honestly one of the funniest ways my friends described the show is this "Imagine a DND session where you are convinced the party is 110% dead but they manage to roll so well that every stupid idea actually worked and also gay vampires"
"How're you alive?" 'Magic. And the fear that you'd name the kid Treffy behind me back.' "How did you even know I'm pregnant?" 'God-like pullout game before meeting you.' "Someone kill this man for me please!" '... Won't be hard...' "You're an ass." 'I know.' "And I love you." 'I know." "Welcome to my village." 'Oh yeah? What's it called?' "Treffy." 'Fucking end me.' I just loved the dynamic of these characters from day 1. They're the DnD group you wish you had that can spend weeks on end making up crazy ridiculous shit with and still have fun after the world decides to kick you around for a while.
My favorite part was the dialogue. Everybody spoke like actual people and let their true selves peek through their facades. No one was two dimensional.
I wish I could have liked Lenore. I keep seeing people defending her and claiming she was the best of the vampire queen council but like..........she basically assaulted Hector? Like even if she did care about him, it's clear she never viewed him as an equal, and used a moment of intimacy to take away his free will. Essentially she did exactly what Sumi and Taka did, except no one is trying to justify their assault on Alucard. Idk Lenore feels like she gets off easy. She put a slave ring on him! If the genders were reversed there'd be zero hesitation in the labels.
Everything Lenore did had an air of playfulness attached to it, and that coupled with Hector 1. being on team 'enslave all humans' 2. playing along and 3. turning the tables in the end all make it easy to forget how objectively awful becoming enslaved would be, because it never got past the point of looking like a consensual roleplay. That she's a smoking hot redhead with soft domme vibes doesn't hurt either. Sumi and Taka were on screen verbally scheming, and while they are also victims operating on survival and distrust, we are shown how pitiable and isolated Alucard's whole life has been so we empathize with them less. Their scene also came off as more menacing and brutal which 'killed the mood' of any titillation the scene otherwise might have had. The way a scene is presented has huge influence on the audience's reception of it.
It's her attractiveness and her demeanor. Even though we know she's cruel, she hides it behind gentleness and attractiveness to the point where the audience takes the bait just as much as Hector did. That's part of the reason why I love her character tbh. She's so well executed that even the audience falls for her shit lol
Your not wrong but the gender reversal of the role is part of what makes Lenore interesting Like yeah she’s hot and I want her to step on me but in reality she’s a predator You can like a character and find them interesting but not condone their actions I personally don’t like what taka and sumi did because rather than talk about it with alucard or sneak around or learn it in secret they went straight for sex murder
Idk I like her character but I don’t condone her actions. And the comparison with Sumi and Taka might be more apt if they had just as much screen time as Lenore, but they don’t so we don’t even get to know them, all we know about is a extremely brief backstory and their attack against Alucard. Perhaps if we had more time with them we could’ve liked them as characters but not condone their actions in a similar way to the way people feel about Lenore
Honestly even though I haven’t played a single game castlevania legit does what all good adaptations and makes me feel like I don’t have to play them to understand it.
It wouldn't help anyways Hector and Issac are nothing like their game counter parts and are better for it in my opinion and carmilla almost never has story relevance and is mostly just a boss to beat up
It is like 2 stories simultaneously Season 1-2 is dracula’s group vs hero trio so two plots Season 3 is 4 plots 1Alucard, 2trevor-sypha-germane 3hector-vampire quartet 4isaac
"Ah yes, another demon lord threatens my life. Must be Tuesday." 🤣 Seriously though, The Captain and Isaac's conversation about humanity has been living rent free in my head for two years. Best scene in the whole show.
