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Shinobi no Ie: House of Ninjas (2024)
Good characters with questionable plot.
The series start really strong with intrigue and mystery in the family. It starts well paced and you are slowly introduced to family business, relations and past events that lead to the current situations. The more you get into the series the more pace starts to pick up and you start to have some questions about the plot moving forward and some of them are never explained because the plont needed to move forward to get to the end also some plot elements are self serving and not well executed and they happen because it is a checkmark that needs to happen in order to get to the next situation even though there is no real reason for it to be happening that way. At the end the show was very enjoyable for me beacuse in my opinion the characters are well written and the plot is intriguing enough, I'm just sad it wasn't given more episodes to develop some plots better and more convincing.
Castlevania: Nocturne (2023)
Beautiful series with a bit lackluster writing
Here's my messy review and i hope you bare it with me. I will be going through some points in the story and judge it like that.
-Night creatures in original series are created from a dead body and are infused with a damned soul from hell and it creates this creature that is absolutely obedient and has no agenda and no sense of self. It only obeys it's master(forgemaster) and no one else(unless it's been given order by the forgemaster to obey someone else).
In this series SOME dead bodies get to keep their souls after being transformed in a nightcreature and that just breaks the laws of the world we know. There is an instance where Olrox approaches transformed Edoard and asks himself 'What an extraordinary thing do we have here' or something like that which could lead to something that can explain why he got to keep his soul but it seems to me a bit far fetched.
-Opening moments when his mother dies and then fleeing to France is a great background story for Richter and what feels like should be his drive throughout the story.
-Introduction of Maria at the rebel gathering we get to know a little bit of her as a person and sets her up as a pretty good character with seemingly moral conviction followed by her fight with a few vampires and proves herself to be capable fighter magician also.
-Richter then slowly shifts to be kind of a dumbass version of Trevor Belmond for no particular reason and feels unnatural first instance being that speech in the cabin about always being by his aunts and cousins sides which could have been done so much better with the same message.
-Maria has a very cool powers but not utilized very well which gives her a way to grow.
-Introduction to Anette was amazing and her design and her powers are great. Her background is convincing and plays a good part in the story but few too many times is inconsistent.
-Edoard's character is good but plays out very weird throughout the story. Nice songs though even though they play a stupid part in the story(maybe to be even more so in later seasons).
-Anette is responsible for Edoards death but is portayed not to be that way in a bad way. Characters should acknowledge her fault and try to make her feel better or deny her fault in a different way than it was. Anette also gets unreasonably mad at Richter for running away after meeting Olrox again (which was kind weird and not what i would expect from Richter) and gets really bitchy about it too only to after say she was concerned about him?.. I mean the show does not show the development of their relationship so it comes off very weird and unnatural.
-Richter saying someone should make a plan before attacking but someone else should do it because he is not very good at plans is a very bad way to portray him and makes no sense while others are wanting to just face it head on. Incredibly stupid part.....
-Vampires in the story seem a bit weak considering both Richter and Maria are fairly inexperienced while night creatures are a bit overpowered.
-Abbot is portayed as an ambiguous person, believes in God with his whole being but considers ungodly peasants to be more evil than vampires who feed on them. I think he should have been portrayed more mad considering he was willing to sacrifice his daughter (whom he held very dear) for the ultimate goal of restoring church to the top of the society.
-Abbot being forgemaster and the situation with the forge is not very clear. Someone made that machine for him? So in retrospect he should not be the master of those nightcreatures unless someone commands them to listen to him. If he is the forgemaster his whole identity falls in the water since he is summoning demons from hell to fight at his side. Very strange.
-Abbots accomplice the Templar is at first shown to be a Godly and principled man which get trampled when he ends up having gay sex with a vampire. Also he has no reason to approach protagonists to seek help to save Maria, if anything he should be happy Abbot is getting rid of a
child that is made by abbot who is forbidden by God to have children, also he is not on a friendly terms with anyone of the protagonists by any means which makes the whole situation very weird.
-Olrox is i think the only good written character in the series. His motivations are unclear so far but he acts according to his morals and his agenda properly. He sees the 'Sun devourer' as a threat and acts secretly against her although he blows that way after he helps protagonists in the church fight and his motivation for killing Richters mother is reasonable and justified.
-Richters grandfather is an interesting character and serves as Richters turning point in mentality which actually makes Richter have some resolution and a huge power up. This is the point the story get a bit better although i would like to hear more of his grandfather other than that he was a disappointment to his family.
-While the last fight at the church was happening Anette had the mission of releasing her nightcreature friend and destroying the forge machine. Her friend says he doesn't want to get released because his job is not done there which moments after she fails her mission to destroy the machine gets annulled and he come to save her from other nightcreature.
While Edoards time in prison being a nightcretures he seems to get some other nightcreatures to regain their soul and snap out of hive mind i guess???
The show is kinda predictable and is heavily carried by its visuals and would fail if not for the success of its predecessor. Overall story is interesting enough and i will continue to watch next seasons(which i hope there will be) but i hope they clean up dialogue and story bits so it can really shine the way I feel it can shine.
I wanted it to be great but the more i think about it the worse it gets, I started with 7/10 score and if not for the truly amazing visuals it would be 5/10.
All in all 6/10 for me :(