, Abraham’s main trait is his unquestioning loyalty to Dracula, but completely opposite to game canon, instead of being seen as the “spare” one, Dracula actually seems to care more about Abraham than Caesar! They’re best buds, they talk as equals, Dracula is 100% honest with him! Dracula saved his life and that’s why Abraham is so attached to him! ... soooo he’s basically human Death. Well, now we know where he ended up!

(don’t know where to put it, but I don’t know how to feel about Dracula seeking Caesar and Abraham out. There is technically little wrong with it, and I see how they tried to make Dracula more sympathetic and Abraham’s devotion more reasonable, but I have two issues. One, we don’t see how Dracula actually met them, and dialogue implies that he already knew about Caesar’s powers somehow, which is odd. Two, one of my favorite parts of Hector and Isaac’s backstories is how they fled on their own and sought refuge in Castlevania as children. Don’t you think it also somewhat humanizes Dracula as well, that he took those poor boys under his wing, even if at the end it was mainly for their powers? Plus, no wonder the two have no relationship if they knew each other as adults, instead of growing up together. Ahhh the missed potential :( )

His backstory... apparently generated some controversies? I’m not sure, and I’m genuinely asking anyone who’s reading this to inform me lol, because the controversies I see, much like with Caesar in Season 3, are not the controversies I’ve seen breaking the fandom. So, he was a slave of a priest (muh church bad), which sure is a way to justify a black Muslim person in 15th century Wallachia, and he went through a lot of abuse. His convinction that love doesn’t exist in this world comes from the brutal way his master rejected his confession. And yes, it was romantic love, in Japanese it was translated to aishiteru. But now I have to be petty: if Isaac is (... ehhh understandably) considered “bad gay representation” because he kisses Trevor while he’s impaling him, why isn’t Abraham being in love with his torturer as a young boy just as bad? Did he really need to love his master romantically? Aren’t you equating homosexual love with abuse and power imbalance? C’mon, be consistent.

(the weird Benedictine monks kiss joke that apparently wasn’t a joke also doesn’t count, I’d almost say that it’s OOC for Abraham)

The ending of the season sets his character arc up. He decides that he will become a more independent villain, although still loyal to the deceased Dracula. Admittedly, I more or less already know where he’s going to end, and it’s a good direction for a character previously defined by nothing but unthinking loyalty... although I could only laugh at the band of over the top assholes who are supposed to make me think “see, isn’t Abraham right to hate all humans?”. writing.mp4 :V

And finally, I very much do not like his design. He’s literally just a guy who stumbled on set and donned himself a Devil Forgemaster outfit - a drab one too, it should have been red, fight me. He looks like Pucci without anything that makes Pucci visually distinct (and from what little I know about him, they’re also similar personality wise). Are the dots on his skin supposed to give him character? Not enough. I don’t know how to feel about the red eyes: at least he still has some red in him, but if they’re meant to represent his magical nature, I prefer Isaac’s vaguely yellowish eyes for being a (I can’t believe I’m saying this) subtler clue that there’s something wrong with him. In short, I’m not going to remember Abraham any time soon. I wish they kept his glorious red dreadlocks :’)

And now, it’s time for Caesar.

Where do I begin with him?

How about the fact that he’s a dog in human form. I thought Guts’ canid motif was obvious, but Caesar beats him by a mile. His personality can be summed up as “puppy”, as Carmilla lovingly does it for us. While he does have a bit of a strategic mind, even disagreeing with Abraham on the best course of action, he’s mainly placid, submissive, loyal, and childish, described by Abraham himself as “a little boy” and a “simple creature”, and by Dracula as a “child in a man’s body” (what do you mean that they didn’t need to tell us? This show loves its pointless exposition! peak writing :V). He’s such an animal lover that he rationalizes Dracula’s plan as the equivalent of culling and controlling an animal species, not senselessly hurting them but not allowing them to harming others - the concept of an animal-loving misanthrope is nothing new, but I actually appreciate how soft Caesar is in this regard. In fact, his worldview is so warped that at one point he seriously compares vampires to cats... to explain how in his mind they’re just as pure as animals. It’s so out of this world that even I wanted to pity him at that point.

He’s even has his own zombie pug, which is funny to me because Hector apparently loved cats in his childhood. They really did everything to make them one the opposite of the other.

By the way, Caesar’s childhood is taken straight from the manga! Alchemist father who only cares about money and power, mother who resents his very birth, him being abused for bringing “cursed” pets at home, a burned down house that forced him to flee (I do like, however, how it was Caesar who killed his own parents, it shows how desperate he was and how there’s some real dark side in him). So I can’t even say “read the manga”. Ellis just made his own OCs and thought they were so much better than canon. Fuck you too <3

The way his backstory is presented in the first episode is so rushed, too, unlike Abraham’s who got a full flashback. We hear his parents’ voices saying the usual cruel stuff, and we hear them burning to death, all while we see adult Caesar in front of the fire with little to no animation. This is all to explain to us very quickly why Caesar is a huge misanthrope, and weirdly enough, we do get a fuller flashback in episode 3 of him resurrecting a dog. But hadn’t I read the manga, where we see in much more detail how hated he was by everyone in his village and his soured views on God, I would have felt nothing for him. This show is praised for its writing.

Caesar’s design is... almost perfect! Nearly 1:1 to Hector’s, obviously simplified for animation purposes (rip holes in his pants lmao). The one thing that bothers me, and I know that it’s going to sound weird, is his hair - I don’t like how neatly cut his curls are, and I get that it’s probably for animation purposes again, but they don’t frame his head well and make him look even more childish.

and what the hell have you done to my baby boy. what is that haircut.

As for the color of his skin, I approve! It contrasts with his hair and it makes him look Mediterranean :) I like to headcanon that Hector is Greek in origin, and what do you know, Caesar apparently hid in Greece! I feel validated :D

(of course, his being nearly identical to Hector means that it’s much harder to pretend he’s a different person. But I won’t give up. For Hector’s sake.)

(also, something that bothers me is that Abraham and Caesar have different symbols on their vest: Caesar has a wind rose which is a simplified version of the Devil Forgemaster crest, Abraham has... a mask? Some kind of rune? This doesn’t make sense. It’s a Devil Forgemaster uniform. They should have the same symbol, that’s how uniforms work! The connection between the two, man!)

Now, he is seen to have some reservations about Dracula’s plans unlike Abraham, which is shockingly canon. While Caesar has no qualms in killing people, he doesn’t want to cause mindless bloodshed, or “gleefully paddling in the blood of children”. As I mentioned, he sees Dracula’s genocide through the lens of an animal lover, and he doesn’t approve of senseless suffering. I would be happy about this, as this could have genuinely been the beginning of Hector’s rebellion in the game/manga that could then spiral into “I don’t want to be a pawn” and “not all humans deserve to die” and “I am human too whether they want it or not”...

(this moment goes to all the geniuses who reduce Hector to a flat “badass”. Will you look at that, he can have more vulnerable moments while still keeping his personality! :D)

Also, unpopular opinion: it’s not impossible that Hector used to be similarly naive back then. Living half of your life in Castlevania cannot be healthy for your development, and he did faithfully serve Dracula until Lisa’s death, so he had been conditioned to obey somewhat. I can imagine a younger, more submissive Hector, especially if he had to live with Isaac and his much stronger personality ovewhelming him lmao.

It was there! The setup is all there! Look at that, how easily you could have flowed from “Hector the innocent animal lover” to “Hector the self-affirming traitor”. Maybe not in Season 2, but as a series-spanning general arc. Man, I so would have loved to see more of General Hector and what exactly turned into the anti-hero we know.

