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Castlevania: Nocturne | Discussion Thread

Draugoth

Gold Member
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France, 1792. the height of the French Revolution. In a remote part of western France, the counter-revolutionary aristocracy has forged an alliance with a terrifying Vampire Messiah who promises to 'eat the sun' and unleash an army of vampires and night creatures to crush the revolution and enslave humanity. Annette, a sorceress from the Caribbean, seeks out Richter Belmont, last descendant of the long-fabled family of vampire hunters, to lead the resistance.


Trailers:


SERIES PREMIERE:

September 28, 2023

Stars:

EPISODES:​


No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air date
1"A Common Enemy in Evil"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsClive BradleySeptember 28, 2023
2"Horror Beyond Nightmares"Sam Deats and Saren StoneClive BradleySeptember 28, 2023
3"Freedom Was Sweeter"Sam Deats and Tam LuZodwa NyoniSeptember 28, 2023
4"Horrors Rising from the Earth"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsClive BradleySeptember 28, 2023
5"The Natural Order"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsTemi OhSeptember 28, 2023
6"Guilty Men to Be Judged"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsClive BradleySeptember 28, 2023
7"Blood Is the Only Way"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsTestamentSeptember 28, 2023
8"Devourer of Light"Sam Deats and Adam DeatsClive BradleySeptember 28, 2023

TV SEASON INFO​

  • Genres: Action, Adventure, Horror, Fantasy, Animation
  • Network: Netflix
  • Premiere Date: Sep 28, 2023
  • Executive producers: Clive Bradley, Kevin Kolde
 

Dynomite

Member
On Episode 3 now, Animation is pretty good overall. The fights scenes get a bit loose, but nothing too bad. Story feels like it is moving quickly. Richter doesnt feel like has enough attention so far.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
I might just wait for season 3 of Legend of Vox Machina instead

Edit: the animation looks KIND OF janky. Even Lower Decks looks more human.
 
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Sleepwalker

Member
I binged it today on the background while doing other stuff, it was more or less solid but some stuff was really cringey.

Got a lot better towards the end when Richter stopped being a pussy.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
The show is best when it focuses on the Belmonts and frankly it’s great to see them flesh out the stories of the guys you played as. The first season is like 2/3rds character staging and set piece building but I’ll put up a lot when it comes to delivering Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night and the previous series did fairly well when given room to build its characters.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Has the wokeness caught up with this show yet?

Nvm i see it has… yup everything turns to shit in the end. Ugh


What's woke about it?

For me, the animation looks kinda poor and janky. The designs are good, tho. Just not as stellar as TLOVM
 

kunonabi

Member
Has the wokeness caught up with this show yet?

Nvm i see it has… yup everything turns to shit in the end. Ugh
It's been there since most of the first series. Which is funny since it shared time with a bunch of edgelord bullshit.
 

ahtlas7

Member
Made it to ep.4 … why is there so little Belmont in this story about Belmonts? Nah, this is typical modern day Netflix production bs’ery. And it’s thoughtlessly presented. This is a sad continuation of Castlevania.

How did the freshly arrived islanders find Richter who is supposedly hidden? He must be doing some Bethesda level sneaking.
 

Urban

Member
On Episode 3 now, Animation is pretty good overall. The fights scenes get a bit loose, but nothing too bad. Story feels like it is moving quickly. Richter doesnt feel like has enough attention so far.
i just finished Episode 3 and is this series about Richter?
I find it pretty bad till now. Nothing compared to the original series
 

Madflavor

Member
I finished it yesterday. It's a total downgrade from the original series. Castlevania at it's core is about the Belmont Clan's centuries old struggle against Dracula. Considering Alucard completely stole Trevor's thunder in Season 2, I'd like to point out we're 5 seasons deep into this series, and we have not had a single 1v1 showdown between a Belmont and Dracula.

