Netflix Renews Castlevania Series For A Second, Longer Season

Sounds good to me, still need to watch the first season.

Edit:
Reading the comments, I'm starting to feel uncertain about this show. I can tolerate some swearing but I'm not a fan of it, especially when it sounds forced and is used to make someone seem more edgy.

Gore for the sake of gore is a bit of a turn off for me as well.

We need more high quality anime- hopefully Castlevania is good.

The voice acting of most characters was really off-putting. The plot seemed contrived and only superficially dabbles into the Castlevania lore. The random gore was also kind of a detractor.

I don't think this counts as an anime.

I'm ready for more. This was a really good watch.

I hope they remove some of the edgy shock values. Not every series need to be game of thrones.

I'm iffy on the gore. On the one hand, I had no problem with it. On the other hand, my son wants to watch it. I've introduced him to the series via virtual console and discussions on SotN. I feel old saying this, but if they toned it down a bit they could widen their audience.

Aside from that, I had a blast watching it. My only complaint is four episodes?? Isn't 10-13 normal? The only other time I remember being this disappointed in one of their shows ending was Stranger Things. And this is much shorter. I'm surprised they didn't just bill it as a movie.

I turned it off at before the end of the first episode. Once the f-bombs started dropping I had enough. It tried way to hard to hard with the language and gross amount of gore. I think this could of appealed to a bigger audience. I'm finding more and more media just include this stuff to be trendy and it's getting a bit wearing.

I loved the animation and character designs. The voice acting for most of the characters was okay, but I really can't stand Trevor Belmont. The constant swearing and comedy is annoying and unnecessary.

I've watched 3 of the 4 episodes. Enjoying it, but it's only just started to get going and then it will be finished. 4 episodes seems way too short. I think the voice acting is good, suits the mood/atmosphere and fits the medieval Europe setting its supposed to be based from.

If cursing and gore is what puts people off a tv-series then maybe they should just not watch that particular tv-series.

I bet most people don't know that people, especially people who deal with bad people and those bad people themselves say curse words a lot.

I hope you never have to hear what kind of language teacher students, midwives or kindergarten teachers when drunk use.

Was a great series and I am really looking forward to the next season.

There's plenty of amazing, beautiful and absolutely superb Disney stuff out there if you want that sort of thing.

It was great. Folks worried about gore probably shouldn't be watching a Castlevania series lol.

The initial 4 episodes were to test the waters and it delivered a nice contained plot. Here's hoping this washes away all the bad Lords of Shadow lore and we could get a proper Castlevania game again.

@Timppis I take no issue with the gore or cursing, but I do take issue with the fact, that those things are what supposedly makes the show "adult" material. All it does is make it unsuitable for kids, while the prose and narrative itself could very well be addressed at kindergarten kids.
I mean, just because it is animation, does not mean everything needs to be super heavy handed. The whole bit about how for evil to triumph all it takes is for good man (and woman) to stand by and do nothing, and how therefore there are no more innocent, was such a heavy-handed and at the same time hamfisted piece of dialogue (just one of many, basically the whole show really), it made me wanna quit it right there right then.

If it had been more than those measly 4 episodes I probably would not have stuck around till the end tbh. By chance, I'm currently rewatching Daria once again (a few episodes here and there) and I have to say, compared to that - a show from 20 years ago - Castlevania is a joke, and again, the only adult thing about it, is the gore, the cursing and maybe the self-importance.

Hugely disappointed, and a totally missed opportunit. Netflix can do way better, as proven beyond a doubt by BoJack Horse - a show that can go toe-to-toe with Daria.

The animation and the action was ok though, not amazing, not genre-defining, and we've certainly all seen better, but still alright. The rest was - in my humble opinion - total garbage. So yeah, I think it's to dumb to show to kids. I rather show my niece something like Gravity Falls or such, even if there was no gore or cursing here. It's just plaim dumb.

Muito Bom !!! Na hora que o Trevor arrancou o dedo do tio no chicote... foi demais !

@Ralek85

The show is rated R.

Why would you start an argument about showing it to children?

It's not meant for children. Hence the rating.