In Dracula’s defense, he did have a reason for wanting everyone dead besides his own sadness. His wife had done nothing but want to help the people, with medicine and technology, and had done so. Yes it ultimately was the church that burned her at the stake. But everyone else that Dracula’s wife had helped ultimately did nothing but let it happen. Making them in his eyes, just as guilty. He did try and grant them some leniency by giving them a year to make peace with their gods and just get the hell out of Wilakiya. Only for him to come back a year latter and see that not only did the majority of the population not take his warning seriously, but we’re celebrating the burning of his wife… Yeah at that point everyone would have to die just on principle alone. Interesting enough is Alucard. Put in a awkward position by it all. He’s not on the side of humans because he believes in them. Fare from it. He even offers to aid Dracula in hunting down and killing the ones responsible. A show were Dracula and his done go and slaughter the church. Yes please! Still Alucard is doing what he’s doing and fighting for humanity more out of obligation to his mother who he knows wouldn’t want what Dracula is doing. And to try and bring his father back to his senses and stop his grandiose suicide. Despite knowing that in doing so and fighting his father he risks having to kill him to stop him. Ultimately what happens at the end of the second season and leaving him truly alone. Dame shame they couldn’t give Alucard one last hug from his father in the end. Carmella I’d another odd one. She sees herself as progressive or rather just sees herself as above men. Seeing them as ether dumb, brutish, and short sighted. Yet ultimately ends up being exactly that in her treatment of others, blindly expanding her borders without a plan to control this territory, and her ultimate downfall. Ending up becoming the very thing she took pride in fighting agents. Have to agree with you though, would have loved to get a all out war between the Vampire queens, and ISIC trying to save his friend and avenge his master. With The the three heros stuck in the middle.
I think the writers perhaps made a mistake in referring to the thing that drove Carmilla and Dracula as vampirism. It wasn't vampirism per se that motivated Carmilla and Dracula, it was how they never processed their trauma and instead lashed out with a bottomless pit of vengeance in which they could never be satisfied. This plagued both Isaac and Hector, because they were both driven by revenge against humanity to commit mass murder and genocide. But we saw how Isaac and Hector with a little TLC and perspective rose past their vengeance such that Isaac's goal was no longer to avenge Dracula, but to build a better world, while Hector finally learned to answer the question "What do you want?" The reason I couldn't get Lenore's death was because for 200 years of vampirism she handled it pretty well, and there were no indications that she was becoming more like Carmilla. In fact, she's far better than most of the named humans in the actual show, and even though she had a troubled past, she never dwelled on it like Dracula/Carmilla did.
@@Suijen86 I think the point with her and Hector's talk at the end was that since they live so long eventually vampire just keep wanting more and more and are never really satisfied, which leads to a ton of senseless death and destruction
@@Suijen86 But I think the point was they have to live with that past longer and thus gain more and more trauma over the years, the problem with Camilla wasn't that it happened to her once, it was constantly having to deal with evil old men as she puts it. That was also Lenore's point about vampires wanting comfort because humans will only live a couple decades and then they'll die so there's only so much they'll go through, vampire on the other hand tend to have to go through and live with the suffering they experience for significantly longer.
@@mikemorro140 I think it's how they process the past and if they're willing to let go of it. 1. Dracula didn't, gets vengeful 2. Carmilla didn't, gets vengeful 3. Isaac ditto for a while 4. Hector ditto 5. Morana, lived for thousands of years, still okay 6. Striga, let go of the past 7. Lenore, ditto I can see where you are coming from though as Lenore feared she would become a Carmilla.
Sylpha girlboss gaslighting Dracula by changing the location of the castle is my favorite moment of the series. The expression on Carmilla's face made it even better.
I thought season 3 was kind of a letdown, but I think the running theme of characters daring to love only to be punished for it is EXTREMELY good. All by showing and not telling, too. No one has to come on screen and announce they feel that way. You can just see it. Trevor tries to do things Sypha's way and feels bitter when it doesn't work out. Alucard trusts people for the first time in a while and they try to kill him. Hector trusts Lenore only to get turned into a slave. It all comes together in the ending and it's so incredibly good.
@@itsblitz4437 I still think that season 4 being the last was a decision they made after finishing 3, because 3 set up too much than what could've been reasonably resolved in a single season, imo. The most obvious being how Alucard doesn't reunite with Trevor and Sypha until WAYYYYYYYY late in the season, in a way that didn't feel intentional at all.
Season 3 is my personal favorite in the series, but I can see why some people would disagree. The way I see it, season 3 appeals to a different audience than seasons 1 & 2; the shift in writing probably caught many people by surprise. The first 2 seasons introduce strong motivations for the characters, include good witty dialogue, and establish stakes for the world if the protagonists fail. It has good writing/storytelling, but the genre falls under more of an action/adventure. Season 3 on the other hand focuses more on exploring character dynamics and themes. For example, Sypha is introduced to us as an optimist who believes in helping people. Meanwhile Trevor is a pessimist who thinks humanity deserves to bask in its own filth. The plot line of the village itself is overall inconsequential, Trevor and Sypha couldn’t save anyone despite their efforts, but it is through this failure that Sypha learns to understand Trevor’s view on the world more clearly: you can’t trust everyone, you can’t save everyone, and being a “hero” isn’t as exciting as fairytales make it out to be. There is still some action in the show, but it takes a backseat so that the characters themselves can have a bit more of an interpersonal spotlight. Season 3 definitely appeals to a different taste than the first 2 so it’s hard to blame people for not liking it, but I personally believe that the writers did a very good job with it.
