i havent seen any discusion on this seasson here on lemmy so what the hell, im gonna start my own.
I had some very mixed feelings on it, for one the action and animation was very cool, and the second season seems that its gonna be a break it or make it kinda deal in terms of the plot because the writting was mediocre and worse compared even to the 3rd season of the first series, which is the weakest season by far of the first castlevania.
This is specially the case with the main 3 characters, first Maria is very passionate about the revolution and thats cool but the way they portrait it is very annoying, she just spouts the same revplutionary speeches over and over, and its never explained why she is so pasionate about it, you could say because freedoom is a universal motivation but it really isnt, speciallybfor her since she as well as her mom live away from the town, they arent really shown interacting with the townspeople so that to make a connection to understeand why they want freedom for them, or at the very least they could have shown her that she whent to college and learned about it on her philosophy class, or anything, luckilly they tone it down at the end by giving her more character and a conflict that goes into spoiler territory that seems that its gonna be cool how they expand upon it in the next season, but the first parts are very annoying and unexplained.
Second is Richter, which is this seassons flagship belmont, he kind of makes no sense, it wasnt shown or mentioned that he was trained in vampire killing yet he is super good at it, you could say that thats because he is a belmonth, but due to his "spoiler" being "spoiled" its not possible he could have been trained as well as say trevor with the wip, not even by the people that he is living wirt now since they are magic users, not vampire hunters, yet he is impossibly good with it, and he really doesnt have a good explanation as to why he is a vampire hunter in profession, and to pretend he has a character arc they gave him a barely justified shonen protagonist anime power up scene where he kills a bunch of powerfull vampires with magic and this was specially made to justify having him running of crying in one scene where his "spoiler" shows up, this imo really shows the intentions of the writers, wich takes us to the last character i want to complain about: Annete.
Annete was kinda like the writers darling, the first parts of the show focus on her and one whole episode its entirelly dedicated to her backstory, while the other characters barelly have foundation, and this wouldnt be as bad if she wasnt so annoying, since she causes some problems and one of them being a characters death due to her not being able to control herself at a very bad moment and isnt even at the very least made responsible for it, the whole contrary btw, and its not because she is clumsy or made a mistake, she has some very OP magic and its very good at using it, which while it shouldnt it kinda gets aded as a negative, not that she shouldnt be powerfull but you kinda understeand what the writers are trying to do and i dont like it, and when richters runs away they made her snap, throw a temper tantrum and shit talk him, making her come across at the very least as very unconcidarate, and granted, they have someone tell her that she shouldnt do that and she accepts it but still, but aggain, its very obvius why the writers added this, they whant to piss pepople of for controversy and about that, thats the characters purpose at its core, to be controversial, you could think it is not but it is. Not that a character shouldnt be diverse, but when they are made diverse nor even for diversitys sake, just for controversys sake, it brings the ehole character and discussion down. And it makes me sad that they are using a culture that has some cool potential for very nice stories and characters be used for just to piss people off and as a twitter argument, but well what can you do.
It may not seem like it but i do recomend it if you liked the first castlevania series, its more of it at the end, but if you like the games you will probably be more perplexed about it, but if thats the case then you probably seen the first series and again, its more casltevania. And if you like diversity in you media then you will like this series, i know it sounds condecending, but i heard is a genuine thing people take into concideration to rate something, so yeah, its very diverse, you will like it. Other than that, the second seasson its already confirmed so, like i said, they could redeem themseles or make it worse, so we will have to see...