Castlevania Season I By Warren Ellis

Castlevania Season I

By Warren Ellis

So Castlevania is one of those weird examples of multiple cross-pollination that our current global structure makes possible. Start with Eastern European myths, add a British novel, simmer for half a century in Hollywood, kick it over to Japan to spice it up with the Japanese perspective via a series of video games, and bring it back to the US to make a television series (The result is basically… a thirsty slash fanfic writer’s wet-dream). Now this series was originally planned as a film trilogy based on the 1989 Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and was under development by Kevin Kolde and his company Project 51. However, events led to the series being put on hold until 2017 until Adi Shankar showed up and convinced Netflix to pick it up as a show and Frederator Studios to help create it. As of this writing, 3 seasons have been produced and released with a 4th season coming. Let me talk about Warren Ellis, the guy they got to write the show.

Warren Ellis, who was born in Essex on the 16th of February 1968, is mostly known for his comic book work. His most famous creation most likely being the comic book Transmetropolitan, about a gonzo journalist in a dystopian future United States (I wonder how close to that dystopia the one we’re currently living in is…{Not very}). He has however written other things such as a hard-boiled detective novel, episodes for television shows, and a large number of nonfiction columns for everyone from SuicideGirls to Reuters. Strangely enough, he never played the games in question but did his research on them and noticed that the creators of the series seemed to be fans of Hammer horror films. Being himself a hammer horror film fan, he leaned into it (So much camp and scenery-chewing!). He was brought in early in the project and has largely steered the writing of Castlevania's three seasons and will be working on the fourth. However in June of this year, a group of nearly a hundred women accused Ellis of sexual coercion and manipulation, including gaslighting, and emotional abuse (And because we believe victims in this blog, and there are nearly a hundred of them, fuck this guy.). Ellis for his part denies any conscious predatory behavior (Bullshit.) but has largely withdrawn from the industry and season four will be his last season of Castlevania, although the production is prepared to move forward without him (Good. No abuser is too important to let go.). My own view is such a large group of accusers that I think these women and non-binary people should be believed and I am disappointed in Mr. Ellis, to put it mildly (I fucking hate that kind of trash-person. Clearly. Seriously, how hard is “not sexually coercing people”? Really hard evidently.). You can read their side of the story at somanyofus.com. Let's turn back to the review.

Season One starts us off with a young woman marching determinedly to Lord Dracula's door and demanding that he teach her what he knows of science. Right away we learn that Lisa is fearless and driven (And I fucking love her.). Even though Dracula is an immortal predator over seven feet tall, she has no problems handing him a mountain of sass in his own damn home (She reminds me of one of my de facto moms.). When questioned about her motives, she reveals she wants to be a doctor and heal people. Now I have to admit that if I had ambitions to be a healer heading over to the guy who maintains a forest of people on stakes on his front lawn wouldn't be my first thought but Lisa clearly is all about thinking for herself. (In fairness, there are legends about his scientific abilities she’s following up on. {There are legends about nazi scientists to, doesn’t mean I’m turning to them anytime soon} Sure, but you’re not living in a medical regime where “take enough blood to make you anemic” is a cure for what ails you.) Dracula finds himself intrigued because... Well, the kind of personality that Lisa has is intriguing and it helps that she's a knockout. So he decides what the hell, he'll teach her while trying to seduce her with his lab and library. So we're given a promising beginning of a relationship that could do a lot of good for the world and for the people in it. This is a gothic horror fantasy, however, so of course, our next scene is ten years later with Lisa being burnt at the stake for witchcraft by a power-hungry priest who is bucking to become the next Cardinal of Wallachia. This goes... Horribly. It goes horribly. You see, Dracula was away on a little trip on Lisa's advice, to see the world, get to know humanity, and see if he could interact with us on a more level playing field (You see he’s never experienced what life is like for actual people, so he has had a hard time empathizing with them. Doing a little sojourn like that would help him see why humanity is so backward, given the material conditions they live in.{He would have been an actual person at one time and it doesn’t seem to have helped} Was he though? It is clear that some people are born vampires.{If he's Dracula he was born a human, this is also game lore}). How anyone would mistake him for a normal man given that he's like seven feet tall and has pointed ears and teeth that could rip out a yak's throat is beyond me but I'm in favor of anything that keeps Dracula from viewing me as something to hunt for sport and/or sustenance! Well just as Lisa is being burnt alive, Dracula comes home and he doesn't take it well. In fact, he summons a beautifully animated storm to announce to everyone that he is going to take the kind of vengeance that gets listed in Old Testament books. He gives the people of Wallachia one year to prepare themselves, a year in which no one does a damn thing. I mean... Seriously! A demonic face emerged from the sky! The sky turned blood red! A voice thundered from the heavens! You have two options, get the hell out of dodge or start prepping for war. It seems like the majority of the powerful decided instead to shrug and say they were sure it would be fine! (Well, you see, the church says he doesn’t exist, and the church rules the roost with inquisitors and pears of anguish.{See, I don’t get that in the medieval era the church was often suppressed when the inquisitors became a problem for the wealthy and powerful. Hell in Spain, the Inquisition was openly working for the crown, not the church, defying the Pope several times in favor of the Kings and Queens of Spain. If I’m building an army to defend against the armies of hell, killing some Inquisitors is a fine warm-up exercise. PLUS THE SKY TURNED INTO BLOOD WITH A THUNDERING VOICE! FUCK YOU, I’M RAISING AN ARMY!!!} That works in Spain with a powerful monarchy or at least wealthy nobility. I don't get the impression that Wallachia has one of those in this fiction, or if it does, he’s in Hungary or something and the church has been given discretion. There is also an alternative explanation, which is that this is a second medieval period after a civilizational collapse. Say an asteroid the size of Mt. Everest hits the Yucatan again. The global air temperature above ground would be hot enough to burn paper, and there would be an EMP strong enough to wipe out electronics, leaving a rump humanity as survivors and having completely lost the ability to manufacture and maintain advanced technology. Eventually, the knowledge would be lost completely and humanity would have to rebuild from scratch. Religion in such a world would probably be even more important than it is now, and the church would be extremely powerful. ) I mean, I'm appalled when Dracula brings forth the literal legions of hell to wipe the capital city of Wallachia from the map and kill every man, woman, and child in it but a nasty voice in the back of my head suggests that maybe they deserve it if they're going to ignore such a blatant warning. Maybe I'm just an asshole like that.