@@seansaechao1798 I really liked Trevor’s final line to Sypha: “We’ve spent a couple months living your life: adventures and victories. And now we’re living my life.”
I feel like this is the best adaptation of a video game out there. The show strikes the perfect balance of doing its own thing, but also being respectful of the source material. This is one of my favorite shows of all time.
I have to enthusiastically disagree about Striga and Morana in S4. Them returning to the castle and seeing it sacked only to spend another season attempting to salvage Carmilla’s campaign would have inevitably lead to one or both of their deaths for a goal that probably would have still failed given the lack of Carmilla’s charisma and Lenore’s diplomacy. The fact that Striga and Morana got to simply walk away and live for their own fulfillment, especially after having nearly lost each other in the daytime ambush, it was just so much more satisfying of an ending to their arc. They had skills that were crucial to Carmilla’s campaign, but it was clear from the beginning that their partnership was more precious to them than any conquest.
When I was watching Castlevania for the first time, my reaction to the first couple episodes with Sypha was something along the lines of "Oh my god she's too wonderful for this world"
And when she was preggers, the fires of hell would not be hot enough compared to her wrath. Imagine if she was that way in the fight against Dracula. Dracula would be hiding behind Alucard and asking him to tell her to calm down.
@@LunaP1 Or maybe Dracula would like a challenging opponent to keep him motivated about something. Or maybe he use her sudden Overpowered-ness as an excuse to lose. Or maybe he would hide behind Alucard. That alternate universe would be funny.
About the games, story ends up totally different (partially due to hardware limitations because NES game but also the show taking creative liberties). Castlevania 3 has sypha, alucard, and grant (he got cut from the show) as secondary playable characters you switch between on the fly that you get after certain bosses. You can only have one of them with you at a time and yes, sypha is still busted. You can even beat the game without getting any of them to help if you choose a specific route even. Hector gets his own solo game, castlevania: curse of darkness on ps2 that takes place not long after where he goes on his own adventure to stop Isaac(he's a redhead originally just a heads up) from reviving dracula. Trevor even gets involved at some point. Every other game besides that takes place Long after, different descendants of the Belmont bloodline stopping Dracula when he revives every century (or some shit wakes him up early). Might have inspired that part of jojo's bizarre adventure ngl. The one exception being a prequel game for ps2 castlevania: lament of innocence, that shows how the belmont/Dracula beef started (that one paining in the Belmont family home in season 2, that's leon, you play as him). Alucard also gets his own game that takes place centuries after, Castlevania: symphony of the night for ps1/Sega saturn/etc. where a Belmont gets possessed by a evil priest named shaft (yes, really) and alucard returns from centuries of slumber to set hings right. It's the first metroidvania in the series and part of the namesake so you get to explore more and find secrets in the castle. I'll leave it up to you if you wanna find out more, but I figured I bring those specific titles up since they involve charcters you seem to like alot. Also Carmilla is a reoccurring boss so she shows up alot but in not as big a role. There are more female characters that get to do stuff though, good and evil. ... The original Dracula book is part of the canon, bye.
Castlevania is really a good example of how to do a series adaptation of a classic video game franchise, done right especially its characters and its settings.
I Still upset on how try make boi hector who basically hero who want revenge of his love his to goddamn slave Just look at game hector And look at anime hector
thanks for addressing the Ellis stuff. as good as this show was, it doesn't excuse what a gross abusive shithead he is and i'm glad his victims are standing up and being heard given how difficult it can be to do that in this kind of system.
A detail I found interesting about Dracula and his story arc (which might be a coincidence, I don't know) is that the part of hell where he ends up share a lot of similarities with the seventh circle of hell in Dante's Divina Commedia, "The Wood of the Self-Murderers." If the similarities were intentional, it says a lot about the short-sightedness of Dracula's plans. Maybe he knew that his revenge plan wasn't sustainable. Maybe he never intended to stick around after that anyway. Maybe the whole thing was just a really slow s*icide.
