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beevean · 24 days ago

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Second half of S2. I think the best way I can summarize my state is saying

and trying to put my thoughts in order.

While it is slightly less disjointed than OG S3, the sheer number of plotlines that they attempted to tackle means that every scene lasts about 30 seconds before having to switch over. I genuinely struggled to keep up with what happens in each episode, until E6 where everything converges. And what made it even worse is the realization that... very little of what I watched actually matterered to the plot.

"But Beev, it's a character-driven story! Like Best Character Of All Time Isaac's!" I get that. And you know what? With stuff like Maria/Tera and Mizrak, I do see the potential for a good character-driven story, especially as the show is finally tackling more complex themes with vampirism instead of reducing them to elves or evil oppressors! But... I cannot get invested. I failed to connect with the characters, and the show keeps throwing other shit at me to divert my focus. This is simply a mess that has been bombarded into my eyes, while simultaneously being empty of content. And it is frustrating, because I want to like the less irritating parts.

Like this scene:

This is adorable. Random and another instance of fixing things too late, but it is a treat to see RoB Maria and finally some genuine emotions <3 literally the best scene in both shows idc. too bad it's drowned by the edgy pretentious Peak.

Anyway, time for the usual breakdown, character by character.

Taking a page from the OG S2, the heroes did nothing until the finale when they get to show off how cool they are. Think about it. Alucard recruits his sidekicks, they go to the Louvre, they get their asses kicked by Drolta, they split, and Annette suddenly has the revelation that the visions of her ancestors haunting her were trying to guide her to the solution of all of their problems: go and retrieve Sekhmet's third soul in the spirit realm.

And here I was hoping that it was some kind of internal turmoil for her. No. They were just the new Miranda, conveniently leading the hero to the solution. She just had to take five episodes to realize that for the suspence.

It's really weird. Annette in S1 was the focus of the season, infamously so, being all about her past as a slave and her desire to free everyone and thinking lowly of Richter for being a coward. Now, she was definitely made more pleasant for ship purposes, but then what is left of her? It says something that technically speaking, Annette wasn't even there in the finale! She was being possessed by Sekhmet!

Which, by the way, isn't just lovely? The descendant of a god being chosen by a god to become the vessel of a goddess. Why do we even keep Richter around?

This is not rhetorical. Why is Richter here? What does he contribute? Being the guy whose 90% of dialogue is swooning over Annette, fretting over her, telling us over and over why he loves her? (while I still don't know how Annette went from thinking he's useless to blushing around him and thinking he's cute.) Now, to be fair, he does kind of sort of talk about himself a few times... but it doesn't land. I don't care about his doubts as a Belmont now because they aren't relevant.

I've known I'm a Belmont and what that means since... since I could form words. Fighting evil, serving some kind of higher purpose. But then I watched Olrox kill my mother, and I understood the bitter fսcking truth. My mother died for absolutely nothing. Actually, she died because I tried to help her, which meant she had to protect me, and that's what got her killed. My whole life since then, I told myself it was so I could live. As if I was the higher purpose.

Why are we suddenly caring? Richter hasn't thought once of his dead moms (moms, Tera raised him too!) and in S1 he was all "I am a Belmont, and Belmonts kill vampires!". I understand the survivor's guilt, I do, I understand the logic "I need to fight otherwise my mother died for nothing", but okay, Richter, tell me: what does being a Belmont mean, in your opinion? Because it certainly isn't being locked in a generational fight against Dracula and realizing that once he dies, you have no purpose in life anymore!

The world's changing so fast. Belmonts, we're something from the past. Maybe there's no place for us anymore.

You know, I almost don't blame him. No wonder he thinks that Belmonts are a thing of the past. They sure were a thing of the 1980s-2000s. These shows hate the Belmonts with a burning passion and do everything in their power to make them tertiary.

But yeah, Richter and Annette bond over dead moms, woohoo. Thankfully this new, revamped Annette doesn't mock him over it, now that he has magic. It does get a bit ridiculous when Richter asks Alucard if he could change being Dracula's son, Alucard says that that would change other parts of himself that he'd rather not, and Richter immediately asks about his mother. I don't think Richter even knows Lisa's name, but he just can't help connecting to people through dead moms!

