Well, looks like Castlevania is getting its own animated series on Netflix

[Shiny Gems]

Quote

The first season of a Castlevania animated series will be coming to Netflix this year, the streaming service announced today. As part of its slate of new premiere date reveals, Netflix also revealed Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 will be arriving this year, though no specific date was revealed. Netflix's website lists the series as a four-part season, with each episode running for approximately 30 minutes.
According to Netflix's official description of the series, Castlevania will focus on the game franchise's Belmont clan, as it follows "the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself."


IGN spoke with producer Adi Shankar following the announcement, and he confirmed that the show will indeed be an adaptation of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, but could not give further plot details at this time.
"This is very much Castlevania done in the vein of Game of Thrones," Shankar said of the project, noting that Warren Ellis, who wrote the series and is on board as a producer, "added so much depth to the material." Dracula's Curse followed Trevor Belmont as he fought to stop Dracula from ravaging Europe in the 1400's. Those fighting with him included Alucard, Dracula's son.

"[The series is] going to be R-rated as ****," Shankar said of the series' level of violence, as many entries in Konami's game series were rated M for mature due to blood and violence. Shankar's discussion of the series' more adult aims reconfirms a 2015 interview in which he said the show would be "America's first animated series for adults." At the time, Shankar, who has produced Dredd, The Grey, and more, said Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Young Justice were among the series inspiring the Castlevania series' art design.

Speaking to whether the franchise is aimed at the franchise's longtime fans or newcomers to the material, Shankar discussed his high hopes for the project, saying "this is going to be the best ****ing video game adaptation we've had to date."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/02/08/netflix-announces-castlevania-animated-series?abthid=589b9394c2467f8c7c000014

Sorry if this was posted before. Didn't see it posted before, so I'd thought I'd make this.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

And here's the exclusive trailer of the new series! 

 

[Tailikku]

Something I really hope is possible for the series:  getting the Animaze cast to essentially reprise their roles from LoI onwards.  I mean I can just imagine something like Richter's fateful encounter with Dracula at the end of Rondo of Blood/opening of Symphony of the Night with both he and Dracula chewing the scenery with their back and forth banter.

And seeing that there will be an adaptation of Dracula's Curse, which I have recently obtained via GameStop's vintage software program, it will be good to see Trevor, Sypha, Grant, and Alucard get the proper treatment they deserve since that godawful semi-adaptation in Captain N.

*looks at article again, sees Warren Ellis as writer*

You mean the same Warren Ellis that was originall working on this?

If that's the case, I'd say that it's about damn time since I saw the topic on the Anti-Chapel forums in the last decade.

[Apollo Chungus]

16 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

And here's the exclusive trailer of the new series! 

 

As silly as this is meant to be, I would actually watch the hell outta of a CastleVania show in which Captain N's Simon Belmont is the main character. No, really. Keep everything as it is; gruesome monsters straight out of Kentaro Miura's worst nightmares, defenseless citizens people in constant despair, and the kind of broken, despairing atmosphere that makes Dark Souls as miserable and horrifying as Tots TV; but have the main character be this cartoonishly over-confident fop who is terrified of everything that's slightly threatening. The end result might be seen by a few (well, okay, everyone) as sacrilegious, but I relish the the idea of a show with such contrasting elements!

If we aren't lucky to have such a deliciously barmy show, then I will at least hope that the team behind this series do two things:

-Do it with traditional animation. I specify this because most Netflix animated shows are contracted out to DreamWorks, and therefore tend to be CGI. I know that DW might choose to avoid doing an R-rated series, in light of shifting towards younger audiences within the last year or two, I'm still convinced the show might end up as CGI. And I'd rather not; CGI is fine, don't get me wrong, but I'd really like to see a CastleVania series with an art style akin to this kind of artstyle.*

*Simplified for the sake of giving us good animation, obviously. Retaining what this style gets right while allowing for nicely animated scenes would be fine by me.

-Don't overdo the dark, grim, R-rated thing. Please. I'm aware that this show, by the mere nature of what its adapting, will not be something considered 'family friendly'. There will be blood, there will be horror, there will be violence: I get that. But the producer saying their series is "R-rated as fuck" makes me think they're going to cynically put as much 'adult' shit into the show as possible to come off as a 15-year-old's idea of mature (e.g. crap like Man of Steel). Shit like naked people having gruesome sex for no real reason, or Trevor Belmont suddenly tearing vampires to bloody, pulsating giblets and getting hard from it, or even just characters swearing all the time.

Can we not do that? I really would like for animated shows/films in the West to start being more varied in their content, instead of just being one of three things: stuff that only appeals to little kids, stuff that only appeals to adults who like gross things, or stuff that only just about works for everyone else, and a CastleVania series would be a good place to help that along. Make a grim horror series, by all means, but do it because you have a seriously good idea behind it. Don't overdo the whole R-rated thing because you want to come off as 'hardcore', 'mature' or any of the other disingenuous buzzwords used to disguise your creative bankruptcy.

