An Anime? Review of 'Castlevania Season 3'

The third season of Castlevania picks up a few months after the events of season two. Dracula is dead. Alucard is living alone in Dracula’s castle. Trevor and Sypha are travelling the land killing night beasts and getting paid for it. Carmilla has returned to her home along with Hector as a captive and she is reunited with her three council members. Isaac is travelling north in the hunt for Hector so that he can get the revenge that he is looking for. This third season is ten episodes long with the longest episode being thirty minutes in length.

The existing characters along with the latest additions to the cast all do a fantastic job in endearing themselves to the viewer, as odd as it may seem considering the subject material of the show. The established characters are developed further in meaningful ways, revealing more of their personalities, beliefs, and challenging their convictions throughout. I found the stance that was challenging Isaac to be fascinating to watch as he was being challenged on an ideological level, Trevor and Sypha are challenged from a physical standpoint with their trials, while both Alucard and Hector are challenged emotionally. The resulting developments in these four characters are fantastic at best, and contrived at worst. My favourite character this season, from the latest additions is, without a doubt, Lenore.

The build up to the final two episodes were fantastic as I found that I was riveted to what I saw on the screen. The mythology of the world is deepened and enriched wonderfully as we get a scope of the world, and beyond that, the worlds that are open to being explored in this show. The narratives of the four characters unfold simultaneously, while largely remaining unconnected on a character level, while having incredible implications towards the world as a whole.

The strength of the individual narratives vary in quality as they reach the conclusion of the season. It is quite clear that Warren Ellis had a particular end point in mind for the season, with Trevor and Sypha’s narrative being the strongest of the four as it was the most consistent, while also being the most interesting as it was close to a mystery narrative. Isaac’s narrative has fantastic elements that don’t quite reach its full potential with a visually impressive yet emotionally lacklustre finale to his storyline. Hector’s storyline was incredibly predictable and as such was robbed of its gravitas when it reached the pinnacle. Finally I found Alucard’s storyline to be incredibly contrived at best, and this is where many of my qualms with the season come up. The twist that occurs at the conclusion of his story was so ironclad in its inception that you get the feeling there was much more that was written to explore but were excluded from the final product for one reason or another.

The visuals and the sound for the series remains at a consistently high standard as expected at this point, if anything the quality has only improved. The backgrounds are lush and beautiful, if at times covered in hellfire, blood and gore. The character animations are well done with the action set pieces being a visual spectacle to observe, and the character designs are on point. The music is fantastic and matches the tone of the scene it finds itself in. When things get epic, it sounds epic, and it looks epic. The highlight episode in my opinion for season three was episode nine. Watching this episode was the equivalent of experiencing a twenty minute long adrenaline rush, and I was left out of breath by the end.

In closing, this is a fantastic continuation of the Castlevania narrative, and if you have been a fan of the previous two seasons this is more of the same, and much more. The future narrative strands set up from this season are intriguing and I cannot wait to watch it.