But.

The conflict presented in Season 2 is not about Caesar growing a spine. This is about him becoming Carmilla’s puppet.

Yep. We’re here, folks.

Let’s talk about the ukeification, and I do not use this term lightly, of what is supposed to be Hector.

Caesar falls for the most basic of manipulations, to the point that even Silver in ‘06 would tell him that he should activate his braincells. On one hand, sometimes Carmilla makes sense: searching for the Belmont household to prevent any of their weapons to harm Dracula is a good idea. Or, if Dracula wants to kill all humans, what’s to say that he wouldn’t turn against Caesar and Abraham eventually? This would have been even more poignant had Caesar known that he was lied to by Dracula himself. But other times, the manipulation doesn’t amount to anything more than “oh you’re so smart and talented :) you will do as I say because I say so :)”. Also the way she torments Caesar by following him as he’s walking away clearly uncomfortable... sweetie, that is the worst possible way to make yourself look trustworthy.

But of course, Caesar totally believes a vampire lord who in one breath calls Lisa a pet on virtue of being a human, and in the other acts so concerned about Caesar’s safety as a human. Dracula must be truly desperate, to enlist this fucking idiot as a strategist.

“The castle must land at Braila!”

“And why is that?”

“Because I wish it!”

what a superb chessmaster, no wonder one of Dracula’s best generals had no chance against her :V

I didn’t know beforehand that even Dracula manipulated Caesar to enlist him! With Abraham he’s honest and respectful, but with Caesar, he has to play along with his more benign point of view, “uhhh sure it’s a... it’s a culling, sure why not, whatever makes you happy”. Later on, Dracula says that Caesar’s “a child in a man’s body, and that makes it easy for him to be lied to”. Goddamnit, forget “puppy”, Caesar’s personality is basically “pawn”.

“There's betrayal abroad in the court, but Hector is a simpler creature than that.”

I want to bite someone to shreds.

*sigh* They really took everything Hector stood for and flipped on its head, didn’t they.

Now that’s the stuff <3 hector really said “lol you like being a pawn? rip to you but i’m built different uwu” get his ass you utter savage <3 look at that condescending smirk too <3

isaac here being #relatable. for later.

Okay, back to Caesar. He’s a sweet lil boy who is pushed to betray Dracula, so much for being a general and a strategist. By episode 5, Carmilla can say stuff like “I am in control”, call him “puppy” and #girlboss all over him, she gets to yank and push him around and berate him, and Caesar can’t do shit about it, because he’s “implicated”. Because Carmilla is such a badass, and she’s a badass by shitting on Caesar :^) love how he even admits at the end that he wasn’t even thinking of stabbing her, like he holds no grudge over being tricked, insulted and literally pushed around. So fun.

(oh, and nice rapey vibes from her. “You’re mine now, you have nothing left but me”. In case you didn’t find her heinous enough. I love how this ended up being a red herring in hindsight lmao)

Look, the thing is. Even if I accept that I’m not dealing with Hector, protagonist of hit game Curse of Darkness, the same dude who trekked through half of Wallachia to tear Isaac, Death and Dracula to shreds, first person in history who kicked Dracula’s ass without assistance (which is why I’m calling his Caesar, see I’m not just being a brat)... I really don’t like the treatment of his character. I’m fine with a character being naive to an uncomfortable degree, but not only I keep questioning how in the hell he managed to get such an important position in Dracula’s army, it’s not fun to watch other people shit on him and look down on him. First of all, I get it, stop beating me over the head. Second, character bashing is just not pleasant. I’m supposed to care for him because he gets no respect in canon, and that’s not good writing.

And what comes next sure isn’t pleasant.

There it is. Ellis’ weird fetish for torturing Caesar.

Well, there was the rapey line I mentioned earlier, but now it’s time to unleash my ire against this:

Very rarely does bad writing make me feel almost physically nauseous. I documented on my blog how much I loathed the scene in Other M where Adam shoots at Samus in the back, because it was stupid, humiliating, and way too happy to show a beloved character in severe pain, in all its gruesome voyeuistic detail. Guess what happens to Caesar here?

Look at Isaac’s face that I posted above. That was roughly my expression during this sequence.

I will give this scene one point - we’re not meant to ever sympathize with Carmilla, thank god. But this scene comes out of nowhere, and it’s nothing more than a long Kick the Dog moment for Carmilla, with too much attention on how scared and little and weak poor Caesar is. Look at the focus on him trembling on the floor, curled in a fetal position, like an abused dog (and fuck you so much for making me think that, you even put him on a leash because GET IT HE IS A DOG IN HUMAN FORM I FUCKING GET IT). Look at how Caesar doesn’t try to do anything, not to run away, not to defend himself, even his anger towards the woman who manipulated him to cause Dracula’s death comes off as underwhelming - “go to hell”, that’s your best? Look at the lovingly detailed cruelty. And I know I’m supposed to be horrified and feel sorry for little Caesar, but I’m not. I’m fucking pissed, and not at Carmilla herself.

I know this is a post dedicated to the Forgemasters, but I need to talk about Carmilla now.

Why is she doing this? As a character. What is the purpose of this scene? Shock value, of course; making you hate Carmilla even more, I hope (I hope because she has her fans, apparently, and I really don’t understand y’all). And then? She felt like beating Caesar up, because she could. What does it tell about her? That’s she’s evil? No fucking shit, I’ve been watching her strut around like an evil #girlboss turning everyone into a dumbass since episode 2.

I watched plenty of clips about her. The most common comments (when they aren’t joking about Hector - who is the sick fuck who called the scene of him being brutally beaten “animal abuse”) are all about how ironic it is that Carmilla became what she despised the most. She always rants about “crazy old men”, and she herself is a crazy old woman. So, the appeal is that Carmilla is a huge hypocrite, which I suppose it’s meant to flesh her out. Look at her, pretending to be chessmaster, when she’s not above beating the shit of a weak human like a brute. Ohh, so evil, so twisted.

I didn’t quite understand why I didn’t care for it, until I compared it to a scene in the CoD manga. Yup, you guessed it, it’s time for yet another episode of “Beevean won’t shut the fuck up about Isaac Laforeze”! :D because fuck you i deserve my comfort.

(I could have waited until Season 3, or even 4, where I’m sure we’ll get even more of Carmilla’s oh so unique “hypocrisy”. But screw it. It’s not like her character will get any more interesting from now on. Carmilla is fucking boring and flat as a board, and I know that her character development will simply be “goes insane”. Besides, I’ll have other matters to discuss then. I’m coming for you, Ms. Mommy Fetish, just you wait.)

Isaac’s most prominent character trait after being a horny slut is, of course, his devotion to Dracula. He’s a huge Dracula simp, perhaps the biggest simp after Death. He’s more than proud to serve him, it’s his whole identity, hell he wears a collar to show it! The biggest contrast with Hector is how loyal he is to the point of sealing his fate because of it, while Hector grew a spine and defected.

In the manga, Dracula orders Isaac to find out what happened to Hector and, if alive, to bring him back, so that Dracula can punish him as he sees fit. Very clear cut: Isaac is to find Hector, and that’s it. It’s Dracula who will torture and/or kill him. Hell, Isaac even dared to have one legitimate question, and he got glared into submission:

You do not fuck with Lord Dracula.

(btw, compare this with Dracula in the show who can’t even make himself be respected by his own council. Yeah.)

So of course, when he gets confirmation that Hector is alive and well, Isaac will be a good boy (hehe) and do as told, right?