Oh yeah, Alucard! He's still a cunt. That's what his fans love about him. That, and how hot he looks after taking a bath in the shit-filled Seine, I suppose. E5 started with a moment so infuriating, it briefly took me to the OG S2 days:

call me carmilla the way i cry bloody tears

Now, to be perfectly fair, Annette does get her first big W by reminding Alucard that they all thought he killed Drolta and yet now she's back and stronger than ever. hell yeah it takes an asshole to put an asshole in his place 🥰 (although I wish they had done the same to her when she insulted Richter and no one reminded her that Edouard died because of her.) But more seriously, this shifts that line from "Sypha having a boner for Alucard and defending him at all costs" to "Annette trying to comfort Richter that he's not as useless as Alucard implies". I am glad that someone is finally on his side. But still, I am very tired of this. In the OG S2, Alucard was in theory justified because he was a grieving teen: how come this wise 300 yo old man still snaps at Belmonts when he's mad at himself? Now it's even worse due to the age difference. You can't have him stroke his dick over how old he is when emotionally he's still the same brat!

But yeah, this is Alucard in this season. They try so hard to make him sound old and wise and experienced and jaded. To the point where he says that he has fallen in love "countless times", and this is why he dares to give Richter advice on how to approach Annette romantically. I really don't know how to feel about this. It's not wrong, per se, but doesn't gel with my personal vision of Alucard - not just the game version, naturally, but I also can't really imagine show Alucard opening himself up like this, especially since this season paints him as being almost completely detached from human society. What sort of people does he fall in love with? The Belmonts? People like Greta? Eh, I could just take this as a cheeky reference to his Launcher of a Thousand Ships status lol. lmao imagine if they adapt the sorrow games and it turns out soma is one of alucard's many descendants when he lived his best slut life in japan fhdsjkfhskdhkj

I really don't know why they still bother to remind us that he's Dracula's son, though. Sure, they're correcting this from the OG show where the dude sympathized with vampires. But it's not like anyone gives a shit about Dracula anymore. Juste lowkey implied he's less impressive than Olrox. Richter didn't even know who Dracula was. In this setting, Dracula was just a more meow meow version of Erzsebet, not the closest thing to Satan who periodically threatens the world. Not even Dracula cares about himself anymore, since a WHOLE ECLIPSE happened and he's still chilling in Hawaii. Alucard has no reason to tie his identity to what in his perception is a dead man that was forgotten by history. He sure acts like a celebrity, though!

literally "bitch, don't you know who i am? 💅" i don't know, who are you? the one who allowed vampires to become human nobility?

There is, however, something that greatly bothers me about Alucard's untold past.

(why 14? had they said 18, it would have been a neat reference to HoD, even though I know it can't have happened)

If the Drolta plotline (more on that later) didn't convince me that this season was hastily rewritten, this would. Alucard keeps flipflopping between being solitary and being a Belmont ally through generations, which he apparently counted. I'd assume that, considering how much emphasis on his age is put, "years" for him means multiple decades, perhaps a whole century. So which is it? Did he fight alongside Christopher and Simon, whatever they did, and then got tired by the time Juste was born?

Speaking of the Belmonts, what happened to Dracula's castle? Why didn't they stay there, as their new hold? Are you going to explain that, show? No? Okay.

By the way, once again, I was ready to call Alucard a cunt (not helped by his condescending "Trevor would be proud [at Richter's sarcasm]" which I hate on principle), but him being tired of seeing Trevor's descendants die is a pretty good reason for wanting to distance himself and spare himself the pain. See, once again, I'd care much more about Alucard's experiences with immortality if he was more likeable. I'd accept him being more standoffish because his heart has been hardened by so many people dying, if he didn't start out as an 18 yo piece of shit who insulted Trevor's whole lineage for petty reasons.

Oh, and if he didn't literally, deadass, lead the actual Robespierre in the revolution. What the fuck. You know, I was joking about him telling Galileo Galilei about the heliocentric theory! Now I'm totally expecting the Sorrow adaptation to mention in passing that he was the one who killed Hitler!

