Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
If you’re both an animation enthusiast and a horror fan (a soft spot for vampire lore would be bonus), then stop sleeping on ‘Castlevania’ and just watch the show on Netflix.
Based on a Japanese video game series and written by Warren Eliss, Castlevania’s season 1 is perfection and spans only four episodes. Thankfully I started watching the show in 2018 when season two was out, so one could binge-watch them back to back, because season one ends with one hell of a cliffhanger. So even though it leaves the viewer hanging, the season scores full points on everything – visuals, plot, storytelling, background score, voice-acting, horror, and drama.
Set in 1400s Wallachia, the show opens with a fantastic gothic horror scene of rotting skeletons on pikes lining the path to Dracula’s famed castle. Lisa, a beautiful human woman knocks on his door, despite all the terrifying tales and legends about him. She soon becomes his wife, but is burned at the stake by the Church for being a ‘witch’ while Dracula is away traveling. Grief-stricken and maddened with rage, Dracula vows to wipe out everybody in Wallachia, and unleashes literal hell upon the land. It is up to some unlikely heroes to stop the vampire’s demonic hordes from murdering everybody.
Castlevania’s depiction of corrupt clergy and rotten bishops, and how they manipulate common people through fear and superstition, is handled excellently throughout the show. Dracula’s hatred for the Church feels deserved, although his plan to kill every human is, of course, extreme and beyond villainous. The ‘Clergy vs Demons’ tension is the highlight of this show, and it’s darkly ironic how the Church seems to be another other side of evil.
“God is not here” – this simple dialogue uttered by a nameless demon inside a Church is my favorite line from Castlevania. The demon says this to a bishop, before proceeding to murder the man, while surrounded by religious iconography and crosses.
It’s only at the end of the first episode that we meet one of the heroes of the tale – Trevor Belmont, a washed out young man from the house of Belmont, a family of legendary vampire hunters. Trevor arrives in Gresit hoping to pass through, but the city ravaged by Dracula’s nightly demons has other plans. He learns the bishop is pinning the attacks on an innocent group of scholars and steps in to help, only to be pulled into the larger fight against Dracula and the hunt for a ‘sleeping messiah.’
Honestly, this is more of a recommendation than a review, because it’s been a while since the show came out, and I recently saw Luc Besson’s ‘Dracula’, which made me think of all other Dracula re-imaginations, and of course ‘Castlevania’ came to mind too. I’ve seen the first two seasons of Castlevania a bunch of times, but season three & four only once, three wasn’t nearly as gritty and entertaining, although four offers great closure to the tale.
If you end up enjoying Castlevania, it’s spin-off animated show ‘Castlevania: Nocturne’ is also worth checking out.
Rating for season one: 5 stars on 5. Watch Castlevania it on Netflix.
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