Yeah. Isaac is a callous, remorseless, sadistic, petty, hypocritical piece of shit, but he has flaws too 💖

Seriously, though, think about it. His hatred for Hector is so strong at this point, that he’d rather slaughter his own underlings using Abel (who apparently can shoot lasers from his eyes here, geez, poor dude got exploded), so that he can kill Hector unopposed, and then go lie to Lord Dracula’s face about it.

You know. The dude who reduced Isaac to a shivering wreck after one question, and who vowed to make Hector drink sewage for the rest of his life? Isaac got into his head that he'd rather lie to him than obey his command to the letter.

His petty desire to take revenge on Hector with his own hands (for having betrayed Dracula? For daring to be better than him? Who knows) is more important than respecting his master.

And he still has the gall to think of himself as loyal!

This is hypocrisy done right. This shows that Isaac is not as pure as he thinks, he’s also willing to do as he wants if Dracula’s wishes no longer align with his own, just as much as the same Hector he so despises. He has the same tiny spark of rebellion as Hector, but he’s deep in denial about it, and while Hector eventually grew to be more and more noble, Isaac’s desires are extremely selfish and childish (huh, almost as if Isaac ran away from his village as a child and therefore his growth was somewhat stunted 🤔 but nahh no depth at all in this character). These are not the hidden depths that make you think “oh they’re not so bad after all”, no this paints Isaac as a wholly awful person, but there is something intriguing in this contraddiction that makes him, well, more human. As much as he might be disgusted by the idea :P

(this whole rant, btw, is entirely dedicated to the very funny people who think that the best way to praise Abraham is to shit on Isaac and call him “fan disservice” and “problematic”, am I right TvTropes guys? :^) )

... well, as much as I would love to keep talking about my darling BDSM disaster, I sadly went on a tangent because I needed to finish my thoughts about the residential #girlboss here. Yay 🙄

So my question is: what does Carmilla’s hypocrisy accomplish? How does it flesh her out? Because what I see is nothing more than sadism for the sake of sadism. And she’s just as stupid as the Stupid Old Man she keeps making fun of. Beating Caesar up was stupid, she already had him, Caesar wasn’t even mad at her anymore. He has no fighting spirit whatsoever, he proved it to her by admitting that he didn’t even think of killing her! She didn’t need to do that at all, there was no logical reason for her to do that, not even an emotional one other than “yay I get to beat up a man!”. Is that it? It’s that her motivation, that she’s a radfem - scratch that, a parody of a radfem? It was a senseless scene. Carmilla is not deeper because of it. Fuck this stupid villain. The whole purpose of that scene is beating us over the head how pretty Caesar is when he’s in pain and scared.

Same energy as Adam shooting at Samus for no reason other than to have a long sequence of our protagonist humiliated, except that here, it genuinely comes off as a fetish.

Now you understand why it makes me sick? This is on the same level of the lowest rape fanfics on FF.net!

And this is still nothing. Oh, I’m so not done with Caesar being turned into a fetish, ma porca di quella puttana schifosa

... Season 3 is going to break me.

I hate everything.

[beevean]

Season 2 was supposed to be peak. I was promised peak, before the torture fest that is Season 3 and “let’s fix everything ASAP” that is Season 4.

Well, fuck me if this is the best season.

We see more of the dynamic between the main trio, finally. Trevor lost most of his gruffness of Season 1 and is now more melancholic, perhaps because he spends most of the season cooped up in his old family home. I appreciated how they also tried to elaborated on the family lore, such as how the Belmonts originated from France but moved to Wallachia to hunt vampires. Sypha is still cute, nice and talented but a little spoiled and sheltered, compared to Trevor’s roughness. They finally start to build some chemistry in episode 4, where Sypha makes fun of Trevor’s name and calls him Treffy, and okay, they’re cute. By the end of the season, they put a smile on my face :)

And Alucard? For the first six episodes or so, Alucard is horrible. He’s nothing but smug and condescending (okay he may have an understandable distaste for the Belmonts, I get it, but you’re way more of an asshole than the supposed asshole Trevor), he calls Trevor “unreliable, emotionally damaged, drunk and self destructive” after a few days with him when Trevor did nothing around him to deserve these words (Sypha has seen more of his worse side than Alucard), he curses already, he says stuff like “Villagers, pitchforks and torches, that sort of thing” which is very much not how Alucard should sound... How am I supposed to take seriously the running gag of Trevor turning everyone around them into cussing assholes, when they start out that way already? (yeah we already know that literally everyone here swears like a sailor, even characters that really should not. I will get there.)

Yes, they handwave it by saying that Alucard is actually a teenager in an adult’s body. He’s still a jerk. And this only makes a Very Infamous Scene much worse.

Strangely enough, they say that he’s called by others Alucard, it’s apparently not the name that he chose for himself, although he adopts it. Weird way to deprive him of his agency? Ellis, darling, Alucard is a silly nickname no matter how you slice it, no need to change the lore :P

Anyway, he gets better at the end when he stops being an OOC jerkass, and he becomes more like his kind but self-loathing game counterpart. I guess I’m insisting on this because I genuinely didn’t expect to dislike him this much. Hopefully he gets better later on.

Well, the trio spends most of the season doing exposition and supposedly bonding. And I mean. A lot. Of Exposition.

At one point, Alucard takes 2 full minutes to explain the tragic nature of his father and another 2 to drive home how terrible it is that Dracula doesn’t want to “destroy the world”, he wants to kill humans, which will result in a sad, empty world. I get it, man. It is a genuinely harrowing description of how mad Dracula’s plans are, but it comes so out of nowhere and it adds nothing other than “we must stop him”.

Another weird detour is the one about Trevor’s name, which isn’t “local”. Get it, because Trevor’s name was changed by Konami of America and he’s actually Ralph in the original Japanese? The explanation is that he was named after a Celt who rode with Leon himself, and it should be spelled Trefor, which, a little random, but okay. Well, good luck trying to explain all the weird names in Castlevania :) I’ll especially wait if you’ll ever justify the Germanic Richter.

Sypha goes on another speech about how both Trevor and Alucard are sad, but Trevor is still there under his sadness, while Alucard is completely consumed by it. Very poignant, but I only see smugness from him so far, so thanks for telling me instead of showing me? Who talks like that anyway?

I did appreciate Sypha defending Trevor from Alucard’s assholery by pointing out that he didn’t get to grow up normally, something that Alucard should relate to. That was actually a normal conversation to have.

I also find odd how the Morning Star, supposedly a powered up version of the Vampire Killer, is found in a chest as a separate object - I’ve already seen a clip of Trevor double wielding them. Speaking of which, was the Vampire Killer named in Season 1? If it was, I missed it thanks to the sleep-inducing pacing.

Speaking of weird writing... Sypha. Darling. Baby. Why in the sheer fuck did you move Castlevania on top of the Belmont hold? Like, she doesn’t even try to explain herself, she’s just like “oopsie, my bad”. girl???????

Yes it gives us the genuinely awesome moment of Trevor leaving the Belmont hold in Alucard’s hands, which is one hell of a friendship offering if I’ve seen one... but still.