And you know what? You know fucking what? For all of his posturing, Alucard is just as useless as Richter! His only purpose in the plot is to basically tell the gang "here's what we need to defeat the villain", then he failed spectacularly by allowing Drolta to snatch the McGuffin (and blamed Richter for it), then he basically inserted himself dick first in the Revolution plot to give him something to do in the two-parter finale! He didn't even care about the Revolution! He said so! The Revolution is a completely pointless backdrop to the fight against Sun Thundercat! You know, I'm impressed, I honestly thought he'd be the real protagonist of the show, but no, they managed to waste him too. peak.

Maria, Tera and Juste are all connected, but Maria is pretty much the only character going through an arc here, as Juste is nothing more than Maria's babysitter and adoptive grandpa (yeah, clearly they're trying to establish a "found family" theme as also mentioned by Alucard, but sure it's nice of him to call Maria his family when dude abandoned his blood grandson and hasn't still quite reconnected with him). I think that what they're trying to do with him is to basically prevent Maria from falling down the same pit of despair he did until two days ago, but it doesn't really work, Juste feels like a plot device and Maria's reaction is different than his anyway, since she's falling into... well, edginess.

In fact, Maria is so edgy, that she out of nowhere gets the idea of making her mom bite her to turn her!

Maria: It feels good... to have such power. To control such powerful forces. To have power over life and death. Juste: It shouldn't feel good, Maria. The world can be a dark place, full of horror. But if you surrender to the darkness, what's the point in living? None of us counts for much. All of us will be forgotten eventually. But there's something miraculous about us being here at all. To see this world. Breathe its air. Smell the forest at night. Feel the sun on our skin. If we're still able to do that... there is a point in living. Maria: And maybe there's even more point in living forever. He's right. This was different. Killing my father. This was murder. I can never go back to who I was. But I could be with you forever. *exposes neck*

Just a taste of the dialogue here. Juste doesn't even feel like a real person at this point. Why is he talking to Maria like she said that she wants to die? Is he projecting his own depression? Or is it only so that she can talk about living forever?

Maria, the girl who sees the world in black and white and therefore slotted vampires in the "evil" category, being ready to ditch her humanity because she'd rather live with her mom forever and perhaps out of guilt for killing her father out of revenge and not a righteous reason, is a very interesting idea. And this is why it's never brought up again :) Tera, with shocking self control for a newborn vampire, runs away from her to "find herself", leaving Maria crying and to be comforted by Juste. By the way, Tera's arc is done here lol. She runs away, lowkey implying that she manipulated Maria into killing her dad because "he deserved to die", and then she's the only open plot thread left for S3, enjoying the executions and perhaps glad of the dark path taken by her daughter, leaving ambiguous how much vampirism corrupted her.

Again, I kinda like this arc. I like that it ends with Maria declaring that the humans who worked alongside vampires (which I didn't notice at all, but maybe it was because I was inundated with too much Peak) deserve to be executed, probably still thinking about Emmanuel. It just rings hollow because Maria has always been a serious righteous fuck who only cared about the Revolution, with all that it entails, so I don't see much of a change in her. Maybe it could have worked better if they hadn't been cynical hacks in S1 and kept her RoB innocent personality. And I'm also irritated that they could have given this corruption arc to someone else...

(also, since I'm a horrible person, I am compelled to point out that the show leans heavily onto the "bite is sexual" trope, as shown by how predatory Sun Thundercat is with women and later on by Olrox with Mizrak. Therefore, having Maria begging for her own mother to bite her so that the two could live forever together is very. mh. well this is getting interesting i suppose)

As for the villains, before the finale, I just have to say: why in the sheer fuck do the villagers bow down to an obviously foreign vampire noblewoman?

Your Abbot, as you know, is dead. Murdered by a revolutionary. Your Abbot compared me to Joan of Arc. But I am not like her. She was defeated, burned like a witch. I will burn all your enemies. All your oppressors. Burn them all to ash. I am the one who wields the knife.

