Anime: Berserk: Ougon Jidai Hen

This material is a movie/OVA compilation or alternative version of an original work that was previously aired in TV format. The review will only comment on the differences between those works, therefore those who want a full analysis of the show must read the original review before this. I won't be reducing the scores solely because the work is a retelling, my scores will reflect the work as a standalone as far as I can.

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Berserk was a behemoth back in 1997, it became the top dog in dark fantasy genre, and still hold this title sixteen years after its release. To earn this, the show did many things right, from keeping the mood dark and serious, creating realistic and more human characters, to bringing lots of political intrigues mixed with combats and warfare. It still is the ultimate show for table-top RPG lovers. Sadly, its tale only reached the event known as the Eclipse and left the fans demanding for more.

Differences
The manga gave us a continuation, increased its art quality tenfold within the first volumes, but also let us down by dragging the plot for many years (it's yet to finish). So, in resume, Berserk fans haven't tasted an end to the story yet. But hey! What we have here? A movie-format series with CG elements and probably going to tell the story from start to finish? I'm totally in! The first three sets of movies supposedly tells us from the early days of Guts in the Band of the Hawk to the fated event of the Eclipse, but as far as you can tell from the opening and promotional artworks you can expect a bit more than what you tasted in the TV series.

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1. The Animation
   Instead of using static painted images to bring a sense of action and impact, this time we have Studio 4C delivering the tense moments with CG animation. The CG, as a whole, is a very decent element to use for such an action-demanding show. The work is, in fact, nicely done for most part, as the butchery, the sense of strength in the characters' strikes, even the simple heavy breathing of characters is improved by the use of CG elements. Add that to a top-quality 2D work with the superb art style of the show and those who failed to see the mastery of Berserk due to its outdated animation don't have this excuse anymore. Sadly, however, the CG parts that puts full character models in play are simply awful because they look like ragdolls, playmobils, lego, or anything else but humans. This is more noticeable in the first movie because it makes more use of such scenes, but even in the other two movies it can compromise a lot the animation work because it screams the difference with the quality of the rest.
   
   Sound Direction
   The sound direction may have suffered the biggest change of all. In the TV show we had a so-so opening that didn't fit the content of the episodes, but other than that the show was pretty good in its voice-acting and epic themes. The movies use a theater-style sound direction, meaning absurdly loud sound effects and nearly unoticeable voice-acting and music. This job may sound good in a theater for typical movies, but in a anime show this only makes the show appear to be a lot more silent and empty. Because of that, the world of Berserk, a place full of terrors and opression, now looks more of a sad, vast place. The scenes of Doldrey, the shots of the fields, even the city takes are fairly silent. This works for both positive and negative factors. Positive because the silent mood makes the show look even more serious when you watch it. Negative because the tension and action lose quite a deal of power when you only hear the yelling if you turn your sound to max, and at that time the clashing swords will explode your ear drums.
   
   The Voice-Acting
   To worsen things for those who didn't like the change for a movie-style sound direction, the voice-actors also suffer a bit in here. What happens is that they simply lack urgency. From the very first scene this is visible when you hear the soldiers attacking the castle with timid yells and talking as if they were calmly discussing in a restaurant. No character escapes this issue because it's a style chosen bythe sound direction. Even when Guts is facing demons or watching Casca suffering in the last part, the voice doesn't match the yelling face. It's weird for me to complain in this regard, mostly because I always hate shounens due to the absurd yelling, but when you see a show where they all look far too timid it also proves to be an issue.
   
   The Cast
   Character-wise, Berkserk was very powerful. The cast in the movie is the same as before, but the direction sadly decided to make Guts the real protagonist this time and leave Griffith and Casca more to the sidelines. What happens when they do this is that the show looks far more typical in this aspect than the TV and manga. Guts is your common brute guy who can only think "swords", and his development was always slow and steady, he was the least complex of the three in the original work, but grew nicely because of his absurd skill with sword and demand for vengeance. He has his traumas and inner demons, but in these three movies all of his best moments are diminished because they depend on the other two characters.
   
   These two half-protagonists are now far less than what they were. Not because they changed, but because the scenes where they were the lead were nearly all removed. The parts within Midland Capital where Griffith shows his plotting and dependence on Guts, the parts where Casca tries to be a man in world that don't accept her, and quite a few other small but key parts for development of both these two and support characters such as Judeau and Rickert were overridden by action parts and moments of silence. In the end, watching only the movie maylet you think Griffith is just the bishounen guy and Casca is the mandatory girl for sexual scenes, which sadly is not true in the original work.
   
   The Manga Elements
   The TV show lacked most refferences to the manga back in 1997. We didn't have a glimpse of the noisy fairy, we never heard of the Skull King, we only knew the world was really distorted and that evil was about to overwhelm everything. This happened because the manga was not ready yet, which now is not an excuse anymore. The trilogy makes uses of many elements from the manga, especially when it come to cameos that promise us more movies in the future. We have an opening with characters from the far future arcs, we have cameos of the noisy fairy, the bold templar, more monsters that Guts face in the future, etc.
   
   The Dark Fantasy Master
   Berserk is simply the best dark fantasy show we have. It doesn't have any competitors. Perhaps Claymore fit the shoes as a sucessor, but it's not the same, Berserk is not as shounen as that. I can point out that the world in these movies feels a lot bigger and empty because of the sound direction and the remake of scenes such as Doldrey, but the darker parts still remain quite dark and mysterious. The doll-like characters during CG animations are certainly a bad point, but they don't spoil the other departments in any level.
   
