I got worried when I found out the French Revolution features heavily in it as opposed to just being in background like the original game, given how used I am to the typical “this is Literally Animal Farm” shitlib plotline is (Hello Bioshock Infinite). I’d rather watch my nostalgia-bait anime vampire slop without rolling my eyes every five minutes.
Not to say I don’t have other concerns about the quality of the show (nothing to do with Gamers™️ seething about the POC characters in it).
I'd give it 7.5/10
I'll give a mini the without much spoilers.
They don't go out of their way to explicitly compare the way the wealthy in general are like vampires. The vampires are the wealthy people and that's good if you already have an understanding, it just doesn't feel like they went hard enough to explore how vampires are a metaphor for a exploitation.
The latter half of the season (the season ends on a cliffhanger like the previous Castlevania series)
They portray Maria's revolutionary rhetoric as childish and unrealistic, given she's a child, and she doesn't interact much with common people after the first few episodes.
The other characters don't talk about the exploitation too much, granted that makes sense given the more immediate threat of vampires, but it left me wondering why it was brought up in the first place if they weren't going to really talk about it.
Annette goes from Richter's generic girlfriend without agency to a new character - a slave who escaped the Caribbean using the powers of her ancestors.
She's clearly portrayed as opposed to enslavement and exploitation, and supporting characters in her story talk about white people enslaving her ancestors, but she doesn't talk about how Maria is speaking from a place of privilege as a white girl with education, a home, and magical powers.
Also the writers made a pretty deliberate choice in not talking to about the Vampire Killer being a whip. They give Annette flashbacks showing whippings of others, but she doesn't react at all to seeing a powerful white man casually doing whip tricks while sitting at a table outside.
It has a lot of good potential, and as a Black person who enjoys seeing depictions of people in fantasy and historical settings, it does more than what I've seen in a lot of shows.
I like that they decided to have the setting be pre-revolution France. They could've had the story take place anywhere else in Europe and I applaud what they're going for.
I'd suggest watching the show if for nothing else than as a case study of fantasy in historical settings/ a discussion opportunity for your less political friends. You could easily draw connections to vampires in fiction, exploitation by the nobility, the history of slavery, anything else. We don't get a lot of opportunities to talk about politics in mainstream media like this and I'd say jump on it if you can.
I'm hoping they'll listen to feedback and improve on the next season, but if they don't improve anything, I'd still say I enjoyed it.
I have more thoughts, but I don't want to give spoilers. I'm actually writing a professional review on the show right now!
Thanks. Let me know when you release your review.
Most surprising thing to me is Maria being a revolutionary, given how she was just a girl who could use animals as weapons and cared only about rescuing her sister in the original game.
Even then while her revolutionary ideals can be seen as childish, the only people that critique her in show are the villains who are basically not sympathetic at all.
True, but I think it's a flaw (not a huge one) that none of the main heroic characters openly agree or expand on the themes. It's good, but I sense it's from the writers not wanting to rock the boat too hard, or executive meddling keeping the themes less explicit.
Killing slavers with a whip is almost poetic
Am I dumb for being annoyed that the French characters all have English accents? It annoyed me in Plauge Tale when Amacia and Hugo have French accents in the first game....and then in the sequel they bizarrely are speaking in English accents.
I think that's perfectly reasonable, given that there are plenty of actors out there with French accents. It's not like you needed specific appearances, or to fly out actors to record in person. They're voice actors. It was a choice by the showrunners and you're perfectly valid in disliking that choice.