I don’t know how to feel about the decision to leave Alucard behind. In-universe, Alucard explained his reasons well, I don’t blame him. In a meta sense, it’s an odd decision to split the trio so early on, after they barely began to bond. And I know how it’s going to affect Season 3 :\

Onto the villain side! The war council gets introduced, and with this, Dracula’s portrayal takes a nosedive. While he was genuinely intimidating yet tragic in Season 1, here Dracula can’t even intimidate a room by yelling, and all the new OCs take turns into painting him as a dumbass who just wants to destroy himself with no logical thinking. Which is true, and an interesting thing to point at, but let’s just say that I’m very tired of OCs existing purely to make fun of the canon villain :\

Basically, Dracula is clinically depressed and getting worse. By the second half of the season, his modus operandi is “fuck it, I don’t care”. And I do feel sorry for him, I do, Graham McTavish is perfect in conveying his tiredness, and there is an excellent payoff at the end, but I only see a forced reason for the OC villains to be right and surpass him. I think I’m biased at this point :\

As for the OCs, you have Godbrand who keeps insisting that he doesn’t want to fight this war, that it has no order, why does Dracula trust two humans over his other generals, and most smartly, if Dracula manages to kill all humans, how will the vampires feed? Dracula doesn’t have an answer for that other than “welp i have stored blood”, which is not a good solution for immortal creatures. I don’t have much to say about Godbrand on his own, he wants to be funny but insightful at the same time but I just felt that he hogged too much screentime for someone meant to last 4 episodes.

Then you have Carmilla who can march to Dracula and ask him why hadn’t he turned Lisa, did he really want to keep a pet, and Dracula for some reason doesn’t turn her into a smear on the floor. This is hard to go through. And it gets worse.

Oh, Carmilla. You wonderful radfem #girlboss, you. You are the Starline of this show, without any of the cute shipteasing. It’s really funny to compare her to her game counterpart, who not only looked more frilly, but was one of the many Dracula simps of the series.

Here her design is more generically sexy (really, no skull motif? Boring) and, well, her personality is #girlboss. She’s a smug snake, she constantly speaks in a fake sweet voice, always with a hand on her hip, she #slays in her pretty dress and high heels, takes no shit from no man, her introduction is all about intimidating men, and no wonder fans love her, she has no depth other than “man bad” :^) (the implication that she and Godbrand have a sexual relationship is... uhhh interesting ig?)

The way her backstory is told is so forced too. She kicks Godbrand down the stairs to subdue him, and then rants about the Stupid Old Man who kept her prisoner. We don’t see how she was “bound” to her master, but we see her in her #girlboss moment as he murders him with a smug smirk on her face. God forbid we see her in a more vulnerable moment of her life. I feel nothing for her. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to feel nothing for her. I only know that at this point the mere sound of her clicking Girlboss Heels pisses me off and I want to use them to stab her in her obnoxious smirk.

Carmilla is the Mephiles of Castlevania. The show tries so hard to paint her as a Machiavellian mastermind, pulling everyone’s strings to get what he wants... but realistically, who is she dealing with? Dracula, who is depressed and doesn’t have the strength or will to fight her; Godbrand, who has only one braincell and it’s boat-shaped; Isaac, who agrees with her plan while knowing that it doesn’t benefit them simply to make her shut up (not that I blame him); and Hector. I am not impressed, I’m just constantly rolling my eyes because everyone is such a dumbass!

We have here another instance of weird writing, the running water rant, which is basically Carmilla, Godbrand, Hector and Isaac arguing about the validity of the superstition and what counts as current water. This smacks to me as Ellis trying to use logic to explain old vampire lore, although at least it’s not as stupid as the cross explanation in Season 4. Yes, vampires can’t touch running water because it was seen as purifying, much like garlic, and this is present in the games sometimes: Alucard in SoTN needs a relic to go underwater, and Joachim was imprisoned in the Dark Palace of Waterfalls, much like Carmilla mentions the ancient practice of burying vampires on small islands to trap them. So... I guess this is supposed to flesh out the lore? But it comes out of nowhere and, unless I’m proven wrong later on, it leads to nowhere. It’s a big filibuster that takes time from things like showing stuff.

“oh but these conversations make the show more realistic, it’s like how real people talk!” unpopular opinion then but I’m getting tired of all this pointless exposition, it’s not even that entertaining. All these people do nothing but talking, and I don’t feel a damn thing! And I adore dialogue, characters interacting is usually my favorite part of every story! Here, I’m not sad, I’m not amused, I’m not intimidated, I just want them to shut up. Godbrand is the only one who is mildly entertaining, but of course he doesn’t last long.

Oh, and people have already pointed out the inherent contradiction of a cursed zombie bishop being able to bless the waters. By all logic it shouldn’t happen - hello, the magic is called Devil Forging for a reason, maybe you shouldn’t drop it! But hey, everything to make Carmilla look as smart and powerful as possible, look at her, destroying Dracula’s forces like a total #girlboss! Or to yell that CHURCH BAD, in case we missed it the last 4383532 times.

Well, I’ve ranted enough. Positivity time! This won’t be long :P

The fighting scenes are still top quality (although admittedly the general animation has its dips), and I really liked the fight in the Belmont house. I have the smallest of nitpicks, which is that I would have preferred if Trevor stuck to the Vampire Killer/Morning Star instead of having a sword as well, but it’s no big deal. I also appreciated the more precise references to the games: while Slogra and Gaibon are a little “obvious”, I genuinely liked the inclusion of Malphas and the presence of four Save Room statues, that’s more deep cut. The sequence of Castlevania moving around Breila, being flooded with blessed water, and Carmilla jumping around with Hector in tow to avoid it is also actually original and cool. (it also has the only instance of “fuck” that made me genuinely laugh)

And of course, I can’t not mention episode 7, which feels like it was written by completely different people for a completely different show. First of all, Bloody Tears.

Chills. I love this track despite being used to death: I can only imagine how long time fans felt at the time.

I’ve watched the fight scene plenty of times, and it never gets old. Animation on point, good choreography, excellent use of every character’s abilities, this is the real peak of the show and I’m finally feeling something! It’s so good :D

Speakin of feeling. God, Dracula.

When I saw the scene of Dracula sending Isaac in the desert, I thought that it was a nice way to show how much he cared about his friend, but that it was also much dumber compared to how the manga justified Dracula being left defenseless (why are you sending away your best fighter?). But it was not about protecting Isaac at all: it was to ensure that he’d die in peace without Isaac laying his life for him. And, well, it got me. Finally, some good telling instead of showing!

(although sending Isaac in the middle of the desert with no help whatsoever is kind of cruel)

The ensuing fight is also awesome. After a whole season of moping around, we get a good reminder that no, Dracula is not to be fucked with. He shrugs off every attack, even the OP Sypha can barely scratch him. (and alright, him recognizing Trevor as a Belmont from his ineffectual punches is funny)

By the second half, it becomes more of a Dracula vs. Alucard fight (and tbf, the other two were clearly outmatched, although I liked the moment where Trevor supported Sypha with his back to allow her to push Dark Inferno away - yay, battle couple!); this is, of course, to fully explore the family tragedy, how much Lisa’s death wrecked both of them, and how Dracula is so lost in his grief that he’s beating his own son to death. Which leads to the absolutely best moment in the show, which still makes me tear up: “Lisa, I’m killing our boy” :(

This fucking sequence makes me cry almost as much as Lee’s death goddammnit I can’t handle this

if only this was the last episode. But no.

So, that was Season 2. Much meatier than Season 1, although still rather slow for most of its run, but I really thought I would have enjoyed it more, especially since I know the hell that it’s awaiting me. The core of this season was Carmilla setting up the stage to replace main villain Dracula, which I can’t say I found entertaining. Well, episode 7 was a masterpiece, but it took so long to get there, and episode 8 had to shit all over me.

... speaking of which...

