Castlevania Netflix Series Season 1 Review

The Netflix Castlevania series was well done! I’m personally a Castlevania fan and I was quite pleased with this first season. Dracula is portrayed as a sympathetic villain, with the death of his human wife and spreads havoc around the land of Wallachia. This I found to be a great way to give the antagonist of the series a motivation that’s understandable and not just that he’s a evil bastard.

Contrasting that of the protagonist of the series Trevor Belmont, he’s an ass and he probably doesn’t give a shit about you, considering his family the Belmonts were disgraced by the people, so his appearance is certainly not welcomed. Despite that being the case, he still goes by his family’s wishes to fight back against the creatures of the night and defeat Dracula, it’s in his blood and that’s his job. I love this portrayal of Trevor, he’s a lovable ass-hole with the duty of protecting the people, he seems like he’s sick of doing it, but that’s what he has to do, so he does it.

The atmosphere and setting fits the Castlevania tone pretty well, the plot was done in a way that made sense for a video game adaptation and got you invested in what was going on. Although the pacing was slow, I felt it was a nice pace to get the series going and there was enough conflict and dialogue to keep it interesting. The animation was generally great, especially in the action scenes they’re short, but sweet and are the best parts in the series tbh, nice fight choreography. Surprisingly, there were moments that gave me a chuckle, especially the bar scene with Trevor, he gave most of the laughs in the series. There’s one moment in the series that involves Alucard and throughout the whole scene I had a big smile on my face, he’s definitely a man I would go gay for(I mean he is my favorite Castlevania character hehe).

I forgot to mention, that this series definitely didn’t hold back with the gore either, plenty of moments where I cringed although it was a little excessive it works, considering the serious and dark tone it’s going for. Some gripes, the music was mostly generic and a bit unfitting, wouldn’t it be awesome if Trevor Morris composed some subtle Castlevania remixes in or something? That would have made for good fan-service, but maybe that’ll happen in the second season. The English voice acting was decent, but at times it was hard to understand. Also, the series ended too fast, I was honesty disappointed that it ended I wanted more! Well, at least the second season will be 8 eps long. It did a good job in setting up most of the main team to go on their journey to fight Dracula, so I can’t complain.

Overall, I enjoyed this series a lot and I’m happy it’s a thing that didn’t end up being total crap. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse isn’t my favorite game in the series, but it is one of the best, and one of my favorite video game series getting a great animated adaptation is a pleasure! Hoping for the second season to be even better! 8/10