Castlevania Review

Warren Ellis wrote every episode, and the first two seasons adapt Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Dracula's human wife Lisa is burned as a witch by the Church, and he answers by loosing an army of night creatures on Wallachia; the unlikely defence is Trevor Belmont, drunken last son of an excommunicated family of monster hunters, the magician Sypha Belnades and Dracula's own son Alucard.

What it does best is make Dracula tragic. Graham McTavish plays him as a widower who has decided the world does not deserve to go on, and the second season, in which his war council of vampires and human Forgemasters turns on itself, is the peak. Sam Deats and Powerhouse Animation stage fights with a speed and clarity of geography most live action lacks, and Richard Armitage, James Callis and Alejandra Reynoso give Ellis's profane, dry dialogue real bite.

It sags after that. The third season scatters its cast across four storylines and stalls in long conversations, and though the fourth recovers for a satisfying finish, the series never regains the focus of its first twelve episodes. Still, its success opened the door that Arcane and Blue Eye Samurai walked through.