Powerhouse Animation It is one of the American animation studios that it pays, and a lot, to have on the radar to see what little things it leaves us. It was already crowned in style with its adaptation of ‘Castlevania’ and despite the cross criticism towards ‘Masters of the Universe: Revelation’, the shocking studio animation is one of the more positive aspects of the Kevin Smith series.
Well, leaving aside the big franchises, Powerhouse opted for an original story with ‘Blood of Zeus’, a series that for now has a single season on Netflix and that means a twist on greek mythology.
A new hero, although pulling classics
‘Blood of Zeus’ poses as an anime of action and fantasy Inspired by Greek myths. Charly and Vlas Parlapanides sign this Netflix series, which, far from retelling a story we already know, asks us a completely new adventure with an original protagonist.
Although he has to ask for a turn in the queue of bastard sons of Zeus, Heron He is an ordinary commoner who one day discovers that he is the son of the King of Olympus. From that moment on, he becomes the main target of the goddess Hera, but as if this were not enough a horde of demons is rampaging through everything in its path and threatens to destroy both Greece and the home of the gods.
This approach of telling an original story is a good start, because it takes the pressure off of being true to the original myth. Even so, you can find certain winks to other heroes like Heracles or Perseusand even some other mythological film.
It is not a series that seeks fidelity neither in the plot nor in its aesthetics, since although it does use an encyclopedia to present us with all the references to monsters that we can find, it also exaggerates the character designs towards their most fantastic and epic aspect. The visual section of the series is where all the meat is put on the grill, and many of the action sequences manage to be at the level of the best moments of ‘Castlevania’.
Again, and having only 8 episodes, the animation section shines completely in the fighting, with multitudes of fighting heroes and monsters and all kinds of mythological creatures entering the scene. In contrast, the more relaxed scenes are sometimes more limited, but it is worth this cut if we compare them with the quality of the more frenetic sequences.
As we have already been seeing with the series of the study, we must warn that Powerhouse likes gore and visceral, and in ‘Blood of Zeus’ they don’t hide at any time and recreate themselves with great pleasure. So don’t expect something similar to Disney’s ‘Hercules’.
Despite the freedom that being able to tell an original story gives, what ‘Blood of Zeus’ unfortunately suffers from is that needs a lot of exposure to bootsince he needs to throw us a cascade of information to correctly introduce us to Heron and Seraphimthe main antagonist of the series.
Even so, these exposure doses are usually well measured and are often resolved as a flashback, although they can become repetitive and even show too much so that you smell the toast ahead of time. However, they fit where they should and do not end up interrupting the rhythm of the main action too much or separating us from it.
The cast of characters is charismatic and the new story that we are presented with has enough hook for you to enter this soap opera of Greek gods and stay throughout the trip. Although this first season is very well contained in itself, we already know that ‘Blood of Zeus’ will have more chapters, so now it only remains to be seen what more tragedies and misadventures can happen to Heron.