At this point, we're introduced to our main character Trevor Belmont, a member of the Belmont family, a dynasty of monster killers, vampire hunters, and general badasses. Trevor is a drunk who gets smacked around by a trio of (literally) inbred (livestock-fucking {in-law screwing too, remember?}) hicks but mostly because he wouldn't go all out against them (He was trying to be nice.). Trevor is the character we spend the most time with here and he is an interesting and actually rather complex character. Now I'm going to avoid spoilers so I'm just gonna address what we learn in Season I. When Trevor sees Dracula's hell legion leaving after a night-time raid on the walled city of Gresit, he goes in. He asks around to get information and finds out that a priest is telling the townsmen that if they turn on a minority group called (((Speakers))) and purge them (I use the triple parentheses because they basically get treated like any medieval city facing a crisis would treat its Jewish population.), that God will protect them from Dracula. He decides to help the Speakers and get them out of the city. Before I go further, I want to say this about the good citizens of Gresit. What they're discussing is monstrous and insane but if you'd ever gone two days without a decent amount of sleep, you'll know how they got talked into it. Because what we're seeing is a city that has been attacked every night, homes have been torn apart. Children snatched from cradles and mothers left screaming. We don't see much of an armed force so I assume the militia of Gresit was mostly murdered on the first night. So these people are terrified, every night they literally hear their neighbors and family members being eaten alive by the armies of hell and afflicted with heart-stopping, pants-wetting fear and the fact that the night assaults will leave them in a muzzy state and finding it difficult to concentrate the next day... Then they got this priest telling them that all they got to do is get rid of people they don't really like anyway. All their lives they've been taught and trained to trust and obey men of the Church and protecting them from Hell is literally the job of the Church anyways. This doesn't excuse their bigotry but it does show how they can be talked into committing a crime against humanity and we should ask ourselves if we would do that much better in their place (The answer is “Probably not” as a society given the state of the world right now, and the fact that right now, we have children locked in cages and effectively orphaned by systematic cruelty in our immigration system over a problem that is basically made up entirely. That having been said, I hold that kind of bigotry in contempt anyway.{I’m not saying you shouldn’t hold it in contempt but let's not make the mistake of thinking we’re inherently better people. Admitting that in that situation it’s possible that someone we trust and look up could lead us down a similar path is the first step to avoiding becoming like them.}). Let me get back to Trevor.