Alucard called it "history's longest suicide note" and he's on the dot. Dracula lost something so he wanted the world to lose everything. If I suffer, you suffer.
This makes me want a series- terrible people make art -where we can learn about terrible people, their terrible things, art they've made and the impact it has had. Endless content with importance
If me and my friends were the Castlevania Trio I'd be the Trevor of the group I literally can't say a sentence without swearing 😎👌 Also hell yeah I can already tell this video is gonna be a fucking banger and now that I'm further into the video you've made me genuinely like Lenore even a little bit cuz I honestly hated her also I've heard about a spin off and REALLY hope that it's either Lisa and Dracula or Striga and Morana or maybe both!
Draculas goal wasnt just revenge, it was death. He new very well that his plan had no chance of not killing all vampires too, but he wanted to be with his wife again so he was all for it
Do you have any plans to do any videos on The Owl House? The attention that show is going to get will be even higher due to it returning next month, and I know you've talked about that show before, so I'd kind of like to see what you have to say about it in greater detail.
Personal opinion, what sold the show to me was the dialogue itself and the character exploration. As you touch down in the video when the character spoke it was just fluid. It wasn't like they were playing a role or they were fitting into some type of character archetype but they felt like they were just people. Then the character exploration in the show was Top Notch. I understood everyone's motivations and what events shaped the character that we see in the show. Hell I still think that the "I am a vampire" speech had to be some of the best writing I've seen in a long time. Moreover it proved that exploring your characters more in a particular season doesn't take away from the overall plot. It feels like a lot of shows nowadays have forgotten that or just leave character motivations to vague interpretations. RWBY is a perfect example of this.
Kind of an interesting coincidence. I just started watching Castlevania a few days ago. I'm not very far in it yet, but at some point I'm going to watch the whole show and I'm probably going to enjoy it.
Quick note for around 12:30 for why the church went after Lisa...she was also betrayed. The village she was helping when she was arrested used to have an old wise woman who was abject crap at her job, and the wise-woman ratted Lisa out to the bishop out of jealousy. A subtle but very important aspect of the story.
This series was great and the reason I got into Netflix in the first place. You should also checkout arcane. 2:38 true that. I mean look hp lovecraft the guy was horrible racist bastard in the times that he was living in but we gave us the very essence of cosmic horror in literature. 14:53 preach! Dracula is everything Salem should be! Honestly Lenore would be a great game of thrones character if you ask me.
Lenore as a GOT character? You mean a Margaery Tyrell, a person who is charming, compassionate, charismatic, manipulative, and can wrap a manchild around her fingers in 6 seconds flat?
What I like about the show is that it is telling a story of its own. It's not held back by any tropes or clichês while being still entertaining and consistant.
I can commiserate with fans of a series who find out that it’s creator is a monster in human skin. Rurouni Kenshin is a great story that was written by a monster.
The only thing I really knew about the Castlevania games before watching the series was that there's an alternate universe game in the series where two of the characters are actually the same person (I won't say who to not spoil it for others who don't know), which made watching those two characters interact a lot funnier.
As gruesome as the story was the characters were so well developed and fleshed out, I HAD to finish it. (Although what happened at the end of season 3 for adrian and hector was very traumatizing, I had to take a break from watching it on repeat...)
HI I LOVE EVERYTHING YOU DO :DDD I was just wondering if maybe you'd consider making a video ranking Winx Club's transformation sequences. Personally my favorites are Enchantix, Believix, and Sirenix, and my least favorite is Butterflix.
I originally didn't want to watch the Castlevania Netflix series since I didn't play any of the games, until I heard that the Executive Producer for the upcoming Devil May Cry Netflix series (who is the same one as the Castlevania series) wants to integrate the Devil May Cry series into his "Bootleg-Multiversum" which the Castlevania series is a part of. So I watched the whole show ONLY to see how Devil May Cry will fit into this and to get a taste of what I can expect of it. Well, I came out of it really liking the Castlevania series and the hope that the Devil May Cry series has the potential to be great! Then came Arcane, to say that it blew me out of the water is an understatement. But that isn't suprising since I was biased to like this show because I already like the Runeterra universe. Arcane and Castlevania showed me that if you want to adapt a video game, animated tv shows are the way to go, such as the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime. But I also have hope for the The Last of Us TV show, at least there the people that made the games are involved like with Arcane, and it's not made by people who purposefully ignored the source material like the Halo TV show. It's interesting to see what the Castlevania Netflix series changed from the games, but even the games changed a lot in the Lords of Shadow trilogy. Makes me wonder how the Devil May Cry Netflix series will differ from the games, can't be worse than the DmC Reboot (even though I like it).
