#i do want to get into the whole actual lore from the show. the consecration ceremony and everything around it >

[koheletgirl]

btw malkia doesnt mean queendom in hebrew. queendom, as well as kingdom, is mamlacha (ממלכה) in hebrew. i only ever heard the word malkia as a name of a kibbutz in israel, which is named after a family of kohanim from the tanakh.

another thing worth noting, imo, is that "malkia" in first kill isnt the name of the legacy (or council, or matriarchy - whatever you call it, it's pretty unclear); it's the name of the snake. the snake is named "emerald malkia". the snake as in The Snake, from the garden of eden. that one.

according to them, the emerald malkia bit lilith in the garden of eden, thus turning her into the first ever vampire. which. im not going to try to unpack that

it's been pointed out that while malkia (מלכיה) isnt really a hebrew word, (and does not in fact mean "queendom") malka (מלכה) is a word, meaning "queen". and personally i dont think "malkia" comes from some attempt to "make up" a hebrew word for "queendom": a) because i've seen the show and this is giving them far far Far too much credit, and b) because, like i said, it's not supposed to represent the matriarchy. it's the name of the snake. so if you asked me, it's a lot more likely that they meant to call it "emerald malka" (emerald queen), and messed up.

which is not better

in fact i think it's worse. what they essentially did was associate a hebrew word (or hebrew-adjacent) with the snake that is the source of all vampires. a reptile. that is the source of all blood-sucking creatures.

that's worse. you see how that's worse, right?

[odilekuronuma]

Castlevania Netflix Season 1 review

                                       Wallpaper found on Reddit.

Better late than never I suppose.

Let me just preface this by saying that I’m a HUGE Castlevania fan, I’ve played most of the games, even the old school ones. And this blog is originally dedicated to Castlevania, and its artist Ayami Kojima. In fact my username is a direct reference to her and her pen name, as well as “Santa lilio Sangre” which is the title of her artbook, that I highly recommand checking out .

Also this review will contain spoilers so be warned.I don’t think I can talk about the story and the characterization without mentioning spoilers, so read at your own risk.

With that out of the way, it wouldn’t come as a surprise that I’d have an interest in this series. Actually this came out of nowhere, there was talk of an adaptation years ago, but it came to nothing. And with the whole Konami debacle, all hope of seeing anything Castlevania related vanished....until Netflix came in.

The story is based on Castlevania III Dracula’s curse, which I’ll have you know is one of my favourite games in the franchise.It’s also partly inspired by Symphony of the night, which is by far my favorite game of all times.  I gotta say that I’m really impressed about how the showrunners expanded on the lore of the game and the franchise as a whole. There’s a clear effort made into fleshing out the characters, and expanding on the lore and the story. The games were never really heavy on the story, but here we get to know more about the context  of those times, and how the Church for example played a huge role, not just in regulating the religious life of the believers.

The  story follows Trevor Belmont, of the clan Belmont, whose main occupation is hunting vampires and all kinds of otherwordly creatures, on his quest to defeat Dracula.  One year prior to the current timeline, Dracula is legitimately pissed off at humanity for having burned his wife on a stake after wrongly accusing her of being a witch.

I gotta say I love how the showrunners fleshed the relationship between Dracula and Lisa. It’s short but it’s to the point.It’s better than any crappy Vampire romance we’ve seen in the past 10 years. It starts with Lisa from Lupu village showing up at Drac’s castle, to learn science. She wants to be a doctor to help her fellow humans. She’s portrayed as being quite witty, and in fact most of the main cast are portrayed as such (not counting the priests since they’re dumb as fuck).

She manages to convince Dracula to teach her science, and here there’s somewhat of a deviation from the usual lore. While in the games it’s not unusual to encounter objects that are futuristic, or even the Creature which by all means is the result of science, Dracula’s powers are deeply rooted in magic, or even alchemy. A recurrent area in Dracula’s castle or “Castlevania” is the Alchemy Laboratory. Either way in exchange of him teaching her all there is to know about science, she in turn will teach him how to enjoy life as a human, since so far it appears that Dracula has never walked or travelled as a man. He originally starts by hating humanity and not having much faith in them, and this beautiful woman comes along and changes his views entirely.

Years later while Dracula is away, travelling as a human which shows that he followed Lisa, aka his wife’s advice, the Church does a really dick move by burning her at the stake....Yeah that’s bound to backfire horribly. Lisa on the stake begs Dracula not to be mad at humans, but all the harm has been done. After he learns of her demise, he transforms into a fiery pillar and goes to face the Archbishop and all the assholes responsible of her death. He gives the people of Targoviste a year to make peace with their God. And then he’ll unleash hell on humans.

I gotta say Dracula’s wrath is justified, you decided to piss off the guy who didn’t like humans to begin with, and took away from him the thing that made him become a better person. So there’s bound to be some retribution. However as Alucard, his son from Lisa points out, he should direct his wrath on those who are directly responsible for her death, and not all of humanity and people who are innocent. But Dracula won’t have any of that, so he attacks his son to prevent him from meddling with his plan to raise an undead army in a year.

So that’s pretty much the context of the story, and what lead to the current events, where Trevor our reluctant hero is currently embarked in. I gotta say the characterization is top notch, and it doesn’t end with Dracula.Our hero’s motivations and journey are also fleshed out, because as it turns out Trevor doesn’t initially want to do anything with it. He’s first shown to be a drunk mess, despite the fact that he comes from a noble house, the Belmonts. But that is due to once again the interference of the Church, who after relying on the Belmonts for years to protect them from monsters and creatures like Dracula, decided to excommunicate them on ground they dabbled in magic pretty much...Which is as dumb as pissing off Dracula. So with his house in ruins, Trevor pretty much sunk into alcoholism, which is a pretty interesting take on his character. He’s all around very different from his character in Curse of Darkness, who is overall very serious.

