It looks like fans really hate the new Netflix Castlevania: Nocturne animated series judging by its Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score.
The series debuted on Netflix last Thursday and is set 300 years after Castlevania takes place, following vampire hunters during the French Revolution who join forces to stop a team of powerful vampires from destroying the world.
While the premise sounds pretty cool, fans don’t think so as the Castlevania: Nocturne Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score currently sits at a “rotten” 46%, while the critics score, with only fourteen reviews, is at 100%.
Update: Netflix announces Season 2.
The Castlevania: Nocturne Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score is in stark comparison to the original series released in 2017 which has an Audience Score of 90% with four seasons released.
Why don’t fans like Castlevania: Nocturne?
Spotted on Twitter, apparently, the series may have gone the political route (never a good thing) as a review says Castlevania: Nocturne tells a “riveting story about the inherent hypocrisies of colonial nations embracing democratic revolution.”
“TF does this have to do with killing vampires,” stated the Twitter user.
Ah.. fuck all but am woke wankers got to virtue signal and destroy established brands https://t.co/FVwBJyYcWg
— Ciaran Red O Keeffe (@Ciaranredokeefe) October 3, 2023
Let’s see what fans on Rotten Tomatoes say
Checking the fan reactions:
– Different writers and the show just isn’t the same quality as before.
– The good – Animation – Some fight scenes – Alucard The bad – The story (very slow) – The development of the characters (too many characters and they don’t have time to cover them all) – Secondary characters overshadowing the main character (Annette has more time on screen than the MC) – Degradation of the name Belmont (for fans of the franchise this is painful to see) – The mixture of the stories of symohony of the night and rondo of blood in 8 episodes, where they could have easily told the Richter’s story without the need for Alucard to appear The problem with adaptations that always fail is for the same reason, it is because they want to change the entire story of something that was a success, we have to respect the original works a little more, it would have been a lot Better to change the names of the characters and the show, this is not Castlevania. (translated)
– As usual with these Castlevania shows, the visual art is pretty good but the story, plot and dialogue is severely lacking. The classic music of Castlevania remains to be almost extinct. It’s like the Castlevania-franchise is nothing more than a vehicle for the writers to tell a story that has nothing to do with the games at all.
– Absolutely no need to deviate so much the story, there was too much great and very popular source material, video games, novels, animations unlike the previous series that understandably had a lot of reimagination of the source material because it was limited and very old.
– I was ok. The ending was good enough to want to watch part 2. I’m just not sure why the politics of our era feel force fed, especially when compared to previous seasons. They had two different writers, maybe that’s why. And the last guy wrote comics for DC & Marvel. Anyway, I’m just getting tired of politics hemorrhaging its ideology into any crevice it can find. Luckily a long line of flops seems to be killing this trend, so hopefully part two is better.
– The pacing is either painfully slow or way to fast. Lack of character development made me not care about the characters. Characters we care about are either undeveloped, lacked screen time, or completely wasted. Biggest problem of the show right now is Annette, she embodies all the worst personality traits a person can have which makes her very annoying. The show should almost be called “Annetteavania: with special guest appearance by Richter Belmont”
– The writing was very bad. Characters just happen to be in the right places at the right time when they had no reasons to be there. The dialogue was unbearable at times. The constant use of profanity in weird moments didn’t help either. Some events happen without any explanation and make no sense whatsoever. I was constantly asking myself questions like: ” Why did it happen then and there exactly?” “How is that going to work?” “Why did they do this?”. The main villain is poorly introduced. Most of the season is spent on characters praising the villain only for the villain themselves to do the very same thing. The season also suffers from telling over showing. Additionally, the voice acting isn’t great. Many times the tone doesn’t match the emotion on screen. The art style and animation are the only things that can be considered decent.
– I had high hopes for this show since the first one was so good but this is awful. Terrible characters, slow and uninteresting story, and very poor voice acting. The lore is nothing like Castlevania and the dialogue sometimes is so cringe that I had to skip some parts. The characters often act like teenagers and it’s almost unbelievable to think this is somewhat related with the first show.FLAG THIS REVIEW
– They took a great videogame series, with great lore and characters and monsters and villains, and said we will make all of that a side story in our own story where politics and sexy minorities are the story. The dialog is really bad at moments, and so the action (that I thought it would be the center point in castlevania, defeating monsters) I enjoyed the first seasons because i kinda could overlook the “netflix” in the series, given that i really love the videogames. But this season reminded me of a toddler wanting to get attention even if he’s being cringy as hell, it makes me embarrased watching this. Diversity as in Isaac story was great, really. But forced diversity like laquisha as the messiah of the vampires and a full focus on slavery, even when vampires enslave humans, using black and french fights for freedom as comparison, has nothing to do with the belmonts and their friends in each generation stopping the resurrection of Dracula in Dracula’s castle.
More than anything I was just bored. The action choreography and creativity that made the original special is gone. Had a hard time even remembering characters names they were so bland and drawn from such poor stereotypes. Writing and conversational dialoge is inconsistent and the setting, which should have been a huge asset, adds nothing but confusion. Hoping they can pull it together in future seasons.
– The only star I give is for the visual, animation and sound design department. They worked so hard even with Neflix’s cuts on budget. Lots of potential… but the writing ruined everything. The pacing was too fast. We get too many characters introduced in the first 2 episodes and we get expected to care about them. Richter doesn’t feel like the main character and we didn’t get the chance to know him. What happened to the world since that last serie? How did the Belmont legacy evolved ? There are no connections with the previous serie and its sad. By exemple, if they really wanted to talk about slavery : Why not made Annette a collateral victim of Isaac’s previous raids over the world ? She could have come from north africa, Maroc etc. and add an interesting dichotomy between a character we love and the sufferings of an other. But the way they endled those topics were kinder garden level. Lots of talk down to the audience. No depth. Don’t even get me started of how they interpreted the French revolution… Everything seemed forced. Even the main plan of the vilain was SO stupid. I am sorry. I really wanted to like this show… I was hyped for 2 years. but I am so disappointed
– They warped the fantastic original story to force an unnecessary woke agenda down the viewers throat. The animation is fantastic yet again but being force-fed how ALL the white males in the show are evil or weak like the main character makes the show difficult to watch. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for die-hard Castlevania fans to watch who loved this universe before it went woke.-
After the excellent first Castlevania series, this is a rather sad attempt to continue the story about the Belmonts. Good animations, Story makes no sense, Characters are not believable, Once again the wokeness stamp was put on an existing story.