   It's still different
   The best dark fantasy show and one of the very few of this genre within the japanese industry. Berserk is the best of what fans of the genre can get here without having to deal with typical fanservice, super powers, and other stupidities that usually take out the serious feel of shows. The movie keeps up with the quality, but it feels a lot more silent, giving a psychological flavor but taking out from the tension we had in the old TV series. It has a huge boost to combats with lots of blood and severed limbs, especially from the second episode onward.
   

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Comments
Berserk had just a small set of flaws. It had no ending, it's animation was mostly based on static impactful artworks and lacked a welcome motion, and it's opening wasn't that fit for the rest of the show. These were basically my complains with the original TV series. To perfect their work in the movie they would need to give us a continuous story, boost the combat with fluid animation, find a more dramatic opening, and we could have the ultimate show ever made.

Sadly, Studio 4C failed in those steps. What we have here is a show that abuses of CG elements in the start, and not only that, but bad CG elements that make characters look like ragdolls and do not resonate well with the background and other elements onscreen. They correct this during the second and third episodes, but never really manage to make a fluid motion human model. The sound direction also took a step to be more fitting to theaters, but failed in this when it tried to use a more silent and dramatic take in order to make things more "artistical" I think. The ending product is not as exciting as the TV part, but is still superb, especially when compared to the recent low standards of shows.

Basically, those who never liked Berserk due to its animation now can watch it. Those who liked the animation from before may still like it, but they'll find quite a few flaws that may put it short of reaching the level of the previous TV and of the manga versions.

I have just returned from the biggest anime festival held in my country, where the main attraction of this year was Berserk movie trilogy. Even the respective creators, Toshiyuki Kubooka and Eiji Matsuo, themselves attended the festival. Thanks to that, we were able to see out-of-Japan premiere of the third movie on a big screen and I have to say it was more than amazing experience.

Berserk TV series is often referred to as the best fantasy, historical or swordplay anime or even the best and most mature anime series out there. I would go as far as saying that movies are even better in these aspects. Especially the maturity – if you aren’t at least 20 years old and handled the cruellest and most butchery pieces already released, I wouldn’t recommend watching more than the first movie of this trilogy, or you may be unpleasantly surprised. If I was asked to describe Ougon Jidai Hen in one word – massacre, carnage or slaughterhouse would be the first ones coming up in my mind.

Animation is simply brilliant! Generally, I’m not a fan of CGI in anime and I stand behind the traditional animation, but this was the first show where I didn’t mind at all. Studio 4C doing their own 3D graphics was definitely a good move and it was done marvellously. It is a display how much can the fighting scenes in anime improve with the help of CGI if you use it correctly. For me, who liked original Berserk a lot less because of the old animation, this trilogy was like a godsend gift. The soundtrack was nothing too memorable or exceptionally good. It managed to support the dramatic scenes perfectly, though. Also, the opening song from Susumu Hirasawa was no less than epic. In general, the music was distributed nicely and played only when really needed. As I’m usually not paying too much attention to the background music, this system was gladly welcome.

I suppose most of the people watching this movie trilogy have already seen the series and therefore know the story. Fortunately, movies are following the original very faithfully, I’d say even with 97% precise (For some reason, they skipped Zodd throwing Guts his sword). Plot is not too complicated, but it sure is extremely powerful and deeper than you would expect from this genre. It is made for those who like it raw – no fancying the protagonists, no miraculous turns for the better, no goddamn cheese! I haven’t realised it earlier when/after watching the series, but now it’s quite clear to me. In anime world, with such setting, there has not been better story placed in it than the one from Berserk yet. Another very pleasant difference from the series is that it goes chronologically as it is supposed to – no confusing future scenes at the beginning – and it even adds few more explanations and events happening during the Griffith’s transformation. It also goes a bit further so those who don’t read manga can finally see what happened after Casca’s rape in a perfectly understandable manner, which I consider one of the biggest advantages of this trilogy against TV series.

Now we got to the weakest side of The Golden Age Arc for me – characters. No matter how hard I try, I can’t find any likeable character or anyone to sympathize with, to root for. Guts, the main badass and butcher, may have godly strength and skills and of course I enjoyed him slaying tons of enemies, but aside from that, he is just too simple. I believe it was partly a fault of his character design in the movie, where he looked too muscle headed and resembled gorilla or some kind of ape in many scenes. Of course you want him to win, but mostly just because there is no other way for the movie to continue smoothly. Griffith was not much more than a walking fanservice for girls for the most part. Most of his actions were sleazy and he was doing them for his own good. And as a cherry on top, he screws everything and everybody in the last movie – easily one of the most hateable anime protagonists ever. Casca could have been the most likeable one, but they didn’t give her that much space to flourish and instead threw her only into the situations with sexual subtext to spice things up or between two men to mingle things up. Remaining captains or other side characters are not worth mentioning I believe, but still it’s not like the character section have failed completely. I liked how they let us create the image of somebody only to shatter it completely in the next movies, e.g. king’s transformation from previous to the third movie.

I don’t think these are the movies to attract masses to anime genre, nor do I think it’s going to become a revolutionary title or a must see classic. (Maybe it could initiate a new wave of using 3D graphics, but that’s kinda off topic here.) For the fans of original series though, as well as for all fans of big battles, swordplay, gore and well-made tragedy, it’s bound to become something precious and hardly forgettable. As for me, I can’t see myself re-watching it anytime soon, but it is already engraved in my brain as one of the most thrilling and enjoying experiences I ever had watching anime.