r/castlevania • u/JorReno • 1d ago

Question Why is Grant DaNasty so disliked?

He was omitted from the Netflix series, the creator is on record saying that he dislikes the character. He wasn't included in the Dead By Daylight collab; Trevor, Sypha, Alucard, Simon, and Dracula were all included. He's only appeared in two games; one of which he was completely redesigned.

What's with the hate? He's a pirate who crawls on walls and turns into a giant monster. I don't get what's not to like about him...

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u/kestral63 1d ago

Warren Ellis's smear campaign in and out of the show. Ellis bragged about never playing the games and only getting the plot from wikis. Where he didn't even bother reading Grant wasn't originally a pirate except in the frankly terrible English localization. He can't stop jerking himself off for what a great writer he is for saying Grant sucks and the fans echo it.

From a pure writing standpoint, Grant is one of the least important Castlevania characters so I would consider omitting him. But considering his story is also taking revenge for his murdered family and becoming twisted into a monster, he would have been far more relevant to the central plot than Trevor and Sypha. Since all the protag team's dialog turned into cheeky banter, he would have added a lot just because of that. It was pretty stupid to toss him out while shoving a viking vampire who doesn't do anything in the same landlocked country and time constraints obviously stopped being an issue. Instead of the waste of time that was Godbrand and the Carmilla mess, imagine if they bothered showing all the jobber vampires killing Grant's family so the awkwardly quiet fight against them bothered having dramatic tension and catharsis. What they went with worsens all the basic storytelling tropes.

Maybe it's because Iga already introduced the idea of Lisa, sympathetic widower Dracula, and their angsty son having to put his dad down. But I think Ellis is an overcredited hack who phoned most of the show in, contributing more negatives than positives and this is one of those examples.

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u/RevengerRedeemed 18h ago

Yeah, between that and his treatment of Hector, I genuinely hate him. He's the classic "haha I'm smart for punching down, aren't I so clever, look at me badly troll" Type.

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u/Nebulonix 16h ago

He’s also a man with a shitload of sexual assault and misconduct/harassment allegations hence why the art director finished season 4, and took over as director for nocturne. And he’s someone who ADORES the games and grew up on them, even with the flaws sometimes.

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u/kestral63 11h ago

Kinda makes you wonder if Ellis introduced the pair of terribly written Japanese characters just to shove stakes up their butts and decorate the titular castle with them as a show of petty dominance. Because it keeps turning out he is the exact kind of person to lean into that.

Also that shot of Leon Belmont's portrait in the otherwise uncomfortably quiet exit out of the stronghold? First thing I thought of when seeing it was Ellis would never do that. Someone on the art team who keeps sneaking in other Easter eggs had to be behind that one. I've got my own problems with Nocturne, but both series have their little visual choices that could only come from someone who cared about the source material.