Anime Review: Castlevania

Castlevania on Netflix is oddly cool. I vaguely remember playing the game on my Sega Megadrive decades ago but I don’t recall much if any of the story. The Netflix series is only 4 episodes long. It seems to act as more of a trailer for what will I hope be a longer series [update: season two is definitely coming].

The writers have made the main character, Trevor Belmont, behave much like a dark ages version of Sterling Archer. Or maybe like Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. He's the sole character that gets to say funny things, the others are very straight and serious.

Although made in America, the characters are drawn faithfully in the Japanese anime/manga style. It's not the best in anime, but it's up there. The colour grading seems to takes a cue from Western comic front covers - lots of cool blues, blood reds and glowing fire, often in the same frame.

The story is reasonably run of the mill evil vampire versus human saviours with pesky evil religious leaders also getting in the mix. But it is the funny and cheeky one liners spoken by Belmont that make this program worth watching. It’s definitely not for little kids though, there’s a ton of F bombs thrown in and loads of really gory violent scenes.

I'm looking forward to season two. But based on the episodes so far: I give this 7/10.

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