cloudstrife-03407
Joined Oct 2022
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Reviews43
cloudstrife-03407's rating
I feel like I enjoyed the flagship Castlevania series, especially the earlier seasons, and I'm not certain what happened here. The voice acting is decent - especially Zahn McClarnon as Olrox - and the animation is okay. The storyline is a big whiff at the plate.
My biggest pet peeve is the stakes (no pun intended) are so low: characters seem to be both invincible and never removed permanently from the storyline. After this happens over and over you start to feel like what's the point of these battles if there's never any real consequences. I'm also a stickler for consistency so if you're a mortal and are hit by a goddess.......you should probably die (granted so many shows are guilty of this).
The Edouard storyline is grimacingly bad and at the end of the second season I just started skipping all his scenes, which seemed artificially emo. The storyline jumps all over the place, especially in the second season, and I feel like they really did Erzsebet a disservice. She is such a bland and one-dimensional antagonist, there was a real chance to make her complex and interesting.
Finally, the show should have leaned more into Belmont/Alucard, who deserved so much more screen time than they received, this is Castlevania after all.
My biggest pet peeve is the stakes (no pun intended) are so low: characters seem to be both invincible and never removed permanently from the storyline. After this happens over and over you start to feel like what's the point of these battles if there's never any real consequences. I'm also a stickler for consistency so if you're a mortal and are hit by a goddess.......you should probably die (granted so many shows are guilty of this).
The Edouard storyline is grimacingly bad and at the end of the second season I just started skipping all his scenes, which seemed artificially emo. The storyline jumps all over the place, especially in the second season, and I feel like they really did Erzsebet a disservice. She is such a bland and one-dimensional antagonist, there was a real chance to make her complex and interesting.
Finally, the show should have leaned more into Belmont/Alucard, who deserved so much more screen time than they received, this is Castlevania after all.
I'm not exactly sure what happened here. I'm a big Tim Miller fan and Blur studios can put out some solid animation but the stories on so many of these went sideways.
I feel like there was little effort at world building or background on a lot of the shorts and if you hadn't played the game you're out of luck. I am sympathetic that 8-15 minutes is super short, but man, at least tell us what the rules are in the fantasy universe we are in.
So many of these seemed like I was watching a video game trailer or a video game cut scene - and you might say "but wait, these are video game episodes!" but if I wanted to watch video game trailers or video game cut scenes I'd go play video games. These really need to be standalone stories: like I have no idea what was going on in Warhammer even though it looked cool, and that probably goes for Armored Core as well. Mega Man and D&D seemed like trailers. A couple were so boring I had to skip out midway through (The Outer Worlds).
Fantastic voice acting and animation, unfortunately story writing has pole position.
Anyways, it sound strange but I'm glad it was renewed for a second season since I do like this genre. I hope Tim Miller gets it right with the second bite at the apple.
I feel like there was little effort at world building or background on a lot of the shorts and if you hadn't played the game you're out of luck. I am sympathetic that 8-15 minutes is super short, but man, at least tell us what the rules are in the fantasy universe we are in.
So many of these seemed like I was watching a video game trailer or a video game cut scene - and you might say "but wait, these are video game episodes!" but if I wanted to watch video game trailers or video game cut scenes I'd go play video games. These really need to be standalone stories: like I have no idea what was going on in Warhammer even though it looked cool, and that probably goes for Armored Core as well. Mega Man and D&D seemed like trailers. A couple were so boring I had to skip out midway through (The Outer Worlds).
Fantastic voice acting and animation, unfortunately story writing has pole position.
Anyways, it sound strange but I'm glad it was renewed for a second season since I do like this genre. I hope Tim Miller gets it right with the second bite at the apple.
This may be one of those idiosyncratic shows that is exactly what I love and doesn't overlap with the general population.....but I can't figure out why this isn't a bigger hit. I just finished Season 2, only recently "discovering" this show after becoming an Anna Sawai fan from her amazing performance in Shogun.
The cinematography, color grading, and music is absolutely stunning and you can tell they took immense thought into every shot. Pachinko is beautiful and I don't know any series off the top my head that comes close to it. The acting is superb and Sunja, both Kim Min-ha and Youn Yuh-jung, is performed masterfully, especially by Min-ha.
If I had to be critical, the show suffers from pacing issues, especially Season 2, so much happens in the final two episodes that I wish they spread that out. I also feel the show could go deeper into some of the characters while cutting out others. I had some trouble following names/reveals across timelines as well, especially in Season 2. Season 1 is definitely stronger than Season 2 and I really hope Apple renews for a final Season 3.
I also wish Apple advertised/pushed this show more, it's a sleeper hit and was barely mentioned for Emmy nominations. I don't know if that's on account of the subtitles or it could just be one of those rare shows I fall in love with that just doesn't resonate with the general population.
The cinematography, color grading, and music is absolutely stunning and you can tell they took immense thought into every shot. Pachinko is beautiful and I don't know any series off the top my head that comes close to it. The acting is superb and Sunja, both Kim Min-ha and Youn Yuh-jung, is performed masterfully, especially by Min-ha.
If I had to be critical, the show suffers from pacing issues, especially Season 2, so much happens in the final two episodes that I wish they spread that out. I also feel the show could go deeper into some of the characters while cutting out others. I had some trouble following names/reveals across timelines as well, especially in Season 2. Season 1 is definitely stronger than Season 2 and I really hope Apple renews for a final Season 3.
I also wish Apple advertised/pushed this show more, it's a sleeper hit and was barely mentioned for Emmy nominations. I don't know if that's on account of the subtitles or it could just be one of those rare shows I fall in love with that just doesn't resonate with the general population.