I enjoyed Seasons 3&4 because the writing was decent enough, I loved Trevor and Sypha, the animation and action was fucking fire, and the series still managed to have interesting enough villains. But it never sat right with me that Trevor's story and destiny to defeat Dracula took a backseat. Castlevania Nocturne looked like an adaptation of Rondo of Blood. This was their chance to redeem the mistakes of the original series. Instead we got something worse. I a bit interested to see where they go in Seasons 2, but I think for the most part I'm writing this shit off of my radar.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I finished it yesterday. It's a total downgrade from the original series. Castlevania at it's core is about the Belmont Clan's centuries old struggle against Dracula. Considering Alucard completely stole Trevor's thunder in Season 2, I'd like to point out we're 5 seasons deep into this series, and we have not had a single 1v1 showdown between a Belmont and Dracula.

I enjoyed Seasons 3&4 because the writing was decent enough, I loved Trevor and Sypha, the animation and action was fucking fire, and the series still managed to have interesting enough villains. But it never sat right with me that Trevor's story and destiny to defeat Dracula took a backseat. Castlevania Nocturne looked like an adaptation of Rondo of Blood. This was their chance to redeem the mistakes of the original series. Instead we got something worse. I a bit interested to see where they go in Seasons 2, but I think for the most part I'm writing this shit off of my radar.
Modern writers would yell: “NO! You do not get it! I subverted your expectations, it makes us mavericks!!!! You expected Belmonts vs Dracula but in my deconstructed fantasy version of it I have given you something you did not expect…”.

This idea that subverting expectations == good despite what you delivered is so stupid and toxic.
I did like the previous Castlevania seasons, but the last season started to overstay its welcome a bit…
 

kunonabi

Member
Between the weird perspective, the laughable animation, the embarassing musical segments and the boring characters...This one is defintely a very forgettable series. Abondonned ship half-way through the fourth episode..
Wait, musical segments? Is this as bad as I'm imagining?
 

Facism

Member
laughed when that dude gave his whole speech about serving god and protecting his holy kingdom after a night of being taken up the arse by a vampire. Bruh.
 
That's one crap series. Even ignoring all the "modern audience" crap the series is bad in pretty much everything from dialogue & story to even the visuals & animations.
What's worst is the fact the season felt like a part 1.
 
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Fbh

Member
First 2 episodes are OK, though the pacing feels rather slow for a season that's supposedly just 6 episodes.
The animation took a massive hit though, I went back and skipped through the first episode of the OG show just to make sure I wasn't misremembering it looking much better. But no, they aren't even on the same tier.
 

F0rneus

Tears in the rain
I need to speak up here because, once again we have hit the "woke" wall and once again it's pretty misguided in regards to Nocturne. Quite frankly there are two kinds of people that throw that word around

1) People who hate something so it's "woke"
2) People who say that if something is thrown in to be simply preachy and adds nothing to the plot or characters, then it's "woke"

Now Number 2 seem to have a much better point than 1, no offense. But here's the thing. There is nothing preachy here. Nocturne takes place during the French Revolution which went hand in hand with the Haitian Revolution, where slavery was completely in the grasp of French Nobility. The setting is ripe to explore that to enrich it's plot and it's characterizations.


- Slavery is a huge plot point because, it's the vampiric aristocracy's test run for a constant supply of blood and it's not "evil white people" that are the actual runners or true slave masters. It's all vampires, who seek to eventually enslave the whole of humanity, for a permanent food source.

- Richter is not at his prime at all. He's 19. He saw his mother murdered by the very powerful Olrox when he was 7 and that makes him a kinda scared and confused hero, who was shipped from Boston to Europe as a kid to fight against the most powerful of vampires out there. By the time Divine Bloodlines hit, he gets a massive glow-up but not enough yet, to defeat the big bad. Not yet. He's got plenty more to learn. He's far more powerful than Annette and Maria by the end and it's just the beginning.

- Annette being a runaway slave, who learned to fight and use Haitian/Creole magic to defeat the vampires that enslaved her people makes her far more interesting that just being a damsel in distress. And I like how she's flawed too. She's brash and does stupid things. Which is good. Isn't that what we want? Not Mary Sues but characters that do fuck up, and have to learn the hard way.

