Loved season 1. Rewatched it on an international flight a few months back and it actually gets better on a rewatch
Binge watched the entirety of season 2 on Sunday (?):
Its... good. Not great, but good.
More detailed: Note, I won't be spoilering anything that (I remember) is bog standard Castlevania lore
I really enjoyed Trevor and Alucard's interactions. Its clear from their first scene that they have a very Tough Guy friendship with lots of playful teasing and mockery. Sypha felt like the straight (wo)man to their jackassery, but she had her moments as well.
That being said, I really enjoyed when they dug a bit deeper. The trip to the Belmont Hold was a frigging master class in character development. When we started S1 we knew Trevor had seen some shit, but the realization that Alucard had more of a childhood than Trevor was the exact right amount of sad. And Sypha, as a nomad, was a perfect addition to that as she never truly had a home and always defined her life by the people around her. People who she has grown away from. I love that they never needed to be explicit, but it was clear that we had three oprhans clinging to each other for stability. In their own, slightly broken, ways. And I loved that the series focused on Alucard as a man torn between two peoples rather than just the generic angsty douche he usually is. His genuine discomfort at Trevor's family's fetishization of hunting his own was great.
I also like that Sypha grew into her own. While she was kind of a badass in S1, she was also the damsel who was largely a summon for Trevor (did she even engage in the Alucard fight?). This time she is their heavy hitting glass cannon. And I felt her comic relief transitioned from petulant child (piss in his mug and call it beer) and more into a trope I can't think of the name for (not quite heroic sociopathy but with a similar sense of having a broken mind from so much power). "God hates me. See?" (paraphrase) was great.
The Sypha/Trevor relationship felt shoehorned in though. I can't help but think the plan was to stretch this out a bit more, but things like Grant and pacing issues cut out the middle arc. The only reason they seemed to have any meaningful chemistry was because it is Known that they get together, and it felt like they went from "you're my friend" to "Let's allude to banging" very quickly.
And if Dracula stole both seasons largely on the back of s01e01, Alucard is primed to do the same for Season 3 (which is effectively confirmed by Armitage). I pretty much hate Alucard in the games (which is a shame as Symphony is amazing) because he is a generic angsty douche with no real motivation other than "my dad is evil". Netflix Alucard actually has motivation and seems torn between his love for his father and his need to protect his mother's world. And the realization that he is, at most, a teenager (which kind of makes sense because of Lisa's age when she died) justifies a lot of the brooding.
Fight scenes, as always, were great. I love that each character got their own style and am further happy that Grant didn't make an appearance. Trevor continues to be focused on acrobatics and using the whip more as a mobility tool. Sypha was probably one of the best depictions of magic-based combat in media (to be fair, the bar is REALLY low). Alucard simultaneously using his telekinesis to control his sword while punching and kicking people was great. And Dracula reminded me a lot of a Wolverine-style character that just face tanks everything while relying on his strength to survive and his power to kill anything he touches.
Isaac gets special mention for feeling very primal and aggressive. If (season 1) Trevor was Officer Rama in The Raid with a focus on acrobatics punctuated by really brutal strikes, Isaac is The Raid: Redemption's Rama with a focus on just straight up brutality as a way to survive.
Which brings us to the ending: I like that, barring Trevor/Sypha's relationship upgrade, it very much built on the earlier themes. It is a low bar, but far too many shows/animes/movies really cash in on that kind of groundwork and tend to just leave it as a nice scene for people to reference. Trevor realizing he was just as much of a nomad as Sypha and trusting Alucard, who is a boy in need of a home, with his own was touching. The same with Sypha pointing out that Trevor needs to be A Belmont to function and that it truly brings out the best in him. And, while I doubt this will be the case, I would love if Sypha's ongoing desire to right the wrongs of the world through magic leads her down a dark path. Especially as, with Dracula dead (pending Death), there is no real shades of grey villain anymore. Speaking of, where the fuck was Death?
Careful eyed readers will note I barely talked about what was probably over half of the season: The Vampire Court. Quite frankly, I disliked it. Stormare aside, everyone felt generic. Even Jaime Murray felt like she was phoning in Carmilla. And she managed to turn frigging HG Wells into a vamp, so clearly something went horribly wrong. That would be like Stormare portraying someone who seemed perfectly sane and normal and not at all creepy or evil.
Hector (interesting reference there) was okay, but he just felt more stupid than anything else. Isaac was a more interesting character, but his portrayal as a dogmatic minion really took away any chance of his personality driving things. And while Carmilla's performance was shite, her character was generic Starscream.
And even Dracula took a hit this season. I like the idea that his war was an act of murder-suicide, but it never really dwelled on that and most aspects of that were Told, not Shown. How many times did Carmilla or GODBRAND!!! need to say "So.. .does anyone really think this plan is going to lead to enough surviving humans to sustain us?". Obviously I am a genius who knows everything, but I would have loved another Dracula Episode that showed him recruiting Hector and Isaac and maybe even showing his motivation waver during his war with humanity.
Overall, Vampire Court aside, I liked it. And I'm looking forward to Season 3. The fact that Armitage is still involved suggests we might be seeing a Simon's Quest adaptation. Or they'll just have him voice all Belmonts. Similar to how Basco voiced Zuko's descendent.
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And, because I positively love the "meta" aspect of TV and movies (I think I watch Game of Thrones more to predict what that means for the books than out of any enjoyment of either): My working theory is that they got the larger episode order while they were still writing season 2. After realizing there was no way to make Grant "serious" his combat style was folded in to Trevor. And when they realized that repeating the season 1 arc (enter town, protect town, move on) would hurt pacing, they needed filler. And, because everyone loved Dracula, we got more Dracula in the form of The Vampire Court.
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