Love this recount. Somehow I found myself rooting for Dracula - but wow that scene when he is beating the shit out of Alucard. That was intense. After Dracula was gone I wasn't sure that I'd enjoy the rest but the various cast which come in are also so intriguing. Hope Nocturne manages to live up to its predecessor !
Super late to this video, but I’m playing a DnD character who is effectively Trevor but in a vastly different setting and tweaked to match that setting, and I’m having an absolute blast. The party is absolutely bonkers, so he unfortunately has to do a lot of babysitting, but his low charisma creates many problems of it’s own even while babysitting. Tons of fun, 10/10 would recommend.
you pointed out everything i love about the series ; i think one thing that bears mentioning is the storyline with Saint-Germain - it's yet another mirror of Dracula but there's a very interesting question it raises about Death's possible influence over Dracula ~
Hearing about Warren's unfortunate allegations my guess is there was more the writers wanted to do but due to these allegations they wrapped the series up in season 4.
"Oi Death!" Yo trevor 1v1ing the actual embodiment of death & winning is beyond hype & im trying to think of a tattoo idea that can symbolize how much i love that scene.
I really enjoyed the castlevania series, but one of my biggest gripes was the happy ending with dracula and lisa. The game series portrays a cycle of death, where each belmont of their time (or others i.e. morris) kill dracula, only for him to be ressurected time and time again. Even when julius permanently kills dracula, he is reincarnated as soma cruz, who inherits his powers of dominance. Here we see the end of this cycle, when an older and wiser julius spares soma and lets the cycle end, letting the reincarnation of dracula, soma, get his happy ending with mina and ending the cycle of violence. The happy end felt more earned then randomly waking up in a field.
Only real criticism is that the show didn’t handle flashbacks well unless they were in the cold open. The way they’d segway into most of them felt forced.
… but isn’t Castlevania’s ending supposed to be “bitter sweet”? Like it’s a sweet ending but it always ends up tasting bitter after awhile _Serenade under the Moonlight_ (HoD, RoB, SOtN) ____________________ In Harmony of Dissonances, Juste have to live on with either not being able to save his friends or Juste having guilt for letting this happened to Maxim and just _pretends it never happened,_ in Rondo of Blood, either Richter lives in sadness for _failing to save Annette…_ or contemplate if he really defeated Dracula, Symphony of the Night, each character have to go on with their respective sins, Alucard is the murder of his father and the wants to keep his promise, Maria is _nothing actually_ and Richter is his failures to fight against temptation of another good fight _The Demon Castle War Legacy_ (OoE, PoR, AoS, DoS) ____________________ In Order of Ecclesia, Shanoa ends with her losing _EVERYTHING,_ her brother, her master, her home, most of her memory and emotions… _but she killed Dracula, her task_ and made ally with the village but… In Portrait of Ruin, the Lecarde family has to dealt with the trauma of a lost father and being vampires once, and although Jonathan has proven the whip his worth, it’s safe to assume he harbors feelings for the Belmont _in a negative way,_ Aria of Sorrow, Soma… worries about his inner Dracula, he’s Mathias reincarnated _but Dracula is still there_ and Arikado… _the same thing really,_ in Dawn of Sorrow, _it’s still the same thing_ but Arikado fully assure Soma that his current life now is human and he’s that and Julius lamenting his old age… _IN THE NOVEL HOWEVER,_ it is alluding that the darkness inside of him is still strong _(or death is genuinely loyal to him, you choose)_ No matter their suffering, never ending tragedy and trauma… in one game, they all have to live on with nearly no good endings, Dracula suffered the most, _the lost of Lisa driven him mad,_ his constant death, revival and influenced by all sorts of _cult, evil people and hell itself_ have made him into a shell of the _former man he was_ and now… he desires redemption _and Soma is his last chance,_ these characters doesn’t get any happy ending, just that they killed Dracula and that’s that Hell, in Curse of Darkness, Trevor got a good ending in 3 but in this game? He got shanked and nearly left for dead, Hector lost his home, _probably hunted by said village under suspicion of being a night creature_ (he is married to Rosaly afterall which is “hanging” around) and Isaac _is dead_
One of the best scene in the serie is Lenore final moment. The reason is because of how much powerfull this scene is and how much She like hektor.Its the first in so long that she hasnt seen the sun and yet in her final moment she doesn't look at it. She turn and look at hektor and smile. She prefer looking at the men she did love than to see something she couldnt for so long.