-Also Castlevania doesn't automatically mean a Belmont vs Dracula. Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, Harmony of Dissonance, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia had no Belmonts against Dracula. Dracula was indeed the final boss for some of these but a Belmont was not the protagonist. And hell Dracula is the protagonist in the Sorrow games.

- Maria's naivety towards her fellow revolutionaries, makes for a great contrast to Annette. They are both flawed and imperfect in complimentary ways.

- Olrox is so much better than just being a Dracula crony. I love how he's an ancient Aztec vampire that saw his empire destroyed too, just like the commonplace slavery during the time period do. And his lover, a Mohican who also got oppressed, was murdered by Richter's mother simply for being a vampire. A vampire who wanted peace and harmony between mortals and immortals. His obvious distaste for the vampires methods and for their leader Erzsebet, makes him a perfect greyish character that can go either way at this point.

- Vampires being ultra sexual beings is straight up Anne Rice stuff, and honestly I haven't seen one complaint about Erzsebet and Drolta having a harem of captured young women to torment and feed on. And it's very sexualized and grimly sensual. Game me a lot of shades of The Hunger in a good way.
 
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There is nothing preachy here. Nocturne takes place during the French Revolution which went hand in hand with the Haitian Revolution, where slavery was completely in the grasp of French Nobility. The setting is ripe to explore that to enrich it's plot and it's characterizations.
The show is PREACHY!
The whole slavery plot was introduced for exactly this reason. To have the race swap Annette talk all the time about "evil white men".
She was also extremely OP and like all of the female protagonists way better than Richter in combat (even after Richter got the magic boost).
And the less we talk about her shit attitude (common trait of most modern female protagonists) the better...
 

K' Dash

Member
Just finished this and... it's really bad, the only good character is Olrox, everything else goes from mediocre to unwatchable.
 

8bitpill

Member
Just finished up on this season.

This is the same trope, contemporary narrative that every show is exhibiting with American media. The writers and producers either pursued this narrative within Castlevania or the network has guidelines for what their current audience will connect with and they have to stay within those guidelines. It's like they already have a story written and then skin it with said intellectual property.

It's sucks Warren Ellis was being a dreg and had to be dropped from continue writing for the series.

I would like to see Konami just give it to Japanese writers and animation studio (team that worked on Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust).

Another misguided step with this series is, why didn't they go with Simon's story? Was there no way to tie in non fiction events with a fantasy fiction story, since Nocturne made a obvious effort on that.

giphy.gif
 

Soodanim

Member
I went into this blind. I think I watched a trailer, but I don't even remember that. It can't have been much of anything. I avoided all discussion prior to watching, and this thread is the first I've seen of any feedback, and I certainly didn't see the absurd tweet/marketing. I came to give thoughts from the perspective of having watched with no pre-judgement.

I watched an episode a day until the last 3, which I watched back to back today.
I need to speak up here because, once again we have hit the "woke" wall and once again it's pretty misguided in regards to Nocturne. Quite frankly there are two kinds of people that throw that word around

1) People who hate something so it's "woke"
2) People who say that if something is thrown in to be simply preachy and adds nothing to the plot or characters, then it's "woke"

Now Number 2 seem to have a much better point than 1, no offense. But here's the thing. There is nothing preachy here. Nocturne takes place during the French Revolution which went hand in hand with the Haitian Revolution, where slavery was completely in the grasp of French Nobility. The setting is ripe to explore that to enrich it's plot and it's characterizations.


- Slavery is a huge plot point because, it's the vampiric aristocracy's test run for a constant supply of blood and it's not "evil white people" that are the actual runners or true slave masters. It's all vampires, who seek to eventually enslave the whole of humanity, for a permanent food source.

- Richter is not at his prime at all. He's 19. He saw his mother murdered by the very powerful Olrox when he was 7 and that makes him a kinda scared and confused hero, who was shipped from Boston to Europe as a kid to fight against the most powerful of vampires out there. By the time Divine Bloodlines hit, he gets a massive glow-up but not enough yet, to defeat the big bad. Not yet. He's got plenty more to learn. He's far more powerful than Annette and Maria by the end and it's just the beginning.

