Anyone who’s ever played the Castlevania video game franchise has at one point or another asked themselves who on God’s green Earth designed and built Dracula’s castle? It’s a veritable maze of death and pain that makes the Winchester Mystery House look downright quaint. And while the obvious answer is because platform games need things for the hero to jump on and obstacles of doom for them to fall into should they fail, it’s still amusing to imagine Dracula bent over an architect’s table musing on whether or not a room needs more spikes in the ceiling.
So it’s nice to see Netflix is keeping with the Escher theming for their upcoming R-rated animated series based on the franchise. The poster — revealed on Facebook — shows Dracula’s home as a gravity-defying confection drenched in blood and secrets. It looks almost like something straight out of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which is truly the best compliment I could give. I don’t know how some of those spires are standing up utilizing construction methods from the Middle Ages, but I can almost guarantee the castle is built using the Collapsing Lair trope.
When Netflix announced Castlevania after months of speculation about where the next project from the team behind Adventure Time would land, little information was given. No specific release date, no time period for the story, no cast. What we do know is it Castlevania will follow the last surviving member of the Belmont clan, who is trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hands of Dracula and the animated series will be “R-rated as fuck” according to executive producer Adi Shankar, who spoke to IGN about it.
If the poster is any indication, it will also be a lush visual experience. But we’ll hopefully have empty hallways that double as load screens.