Not everything in this world is meant for adults and kids alike.

I sure as heck won't be showing my kids 18+ movies and they won't be playing 18+ games until they are 18 or do it secretly (which kids tend to do).

It's great so far. I WANT MORE.

I don't mind violence and gore, nor mindless cursing... But do all the curse words make any sense being in the time period of the series?

I fell asleep before a Belmont even made an appearance.

@MagnaRoader by all the Eastern European people (Where Tepes is from) with English accents and the completely made up place for a land, I don't think they mind the historic anachronism of Extra cursing.

My only complaint is Dracula never called man a miserable pile of secrets.

OMG some people just dont get it, castlevania is not for kids... Go Share pokemon with your kids... because training captured monsters to kill each other for your personal progression is waaay better... GET a LIFE.

New Castlevania series rocks by the way, this is a cult classic in the making, nothing more need be said.

@MagnaRoader Because nobody swore pre what 1960? 1950? 1940? 1930? 1911? Guarantee you they swore in the first world war...

Anthropologists will guarantee you people have been using cuss words... for as long as there have been people.

Big fan of Warren Ellis so this was a blast. If you like Transmetropolitan you'll enjoy the dialogue.

Man, nearly every complaint I hear about this show is ridiculous enough not to take you folks seriously anymore, haha.

As for the cursing, I watched it with the Japanese audio only and there wasn't much of it at all, so if your ears are too sensitive to handle naughty words in a medieval setting, I'd recommend that.

@bolt05 You're not killing Pokémon. You're making them fight to the point of exhaustion. Much more family friendly!

@MagnaRoader yeah, I'd say so. The F word has been recorded as being used in the 15th century, but it's widely believed to have originated from an even earlier time.

@Roam85 agreed on the lack of amazing Dracula quotes

@AhabSpampurse wasn't aware of that. I never thought a Netflix series based on a video game series, based on a book would teach me something new via a comment board on a Nintendo website

@bolt05 I never said no one swore back then. I'm pretty sure some of those grunt sounds prehistoric cavemen made were calling their wives bob or something to that effect, but I honestly wasn't aware they'd used the bomb back in Dracula Era Transylvania

Awesome stuff, as a big Castlevania fan I was not disappointed! We need more! Hopefully this series' success will lead to more Castlevania games!

I enjoyed it quite a lot, despite the fact that the four episode season we got was basically just an introduction to the actual show.
The animation is really well done and very fluid in the action sequences and i'm very pleased with the voice acting too, it's not just american accents in medieval Europe thank god.

I might tune into Season 2 for completion's sake, but after watching all of Season 1, I'm less impressed than I hoped to be with this. The sound and art design is excellent, but the animation is a little choppy, and the story and characters are far more vain, vulgar, and trite than in any of the games.

I loved season 1, so, eagerly waiting for this second one.

Loved it. Way too short, as it had literally just got going, but the animation is above par and the voice acting is decent, especially Richard Armitage. Probably not for everyone but a pretty damn fine adaptation.

I miss the day when a season is at least 50 episodes. Nowadays a season could mean just 4 episodes which is disappointing, that's like one episode per Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Overall the series seems like a good start to something interesting.

Sad to hear about the unnecessary language and gore. Moral standpoints vary, but all the same, adding graphic content just for the sake of doing it is stupid. If it serves a purpose, that's different. However, I will hold off judgement until I actually watch it since I haven't yet.

I still need to watch the other three episodes, but the first one left me cold.

One thing I didn't like was the gore for sake of it. Wasn't very happy with the art style either.

But I shouldn't judge it yet. First I need to watch the whole season.

@MagnaRoader Most probably don't make sense for the time period. But then again it takes place in Romania, and they speak English. And the English they speak isn't from the time period. The fact is, if they spoke English from the 1400s, no one would even understand what they are saying. So the curse words they use fir the rest of the language in the show.

Just watched episode one so far. I enjoyed it a lot, although the foul-mouthed peasants, evil bishops and brutal carnage don't feel that true to the spirit of the old games. Just glad someone is doing something interesting with Castlevania unlike Konami who are probably planning a bad phone app.

