I think this is some attempt to shorten their release schedules? like keep the shows coming out constantly to keep them fresh in people’s brains? it’s weird, but i can get the logic. you aren’t wrong about them functioning better as unified seasons though. They recognized that with Voltron (the last season of that was in like 3 smaller packs) so I don’t know why they don’t do it with their other shows.
hmmm
if I was largely entertained by the first one (in part because it seemed like a nice distinct miniseries) but the first episode of 2 dragged for me and I didn’t trust it, is it worth watching the whole thing at this point?
it’s weird how between this and the inticreates bloodstained, cv3 has proven the most easily mined entry in the franchise for new material – I think that makes sense in a lot of ways, just interesting to consider that cv3 was not an especially popular or good game (it’s like the metal slug 3 of the series, so it’s easy to like in spite of that).
idk, i think anyone’s enjoyment of it is pretty much 1:1 with how much they vibe on well-animated ultraviolence. it’s a bunch of animators trying to come up with the coolest ways for a bunch of hot people to slice demons and villagers up, and everything else is kind of tangential. it’s the kind of dumb shit i would’ve watched late at night on the sci-fi channel 20 years ago. as somebody who’s never found CV plotlines particularly interesting i don’t really mind how many liberties they took with it. give me all the 7 foot tall hot muscle dyke vampires and shirtless alucard you got, i’m here for trash
this really bugged me with Yasuke too? like why hire the redline dude to design this huge cast of weirdos then try to cram them into 8 short episodes :<
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i watched the first series and it didn’t especially tickle my splatterpunk gland, if they’re upped the claret though i’m well in
anime is for carnage, the further strayed from that holy fire the more wretched
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It’s not so much the plotlines I find so sacred as it is the flavors of the game I wish were more preserved. A CV3 story should be more of an adventure story with the squad than propping up a story about vampire politics. Trevor should’ve used more subweapons. It shouldn’t be afraid of goofy iconic monsters. When you’re playing classic castlevania you’re basically playing holywood monster fanfiction but with the framing and grandeur of a greek legend. Watching heroes kill monsters and spitting in God’s eye. It just took it 4 seasons to actually get to something like that but even then were to scared to let there be any goofiness by having to write line for Trevor to use a cross shaped weapon because it just messes with vampire vision. Can’t let religious iconography have any real power in this violent fantasy. That just wouldn’t be real.
Also, Game Dracula as the games go on is supposed to become less and less recognizable as human and is more of a concept. I’m willing to buy this Drac still being human enough to contextualize him becoming the star bad guy but then
They give him a happy ending which is kinda throws a wrench into the whole “returning every century or so to blight the country side” so our heroic bloodline still has reason to be around.
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okay i swished through s2 this evening and 
i’m delighted someone can still try to make this shit
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also i don’t the think the sheer novelty of an anime with like proper well-compensated and delivered english voice acting can be oversold, even if the tone of the whole thing is more than a bit game of thrones most of the time yes
maybe there’s a german dub, that’d be tight
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I watched season 4 of Castlevania in two sittings. I liked it but I also liked the other three. You could tell the animators had a lot of fun on this one and it was lots of fun to watch. Definitely agree the whole series would have been better if they just leaned into the iconic monster designs and flashy fight sequences instead of trying to do a big, grand political story.
I’ll probably watch that Blood of Zeus show now since it’s from the same animation studio (and their Korean subcontractors, hmm I wonder who’s really doing the sick ass fight scenes…). And they’re doing that new MoTU as well.
I wish these shows had better writing.
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i guess i just sort of got Archie Comics Sonic vibes from Season 3 which is part of why i fell off. like i’m cool with taking liberties but i don’t really wanna watch a Castlevania show about someone’s OC’s, etc. that said i think the show is actually much better than i anticipated! i just feel like maybe i got what i needed from it with 2 seasons.
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i kind of loved how horny and grandiose season 3 was tbh. the scratchy animation when things blew up owned in general, but i kind of found the most climactic fights in s4 kind of lacking impact? maybe i just didn’t buy the stakes idk. giant dyke vampire in day armour flipping around with a claymore was aces though. i just happened to blast through s3 for the first time just as s4 was released so i probably had a nicer experience with it for that reason
all the Drac stuff got me embarrassingly good, don’t tell anyone. Dracula as the world’s biggest wife guy is somehow such an enduring concept, cf. Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. and that junk about vampires being vulnerable to right angles was, to me, a nice callback to that Blindsight novel, even though that particular Chekhov’s gun never really went off. i kind of love the amount of dumb cross-pollination in modern vampire lore
also like, the general tone in s3+4 of God kind of just being some guy no-one’s heard from in a while and Hell being this fact of life everyone’s mostly resigned to was kind of neat, to me. i am ALSO a sucker for the whole “Lucifer’s rebellion must have been part of God’s perfect divine plan” line
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the finn and jake episode of adventure time distant lands is fuckin beautiful. the visuals are incredibly, wildly, inspiring and it gives them maybe the best sendoff i could imagine. it’s fantastic television
i felt like the show itself got so caught up in it’s own lore and it’s not like distant lands is not dependent on it but it has really seriously recalibrated the balance back to the emotional cores of the characters and it’s so satisfying
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just watched the first episode of aura battler dunbine. it does a good job of getting across the idea that the stakes are high, without yet totally revealing what exactly the stakes are. i also really like the organic mecha. they even show a workshop with people constructing artificial musculator and stuff!
however, now that i have this, escaflowne, and magic knight rayearth on bluray, i think it’s time to get some shows that aren’t fantasy mecha. the problem is that i don’t want to buy new shows, since i can just watch them on crunchyroll or amazon, and most of the old shows that get released are mecha. panty and stocking is available in the uk really cheap though, so maybe that’ll be next? alternatively, icould save up for a region-free br player, since those discotek sdbd sets have tons of stuff i want.
i’ve also watched episode 2 of the 1988 salamander ova. though the series is called salamander, it seems that each episode adapts a different specific game: 1 - salamander, 2 - gradius, 3 - gradius 2. it was entertaining, and it’s that kind of super serious spaceship sci-fi anime that only really seemed to exist in the ova golden age.
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Damn, Serial Experiments Lain can even elevate its clipshow episode into a postmodern artsy meditation on hypertext media and Y2K-era information overload. Anime so rarely hits this level of euro artfilm wank, I gotta admire it.
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I love the clip show episode SO much
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M.O.D.O.K. is the best case scenario for something that could be described as a Disney licensed knockoff version of the Venture Bros from the Robot Chicken people.
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I saw the first two episodes and it’s fun that a marvel show can exist outside of the MCUs shadow again. I feel it has room to play but sometimes feels alittle to much like robot chicken. It’s taking what would be a breezy sketch and stretching a little to long leaving some gags feeling forced to fill space.
the director of summer wars is making a beauty and the beast story in a summer wars kind of world
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finished watching SSSS.Gridman. what a bizarre thing
from the get-go the premise is so impossibly weird, and that the whole thing is done so straightforward caused me some whiplash. add to that the fact the actual story (i.e what happens before the big fights at the very end of each episode) is so slow-paced and disconnected from everything; it all feels like i’m into someone’s mindspace where the rhythm is all messed up and nothing really makes sense. i think i kinda love it!
gonna start dynazenon today
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