[Yoko/葉子]

If they do a season based on Simon's Quest, I will be beyond curious to see how it's pulled off. 

[Apollo Chungus]

3 hours ago, Vo-Muw/Lime/Rosalie/Key said:

If they do a season based on Simon's Quest, I will be beyond curious to see how it's pulled off. 

If they were able to have a 10-20 episode season, I imagine they could set it up as an episodic series in the style of Samurai Jack. Simon's overall goal is to collect Dracula's parts, but has to spend the episode helping out a village in peril/getting past an environmental obstacle/defeating the monster of the week. Would make for a pretty decent action cartoon throwback, I think.

[RosaRosaRosalina]

We've got our first look of the show with this teaser trailer! And a release date: July 7th! 

[Dejimon11]

The animation is a great! Looks a hell of a lot better than what I was expecting. Hopefully the show will be good. 

[Tailikku]

How fitting is the date?

7/7/17

Literally ten years after 777, so it's almost as if Luck is on the side of this series

 

Having seen the trailer, I am impressed by the artstyle. Likewise, it almost proves that Alucard has always looked like that in both SotN and Dracula's Curse.  Grant and Sypha are no slouches either considering that the last time we saw Grant, he looked like the Shinigami from Death Note and Sypha had to deal with her "fanservice pack."  But seeing her with redhair makes me wonder if she was initially ostracized by the Church because of her hair color (remember, redheads back in medieval times were often thought to be vampires).

 

Also really diggin' Trevor's Scottish accent!  I can't tell if it's Gideon Emery like in Judgement or Richard Madden like in Lords of Shadows

 

Edit: I did just remember that July was in-canon the month when Julius destroyed Dracula in 1999, but we're only 13 days off from the battle.  Besides that, I did remember that Soma Cruz will be born this very July in-canon, and just in time

 

Cast has also been confirmed: Fred Tatasciore, Alejandra Reynoso, James Callis, Tony Amendola, and Emily Swallow.  So I can't help but wonder who will be voicing who.  Fred will most likely be voing Trevor given how manly some of his characters are and how barbaric Trevor looks.  That just leaves the question as two the other four.

[Solly]

Some key art

.

I feel like I probably don't have to say what this is a reference to.

Extremely excited for this. I love Castlevania, especially the ones styled after the first game. I'm glad to see the series in the spotlight again, even if it's not as a game, and I like the way they're playing up the "classic Nintendo" angle. I guess nostalgia goes a long way for me.

On 5/25/2017 at 10:29 PM, Tailikku said:

Having seen the trailer, I am impressed by the artstyle. Likewise, it almost proves that Alucard has always looked like that in both SotN and Dracula's Curse.  Grant and Sypha are no slouches either considering that the last time we saw Grant, he looked like the Shinigami from Death Note and Sypha had to deal with her "fanservice pack." 

We do not speak of the Judgement designs. 

Don't think Grant was in the trailer though. I heard people saying that when this was going to be a movie, Grant wasn't in it, which would be pretty disappointing. 

[Tailikku]

4 hours ago, Solly said:

We do not speak of the Judgement designs.

I just did

And that's not even touching... pachislot

[Tailikku]

The discord server for the Castlevania Dungeon is just exploding since the show's debut this morning.

[Candescence]

The first season is short (and I mean short enough to roughly be a 90-minute film), but really good. That being said, it's also not for the faint of heart, it's very gory, probably excessively so.

[Ratcicle King]

The worst episode when it comes to gore is the first one, after that it really tones down save for a couple of moments, so nothing to worry about too much.

As for the show itself, it's great, everyone should give it a go, they somehow made these 4 episodes packed without ruining the pacing, they really felt much longer than 23 minutes, in a good way. 

Season 2 was confirmed already btw, 8 episodes, I guess they got 4 to test the waters with this franchise, which explains why the first season feels more like a prologue.

[Kevin]

Yeah, the first episode is quite brutal, but that aside, I enjoyed it overall despite it only being 4 episodes. I guess Netflix wanted to test the waters first before moving on to more episodes. That test must've worked out though since it's been renewed for a second season. . Personally, I love the visuals in this series.

[Tailikku]

and now James Rolfe has put his two cents into these four episodes:

I can only imagine how he would react to if they cover Simon's Quest.

[Apollo Chungus]

Just finished watching the series and I gotta be honest, that was terrible. I'm not really a fan of the series, so this isn't some bitter fanboyism masquerading as critique. My issues with the series lie with its mistakes and them alone. So, what did I not like about the series?