:)

I had to split my thoughts into two parts. Because now, I get to talk about the Devil Forgemasters. And it’s going to be fun :)

[beevean]

Masterpost of my stuff

last update: September 23rd, 2024

AO3 account

Sonic Music of the Day (October 31st 2018 - February 28th 2021)

Music of the Day (March 7th 2021 - June 5th 2024)

Shadow the Hedgehog (game)

Analyses:

The Doom

Lost Impact

The ARK

G.U.N. Fortress

Expanding on the endings of Shadow the Hedgehog

Miscellaneous:

The AI of the soldiers in Westopolis

Why the dark path works

Central City intro

Small parallel in the Semi-Hero endings

Shadow’s shippy paths (because this post is legendary)

Sonic Advance 3

Long posts:

Sonic Advance 3 Team System

Sonic Advance 3 Level Tips

Videos:

Sonic Advance 3 Speedruns (masterpost)

Ocean Base Act 3 secret underwater route

Twinkle Snow Act 2 underwater shortcut

Miscellaneous:

Team names (and Sonamy) in Sonic Advance 3

Castlevania (spec. Curse of Darkness/Prelude to Revenge)

Analyses:

Isaac’s tool mentality

“Hector-dono”

Isaac and Dracula

Hector and Isaac’s designs

Rivarlies in Castlevania

Isaactor headcanons

Trevor and Isaac as rivals

Julia the Stepford Smiler

Why Rosaly matters

Hector vs. Netflix Hector (redux)

Isaac vs. Netflix Isaac

Dracula’s favoritism

Dracula in Netflixvania: how small changes in lore build up to disaster

The Devil Forgemasters in Netflixvania: why you shouldn't fix what is broken

Hector and selfishness

Dracula and Rosaly

Hector and naiveté

Hector and vulnerability

Re-translations:

Re-translating parts of Curse of Darkness

Re-translating Symphony of the Night

Re-translating parts of the Curse of Darkness manga (volume 1, volume 2)

Extra: 

Beev Watches Netflixvania (negative) (#anti-netflixvania for more criticism)

Beev Rewatches Netflixvania (even more negative)

Lenector is a selfish relationship that pretends to be wholesome <- complete with links to previous posts

Ace Attorney

Beev Plays Gyakuten Saiban (in progress; up to Turnabout Samurai)

Translations of @latin-dr-robotnik‘s articles

Sonic and speed: are we misunderstanding them?

SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonic-Amy dynamic

“I love you” – Forbidden words in Sonic

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

3 years of Sonic Forces, the biggest love-hate relationship of the series

SEGA and its most recent Sonamy side – more canon than ever

Opinion: How could Sonamy progress in IDW?

Sonamy Paradise – a reflection on recent and future events

Sonic 2: the best of the series, or a terrible sequel? (ft. Beevean)

Opinion: what is the main problem of Sonic Unleashed? (ft. Beevean)

The good, the bad and the ugly: the Sonic Advance trilogy

Learning how to love Sonic Advance 3

Compilation: the Sonamy dynamic, explained in Seaside Hill Paradise (2022)

[beevean]

I watched the final four episodes. And I struggle to put my thoughts in order... mostly because this show felt like water trickling down my brain. It's boring, guys. I can only say that it's painfully, generically, lazily boring.

Once again, the thing that made me rant the most was the complete clusterfuck that is the worldbuilding. Sun Thundercat can literally parade in the middle of the town, welcomed by a crowd of enthusiastic vampires acclaiming the coming of the Messiah, with even some humans tagging along... and then she cries that vampires have been forced to live in the shadows. Girl. Girl vampires can literally barge into theatres and bars without humans even blinking. Jesse what the fuck are you talking about.

Sun Thundercat and Drolta also do not mash with what established in the previous show. It was said that Dracula was the oldest vampire, and respected as such by all the others: this is why, when he summoned as many rulers as he could for his war, they all came from every part of the world, from Scandinavia to India to Japan (and I insist that Cho shouldn't even know about Europe at the time, but whatever, vampires are omniscent.)

Alright. How come these two vampires who literally hail from Ancient Egypt never showed up? Never mentioned? You'd think they'd be a big deal, even more so than Drac himself. You'd think Dracula would insist on having their help, certainly more than "a mere regional ruler" like Carmilla.

Obviously, I know that the real reason is that neither of them existed back then. But this is not the sort of thought I should have, because it takes me out of the story. Their absence from the OG show should have been explained better. Maybe don't make them so OP.

Remember: Hector and Isaac were created 16 years after Dracula's Curse came out, and yet IGA managed to make them slot perfectly into the background of that game. Their entire background of clashing moralities, of Hector running away in disgust and Isaac pursuing him out of loyalty for Dracula, exists to answer to the question "why didn't we see them in CV3?", and the answer is perfectly acceptable. Plausible retcons are possible: you just need to care about the source material. And it has become increasingly obvious to me that the writer binged the OG show in a week and didn't really care about anything but recreating Ellis' writing style.

Also, real talk, making Sun Thundercat this ultra powerful ancient vampires connected to Egyptian gods and worshipped like a Messiah by all vampires feels like they're trying so hard to one-up Dracula as the greatest villain who ever villained. Which is rich, because for how much I complained about Dracula being relegated to his Depression Chair in S2, dude did not waste any time showing in S1 what sort of terrifying force of nature he is: he presented himself to the Targoviste people as a pillar of flames, as Satan himself, threatening them that he'd kill them all if they didn't leave... and then he graphically kept that word.

Sun Thundercat played with light a little. Then she turns into an invincible furry. All while being such a generic doomsday villain, literally flatter than Nightmare Moon from MLP, that I just fall asleep when she struts on screen.

I hope that, wherever Drac is vacationing, he's having more fun than we did.

(hey remember how in Bloodlines Erzsébet caused mayhem to resurrect Dracula? While now she doesn't even seem to know who she is and is a generic "worship me" villain? I'm suddenly reminded of Death. Huh.)

Oh but we're not done with the weird worldbuilding!

Where do Maria's powers come from? Tera is a Speaker, and her magic is 1:1 the same as Sypha... but Maria has this very unique powers of being able to summon familiars? This is once again one of those things that are taken from the games, but the context makes them non-sensical. Maria's powers in the games are 1) a bit of a joke, fitting her "game breaker moe" status, and 2) not connected to anyone in the first place. She's a Renard. We don't know what kind of magic her family possesses. The magic in NFCV is stricter than in the games... or it should be, in theory.

When we meet Juste, Richter says that Julia had to leave for the US to follow her work. But weren't Sun Thundercat and Drolta terrorizing Russia? Didn't we see it with Tera? Was Olrox' bf a more important vampire to kill than this absurdly powerful vampire god?

And speaking of Juste! He always lived close to Richter, to the point of paying Tera money to support him but also to keep silence. And Richter... never heard of this powerful vampire hunter? Of this Belmont? In his small town? He still worked to earn himself money, he wasn't totally retired. Are vampire hunters so common that Richter wouldn't be curious? And if they're so common, how come there are so many of them and they're in prominent positions of power??

Right, Juste. I already spoke about how useless he was. Yes, I know he'll be brought back in S2, but. Really? You turned him into the most generic cynical mentor, and then you don't even... have him mentor? You brought into the story the Belmont magician, and you reduced him to "boohoo wife and bestie died, now i'm sad, evil will prevail" so that Richter could chew him out in true Belmont fashion? So that Richter's cool epic badass raw moment of unlocking his magic would not be triggered by bonding with Juste... but by remembering Annette, the woman who insulted him for being so traumatized he couldn't use magic anymore?

Where does this character development come from? Why does he suddenly sound like Nosaac? Richter ran away once. Am I supposed to take that he wanted to die after that one moment of weakness? And now he has regained his will to live because he remembered his Family and Future Girlfriend? What?

