Castlevania: Nocturne is out, and I want to thank everyone for giving the show a chance! It's been an absolute blast working on Nocturne and seeing all the hard work and passion that went into it. Everyone worked their butts off!! Ahahaha I had more to say but I'm too full of emotions to process words well ;;^ w ^
"...I mean, an ancient war goddess has risen and one of our own has been turned into a vampire, another guy is now a night creature...yeah, you are a little late to the party, my dude."
But since I am also late to the party, here's a brief and incomplete list of things I enjoyed about Nocturne:
The animation slaps because of course it does.
The cold-hearted badassery of Annette (in general) just caging her former abuser and letting the sun do the rest.
This is by far the most gruesome way to kill a vampire. Approved.
Was initially a little confused and disappointed by this choice as I wasn't sure why it was necessary to change Olrox's monster form from the green, bipedal Gollum thing to this weird dragon thing...
....but then they said he was Aztec and I thought, "Oh, not a dragon! It's Quetzalcoatl! Now I'm onboard. Pardon me, I was looking at the one-year plan, not the four-year plan." Aztec mythology for the win!
Good lord if this flip wasn’t the most needlessly fabulous thing I’ve seen all year.
Nothing really to do with Nocturne, but after countless disappointing book to movie adaptations, I felt this line on a spiritual level.
Olrox was the best thing about Nocturne. Him and Mizrak both.
WE DID IT AGAIN. Here's Powerhouse Animation's latest venture into the Sonic-verse! I worked on and supervised boards 'n character designs, and then basked in the talent of our crew.
I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW PROUD I AM OF US!!! I served on the union organizing committee at Powerhouse for the past 8 months and got to experience all this energy and see how much people wanted this. I've been on Castlevania for almost 4 years and I love it here as much as the first day and I'm so excited for what we can accomplish together now and I cannot tell you. What a fucking monumental thing it is to have done this in a right-to-work state like Texas. Our coworkers are absolutely amazing and full of resolve to help us make our studio even better for us. It's been overwhelming.
We're asking you to help us spread the word and support our cause as we seek voluntary recongition of our union with The Animation Guild.
Join us in making the animation industry better for everyone!!!!! Tweet it use that hashtag follow the TAG twitter @theanimationguild like and subscribe etc
The way they animated Sypha's footwork in these frames is very coordinated and precise. It reminded me a lot of the martial arts classes I used to take. When you compare this scene to some of her previous fight scenes, you can tell how heavily she used to rely on keeping her distance and using her magic to overpower her opponent as opposed to methodically wearing her opponent down and looking for an opening to attack as she's doing here. And this makes sense since she comes from a culture that doesn't fight or carry weaponry. Sypha is mobile when she fights in the first two seasons, but it's nowhere close to how quickly and sharply she moves in the last two seasons.
Even her use of magic becomes much more creative and controlled as the plot unfolds.
So given the month long gap between the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3, it's a reasonable guess Trevor taught her this. Or at the very least she was clever and observant enough to recreate those movements by watching him (and maybe Alucard too in the brief time they interacted) fight.
Sypha was never a helpless character, but even so, it is cool the series took into consideration that she wasn't raised or formally trained to be a fighter like Trevor and Alucard were and therefore didn't start out as one. As in, she could definitely fight, but she didn't miraculously know a bunch of fighting styles she would have had no way of realistically knowing with her pacifist upbringing.
We got to see the subtle progression of her abilities as she learned and developed more techniques of her own.