Today in Vampire Propaganda...

Because we, as a planet, are completely out of ideas, Netflix is producing an animated TV series based on Castlevania. Yes, Castelevania and if that ridiculous title means nothing to you, fist of all, shame. But if you're truly out of touch with video games due to what I can only assume is an active social life, allow me to nerd'splain.

Pictured: what the internet assures me people with
active social lives look like. I'll have to take its word.

By combining the words castle and
Transylvania, Konami has saved us three
seconds over the last 30 years. Thanks guys!

The original Castlevania was an NES-era platform game where the player, as Simon Belmont, kills wave after wave of similar to, but legal distinct from, Universal Studios movie monsters in Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania called, preposterously, Castlevania. Konami basically owned my childhood with Castlevania and its sequels along with Contra and Metal Gear and they would have gotten me with Dance Dance Revolution too if it wasn't for all the standing and moving that one involved.

Oh, and like most Konami games, Castlevania and its sequels, particularly the early ones, were hard. Like, deep end of the pool, controller smashing hard. Anytime an enemy hits Simon he gets knocked backwards, usually into a pit which is instant death and in a castle full of flying Medusa heads (because video games) it happened a lot.

Seriously Konami, fuck you.

Precious, life-giving ham.

Anyway, while action video games in the 80's were usually pretty light on story, the premise here is that Dracula comes to life once every century and some Belmont descendant has to re-murder him with a whip. Which, in further video game logic is the only thing that kills a vampire. Oh, and did I mention the wall ham? Because apparently the walls of Dracula's castle are full of ham; a feature I'm sure Netflix will incorporate into their series.

"Blah."

-Some Vampire

Ok, so it's not exactly the richest source material, but everyone loves vampires and violence so, maybe it'll work. And violent it will be! According to producer Adi Shankar way back in 2015 when this series was first mentioned and we we're all like: 'Pffft...sure...' had this to say:

"I'm producing a super-violent Castlevania series...It's going to be dark, satirical and after a decade of propaganda it will flip the vampire sub-genre on its head."

-Adi Shankar, on his plans for-
wait, propaganda?

So...maybe incest? 

Vampire propaganda? Are we all victims of Big Vampire? Yeah. I have no idea what vampire propaganda we're supposed to have been subjected to for the last decade, but there it is. And since he wants people to watch it, he made the obligatory comparison to Game of Thrones. He didn't actually specify what he means by that either, but I suspect it's less about thematic or narrative similarities between Castlevania and Thrones and more about how he would like to make a shit ton of money with it. So um...good luck Adi...

I'm not saying Shankar and Netflix won't succeed with their new show, I'm just pointing out that GOT has tons of violence, sex, nudity and often disturbing combinations of the three while Netflix has a cartoon based on a thirty-year old video game about whipping vampires and eating wall ham.

Above: Totally the next game of thrones. Totally.