Castlevania: Nocturne (2023)

"I was going to say something witty, but f*** it"

I liked the first Castlevania series. While it wasn't perfect, it did grow on me and had some amazing animations and memorable characters. This new series though, fails at all that, but works as a great sleeping pill.

First off, the obvious: the animations are a let down, except for maybe one fight. Gone is the gorgeous spell slinging from the first.

The writing is incredibly weak. You can tell that the writers are on strike and the story was written by chatgpt prefixed with "imagine that you are a teenager with Tourette...". The review title is an actual quote from the show, I kid you not.

The story is filled with cliches and there were so many deus ex machina and woman in the fridge tropes that I lost count. The French revolution should have made for an interesting background setting (and a much better story), except the show does very little with it. There's an amorphous "revolution" that apparently threatens vampires by listening to their teenage girl leader, and then running away when the fighting starts.

The only saving grace is the great, creepy music, but that's nowhere near enough to save this show from mediocrity.