T5W#324-Top 5 Castlevania Episodes

With Castlevania in the books and done, I can finally talk a bit about specific episodes and why I think they really helped propel this series to near Avatar: The Last Airbender levels of perfection for an Anime inspired Animated Series.  Castlevania delivered all the bloody mayhem one would expect from the popular video game franchise but also gave brilliant character arcs and equally amazing dialogue, courtesy of a Grade A voice cast.  Pacing was perfect and all of the emotional highs and lows were ones you’ll never forget.  I guess I’m probably just repeating my Final Series Thoughts at this point and you can revisit any of that here: https://gundamanimeblog.blogspot.com/2021/10/castlevania-part-4-episodes-23-32.html Right now, let’s talk about the episodes that made this series a proper Dracula legend.  These are my Top 5 Castlevania Episodes.

#5-Witchbottle (Season 1)

Castlevania is an action/horror series.  So it’s surprising that the story begins with a rather sympathetic tale of love and loss for Dracula.  Kind of like the first 10 minutes of Pixar’s Up, we see the blossoming romance between Dracula and Lisa and you instantly like them both.  So when Lisa is killed and Dracula’s ready for vengeance…you’re weirdly ok with it…to a point, not everyone was as guilty as the church that burned Lisa at the stake.  The Series Premiere sets up Dracula as a force to be reckoned with (it is Dracula after all) but a tragic figure who seems set to unleash hell for love lost.  As far as origin stories go for the Dracula legend, this one is pretty gruesome, tragic and very well executed.
 

#4-Walk Away (Season 4)

Season 4 is basically a perfect season with perfect payoff for a four year story.  Walk Away is where everything starts to make the final push to the endgame as Isaac, Striga and Morana reflect on the paths they’ve chosen and whether or not their missions will be worth it in the end.  I love this episode for Striga and Morana’s scenes specifically.  Not only are they an incredibly adorable and sexy couple but they’ve finally caught onto the fact that Carmilla is full of crap and they should get as far away from her as possible.  Oh and Striga dawns armor that makes her look like a bad ass character ripe for Soul Calibur for easily one of the best action sequences in the entire series.  Dammit, we should’ve gotten so much more of her and Morana in this show.

 
#3-For Love (Season 2)

Everything had been building to this and Season 2’s penultimate episode delivered in spades and then some.  In what was pretty much a 23 minute action sequence, Alucard, Trevor and Sypha stormed Dracula’s keep and laid waste to his forces like a well oiled machine.  But all of this impressive spectacle was merely the appetizer for the main event: Everyone vs. Dracula.  Honestly I don’t know what was better: the hard hitting and bloody brawl that saw everyone getting the crap kicked out of them or Dracula’s heartbreaking revelation that ended the fight in one of the most emotional scenes in the show?  Were it not for the dangling plotthreads with everyone else that needed to be addressed, Castlevania could’ve ended here and I would’ve been perfectly ok with it.

 
#2-The Harvest (Season 3)

Most shows have a hard time balancing a large cast and giving each of their stories equal screentime.  Castlevania always did a better job with this than most but the penultimate episode of Season 3 was the perfect blend of every major plotline coming to a crashing crescendo.  Trevor, Sypha and Saint Germaine battle the Priory and the Hell Beast they’d been healing.  Isaac launched an impossible attack on an OP Wizard.  Hector and Lenore finally got it on only for Hector to realize too late it was a trap.  And Alucard got unexpectedly lucky with Sumi and Taka…only to have them nearly kill him for seemingly holding out on them (knowledge wise, im sure the sex was phenomenal til that point).  I’m sure if you timed everything out, every story got about 1/4^th the running time each.  This is as close to a perfect episode as you can get out of any TV Series.
 

#1-It’s Been a Strange Ride (Season 4)

It seemed almost impossible, especially after the previous episode found Trevor fighting The Grim Freaking Reaper himself.  But Castlevania’s final episode closed the book on the series in the best fashion anyone could’ve asked for.  From Lenore’s heartbreaking decision to Trevors miraculous return, everyones story was concluded and pretty much everyone got the ending they wanted.  Best of all, Dracula and Lisa are alive and content to eek out a quiet existence together on Earth.  The big bad got a happy ending…who saw that coming?  If you weren’t crying by the time Trevor found his way back home then you mustve hated every second of this fantastic series.