Content Watched: Castlevania: Nocturne, Season 1, Episodes 5-8
Year: 2023-2024
Rating: TV-MA
Run Time: 120 minutes
Let's start with some animation notes: namely, I think Nocturne is really starting to show its origins here. Once Richter accesses his magic powers again, there are a lot of cool shots of him with his coat and headband blowing the the wind that resemble video game cutaways, which I don't really remember from the original series. There's also something about these two battles--first the one by the lake, and then the final battle--that looks more like vdeo game animation to me than the original series did to me.
Also, I know that Richter wears a headband in the video games, but this seems like the only reason he puts it on here? I mean, when he got it from the girls, I thought it was an armband. No one else is walking around wearing them on their heads. And then pulls it out and says "you forgot something about the Belmonts. I almost forgot it too," inexplicably ties this thing around his head, and kills the vampire without ever finishing his thought. What was it he had forgotten? That Belmonts need a costume change to achieve their final form (remember Trevor and coat)? That headbands give them more power? That they all have terrible fashion sense? What?
And then there's Alucard. First off, Alucard's entrance is spectacular. I love the tension with the close-ups of Richter and Drolta (who also looks amazing btw) before we realize that it's the latter, not the former, that's been mortally wounded. And then the wide shot, with Alucard perfectly framed by the moon? I remembered he showed up at the very end; I didn't remember his entrace being as spectacular as it is. I do notice they redid him for the sequel series, somehow turning him into even more of a pretty boy than he was in the original. And he's even paler now (like they forgot to color him in, my husband says), except for his eyes (just about everyone in Nocturne has striking eyes--Eduoard, Drolta, Alucard, Olrox, Richter, esp. when he's magicking... even Tera and Maria, if to a lesser extent.)
I'm not a huge fan of Bathory as a character, which I'll get more into when I talk about season 2, but I do like the use of white around her--the white horses pulling the carriage, and the white dress she's wearing when she's introduced. I don't often see the white=pure symbolism turned on its head, so it's always refreshing when I do. And it's appropriate for a character calling herself the messiah. I also like how the wide shot with Bathory's dress forming a perfect circle around her echoes the shot from the beginning of the show of Julia's corpse, ringed in blood.
One other thing I like about Bathory is just how powerful she is. Basically, the show does a really good job of making her a particularly formiddable foe. When it introduces Richter and Maria, they are both already sklled fighters. They dispatch a bunch of vampires to rescue the revolutionary meeting without batting an eye. Then they join forces with Annette, who is a powerful fighter and magician in her own right, and finally Richter levels up when he remembers how to do magic. And yet, when Bathory appears in the final battle, she literally swats away all their attacks. She is genuinely unlike anything they've faced before.
Plot-wise, I suppose we should start with the argument between Annette, Maria, and Tera. What I like about this is that no one is wrong. They're coming from different life experiences which inform their actions and their attitudes. Annette has had to stand up to her fear in order to fight for the freedom of enslaved people in Haiti. She has had to face the monsters that frighten her every day. In contrast, Richter has been living with this fear in his head for years, but never expected to see it again in person. And Maria and Tera know Richter. They know he'll come back. (But I also like the moment when Ricther does come back, and Annette confeses that part of her anger was due to being concerned about him.)
I do like how Richter's journey and Annette's mirror one another--Richter has to learn to face his fears, and Annette has to learn to accept them. Thus when they meet again, we get this exchange where they have sort of reversed roles, with Richter saying that he's never going to be afraid again, and Annette basically reminding him that the fear doesn't go away, and that that's okay. It's a reminder that you have something worth fighting for.
I've seen some comments that people think Richter re-discovers his magic too quickly, and didn't have a proper lead up to it. I didn't have any particular problem with it, mostly because of what he tells Juste afterward--he realized he had live, and he had to fight. Just before the vampires capture him and Juste, he's seen in Juste what he could become if he gives in to his fear and despair. And when the vampires threaten Maria, Tera, and Annette, he decides he can't give in yet. I guess I would say that interpret the story as Richter's magic is blocked by fear, and in this moment, his only choices are to push past that fear or to give up entirely.