And Hector looked back at her, who was his light during his time in Styria. Imagine what they could have had if they had met in any other circumstance.
There are times when you have to separate the art from the artist. This can be seen in modern times with people like J.K. Rowling and her transphobic ideology as well as in history with people like Salvador Dali and his advocacy for the ideology of the Nazi Regime or Caravaggio and his manic violent outbursts and the fact that he murdered someone. Just because you like their works, doesn't mean that you agree with them or that you justify their actions. It simply means that there's something about what they created that speaks to you.
Like, I know OP wants her big Trio Vs Quartet battle, but uhhh...I don't know if the good guys are winning that one. Especially from what we've seen of the quartet, and what their team work could possibly look like 😬
It would be a far better film series. S3 was well-balanced and gave plenty of attention to the characters, so much so that they wasted Alucard's entire S3. S4 was the same characters, but added in a bunch of new pointless ones. Get rid of the pointless ones, and just focus on the great characters we introduced in S3, and just have all arcs intervene together to final send-off that will really challenge the characters.
Wonderful analysis. I would have liked more commentary on Lenore's arc though as I found her the most interesting and complex character in the series. Oh, have you seen the Dragon Prince? I feel like you would do a great analysis on that also
10:40 another title for the segment might be "Dracula: the tyrannical martyr" alluding to the loss of his wife, his renewed hatred for humanity, and his lust for vengeance. The whole he summons the forces of hell is because the bishop of the church killed his wife, and convinced the entire village of Gresit to follow, which they did willingly. He has every right to feel what he feels. He deserved a better life than what he got.
Here's what pisses me off about Castlevania fans. Dracula's trauma gives him immunity for trying to kill the world. Losing Lisa to a deranged man shows the worst in humanity. But Camillas trauma isnt even talked about.. Like anywhere. All I see when I go to watch the Carmilla Vs Issac fight is "Die Bitch Die". I guess getting sexually abused for years isn't a great enough trauma to be recognized? Or maybe it's just easier to vilify woman who have suffered a great deal.
Except dracula...died and went to hell There's also nothing about carmilla since her introduction that implies she would subject others to what happened to her and worse The freak happenstance that brought dracula and Lisa back to life doesn't change the fact that, like carmilla he was constantly framed as someone who needed to be stopped, even among his own kind
I'm actually more slightly more sympathetic towards Carmilla than towards Dracula. Dracula's reasoning may be more romantic, but I honestly found Dracula pretty selfish to burn the world because his wife died. Carmilla having angst against men seems like a more...realistic view of some damaged people. There are people who HATE an entire group of people because of how they were victimized, but I never heard of someone going apeshit bonkers on the entire world because a spouse died. But in the end, both pretty bad people who needed a chill pill.
Its clearly your last phrase,because the story of this series doesnt discuss anything it just tosses random ideas disguised as "deep and complex",but then you start to notice how the story never goes into them truly. Ok Carmila is a victim of an abused relationship then she is an angsty woman,thats it?isnt this story the one which enters the psyque of all characters?all i know from her is she hates humanity specially men,and thats it no development or interesing ways to flesh more of this character like other good stories do
@@ramiel3759 If Castlevania had 5 seasons and each episode were an hour long, we'd actually be able to have meaningful character depth exploration. Unfortunately, especially in S4, it is extremely rushed as they introduce new characters while having to resolve existing characters from S3, leaving very rushed arcs and some arcs that actually go nowhere: 1. Isaac's arc, resolved in S3 2. Hector and Lenore: Lenore's "Snape kills Dumbledore" moment never explained, sudden shifts without exploring the evolution of relationship. 3. Alucard's S3 brushed under the rug. 4. Carmilla: 2 scenes in S4 5. Morana and Striga: irrelevant to the plot, no real development. 6. The main boss is a Castlevania Easter Egg. Such a shame with the potential that was never explored.
In the show? He and Hector both loved Dracula's intellect but I'm not sure it was romantic. Isaac confesses his love towards his master who abused him for it but I'm not sure if it was romantic love or just some other kind of love.