I get that these people are against the revolution, but really? They trust her as being better? I don't know anymore. Also her Sun Thundercat 2.0 transformation is a punch in the eye but we all know that.

oh right, olrox and mizrak. uhhhh they spend most of the time still doing their drama. Olrox is a passive force who mostly spends his time spying on everyone, Mizrak wants to fight. Since they don't really matter, I'll summarize the rest of their arc here: Mizrak joins the fight like he suddenly belongs, he's fatally wounded by a random vampire, Olrox saves him and decides to turn him into a vampire. The last shot we see of them is vampire Mizrak ready to rail that cockrox raw lmao. And, again, this is a good concept. Mizrak was shown being torn between his faith and his desire to sin with Olrox: therefore, vampirism for him means shedding his inhibitions and indulging in the sinful pleasures he has always coveted. This is good! And completely irrelevant to the story! Even thematically, vampirism hasn't been treated in this way by the story, not even with Tera! These two just make their own sideplot that never intersects with the main one! What's with this series and being unable to organically integrate gay people into their plot?

Okay, I think I covered everyone, so it's time for the grand finale.

The final fight is basically two episodes straight of this

and it's boring. I'm sorry. I get that the animation is cool and the anime fights are cool, but I just find boring to watch a bunch of people throw flashy but redundant spells to an invincible foe. Yeah yeah muh Harmony of Dissonance spells, that just pisses me off at this point, you didn't even mention Maxim once and had him and Lydie be fridged offscreen while the game can't happen due to the lack of Dracula's relics but you're pretending we're suddenly fans of the games?

(a small correction, though. Apparently, Juste's ring is not meant to be the friendship bracelet, but the Aurora Ring, the one that increases the power of the Sacred Fist. While I don't understand why it's specifically that ring, since Juste never uses punches, I do appreciate a more niche reference.)

Hey guys. Remember how fun it was to play Portait of Ruin and having to protect Charlotte for 20 seconds as she casts her plot-solving spells? This is Sekhmet's role in the fight. A sitting duck who tries, for half an hour of real time, to absorb Sun Thundercat's Sekhmet soul to weaken her, while Richter sometimes goes to cool her down with his ice powers. For a goddess, she is quite weak. And I would dearly love for someone to come here and explain to me what the fuck was that monster that Annette fought for the entirety of the finale in the spirit world. And, in the meantime, Alucard and Olrox fight Drolta, with the weird implication that the latter is stronger than Dracula's son since he's much more successful at keeping her down (and that they met once, because we like making fans speculating). Again, I need to stress out: the heroes do nothing of importance until the plot lets them win.

And then this happens.

youtube

alright. So, memes are in order.

youtube

But I think it's time to talk about rewrites, right?

Sun Thundercat's death feels not just pathetic, but spiteful. Compare it with other deaths: Dracula cried that he was killing his boy and let himself be impaled, Carmilla exploded herself to not allow Isaac to claim a victory, Lenore sunned herself because her life got a little more uncomfortable. They are undignified deaths, but they are at the very least graceful. We are meant to feel something for them. Sun Thundercat has an utterly pathetic breakdown, and then she's randomly betrayed by Drolta, who cements herself as the Real Big Bad.

No one liked her. Erzsebet Bathory has been, from day one, derided as a flat, cartoonish villain with a stupid plan. Her design is ridiculous, her personality never goes beyond "smug wannabe goddess", and her only power is being invincible. She is boring, and always has been. But Drolta? Oh, Drolta was cool. Nevermind that in S1 she also had the depth of a piece of paper. Everyone loved her many designs, everyone thirsted over her BDSM get up, everyone thought she was a huge badass in fight. So, what did they do? Give her a whole backstory and kick her upwards to the role of the true puppetteer who was in control the whole time :) basically, they gave her the Isaac in S3 treatment.

yeet, you waste of screentime

And in the meantime, I'm here left asking two questions. One, why didn't Drolta absorb Sekhmet's soul from the get go, instead of wasting so much time finding the right vessel and killing countless women? She had no hesitation trying it now.

And two... why did we spend so much time with Sun Thundercat? What was the point of hyping her up as this great figure, much more terrifying than Dracula, only for this to happen? This isn't cathartic. This isn't fun.