The Content: In a post I made shortly after the series' announcement, I expressed my fear that the show was going to be claim its rating of "R-rated as fuck" (an actual thing said by one of the show's producers) by cramming each episode with gratuitous gore, disgusting spectacles or subject matter, and basically all manner of nonsense for no other reason than to appeal to teenagers who think that kind of shit is 'mature'. And that's exactly what happened. Whipped out eyes, rainstorms of bat foetuses, disembowelled children, talk of goat-shagging; shit like this is done constantly (especially early on), and it feels like it has no other purpose beyond shock value.

I understand this is a horror-action series and that it wouldn't be presenting family-friendly content for that reason, but there's a reason that the best horror media (and non horror media) choses to use gruesome/disturbing content sparingly. Be it showing the brutality that a being is capable of (the climax of Evangelion Episode 18), to contrast the terror of this creature with the tone of the work in general (Gygas in Earthbound, anyone?), or to simply scare the shit out of the viewer after a peaceful respite (Clemens' death in Alien 3); good works wait to disturb the viewer until the right time.

Netvania, meanwhile, chooses to subject the viewer to an un-relenting amount of gore and other disgusting scenes, unaware of how quickly that ceases to affect the audience and simply results in them getting bored with your nonsense. If you want effective horror, you're not gonna get it here.

The Writing: Netvania is written in the same manner seen in too many other shows or films: an overly serious tone that wishes to depress the viewer with 'heavy' themes, only broken up with Joss Whedon-esque quips from Trevor or one of the other characters to provide moments of 'humour'. The different tones don't play off of each other well; it feels like writer Warren Ellis felt that he had to do a 'funny scene' at this point, with no regard for comic timing or the context in which the scene happened. It's hackneyed writing at its most blatant, and it makes me groan with irritation every time.

The characters themselves, though well acted, are as one-note and predictable as you can get. Trevor is your typical roughed-up hero who stays out of things until he decides not to. The Bishop is the same misguided religious nut who believes the word of God allows him to do whatever. Sypha's the grand-daughter who wants to get out and make a difference. The Elder of the Speakers is a wise old man who exposits background information and is hesitant to abandon people in their time of need. There's nothing wrong with using old character tropes (they're tropes for a reason), but there's nothing interesting going on here. There are dopey 60's sitcoms with more nuanced characters than this show.

What drives me up the wall more than anything, however, is the dreadful use of screen-time economy: this is a principle where you try to get across as much as you can while saying very little (Mad Mad: Fury Road and Perfect Blue are very good examples of films that use screen-time economy effectively). That doesn't happen here; every conversation feels like one-note exposition that has nothing to interpret beyond what the script is literally telling you, every scene goes on for 5-10 minutes when it could have very easily been done in half that time. The end result is that it feels like very little happens in each episode, even though it feels like an eternity. It belies the fact that Warren Ellis is a comic book writer, since that kind of expository dialogue can work far better in comics than in animation.

The Animation: When it comes to TV shows and films, most people tend to think that the script and the acting are the most important elements when analysing and critiquing them. However, they forget to take into account that those are not the only elements that exist; there's the visuals, the use of sound, the editing, and the pacing (each of which contains at least ten other elements that all play off each other to create the film/show that you are watching). What I'm getting at is that there's more to a show than just the script, and those elements need to be as strong as they can be to really make the show work, or they feel wasted.

And the animation in Netvania is more than wasted. Sure, the characters look 'detailed' and 'on-model', and some of the backgrounds look pretty good, but it's so uninteresting. The character designs are bland and have too much detail for them to be animated well, and the animation itself is often stilted, mediocre and lacking a soul. There are a couple of decent scenes (the fight against the Cyclops in episode 3, and the fantastic title sequence, both animated by animation director Spencer Wan), but for the most part, it feels like the animation was done by a series of drones who were told to serve the script and character designs, and little else.

This isn't helped by the incredibly lacklustre visual storytelling. Every other shot shows the characters in 3/4 profile, making most shots feel very repetitive. When characters are talking, it shows them talking without trying to do anything interesting in terms of visuals. It ends up making the already long exposition scenes feel so much longer, because there's nothing going on beyond seeing pictures of people talking. This right here was what killed the show for me; I can get over the needless 'R-Rated' nonsense, I could have tolerated the boring script and hackneyed tone, but this show is just so goddamn boring to watch! It reminds me a lot of DC's animated work since Batman Beyond, in that you have to like the script or characters to enjoy them, because there is absolutely nothing else of interest.

If you haven't yet seen this series, avoid it. Go watch the 1997 Berserk anime if you want a horror-action series that tries to keep you interested. Go play any of the Castlevania games if you want to have a good vampire-whipping time. There are much better shows and films that deserve your time and attention.

(Also, the music is terrible. It's the kind of boring electronic Zimmer-lite arpeggios that's been popping up in every hackneyed show or film since Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's awful and forgettable, and the fact that Castlevania is a series known for its often great soundtrack just rubs salt into the wound. Fuck this series.)