The Shrine

It's a Castlevania animated series with a Ninja Scroll art style. Like Ninja Scroll, lots of gore, and cool looking fire and demon stuff.
The story takes place during Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - in my opinion, one of the most interesting games on NES.
Episode 1 is a bit of a prologue, taking place a year prior, while episodes 2-4 feature Trevor Belmont dealing with the Church and demons - without spoiling too much.
It doesn't have any classic Castlevania music, unfortunately, and that is a big part of the atmosphere of the series.

I highly recommend it, if you liked Ninja Scroll, and have any kind of interest in the Castlevania franchise, even a slight casual interest, you'll enjoy this.


"I'm Trevor Fucking Belmont. Please leave my testicles alone."

That popped up on my recommended feed the other day. I'll have to watch it when I have the TV to myself. Otherwise my wife will get annoyed.

I enjoyed this a great deal, I loved Castlevania's timeline, and to see it accurately given life in the form of animation is fantastic. It's a little short, and it obviously has a tight budget(Some of the still frames when chars are talking are absurdly still), but I enjoyed the short ride and I'm looking forward to Season 2. Castlevania 3 is a great place to start, and the shades of SotN thrown in.

This was cool. The season ended just as things were getting going, but, eh, a decent use of two hours to watch the four episodes.

Enjoyable even though I've basically never played a Castlevania game.

Shrinweck wrote:Enjoyable even though I've basically never played a Castlevania game.

Blasphemy!

Enjoying it so far but could do without the Johnny Depp voice they gave Trevor Belmont.

I go back and forth on that.. He kills some of the lines. Also it's more of a nod to the writing but there's really something endearing about the main character (ep 1 spoiler)

The biggest problem with this movie that was split into 4 episodes is that it was just the beginning of a story. Feels like it needed another 8+ episodes to finish, like they just finished the intro, like they're holding back the rest of the season. Great but annoying

It kind of felt like Netflix doing a long pilot episode

So apparently Season 2 was so good Season 3 has already been confirmed.

Season 2 airs in July(Maybe).

Season 2 trailer!

Looking forward to this!

Considering how long it takes them to produce episodes I think we have a second reason on our hands as to why this got pre-approved for another season lol

I wanted to bump this.

This is an American production made in the style of Japanese animation and based on a Japanese video game series that in turn tried to replicate a European style based on a European novel. Featuring European voice actors. Notables are James Callis (Gaiaus Baltar from Battlestar Galactica) who plays Alucard and Richard Armitage (Thorin from the Hobbit, Red Dragon from the TV series Hannibal) who voices Trevor Belmont.

Season 1 was 4 episodes, but season 2 expanded to 8, and season 3 did 10.

And I don’t want to spoil much, but the show remains consistently awesome from top to bottom. There is some genuine insane artwork done in this.

I really like how Carmilla becomes a a big focus, as the 1872 Le Fanu novella is one of my favourite books. It’s nowhere near as popular as Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, but it had a tremendous influence on it. Carmilla itself has a large basis on the 1797 poem Christabel, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - which in turn is one of my favourite poems. While less known, if you were to put together a general vampire canon, Carmilla would be the other book besides Dracula that’s in it. Her role in Castlevania as one of the vampire Queens of Styria remains. They add three more (not really a spoiler since this doesn’t impact the plot in any way) with Lenore, Striga, and Morana.

The other characters aren’t named in the book Carmilla, and are original characters for the animated series (sort of).

Lenore is based on Succubus from Castlevania, mixed with Lucy from Dracula, and named for the character from Poe’s The Raven.
Striga - that’s the English word for “Strigoi” which is Romanian for Vampire - probably inspired by The Witcher series.
Morana - name based on the Slavic Goddess of Death.

Heads up

The first series of Castlevania, which comprises of 4 seasons, is done. For those who haven't watched yet, the story was largely based around Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard and is a TV series reimagining of the story of Castlevania III and Curse of Darkness. Unfortunately, Grant doesn't appear, so don't get your hopes up; his home town and a major character are featured in the show.

There are plenty of references to vampire lore of the 19th century and some other gothic poems... although not Coleridge's Christabel, which is a personal favourite of mine. But if you're a fan of that century, there are plenty of treats. I love how they just took the name "Varney the Vampire" and made him exactly what a vampire called Varney would act - he's voiced by Malcolm McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange); and I love how no one seems to know who he is, or remember, even though he's been around forever - Varney the Vampire being the oldest of the major vampires, first written about in 1845, about 25 years before Carmilla by Le Fanu was written, and 50 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula. Also, they gotone of the major elements of Varney quite accurate to the story - but saying what that is would be a major spoiler.

The art style and animations are very much based on Ninja Scroll. The level of violence gets there too, particularly in the 4th season toward the end.

Minor spoilers in the clip,



Season 4 is a bit of a weird one, by the time I was through the first half, I was thinking "Not bad, but not as good as season 3" and then it followed with 5 of the 8 best damn episodes in the whole series. But you don't have to take my word for it. The final 5 episodes were strong enough to earn the season 100% average on Rotten Tomatoes, and the final episodes of season 4 on IMDB are scoring
6) 9.7
7) 8.9
8) 9.4
9) 9.9
10) 9.7 - although, the final episode IMO was incredibly satisfying, a great payoff, and the most rewarding episode of the entire series by far.

Of course, the series has been cancelled by Netlix, but the story ended in about as great of a place as it could have. Netlix isn't done with Castlevania, as a new series is in the works - show runner Warren Ellis has been fired after accusations of sexual coercion by over 100 women - don't know how #Me Too missed this guy.



Pictured above: WARREN ELLIS, TV producer, Castlevania show runner, sex offender.