Castlevania: Nocturne

The drawing style is pretty good though I feel the previous series was slightly better as it had better atmosphere.

The main issue is that the story moves too far from the original formula.

The new story is set in Revolutionary France but everything is "micro-adjusted" to fit a specific artificial narrative. Feels a like like the characters, story, dialogue all are forced into specific boxes.

The characters are more diverse cast now. Dracula no longer relevant instead is been replaced by another antagonist and she's not as scary to be honest. Belmont has been nerfed into a an insecure, young weakling. They tried to make it look strong by giving him raunchy lines but just looks bad.

The show keeps trying to associate revolution with emancipation and freedom and monarchy with vampires and evil at every corner.

Overall I'd say is not worth watching. The quality of their shows is getting worse and worse. The dialogue of the show is just terrible.

Animation 9/10 Characters 5/10 Story 2/10.

I feel like I enjoyed the flagship Castlevania series, especially the earlier seasons, and I'm not certain what happened here. The voice acting is decent - especially Zahn McClarnon as Olrox - and the animation is okay. The storyline is a big whiff at the plate.

My biggest pet peeve is the stakes (no pun intended) are so low: characters seem to be both invincible and never removed permanently from the storyline. After this happens over and over you start to feel like what's the point of these battles if there's never any real consequences. I'm also a stickler for consistency so if you're a mortal and are hit by a goddess.......you should probably die (granted so many shows are guilty of this).

The Edouard storyline is grimacingly bad and at the end of the second season I just started skipping all his scenes, which seemed artificially emo. The storyline jumps all over the place, especially in the second season, and I feel like they really did Erzsebet a disservice. She is such a bland and one-dimensional antagonist, there was a real chance to make her complex and interesting.

Finally, the show should have leaned more into Belmont/Alucard, who deserved so much more screen time than they received, this is Castlevania after all.

Compared to the first one this one disappoints due to the writing. The animation is beautiful, the characters are interesting, but the plot just feels... lacking. Things happen a little too conveniently. The story doesn't feel natural, but rather like some things were thrown in to 'solve' plot problems. Some of the themes and tropes are a little too much modern Hollywood for my taste. It's too much about trauma and empowerment and such. The atmosphere is still stellar though and the world is well built. Also, once it get's going towards the end, it really gets going.

The first one was 10/10. This one is still worth watching, but with lowered expectations.

I share some of the sentiments with regard to the other reviewers. The visuals are great but the story is lacking.

But seeing as I don't know the castlevania storyline from the game, I don't care if the show is true to the game storyline.

My biggest gripe with this show is just how weak the monsters are. Vampires and night creatures are star wars storm trooper levels of useless. They are just fodder for the heroes to kill, so they have no intimidation factor.

The second gripe is related to the writing, stuff like how when one of the characters goes on a spying mission how they immediately find what they are looking for and are within hearing distance of important conversations. All this while the Vampires which are supposed to have heightened senses cannot detect that someone is following them and listening in on their conversations. That's just hack writing.

I really loved the first series as far as adaptation goes, back when Nocturne got announced I was stoked to see how they could keep the plotlines fresh. In this case, Nocturne is a beatifully animated show, with a few hiccups which don't retract from the experience, the sound is good, however voice acting ranges from good to fine.

As for story, this is where I'm conflicted, on one hand the plot is good and Erzebeth Bathory is a good pick for a villain, but... what the actual hell is up with the writing? Dialogues seem stiff, leaving little depth, they get so bad at times that it just took me out of the experience. With that said, I like Nocturne despite these issues, I hope that they will improve when the second season comes out, there's still a chance for it going from good to great..