Instead here Trevor is portrayed as being sarcastic and witty, and there’s a good amount of comedy involving him, mainly due to the fact that he’s a drunk and out of practice. So his initial motivations aren’t anything grand, and overall he just doesn’t want to get involved with the Dracula drama. He just wants some booze and something to eat. But soon he starts to care, after his encounter with the speakers.

After making it to a town that is plagued by raids of  Dracula’s minions he meets the Speakers, a band of nomadic story tellers who pass their wisdom orally. Because he’s a Belmont, he had previous knowledge of such a group, and unfortunately for them, the Church (again) plans to pin down the onslaught by Dracula’s forces on them, because they happen to use magic...sigh. The Church are even bigger villains than Dracula himself, they fucked over pretty much everyone. Trevor bides them to leave town, but they can’t, not until they retrieve the body of one of theirs, the grand daughter of their leader in the catacombs. As to why she ventured in the catacombs, it is to find the “Sleeping warrior” who is according to a prophecy, the one who will defeat Dracula.

So Trevor ventures in the catacombs to find her, and he saves Sypha from the Cyclops, yay. While she’s grateful, she doesn’t think too highly of Trevor, and who could blame her, since at this point he won’t do anything about this situation. But with Sypha’s and the speakers help, who won’t abandon the city despite the fact that the mob lead by the Church is after them, he comes to realize that it is his duty as a Belmont to stop Dracula. 

After that they both end up in the catacombs again after trying to run from the mob and confronting Dracula’s minions in one of the best action scenes of the season. While they keep falling in the catacombs they end up encountering the “Sleeping warrior” who turns out to be a vampire, and none other than Alucard, Dracula’s son. Of course Trevor and him would come to fight since for the former it is likely Alucard is Dracula and is a vampire and thus can’t be trusted, and for the latter it is more of a test to see if Trevor is worthy.Trevor manages to kick Alucard’s sweet ass on more than one occasion thanks to his consecrated whip and weapon of choice, the Vampire Killer which is very effective against vampires. But Alucard manages to come on top thanks to his superior swordsmanship . In the end both of them stop fighting after Trevor managed to stab Alucard a few times, and Sypha threatens to burn Alucard’s precious little head if he tries to bite Trevor.

Either way they all agree to stop fighting, and Alucard announces that the other 2 passed the test, that is supposed to show if they’re worthy to be his companions and aid him in killing his own father Dracula....

So through 4 episodes, the length of the first season,  we get Trevor’s character arc, who starts as a reluctant hero but slowly comes around to realize that it is his mission to protect humans from people like Dracula. And characters like Sypha played a big role in it.Alucard comes along to gather all of them and aid them in defeating his own father. So in terms of characterization I have no complaint whatsoever, the showrunners really did flesh them out well. 

Another reason for me to like Trevor as a character is the fact that he’s voiced by Richard Armitage, who is a great actor (if you haven’t watched the Crucible go watch it now) and has an amazing voice...and I have a crush on him, but what’s new? I have a crush on 90% of Hollywood actors XD. In fact the original english dub (so weird to say that) has an amazing cast, even though I find it a bit odd that characters from Wallachia would have a British accent....But that’s how things are, and Sypha and the speakers have a Spanish accent, which I guess means they’re from Spain (Sypha Belnades) and are the equivalent of Romani people. Yeah I guess that makes sense.

So the story is very well written, they managed to also portray the characters in a realistic light. The voice acting is also great. But what about the actual animation? I’ll let you judge by yourself.

It is surprisingly good. In fact it’s better than fucking Berserk 2016/17. That one barely qualifies as animation. To me this series is a homage to 2D and during the very important scenes, mainly action scenes, it literally has some of the best animation I’ve seen in a while. The art style is also rather manga-ish and to me a bit reminiscent of Ayami Kojima’s style which is very feminine and graceful.

The action is top notch, and the Trevor vs Alucard fight really lived to the hype. It wasn’t as one sided as I thought it would be, since Alucard is supposed to be overpowered, and while he is portrayed as such with him being able to teleport thanks to the hidden ability of the Alucard sword, he still has the basic weakness of vampires to the Vampire Killer. Dracula is also overpowered since he’s able to appear in fire pretty much everywhere at will.And the action scenes are carried by the quality animation and choregraphy.

My only complaint is that the music is forgettable, it has none of the classic feel of the video game franchise. It uses a lot of synth tunes, which makes it really generic. The endings do feature a song that somewhat feels gothic, with all the choir singing, but it’s nowhere close to the quality of the music from the games. I personally pictured the music to be like the score from Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. It could be a mix of classic instruments and more synthetic sounds, but alas none of that here. So that’s my main gripe with it, and it is somewhat important since CV is known mainly for its music.

So overall really impressed with this series and I totally recommand watching it. . It’s short, only 4 episodes though which I guess is made on purpose.Perhaps Netflix wanted to test the waters first and see how this series does. But fear not my Crestfallen children, a second season has been greenlit that should come out in 2018 and it will feature double the amount of episodes. And I’m more than willing to wait till 2018 as long as they can keep the same quality of storytelling and animation. And maybe they can also improve on the music while they’re at it.Also I’d be interested in seeing them doing a third season, and maybe also feature the events of Curse of darkness, even though the characters are less memorable and iconic compared to the CV III trio (since Grant isn’t here apparently). And maybe even beyond.

I just don’t want it to end. XD