Sun Thundercat is a pathetic villain, by far the worst in the series, even more wasted than Carmilla, with less feats on her belt than everyone combined despite the hype. And they didn't even try to fix her. Instead of making her a better character, they doubled down on her being flat and then pulled a bait and switch for fanservice purposes. Drolta is probably the most inoffensive villain in the series since Dracula, but that doesn't erase the sloppy, disingenuous writing.

She doesn't put much of a better fight, either. Now Alucard joins Richter in their epic team up, because of course. And I'm going to sound like a Classic purist, but I am sick and tired of the shows ignoring the Vampire Killer. Why in the fuck is Richter fighting Drolta with magic punches? Didn't Dracula mock Trevor for that? You have a consecrated whip, you imbecile!

oh, then they redo the same scene they did with Sun Thundercat, with Sekhmet being all angery that Drolta defiled her, Drolta sobbing and whimpering that she did everything for her, and the two engaging in some sort of Avatar spiritual fight that makes Annette's eyeballs explode or some shit.

Btw, gotta love this epic reference to Sonic '06:

I don't think you will live anywhere if you don't let her do her thing, genius.

I could be generous and think that he's so attached because he doesn't want to lose another person. I like some details here, like Richter using his ice magic to embrace Annette's searing body. It's just. I don't buy this romance's foundations, because S1 fumbled so bad. Alucard says that Annette laughs at Richter's jokes, and debates his ideas, which means that she loves him, but is that really enough for him to declare that she's more important than the world he swore to protect? Also, why does Annette like him back? Because he constantly tries to protect her, even though that should piss her off according to her S1 personality?

btw

shut up you cunt

Speaking of the cunt, Richter kills Drolta by using Alucard's sword infused with ice magic. No, I have no clue why it works except anime logic. The Vampire Killer can go fuck itself. yay. To top it all off, Richter is surprisingly chill when he spots Olrox, even calmly echoing his promise of "killing him one day, but not today". hey, remember how Richter used to suffer from PTSD over his mom's murder and panicked at Olrox' presence? remember how Olrox was built up to be this msyterious, charismatic figure with his own agenda and plans for the little Belmont? guess that's another tease for S3!

The ending feels like a fusion of the one of OG S2 and S4. Richter and Annette pull a whole Trepha and abandon Maria to her own grief. Nice job guys! She is still crying for her parents but you just have to bone in private, I suppose! So much for muh family! Well, at least Maria will hang out with her new grandpa and Alucard, who...

ah. mhh. well. This is bound to be very funny lol.

(btw, it's perfectly fine for a 16 yo to crush on an older man lol. We'll just have to see what said older man will do with it.)

Oh, Edouard! I forgot about him because he was nothing more than a jukebox: his only character development is that his extra hands move away from his face, maybe because he's no longer ashamed of himself. Well, he's coming to Saint Domingue too with Annette and Richter! Yes, as a Night Creature. Annette simply says "the people there have had worse nightmares than you" and the matter is settled. Hey, remember when she felt guilty for being the cause of his fate? Remember when she was this close to mercy killing him? It doesn't matter anymore! Yay, just like Dracula and Lisa! Conflict is for those who are sure they're going to get a next season!

And while Richter and Annette kiss and are all cute and everyone is happy, I'm left wondering who was the true protagonist of this season. Richter? No, he did fuck all until the end. Annette? Same. Alucard? He could have vanished in E1. Maria? She got a lot of focus, but ultimately irrelevant to the main conflict. Juste? Tera? Mizrak? Olrox? Don't make me laugh.

Drolta, then? The season took the time to give us her backstory to explain how she got here. She stole the mummy, which is what caused the final fight. And that's it. Once again, I feel the need to use Carmilla as a comparison: she was the true star of the OG S2, because she was the only character in both plotlines to actively do something, and she acted throughout the whole season, even if in the end she didn't get what she wanted. What is this season even about? How do you summarize it? Why is it so rushed and confusing? Why did they try so much and muddle every theme they could have tackled, like the effect of vampirism on your soul, or the dark path grief can take you, or finding a new family?

and oh right. the shadowy figure that seems interested in maria and tera. i don't even know. we'll see in s3 i guess. which will happen, since this season has currently a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes because it is considered peak fiction.

anyway,

#anti netflixvania #beev watches nocturne #long post #i'm tired chief #i need to replay rob #Youtube

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