- Annette being a runaway slave, who learned to fight and use Haitian/Creole magic to defeat the vampires that enslaved her people makes her far more interesting that just being a damsel in distress. And I like how she's flawed too. She's brash and does stupid things. Which is good. Isn't that what we want? Not Mary Sues but characters that do fuck up, and have to learn the hard way.

-Also Castlevania doesn't automatically mean a Belmont vs Dracula. Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, Harmony of Dissonance, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia had no Belmonts against Dracula. Dracula was indeed the final boss for some of these but a Belmont was not the protagonist. And hell Dracula is the protagonist in the Sorrow games.

- Maria's naivety towards her fellow revolutionaries, makes for a great contrast to Annette. They are both flawed and imperfect in complimentary ways.

- Olrox is so much better than just being a Dracula crony. I love how he's an ancient Aztec vampire that saw his empire destroyed too, just like the commonplace slavery during the time period do. And his lover, a Mohican who also got oppressed, was murdered by Richter's mother simply for being a vampire. A vampire who wanted peace and harmony between mortals and immortals. His obvious distaste for the vampires methods and for their leader Erzsebet, makes him a perfect greyish character that can go either way at this point.

- Vampires being ultra sexual beings is straight up Anne Rice stuff, and honestly I haven't seen one complaint about Erzsebet and Drolta having a harem of captured young women to torment and feed on. And it's very sexualized and grimly sensual. Game me a lot of shades of The Hunger in a good way.
This actually covers the majority of what I wanted to say.

The series throws in an obvious diversity checklist, and while I did have doubts going in because this stuff is really obvious these days, and although I did have some "Oh of course he's gay" eye roll moments a fair bit ties into the story or worldbuilding in one way or another. You usually get something out of it rather than just an empty shoehorned diversity quota.

Olrox was a perfect example of that. Started off a tickbox character, but by the end was interesting and I want to see more. His story feels intentional.

The opera singing was intolerable. I skipped the first few, then tuned it out when there was something to actually pay attention to. It was ridiculous, and unless this motherfucker has some Siren roots revealed in S2 it will remain a hollow addition that lack substance.

Annette's speech that was posted above was definitely odd. I'm not quite sure the word for it. Clumsy? Shaky? Very loosely written and just barely works at best. Not the finest moment, but it's not like a dwelled on it. When the moments were bad, I was mostly browsing GAF until the interesting parts came back around.

Alucard was something I accidentally spoiled when I went onto IMDB, but actually it helped keep me going through some of the more boring bits. His appearance at the end was something like a surprise wrestling return by Rock or Austin. Not necessarily earned, but you pop for the hype of the big name making an entrance. It's a big deal and you want to know what happens next. I certainly do. I also went back to watch that scene from the original series, and his look has changed a lot. They went full SotN boxart.

Overall, it was fine, but I'm not likely to go through it again. Of 8 episodes there's about 4 episodes' worth of decent content and the entire run is build up for S2. There was also absolutely no payoff. No story or arc was ended, and it wasn't even a cliffhanger where everything feels bleak or tense, and there was no major loss to recover from. It just... ended, and when we get the next ones it will feel like S1E09, not S2E01.

But with all that said, you can tell how many replies ITT are based purely on clips and short comments rather than first hand experience. For better or worse, I feel like people would be better served by trying the show out and seeing what they think rather than the low hanging fruit of "Woke, shit". Even though this post points out more negatives than positives, if you like the idea of what will eventually be a SotN-adjacent it's at least worth a skip-through to catch the fight scenes and major plot points.

Beyond that, I do wonder if they will ever attempt the Sorrow storylines. With the time jump from Trevor in middle ages to Richter in revolutionary France makes me think the next jump will be to ~1999. That would mean Dracula dying to be reborn as Soma Cruz, but if it does happen we get Julius Belmont as a side character and that can't be bad.
 

NahaNago

Member
I'd say that this show was weird. The show was definitely woke and cringey in parts. Half of the male cast is gay. The other half that is straight are bad guy, useless belmont, and one that went out for milk. The females are badasses. This show is barely about the Belmont. With that said the show was fairly easy to swallow and while I did have a ton of problems with the show I did enjoy it. It had just enough action to keep me watching even though they didn't really accomplish much or really anything this season except get defeated over and over again.

