This in an awful, low-budget adaptation made by a team that I can only assume has no idea what it's doing. It all but makes a mockery of Miura's fantastic manga art. It also lacks the great soundtrack of the 1997 adaptation.
The animation is truly awful, with the human characters moving stiffly and awkwardly. The cinematography is atrocious. The camera is constantly, unnecessarily panning, the shot selection is puzzling, the rule of 180 is consistently ignored. Typical action scenes in Berserk feature the camera swooping through the scene and rapidly cutting and repositioning for no good reason while your eye struggles to follow the action. There are several shots in which it is literally impossible to discern what's taking place. In addition to this, the art is incredibly bland, featuring unfinished-looking CGI that looks like it belongs in a cutscene of a Final Fantasy game from the '90s.
I can only assume that such an adaptation was made by a team with a very low budget and very little experience in crafting a visual narrative. To top it off, the soundtrack is putridly stereotypical, featuring generic heavy metal that only goes further in proving this team was consistently shooting to make something that looks "cool" rather than putting any effort in telling a compelling story.
This is really only worth watching if you're a hardcore fan of the manga, otherwise it's not worth your time. Incredibly disappointing. Hopefully they find a different studio to continue this series rather than just completely canceling it, though after two seasons I'd honestly rather see it cancelled than continued in such a horrible fashion.
2 stars on the strength of the source material alone. If you're interested in Berserk, read the manga instead. This trash isn't worth the time it takes to watch.