Oh, speaking of Future Girlfriend. I talked about Annette and Cecile's scene here. I can just add that it's fucking rich of Annette to welcome Richter back like "oh I knew you'd be back, I was more concerned that I should have," when the asshole did nothing but cry that "he literally ran away!" and he was "useless as fuck". Shut up, you liar.

It's also rich that Annette gets to have a whole scene where she reunites with her ancestors and draws power and strength from her family, while Richter literally met his living grandfather and only bitched at him. God, she really is the Nosaac of this show.

... what even is to say about Maria? She and the Abbot are two strawmen squawing at each other. CHURCH BAD vs. GOD IS GOOD. I don't care. He's still a nonsensical character who really thought allying himself with vampires was the right answer to a "Godless" revolution. I don't care that other characters called him out, it still doesn't make sense. He's also a shitty Forgemaster who can't even ensure the loyalty of his Night Creatures lol. And Maria is literally a Twitter teen, flat and so utterly boring.

I'm even less interested in Olrox than I thought. He's mostly... a tsundere towards Mizrak lmao, although I like that he's a wildcard. Mizrak himself of course is kind of an hypocrite who balks at the idea of the Abbot conceiving when he himself was happily fucking a male vampire lol.

And the season ends with the heroes accomplishing literally nothing of substance (including the oh so mighty Annette), losing Tera, and Richter witnessing as Alucard one-shots Drolta, cementing himself as the real protagonist of the franchise. Great. We love to see it.

I don't know if I forgot anything. I've been as thorough as I could be with such a nothing-burger of a story. It's all bland, the dialogue is generic, the characters are barely stereotypes, the pacing is rushed but at the same time nothing happens... at least the OG shows squandered some intriguing ideas. This really is a mediocre French Revolution AU ft. Vampires.

We finally watched Nocturne.

... what? No, no endless post this time :P not only because it's just one season. It's just as I expected: it's not as infuriating as its big sibling. (unless you're familiar with the French Revolution coughcough@the-crow-binary)

We only watched the first four episodes so far, and I have already said a lot, so let's go.

The thing I complained the most about, I noticed, was the worldbuilding, mostly how vampires work. The original show "elfified" vampires, only keeping the basic traits "need blood, don't like sunlight or running water, can turn into things like bats and mist". They were portrayed as this ancient rage, one with its own culture (much superior than the dumb humans who forget everything because church bad): they sleep normally, they can eat food if they so wish, apparently they can have sex with zero issues lol, and infamously child vampires are treated as, well, innocent children and not as poor human kids suffering a terrible fate. Trevor even kindly tells us that the reason vampires hate crosses regardless of their faith is because their eyesight is so advanced that they freak out at the sight of geometrical shapes. The only monstruous trait they have is that apparently they have a tendency to go insane and crave power. Honestly, they kind of remind me of Twilight.

And somehow Nocturne manages to get it worse.

Now, yes, vampires in Nocturne bite far more often than in the OG show. I think in that other show we see them doing that... twice? And Carmilla and Lenore lick Hector's blood; then they just drink from their stock of blood à la Drac from SoTN. Anyway, Nocturne is more willing to show them as beasts, so good job. Hell, Sun Thundercat even turns a human!

But in this setting, vampires seem to not even have those few weaknesses they had in the OG show. For a story centered on how Sun Thundercat will bring eternal night to the world because sun is the number 1 obstacle to vampires, it's baffling how easily they can just walk around in plain daylight. Olrox looks out of the window with his face illuminated by the sun. Drolta can literally walk just fine, even without a parasol. @spinningbuster98 kept asking "why don't peasants or slaves just destroy the windows of the places where they know vampires live?" - well clearly they'd be fine!

And special shoutout to Drolta who openly mocks the concept of her being hurt by being in a church. At least in S1, Blue Fangs explained its presence in the Bishop's church by blaming his heinous actions for pushing God away.

Vampires are also shockingly well integrated into society. These extremely pale people, with visible pointy ears and long fangs, can chill around in a nice palace or stroll into a theatre, and no one bats an eye. How? In the OG show, vampires could be in a position of power (see the council of Styria), but they mostly worked from the shadows. Did humans just... accept the presence of these monsters?

(the cross weakness becomes way funnier now. Vampires are weak to the religion they used to believe in, so Annette can ask the help of the Christian God to harm previously Christian vampires. I actually like this. But then this makes that OG "vampires have super freaky eyesight" scene even stupider than it used to be)

Another point for the clumsy worldbuilding. Hey, remember how I complained that N!Hector wearing Hector's CoD outfit makes no sense? Because that's what he could cobble up from his old Devil Forgemaster uniform and it's basically the best he can wear for running through the country and fighting, while N!Hector 1) is still in Drac's service in S2 so you'd expect a more professional uniform from him, like the one worn by N!Isaac, and 2) he very much does not fight, making details like the arm guard and the single glove look redudant. We have a similar issue here: Maria, whose design was taken straight out of DXC, complains in the first episode that her mother is too poor to pay taxes. You can tell that she doesn't look that poor. To make things even worse, in the second episode, Tera is able to offer bread to Annette and Edouard: the French Revolution started, among other reasons, because even bread got ridiculously expensive for common people! So which is it? Is Maria one of the common people, or a well-off young woman who really has no business leading the revolution?

And this... is tied to other problems.

The French Revolution is nothing more than a shallow backdrop for the main plot being the Vampire Messiah being hyped up as the greatest evil to ever evil. You can tell the writers did not care when they cast Vaublanc, a real person who fought against slavery, as a vampire slaveowner. I think. I think you shouldn't do that.

The point is, it becomes increasingly jarring when you see that the main protagonists, the ones who spout the most generic "liberty, equality, fraternity"... are not even French. Maria has Russian origins, and as I've shown she seems to be doing well. Richter is a Romanian who grew up in the US. Annette, who gets to make a super epic speech about freedom, is a runaway from Saint-Domingue. Edouard is a rich opera singer, also from Saint-Domingue.

Oh, Annette.

You know, I want to say something. I'd have much more patience for her abrasive, ungrateful, condescending behavior, I'd justify it as a result of her trauma, if it weren't for how mean-spirited she is and for how no one seems to even react to her.

bruh.

You did that, huh. Richter has been nothing but kind and supportive to you, relating to the loss of your friend and of your mother - this isn't a Trevor situation where you can fall for what the story tells you and believe he's actually rude, no, Richter is on-screen a very nice guy! And you say that? To his face? After he revealed to you that the Belmonts used to do magic but he can't because he lost his mom? Something you should know how devastating it feels? And you THROW THAT TO HIS FACE??

Richter is the one who gasps, by the way. Maria and Tera over there? Nah they're just eating popcorn as this stranger is deliberately hitting Richter where it hurts the most. Thanks girls.

Oh but she's not done!

I know what this is. Look at her, the Stronk former slave who suffered Hardships which inherently makes her more Mature and World Wise, looking down on the two white French people who obviously had it so easy in their lives.

Hey, Ms. Adult. Who's the one who lost control of her powers, leading to Edouard becoming a Night Creature? Richter is too nice to throw that in your face. I'm not :)

Hey, Ms. I Suffered More Than You. Who's the one who only managed to save herself from the plantation only due to magical god-inherited powers? Which is also incredibly insensitive to the real-life slaves who managed to escape with nothing more but human skills and intellect?

Hey, Ms. I'm More Mature Than You Whiteys. Who's the one who needed the help of a rich half-white man to be protected? Not that you even know the concept of being grateful.

Uh, and Tera? You mind chiming in? You mind defending your daughter and your adopted son from this stranger who keeps being rude and disrespectful? No? Okay. She just suggests how to save Edouard, but lets Annette's words slide. You and Lisa can compete for the title of Mom of the Year.