Why is the Caribbean lady the only one that gets a vision of what is about to go down and only two people went to fight? I need to stop thinking about the show or I'll end up tearing it apart.

I've been wondering about this ever since I watched the show but why don't vampires just dig into the ground when the sun comes up. Most of the times vampires are super strong and super fast so couldnt they just either dig a hole or cover themselves up with dirt as soon as the sun comes up. Another thing I've been thinking about is why don't they have underground cities more often. We have electricity so they could easily find some way to light up an underground city with the wealth they've accumulated over time. They could even bring humans underground as cattle and just seal it up so that only a vampire could leave.
 
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Fbh

Member
Very disappointing overall.

I could look past the eye rolling forced diversity, usual Netflix bait and switch marketing, meh writing and hilariously cringe singing scenes if at least the production values and animation were really nice.
But it looks so bad, the animation somehow seems even lower framerate than the OG show. Watching an episode of this and then watching something like Jujutsu Kaisen felt like going from playing Shadow of the Colossus on ps2 at 15fps vs the remaster on Ps4 pro at 60fps.
 

manfestival

Member
Yeah I finished it the other day and it is definitely a 5.5/10. Entertaining to a degree for sure. The writing was pretty rough and the voice acting was uneven(I hated the voice acting from the blonde mother person that I refused to learn her name due to hating the voice acting). The show wasn't even sure of who the main character was. That is without saying the already beaten dead horse around here. The "in your face" message from the writer too. The characters even acted weird in those moments too. Actually thinking about it... not a single character was likeable aside from maybe
Grandpa belmont, and he was literally just in there to give little belmont his awakening that ended up being useless in the final battle where he only channeled it to his whip for some reason(and those ice spike/fists but yeah seemed like a waste compared to what they showed us with his grandpa nearby
. That was basically it for me.
Now, I do not have any perspective on the lore and etc but I assumed that the Belmont kid was the main character but it felt like it wasn't since he only really "mattered" in the end and even to a degree. Now that ENDING... it was kinda cool but from a logical perspective it just seemed weird.
It was basically a Deus Ex machina having Alucard show up at the best possible time and just easily defeating the enemy. Also his reaction to things to me was just like... uhhh cool. Maybe it was established in the other show but I do not recall all that. Granted I did not get to finish the original... which I should.
 
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tamago84

Member
its hard to enjoy entertainment nowadays; we're comparing it to previous seasons and similar genre. its almost like we have a pretense of industry just wants the money and capitalizing on IP. watched this and was just wanting it to end. tbh the only thing i enjoyed show wise is "the worst of evil" korean drama lol
 
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Fbh

Member
Yeah I finished it the other day and it is definitely a 5.5/10. Entertaining to a degree for sure. The writing was pretty rough and the voice acting was uneven(I hated the voice acting from the blonde mother person that I refused to learn her name due to hating the voice acting). The show wasn't even sure of who the main character was. That is without saying the already beaten dead horse around here. The "in your face" message from the writer too. The characters even acted weird in those moments too. Actually thinking about it... not a single character was likeable aside from maybe
Grandpa belmont, and he was literally just in there to give little belmont his awakening that ended up being useless in the final battle where he only channeled it to his whip for some reason(and those ice spike/fists but yeah seemed like a waste compared to what they showed us with his grandpa nearby
. That was basically it for me.
Now, I do not have any perspective on the lore and etc but I assumed that the Belmont kid was the main character but it felt like it wasn't since he only really "mattered" in the end and even to a degree. Now that ENDING... it was kinda cool but from a logical perspective it just seemed weird.
It was basically a Deus Ex machina having Alucard show up at the best possible time and just easily defeating the enemy. Also his reaction to things to me was just like... uhhh cool. Maybe it was established in the other show but I do not recall all that. Granted I did not get to finish the original... which I should.

While having Juste appear was fun, I'm starting to hate the "Hero from your childhood is now old, depressed and probably a bad parent" trope we seem to get all the time now
 
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