I haven't seen it yet, but from everyone's comments, it doesn't seem like I'll enjoy it. Like other people have said here, swearing, gore, etc, should only be used when it's actually warranted. It's annoying when I watch a movie, and characters are swearing literally every other minute. That stuff turns me off. You don't need excessive swearing and/or gore to make something 'adult/mature.' It's too bad lots of people apparently believe it, and that's what they make. I'll just watch something else instead.

I'm pretty sure the Castlevania games had no swearing, so why put them in an animated show about Castlevania?

Excess language and gore... my friend and I watched it last night. It was incredibly metal and we loved it. I feel it was made just for me. And many Castlevania fans probably feel the same way I do. I'm a kid from the 80s that loves Ninja Scroll, heavy metal, and Vampire Hunter D. I want to mute it and watch it again while listening to Iced Earth.

Watched them them loved them what more of them. That is all

I wasn't expecting anything earth-shattering (it really isn't), but it is very good. The art style and direction, the character models are spot on, and the dialogue and characterization is very good. As with many Netflix-produced anime (except maybe Blame) it is not detailed well enough: it is like looking at a Call of Duty game circa 2010: good models not detailed well enough.

As for the gore and f-bombs, what the heck were you expecting?! I didn't find the gore gratuitous or exaggerated. It is what it is.

I rather enjoyed it! Even if it started a bit slow and the dialogue was clumsy at times, the tone was right and it had mostly great action scenes!

While this isn't my kind of thing, it's cool to see a series based on a video game turn out pretty legitimately solid.

Enjoyed the first three episodes. Will watch the final tomorrow.

I loved it but can totally understand why the swearing and gore would turn someone off and it doesn't mean they're too childish/un-manly or whatever – each to their own, innit.

@MagnaRoader offensive words change over time. Deadwood - the sweariest show ever made - started with the intent of using authentic 19th century swear words (it's a remarkably authentic show in many ways) but they did some research and found those words were all very twee to modern ears.

Stuff like '***damn'. In previous centuries where people were more religious those words and phrases were very offensive and the f word was less so.

Of course the most offensive words of today - like the n word - were thrown around casually until relatively recently.

As for swearing in to programmes - I'd rather hear less. If a programme needs to be r rated fine (I've seen plenty of great shows & films that need the rating to explore true adult themes) but it's often a self indulgent mistake that signifies 'hey 13 year old boys - this one's for you!'.

@Ralek85

Well they did say it wasn't for kids,to be fair.

@Freelance

There is a little bit of swearing in the games here and there.

@Steel76

People today seem to hate hand drawn animation. Dunno why. It's beautifully done.

"Binged" (Is four half-hour episodes considered binging?) the series last night without knowing anything beforehand, so it hooked me more to discover the Castlevania III ties till the end. Maybe a little too explicit for my taste, but I loved it and am looking forward to more episodes.

@Tempestryke

Unfortunately it's becoming a lost art. I still love hand drawn animation.

@4estGump

Me too. It especially baffles me when they call it ugly. Well done hand drawn animation is lush, natural and flowing. But I guess I can't expect anything reasonable from a bunch of people who think cookie cutter flash is the greatest thing ever.

@4estGump

I wouldn't call it binging unless each episode was like, an hour long or something. Lol

Castlevania's a stupid fun game series about strutting to a castle, whipping old horror cliches in the face and getting knocked off stairs by floating medusa-heads, so I'm not exactly disappointed at the amount of stupid fun there was to be had in this animated series. Excellent throwback to the best two Castlevanias of their eras.

@Tempestryke It is not. It doesn't appear, for example, under the profile of my son, who is 12.

@Tempestryke For me binging is when you watch a whole season in a short amount of time: be it a day, a weekend, or so. I wouldn't call it binging if I were to watch an entire season (10-16 episodes) over the course of a week, for example.

I thought it was fantastic. Bring on the next season.

Seriously? It was horribly bad, and I have low standards in show and movies.

The writing was alright, the animation low budget but ok.
But the direction and screenplay are so bad. I wanted to like it but it was painful to watch. What was up with the useless profanity.. it's not even a vocabulary of that era.