Trevor postures cynically and acts like he doesn't give a damn in a traditional anti-hero manner but his actions tell a different story (The cynicism is a very obvious self-defense mechanism.). This is a guy who can't stop himself from trying to help somehow but has a feeling for his limitations and is carrying some grudges. I mean we learn that the Belmonts have been basically torn down and excommunicated (Getting rid of your monster hunters seems like a really bad idea to me but people keep doing it in fiction! [Honestly, it happens to any institution that becomes too powerful or respected and becomes a threat to the established hierarchy. The Roman Catholic Church did it a bunch of times. To the Albigensians, their own Knights Templar, the Hussites, etc] {Why do you always pick such terrible examples? The Albigensians and Hussites weren’t social institutions that the powers turned on like the Belmonts, they were movements to overthrow authority, the Albigenses openly wanted to get rid of the priesthood. This is a valid goal but they were preaching in a period of authoritarian government, to put it mildly! As for the Knights Templar, they outlived their purpose and that made them an easy target. The Belmonts still had a purpose!} I will grant the movement vs institution thing, but the same principle applies. Had the Albigensians or Hussites been a thing in some small hamlet no one would have bothered. The Albigensians in particular controlled the Languedoc, and their suppression of IIRC leads to the extinction of that language.) and that's made him bitter towards society. I can only imagine there's a string of failures in Trevor's past as well. Because while he gathered information and scouted the group, he seems to have come to the conclusion that he couldn’t save Gresit and its panicked mob of citizens but he could save the Speakers (In fairness, it is a much easier task to protect a dozen or so people on their way out of town than it would be to defend an entire town against a slathering army of the minions of hell.). He also seems to have come to the conclusion that comes Hell or High Water he is saving someone from this mess. This frankly tells us that inside of Trevor Belmont is a man who cares about his fellows but has been subjected to constant disappointment and failure. Despite that, he's still trying to do something, and damn if that isn't admirable. This is also paired with a willingness to do incredible damage to his enemies. Using his ancestral weapon of a whip to relieve them of all sorts of things, knives, fingers, eyes. Trevor fights messy, just like he does everything else (And it is very satisfying, and dare I say sexy, to watch. {This makes me wonder just what do you do on dates… (I mean, look, if I meet a nice boy at counter-protest against fascists…)} But then, I am an extremist who doesn’t like seeing corrupt assholes direct the people they exploit toward the throats of innocent scapegoats.).

Of course, the leader of the Speakers won't leave without his granddaughter. A girl who headed into the catacombs beneath the city because of legends that sleeping under the city was a legendary hero. So Trevor goes and finds the girl, exploring a dungeon that is definitely not up to code (They’re never up to code.) but has a hell of a slide. He ends the adventure by adding a Cyclops to his kill count and saving the girl. This brings in Sypha, the mage, idealist, and pretty redhead into our group (She is also ruinously lethal.). Like Trevor, she is intent on helping people and fighting back but isn't struggling under the weight of failure and disappointment like Trevor is. Her role is to basically goad him into more and more heroics (And she is very good at it.). So Trevor is going to attempt to lead a rebellion against an insane priest while fighting the armies of Hell for a doomed city for three reasons. First off is because Sypha won't stop hectoring him about it (And the thirst is increasingly obvious). Second is the Speakers won't simply fucking leave and let him complete his one good deed and he needs that good deed to keep going. Lastly is the fact that the priest in question has offered to restore his family's good name if he simply walks away and lets the Speakers get pogromed, I kinda feel there's a hefty chunk of 'you're not my real priest and you can't tell me what to do' going on here (Justifiably. That priest is a fucking monster.{I was pretty okay with his final fate}). Don't get me wrong, I don't disapprove. I'm a protestant after all and doing the right thing to spite corrupt Catholic clergy is like a huge high for people for me (And I am an atheistic Jew, so fuck those people too. This is for the Rhineland Massacres you schmucks!) I do enjoy the following tradition when I can after all. So can Trevor face off against a band of robed thugs and a demon army? What is under the damn city anyway? Why haven't I mentioned the third member of this happy band of anti-Dracula murderhobos? Well, join me next week when I discuss season II to find out. That's when I'll get into our 3rd band member because he'll need the space.

Now I’m not going to hand out a grade until we hit Season III but I am going to recommend you watch this series. It’s fun and interesting, although I feel Ellis could have done more historical research. Join us next week for Powers of Darkness and Season II and III. Until then, stay safe and keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders