I went into this blind. I think I watched a trailer, but I don't even remember that. It can't have been much of anything. I avoided all discussion prior to watching, and this thread is the first I've seen of any feedback, and I certainly didn't see the absurd tweet/marketing. I came to give thoughts from the perspective of having watched with no pre-judgement.
I watched an episode a day until the last 3, which I watched back to back today.
I need to speak up here because, once again we have hit the "woke" wall and once again it's pretty misguided in regards to Nocturne. Quite frankly there are two kinds of people that throw that word around
1) People who hate something so it's "woke"
2) People who say that if something is thrown in to be simply preachy and adds nothing to the plot or characters, then it's "woke"
Now Number 2 seem to have a much better point than 1, no offense. But here's the thing. There is nothing preachy here. Nocturne takes place during the French Revolution which went hand in hand with the Haitian Revolution, where slavery was completely in the grasp of French Nobility. The setting is ripe to explore that to enrich it's plot and it's characterizations.
- Slavery is a huge plot point because, it's the vampiric aristocracy's test run for a constant supply of blood and it's not "evil white people" that are the actual runners or true slave masters. It's all vampires, who seek to eventually enslave the whole of humanity, for a permanent food source.
- Richter is not at his prime at all. He's 19. He saw his mother murdered by the very powerful Olrox when he was 7 and that makes him a kinda scared and confused hero, who was shipped from Boston to Europe as a kid to fight against the most powerful of vampires out there. By the time Divine Bloodlines hit, he gets a massive glow-up but not enough yet, to defeat the big bad. Not yet. He's got plenty more to learn. He's far more powerful than Annette and Maria by the end and it's just the beginning.
- Annette being a runaway slave, who learned to fight and use Haitian/Creole magic to defeat the vampires that enslaved her people makes her far more interesting that just being a damsel in distress. And I like how she's flawed too. She's brash and does stupid things. Which is good. Isn't that what we want? Not Mary Sues but characters that do fuck up, and have to learn the hard way.
-Also Castlevania doesn't automatically mean a Belmont vs Dracula. Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, Harmony of Dissonance, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia had no Belmonts against Dracula. Dracula was indeed the final boss for some of these but a Belmont was not the protagonist. And hell Dracula is the protagonist in the Sorrow games.
- Maria's naivety towards her fellow revolutionaries, makes for a great contrast to Annette. They are both flawed and imperfect in complimentary ways.
- Olrox is so much better than just being a Dracula crony. I love how he's an ancient Aztec vampire that saw his empire destroyed too, just like the commonplace slavery during the time period do. And his lover, a Mohican who also got oppressed, was murdered by Richter's mother simply for being a vampire. A vampire who wanted peace and harmony between mortals and immortals. His obvious distaste for the vampires methods and for their leader Erzsebet, makes him a perfect greyish character that can go either way at this point.
- Vampires being ultra sexual beings is straight up Anne Rice stuff, and honestly I haven't seen one complaint about Erzsebet and Drolta having a harem of captured young women to torment and feed on. And it's very sexualized and grimly sensual. Game me a lot of shades of The Hunger in a good way.
This actually covers the majority of what I wanted to say.
The series throws in an obvious diversity checklist, and while I did have doubts going in because this stuff is really obvious these days, and although I did have some "Oh of
course he's gay" eye roll moments a fair bit ties into the story or worldbuilding in one way or another. You usually get something out of it rather than just an empty shoehorned diversity quota.
Olrox was a perfect example of that. Started off a tickbox character, but by the end was interesting and I want to see more. His story feels intentional.
The opera singing was intolerable. I skipped the first few, then tuned it out when there was something to actually pay attention to. It was ridiculous, and unless this motherfucker has some Siren roots revealed in S2 it will remain a hollow addition that lack substance.
Annette's speech that was posted above was definitely odd. I'm not quite sure the word for it. Clumsy? Shaky? Very loosely written and just
barely works at best. Not the finest moment, but it's not like a dwelled on it. When the moments were bad, I was mostly browsing GAF until the interesting parts came back around.
Alucard was something I accidentally spoiled when I went onto IMDB, but actually it helped keep me going through some of the more boring bits. His appearance at the end was something like a surprise wrestling return by Rock or Austin. Not necessarily earned, but you pop for the hype of the big name making an entrance. It's a big deal and you want to know what happens next. I certainly do. I also went back to watch that scene from the original series, and his look has changed a lot. They went full SotN boxart.
Overall, it was fine, but I'm not likely to go through it again. Of 8 episodes there's about 4 episodes' worth of decent content and the entire run is build up for S2. There was also absolutely no payoff. No story or arc was ended, and it wasn't even a cliffhanger where everything feels bleak or tense, and there was no major loss to recover from. It just... ended, and when we get the next ones it will feel like S1E09, not S2E01.
But with all that said, you can tell how many replies ITT are based purely on clips and short comments rather than first hand experience. For better or worse, I feel like people would be better served by trying the show out and seeing what they think rather than the low hanging fruit of "Woke, shit". Even though this post points out more negatives than positives, if you like the idea of what will eventually be a SotN-adjacent it's at least worth a skip-through to catch the fight scenes and major plot points.
Beyond that, I do wonder if they will ever attempt the Sorrow storylines. With the time jump from Trevor in middle ages to Richter in revolutionary France makes me think the next jump will be to ~1999. That would mean Dracula dying to be reborn as Soma Cruz, but if it does happen we get Julius Belmont as a side character and that can't be bad.