The music was incredibly dull and uninspired. Castlevania has always been dynamic with awesome musics...

And the voice acting was.. meh. I tried several languages, english had the best. Alucard's voice though, it's nowhere as powerful as the voice actor who voiced him in sotn.

A big disappointment.

Watched all 4 episodes today and I loved it! Can't wait for the expanded Season 2. Is there bad language? Yes. Is there gore? Yes. Would I call either of them excessive? Absolutely not. If you want an example of excessive bad language, watch the South Park movie. If you were expecting a movie about killing vampires, demons, and all sorts of other monsters without any gore, then I think you're crazy. This show is definitely not meant for kids. It's meant for all the 30+ year-olds that played these games back in the day. The bottom line is, if you're a fan of Castlevania then you'll enjoy this series.

I'll watch it in a few minutes, but just so it's clear, animes should be watched in their native language, otherwise it looses its essence. Dubbed anime is one of the worst things to watch, imo.

@MattFox This is however an american cartoon.

@Smokingspoon Well, I just found out there isnt even a japanese dub.. This is only my opinion, but english dub on animes/cartoons are just soooo bad. I'll give it a shot anyways, it does kinda look like an anime lol

@maceng

Yes I know that. They said so from the beginning, so I don't know why some people are complaining it's not kid friendly.

And if they haven't been following it, which is understandable, it wouldn't kill some people to check the rating.

@SteamedSquid

Medusa heads suck.

@Tempestryke Me neither. People are such hypocritical mammals: they clamored for a R-rated video game based anime, and when they get it they complain.

@maceng

They did? I must have missed all that clamoring.

My gripe with Castlevania is not the idea that it isn't family friendly. The animation is fine. The gore is fine. I just can't stand the script.

I can handle swearing, but it was a crutch to prop up terrible writing. I'm hoping someone else besides Warren Ellis writes season 2.

@MattFox I can agree on most, but some cartoons have good english voices. Samurai Jack, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, they all have great voice acting.

But, as for dubbing foreign stuff, english studios are seemingly bad at it.. They sound all alike lol

@fortius54 I have to hope it was somehow a pilot... I thought the general story was fine, but it's the direction and screenplay that was bad.

I loved it, and I can't wait for season 2! There was profanity, but not anything you couldn't handle if you play modern games.

Gore? Go brush up your history on the real Vlad Dracul. The forest of the impaled did exist, and was far more graphical than anything in this series. He was known as a brutal commander, so I don't expect his Castlevania counterpart to be all roses and sunshine. If anything, the last Iga games were a bit toned down to appeal to a bigger audience.

Corrupt bishops? We're talking about Middle Ages church. The guys who sold indulgences to any who could pay? The time where Popes were puppets to families in power? The time of the crusaders? Don't expect nice bishops like you can find nowadays. Those are from modern times.

@Tempestryke I'm not a fan of flash art but I gotta say hand drawn or not there are only a few moments in the series I enjoyed the animation, otherwise I found the rest pretty non impressive. Fight with the "sleeping hero" was pretty nice though!

@Timppis Whether or not it is R-rated is totally besides the point, even if it didn't feature gore and cursing (hence the rating obviously), it would be too plain dumb to show to kids.

looks dope, I'll watch it

Just watched it. The voice work, action, and visuals were amazing!

Geez. The people complaining about the gore and swearing, really? It's Castlevania. It's about hunting demons. I thought it added to the grittiness. And it wasn't constant F-bombs either. You don't think that demons attacking people wouldn't involve gore? And if I was running from one, I'd be swearing way worse than this show.

I finished Glow and Quntico on Netflix already. I'll try out Castlevania now.

Love the 4 episodes, watched them right in a row right when released! Feels like a complete tease though, and now Season 2 needs to come quickly.

For ppl complaining about swearing and gore, it's Castlevania, it's M rated and for adults, what the heck where you expecting?!?

@NinjaWaddleDee
That's exactly what I thought. I don't think I would be using nice language if I was running for my life from a pack of man eating monster and was a poor, simple mortal.

@Tempestryke Really? I've never seen any in any of the games I've played. I've never played them all though, although if there were any, I may have forgotten as it's been a while since I've played.

Guys, I am not complaining that there IS swearing. There's a huge difference between swearing, and swearing excessively. The former is fine. The latter is annoying and IMO, rather immature.

@Freelance

I know what you mean, it shouldn't be there just because and it takes you out of the time period.

I'm pretty sure someone said damn, but I can't remember which Castlevania. One of the Handhelds I think.

Plus in Simon's Quest, the intro text reads Welcome to the hell house. You are back in Transylvania on business

(And I forget the rest)

Wow some people in this comment section just needs to get over it. You expect a family friendly show for Castlevania? LOL

@Filth_Element

Well there is such a thing as bad or mediocre hand drawn animation too. Not everyone can be Disney or Studio Ghibli.

I think the animation here looks nice myself.

Watched the first episode and enjoying it thus far

I think they done an awesome job

Why is there no music from the games? There's so little here that actually has anything to do with the source material... And the swearing. Not only is it unnecessary, it's not even in the source material. As a Castlevania adaption, it's failed I think.

But I had a pretty good time watching it. It doesn't fail as a piece of entertainment.

@ReigningSemtex "For one million dollars!"

Sorry, couldn't help it. Gonna seek myself out...

i thought it was brilliant,found the gore and swearing quite funny at times,cant wait for series 2.

Why the foul language? The games seemed to do fine without. Pathetic.

@mikegamer Because they're not bound by Nintendo's censorship and are free to make the show as mature as they wanted to. There was even swearing in the Street Fighter II animated movie if you remember that.

I liked it. Will definitely watch season two.

@Bass_X0
Swearing in general doesn't bother me, but excessive/gratuitous and unnecessary use of the f-bomb is just plain stupid and, just freaking why?

@mikegamer they want to be animated game of thrones. What they forgot was that while got is gory, it is often warranted (especially in the earlier seasons).

I for example don't mind impaled heads or demons tearing babies apart. That is relevant to show their ruthlessness. But many instances were just 'look at us, we can be gritty'.

I also think the church was too one dimensional. They could have added a bit more flesh to them, to me they were written worse than bad guys from any modern kids cartoon.

Dracula's story is fine. I like that he have a real motive.

Probably to get a mature rating so those who aren't familiar with Castlevania don't just look at the screenshots and automatically assume it's a cartoon for children. I've not seen it yet personally but I will do.

Good news, and kind of expected given how positive the reaction to it has been along with that ending. Glad it's being extended to a longer season next time as that'd be my main criticism that the first was very short. Great overall though.

@Elvie anime just means it is animated. Any cartoon is technically anime

@Roam85
What made up place?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallachia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

My wife and I are loving the series and can not wait for more. While I kind of wish the language and gore wasn't so extreme, it by no means is turning me off the show. It does make me wish we could have an anime for Lords of Shadow. That was hands down one of the best video game stories I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I've genuinely never understood the hate it gets (even if LoS2 was a major let down).

Genuinely shocked at everyone saying they enjoy this show. It is absolutely AWFUL. Shoddy, cheap animation, absolutely rubbish voice acting and HORRENDOUSLY bad lip-syncing, poor, dull plot with too much time spent on irrelevant scenes, dodgy writing, dodgy directing. It's like a really bad, straight-to-VHS film from the nineties.

I'm all for people having their own opinions but if you actually like this adaption then you have seriously SERIOUSLY bad taste.

Loved it

I have seen the first episode. Wow, very strong stuff!

@Bass_X0 They did censor the most recent releases (of Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie). To be honest I preferred the swearing there. To be honest though I personally felt it was warranted since it fit the characters that did swear and it wasn't constant anyway. Changing Guile's line to "I'll rip your lousy heart out" just doesn't have the same outrage to it.

I can't judge this anime yet as I haven't seen it (therefore I can't fully compare it yet). I think swearing is fine in these sorts of shows, so long as it's not forcibly thrown into every sentence. Anger or having an actually bad attitude or character is one thing, but if every single character is spouting it out, I can see it being silly.