Again, I think it pairs nicely with Cecile telling Annette that "everyone runs away at first." Obviously, Annette connects this to someone literally running away from the plantation where they were enslaved, but I think she realizes that what Cecile is talking about is deeper than that--we all, in the beginning, have this response to our fears--to run from it; to get to safety. And only with time can we learn to channel that fear into something useful. I know this is a lot different from fighting vampires or enslavers, but I once heard a slam poet say that when you go up on stage, and you're nervous, this is the gift you give the audience--you channel that fear into energy to make your performance sing. Annette and Richter are essentially doing the same thing--channeling their fears into their magic. (All this being said, I do recall having issues with the pacing myself, so we'll see how I feel about things in season 2.)
And now let's talk about Eduoard. Because that rendition of Lachymosa was just beautiful. Remember I said yesterday that Eduaord's singing is a form of magic. (And I do think well-done art forms are magic in real life as well). In the first half of season 1, the only clue we had that he is magical is his claim to see the color of people's souls. But in the second half, his magic allows him to help night creatures remember who they are--to give them new life as something beyond a mindless soldier for their forgemaster and allow them to find their own purpose--which, of course, leads to Jacques helping Annette. And I love that he's discovered what he can do and tells Annette that he needs to stay. Because his work is not yet finished. Again, this is a brilliant continuation of what Isaac's conversations with Flyeyes revealed to us about night creatures.
I also need to talk about Olrox. Because I haven't yet. And he feels a bit like the Carmilla of Castlevania... or maybe a reverse Carmilla. With Carmilla, I respected the journey she had been through to gain autonomy and power in her own right as a woman in a male-dominated society. But I still relished every moment that her plan went wrong and was ultimately relieved when she was killed. Olrox I dislike because he's pitted against Richter from the opening scene. And I think he's got a lot of problems, as his relationship with Mizrak shows. I particularly like the moment when Mizrak asks Olrox if he has his former partner's consent before turning him into a vampire (a question Olrox evades), which is then echoed in the moment that Olrox rescues Mizrak from the final battle, only for Mizrak to say that he didn't want to be rescued and go charging back to the fray. In short, Olrox is a fairly self-centered bastard.
But he's also indigenous. And he remembers when his land was stolen by European colonists, which is what makes him such a good character to pit against Bathory. In regards to the show's themes about power and corruption, Olrox has seen people corrupted by power. He's seen men who think that everything belongs to them and the destruction it leaves in their wake. He even talks about fighting alongside his former lover in the American Revolution--not against the colonists, but with them--because this was also a battle against people corrupted by power. So when he looks at Bathory, he doesn't see the vampire Messiah, he sees a conquistdor in French aristrocratic clothing. So while I don't expect Olrox and Richter to remain allies long term, I do hope their tenuous alliance will last long enough to give them both happy endings, of a sort.
And then, of course, there's the abbot, who is a perfect representation of someone who allies with the person trying to take over the world thinking that they'll be able to protect their own. This never works, y'all. If you're working with someone whose goal is power, they do not care about you, and they will only keep you around as long as it benefits them. Even Lenore, in the original series, realizes this about Carmilla--that in Carmilla's new world, she will no longer have a place. But the abbot, like many others, doesn't realize until it's too late. What I find particularly striking is that he's willing to kill his own child for the sake of his cause, and it doesn't really hit him that he's allied with the wrong people until Bathory explains that she plans to turn Maria into a vampire. Of course, by then, he's in too deep.
Actually, the abbot reminds me a lot of Mrs. Coulter from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Neither has qualms with harming others to get what they want, but they both stop short of their own loved ones, in particular, their children. Mrs. Coulter has a machine that cuts children's souls away from them, and she doesn't really care who ends up in it as long as it's not Lyra. Likewise, the abbot wants to abolish the revolutionaries that have turned to reason over God, but he doesn't want anything to happen to Maria, even though she is a revolutionary. I guess that's another thing about people in power, though--instead of applying their feelings toward their loved ones toward the larger group of people, they just try to care out exceptions for themselves, which, as we see with the abbot, doesn't always work.
Pretty sure that the reason the Abbot’s night creatures regain their memories and rebel so easily is because he’s putting souls back into their original bodies. The only time I can think of that possibly happening in the first Netflix series is when Hector resurrected the Bishop because he needed holy water, and all the others were just souls from Hell.
Maybe he’s too poor of a forgemaster to call a soul into a random body? He does need a machine afterall. Or maybe it has to do with his religious position restricting his access to Hell?