Oh, but this is not a sexism or racism issue. This is literally the same thing as Alucard in S2 being the biggest hypercunt to Trevor, making fun of his traumatic childhood, cruelly mocking his family and his legacy, and treating him like he's nothing more than a failure of a drunkard when the dude has been nothing but a help in fights and gave them access to the vast Belmont Hold... and Sypha always rushed in Alucard's defense because boohoo his depression is an icy well of sadness, he Suffered More Than You!

This is just the writers shitting on the Belmonts, and I am sick of it. Trevor did not deserve this, and Richter doesn't deserve this.

Anyway, characters. I have little to say. Richter is the best one, being reasonably cocky as you would expect from him; not to an insufferable degree, just yeah he comes off as an immature young man who needs to grow up. I like him. Maria is a parody of teens on Twitter talking about seizing the means of production, and I kind of forget she's there. Annette, yeah :) Edouard got retroactively characterized after his death, but I still don't know how to describe his personality beyond "helpful" and "source of infodumps". Tera exists. The abbot is profoundly stupid for allying himself with vampires for the sake of crushing the "Godless" Revolution (there's an N!Hector joke to make here but it's not worth it). Drolta is basically Isaac who slapped a pair of tits on himself and just like that she's a beloved slay queen icon. Templar Agent Stone Mizrak is mere bara bait so far. Olrox... well, so far he's mildly intriguing for being outside of the hero/villain dichotomy. Kind of a tryhard, though, and I still don't know why he didn't just kill Richter.

My last complaint is that it's really boring how they hype up Sun Thundercat as this harbinger of DEATH AND SUFFERING AND PAIN AND TERROR way before we even see her. It reminds me of Alucard exposing how a world without humans would be: just this empty, edgy narration with nothing to show for it. But at least by then we had a taste of Dracula's anger and powers, so this is even worse. You need to try harder to build up an antagonist.

and finally, have the best moment in the whole franchise

BUT, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[beevean]

And finally we reached the end of the show. I'd almost be touched, if the finale didn't bore me to tears.

Also we skipped episode 7. Again. I wish we had skipped more episodes at this point.

I love how the last time I laughed at this scene:

and now I can laugh even harder because Nocturne completely retconned this stupid explanation!

(and I realized we never see vampires getting confused by crosses in the show either. Beautiful)

I still don't care about anything. But, of course, how could I ignore the best line of the show:

This is the "Wheres the DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" of NFCV. I love it. I tip my hat to such unbridled cringe <3

Not much to add about the epic reunion of the Trephacard gang. Alucard is still a cunt who hasn't earned the right to treat Trevor with snarky scorn. I still love how, for how hyped and shipped those three are, they don't even spend half of the runtime together, and when they do they are bitches to each other.

Death is still the character of all time, of course. I wish he'd be loyal to Dracula, like implied by the constant "he was one of the first people in Dracula's court", but I've long given up on the show giving any respect to the game characters. And yoohoo, Trevor got to do one thing without being portrayed as an idiot! Which is fighting a villain with barely any ties to him or the rest of the setting! He really is the funny penis man of NFCV.

As for Alucard... I just realized that the last time he saw his parents, they got trapped in the Rebis and experienced long minutes of terrible torment before exploding. And they, upon returning on Earth as themselves, simply decide to fuck off and "give him closure". Parents of the century. You know, now I'm even more insulted by Lisa deciding to leave her only son with the grief of the loss of both of his parents. As for my thoughts of Dracula and Lisa coming back, I explained why it was a terrible idea here, and how this ended up ruining Nocturne before it could even begin.

(that being said, the conversation between Alucard and Sypha when they still think Trevor is dead. It's touching, poignant and shows how they are willing to move on. But of course, the last episode was all about everyone not named Hector being as happy as possible, so Trevor couldn't stay dead.)

Of course, I have the most thoughts about Hector. (also rip isaac who peaced out in episode 6. not that i missed him but it's a noticeable absence)

I am suddenly struck with the realization that, after the show made so much noise about how cool Styria was for being a stable reign of four women, the story ends with the main "queen" killing herself out of insanity and the reign getting conquered and ruled by a stable man, possibly two (I don't really know Hector's role in Isaac's rule. Prince consort? lmao). But go ahead and tell me how woke this show is :)

Anyway. You know, after I watched Lenore's death, I am left here to think that maybe I do agree with Lenector shippers that they deserved better.

Oh, not because I wished that they'd live happily ever after having lots of BDSM sex and spawning adorable gray/redhaired dhampirs. But because, as characters, they were written so poorly that I'm still sad about the huge wasted potential.

Lenore's death is beautiful. I love the honest talk about strength and power, interesting but not pretentious. I love how Lenore's decision is triggered by Hector saying that "Power does nothing but eat. Like a vampire", which visibly horrified her. I love how, while Lenore puts emphasis that she won't live in a cage coming off as a hypocrite after what she has done, you can read the subtext that she refuses to live in the cage of her own vampirism, and risk becoming like Carmilla. I love how, after two hundred years of living in the night, she has the chance of seeing the sun again... and she chooses to instead look at Hector in the last seconds of her life, the only person who respected her and actually cared about her beyond what she could offer. And the music? Easily Trevor Morris' best composition in a soundtrack that is largely movie-like and forgettable. This scene is like Dracula's death: expertly crafted and moving, in a vacuum.

And then I remember that the rapist who brushed everything off with "I'm sorry for everything you went through" got to have more agency than her own victim, and I get angry again.

Hector shows so much love to Lenore. He never says it outloud, but it's so clearn in his expressions and gestures that it's almost touching. He takes her hand when she goes to sun herself. He emphasizes with a meaningful glance that he wants to lean about the beauty of things that live longer than he does. He's soft, and vulnerable, and caring. And what does he get in return? "I won't live in a cage, not even with you" said in a quick, dismissive tone. I'm just. This poor man.

The emblem of the absolute fuckery of this relationship is how Hector says "be free, Lenore" while clutching at his mutilated hand. The symbolism being that he, after suffering to achieve how own freedom, is accepting that Lenore finds her own, even if it can only be found in death.

Lenore is the reason he had to mutilate his hand to be free. And it's not like the show has forgotten this, "oh shush you were having fun". We are meant to forgive her for that. Hector has apparently completely forgiven her, and once again, this is the only growth he was allowed to do.

You know what? I will redirect you to this post I found: while I disagree with some parts, like "google for yourself what Ellis has done" or all the praising for S4 ("beautiful animation", jesse what the fuck are you talking about) and especially Isaac, this is an excellent breakdown of how offensively Hector and Alucard have been written. I wouldn't say that Hector has ended the show alone either, because he should have Isaac now, for how much he's worth... but it is a very unsatisfying conclusion to his character arc. As I said the previous time, he has suffered Hell without learning a thing. It was torture for the sake of torture. I grieve the potential of this character.

(on a lesser note, I want you to play Yakuza 0. Or, at the very least, watch Majima's cutscenes. If you want a poignant story of a dog breaking free of his cage, and his jailer who grows to respect him and whose death, despite the lack of catharsis, still hits you, then please play that game. I cannot overstate how immensely better written it is. Maybe one day I'll make a whole post how the relationship between Majima and Sagawa is literally what Hector and Lenore should have had.)

(oh, and Curse of Darkness, obviously. Please play Curse of Darkness. And read the prequel mangas. I implore you. I can assure you that game Hector is what y'all think show Hector is, but much better written. And Isaac is not just a caricature, he's an engaging tragic villain and he did not deserve the slander that he got because of Gary Stuaac here. And Trevor was already fleshed out in his games. All of the games are good, don't listen to game journalist shitting on them to praise this show.)

So, with all said and done... yes, it was painful. NFCV is simply not a good product to me, in any way. Not in the animation which has sharp drops in quality and is overall uncanny, the music which is generally forgettable, the plotlines which are uninteresting and sometimes recycled, the pacing which swings between glacial and rushed, the dialogue, the characterizations which are inconsistent and unpleasant, and even less the themes which are downright offensive to me. As you might have noticed, I stopped comparing it with the games halfway through, because it's not just a bad adaptation, it's a bad work that survives on rule of cool and fanservice, both the sexual kind and the "SEE WE PLAYED THE GAMES" kind. It's mind-numbing when it doesn't make my brain boil with rage. Overall, this rewatch left me sadder than the first time, because after a year, I have grown to see more of the potential buried underneath the lazy, insulting writing decisions.

All my respect to the fans who genuinely see something good in this, of course. But I will never understand your point of view.

Rewatching NFCV with @woodchipp and @the-crow-binary has been miserable so far.

Not because of them, of course: we all need each other to bear the Peak. but holy shit I forgot how mindnumbingly boring the show is. it's way worse at a second watch because now I know how much it falls apart! We're only at S2E3 as of this post!

S1 is the best season, and even that is largely forgettable, especially S1E3 which wastes 22 minutes of my life to say "here's the bishop. he's proof that CHURCH BAD". But S1E1 may be the best or second best episode of the whole show thanks to Dracula and his performance... and isn't that sad, that the show peaks at the very beginning? The rest of the show is just... Trevor doing his stuff (while the framing mostly makes fun of him), talking, some fighting, and CHURCH BAD. As positives, I still like Trevor's mini-arc in this season, and the vague effort to be faithful to CV3 (Sypha being petrified by a cyclops, falling down a chasm to find Alucard).

S2 is terrible. Yes we're still less than halfway through. I already hate everything.

I hate Alucard becoming a legend to the point that the Wallachians name his Alucard (as in, Dracula's opposite) after only a year - why couldn't he name himself Alucard? Why complicate matters so much? Isaac calling him Alucard, and Dracula recognizing the name, makes absolutely no sense: how do they know about it? Dracula lost contact with his son one year ago and I doubt Wallachian human legends have reached him. And Isaac was in the Sahara until sometime after Lisa died!

I hate Alucard himself. He's a cunt. He does nothing but insult Trevor and the Belmonts without provocation, and it's not funny banter, he's mean! He's genuinely cruel! He hears that Trevor lost his family at 12, and he can only say "lol and lmao I had more of a childhood than you. anyway they were mentally ill and child killers, they sacrificed chickens and hoarded dead cats". And this piece of shit is the most popular character of the show??? he's not even pretty what are y'all seeing 😭

(it's also weird how he's all angsting about killing his vampire father, but he hates the Belmont for being vampire hunters. bro. bro you're also about to hunt a vampire. why are you defending a race of monsters so staunchly. not even a hint of, I don't know, a Belmont hurting him when he was a child because he was confused for a full vampire? Remember that logically, a vampire child is a child turned into a vampire, we have no other indication that dhampirs are running all around the world. I know that in the games he seems fully on board with "vampires bad and me bad for being half vampire", but you have the chance of making it better and you squander it?)

Sypha is also ruder than I remembered. I think she suddenly became more cheerful in S3 and that's why I liked her, but also girl, you keep criticizing Trevor for being rude and not consoling you, but you look at him with a perpetual resting bitch face and insult the Morning Star calling it an "ugly thing"? Why does Trevor even bother with the likes of you? How is Trephacard the most popular ship in the franchise?

I hate Isaac. Oh, I gave him the benefit of the doubt back then, because I really wanted to understand why he became the fan favorite. But now? No, I'm sorry, he's overrated as fuck. He's so damn pretentious, his speech about how he wants a pure world without love is terrible from the lens of him being a Muslim who is devoted to the Devil, and his backstory is so tryhard and historically inaccurate that I almost prefer Hector's past being exposed through voiceover.

Oh, and Hector, I hate his scenes. Because he's actually treated with dignity. He's fine! I actually like the guy! I like the scene where he rebukes Godbrand (who as a character only exists to attract infodumps and to question Dracula) because "I have to work" - he sounds actually proud of his role, if not even competent, perish the thought. Also by reading the scripts online I forgot that he was the one who yelled "you do not question my loyalty!". Which I like a lot? I can hear the real Hector protesting like that out of pride, even if in private he would admit that he disagrees with the bloodshed. And the scene where he soothes the newborn Night Creature... yeah, this character used to be written with respect, and knowing how he gets tortured and disrespected and used for rape apologism by a sex pest hurts even more. Also, in retrospect, the scene where he stares at the fire while reminiscing about the day he set fire on his own childhood home doesn't go anywhere, even as the finale of S3 echoes it :^)

And Dracula, oh my poor man Dracula. He's already being presented as an ineffectual depressed old man spending his time staring at a fireplace, who can't even command his presence in the war room, who allows Carmilla to insult him and Lisa in front of everyone - it's so embarrassing how he gets the Red Eyes of Fury and then he simply... lets her go after he gets the flimsy explanation of "yeah I humiliated you because everyone is asking themselves the same question. I wanted to help <3" girl (Dracula), she's a mere regional ruler, as she herself said??? why do you need her so much that you allow her to do this shit??????? oh but then you posture to godbrand, he gets to be threatened because... he's not relevant to the plot i guess. fucking pathetic. what have they done to my man.

(and I hate Carmilla. but that has never changed. annoying smug ass #girlboss with the charisma of spoiled seafood. her way of manipulating Hector isn't even manipulation, it's just her telling him very plainly what she wants him to do. She and Lenore utterly suck at their job, and they only get their way because muh plot)

And then there's the infodumping. Oh my god these people won't shut the fuck up. Godbrand is like "why should we listen to two humans?" and Dracula dumps twice that he trusts Hector and Isaac for their human nature (which, again, it's a decent reasoning, but it goes on and on and even they should know, I get it). Alucard dumps about the apocalyptic scenario where Dracula wins and rules over a world without humans... but he only describes it as we look into his ugly face, instead of doing something more creative like actually showing what would happen. Hector gets this random flashback-through-sound, shoved there as if Ellis didn't know where to put it in the script; later on he explains to Carmilla the origin of Night Creatures, as if ever remotely matters. Isaac dumps about his jihadist philosophy about how by killing humans he and Dracula will create a pure world. Carmilla randomly reveals her Tragic Backstory after kicking Godbrand down the stairs, another scene I can't stand because it's all about what a #queen she is and how she's better than Dracula. At one point they seriously discuss about the myth of vampires unable to cross running water, which is a moot point anyway because Carmilla resorts to using a zombie bishop to bless the river!! No I will never let it go!!!

(also I love that in the one occasion where Alucard has the chance of describing his childhood, he retells the tale of Lisa meeting Dracula, something we've already seen and he was also obviously told about, not something he experienced himself. They couldn't even come up with another anedocte to actually tell us what kind of mother Lisa used to be. so lazy)

This show is half people sitting in a circle and talking, and half average fight scenes. Yeah at this point not even those impress me anymore. I'm serious when I say that Knuckles' fight scene in Divergence, also animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios, is of a better quality than what the show has offered.

And this is why I'm so reluctant to watch Nocturne. If the best seasons of this highly acclaimed show are so painful to sit through, how are we going to survive a sequel series that not even the fans liked it as much?