@Therad Gore, eh, but excessive swearing and f-bombs are just stupid and unnecessary. There has be a line.

very very good and I consider myself to have rather good taste thankyouverymuch
note to self: if a demon asks for a kiss... tell it you have a coldsore O_o

@mikegamer Oh, i agree. If you use these stuff more sparsly, it would have had far more impact when it happens. Just because they are r-rated, doesn't mean they need to have r-rated material all the time. As it is now, it feels juvenile.

@Therad Right, and people are just resorting to blind sycophancy at this rate, thinking it's okay for the swearing to be over the top, it's just too asinine. The PS2, PS3 and non-Nintendo console iterations of Castlevania never use it, why should this? It's stupid.

All these people ridiculing anyone who's not comfortable with the gore or language are getting really annoying. Who are you to decide what someone else should think about subjects like that?

I honestly can't tell if these people are just being ignorant to the fact that not everyone thinks like they do, or if they're just pretending to like the language and gore because they want to be edgy.

Loved it! Although I agree the swearing and violence felt at times just too much. I'd prefer if it was made for kids too.

Still, I thought it was great, specially episode 4. I recommend anyone doubting to watch it to go directly to episode 4. The rest are not really necessary, although Dracula's backstory in episode 1 was great too.

@mikegamer Personally, I would prefer that the gore is the one toned down. Neither of both aspects is present on games but... I did find sense on Belmont's language considering his lifestyle and personality and didn't feel like he was swearing in excess or out of character (since to begin with Belmont's characters are barely explored in games). However, I didn't find sense in looking at a baby's corpse completely destroyed and I think that just by showing how the demons took them was more than enough to make a point.

That being said, I can understand how people can get annoyed by these things they dislike and adress them as minor problems, but considering the quality of the voice acting, animation, story (they are being quite faithful, even to the character's appearance) and character development I certainly can't see how they find it so annoying to the point of acting like if it was an atrocious product, specially when faithful adaptations of games rarely happen.

I don't support the people that attack other just because they criticize these aspects, but I do think people are overreacting about the negativity of them, specially the swearing which wasn't even close to be the example of "I swear because I wanna look mature and edgy".

I encourage people to give this series chance so that we get more projects lik this, and they should of course express what you don't like so that changes can be applied, but if you have the time and interest, please give this series a chance since it's easy to appreciate that it was made with love and respect to the game and don't turn your back so easily on it because of minor annoyances. I do suggest that if you are parent you should check the content first (specially the gore) before watching this with your kids.

@DarkScythe13 is the blu ray censored?

@Smokingspoon I agree with you, there are good ones. Using Futurama as an exemple is just cheating because its just too awesome lol

Well, after watching it, some of the voice cast was just Maximum Effort bad. Lisa Tepes? It didn't even match her mouth movements. That being said, I really liked it. There was no gratuitous swearing and I'm looking forward to next season.

@timson72 I'm not sure about every blu-ray version. I know at least 1 blu ray version is. Fortunately my DVD version mostly seems okay.

Is this show based off Castlevania III only?

Loved it.

People must also consider that this was a trial, testing the waters. The reception was overwhelming good, so Netflix decided to go for a second season. That is why character development of certain, er, characters seem rather non-existent.

The are already inside Dracula's castle. There are 8 episodes coming. I think that we are going to get plenty of action plus some more character development.

Next up: Order of Ecclesia storyline!!

SPOILERS

TBH I felt bad for Dracula tho, losing his love at such a point. Though his revenge is obviously unfair and cruel, you can't help but feel sorry for the guy...

I think it was good (although there's room for improvement) so I'm gonna watch the next season as well!

Okay I just watched this and thought it was great. I don't know what the complaints are regarding the swearing; it didn't feel overly forced, nor did it happen as often as what others made it out to be (in fact most of the swearing came from a pub scene with drunks).

The gore at times was a bit excessive. It seems like shows either unnecessarily censor things, or go all out. I suppose it could be worse, but that's the one part i'd probably tweak slightly - but I can live with it and it didn't really detract or affect my enjoyment of it. A shame it had to end when it was really getting good.