Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Berserk
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Hameyadea
 Posts: 3679 |
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The CG in the first episode and indeed quite choppy and the character movements were stiff, but episodes #2 & #3 were better in the technical aspect, and aside from a few artistic mishaps, the looks of the show is looking up, as well, IMO.
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Thunderbolt Fantasy and this season of Berserk feel like inverses of each other. The former is a by-the-numbers fantasy tale with trope-based characters redeemed by the absolutely stunning aesthetics and overall energy of the production. The latter has some of my favorite characters and stories in all manga but is bogged down by often-awkward animation and terrible music (except when Hirasawa's insert song comes in -- then it's awesome). The upshot is that I'm watching both of them, but they appeal to me in very different ways.
By the way, has anyone figured out why on earth Caska seems to be white in all the flashbacks?? Also, spoilers here but Farneze spoiler[is not the new Caska. Her combat skills are incredibly limited, she's leading the knights because her family is rich. Serpico, on the other hand, is a badass with a sword, especially after he gets a certain cloak...] Those two are probably my favorite characters and the #1 reason I will stick with it. |
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JaggedAuthor
 Posts: 981 |
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Thanks for clarifying. The various still shots of the little guy's pre-Apostle life were probably supposed to get this point across, but not being familiar with the rules outlined in the source material, I wasn't quite sure what to make of them. |
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myrosin
Posts: 1 |
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Honestly this anime is shit.. I love berserk I have all the volumes but it saddens me to see such poor effort put into one of my favorite manga.. Honestly a team of 2 could do better animation then this shit cgi+2d animation i don't understand why they cant just animate my favorite manga properly. They even said before they started this that they were doing it for the fans of the manga but i don't see that at all.. I am losing hope with this company and slowly turning to a vote of zero confidence.
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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To be honest I expected Jacob to be way harsher given how gross and gratuitous Farnese's rape was. Like I said in the series thread, it served no narrative purpose because what it achieved in the manga (which was already a very flimsy excuse) had already been accomplished earlier in the episode when the dog guy licked her. And really, did we need to see Farnese sexually abused/threatened/humiliated three times in the span of twenty minutes? As if being conveniently half-naked through the entire episode wasn't bad enough. Farnese also is the second main female character that is subject to rape as a way to break/transform her character, and that rape is also framed in a titillating manner.
I was a huge fan of the 1997 anime, which I watched some five or six years ago. Recently I started reading the manga and came to appreciate the anime even more seeing how much disgustingly unnecessary content was removed -particularly spoiler[the dog demon dude who tries to rape Casca with his tongue-dick] and basically spoiler[Casca getting sexually assaulted every other chapter]-. Honestly the amount of times a woman is shown to be raped in a titillating manner in the manga is awful. I'm still reading it (I'm halfway through volume 19) but I can hardly stomach it. Seeing how Jacob has shown little tolerance for titillating/sexualized portrayals of rape, and the use of rape as a gratuitous plot device, I expected him to go more at length about it, or at least explain why people don't see it as troublesome when it comes to Berserk About Casca looking so white, I remember noticing she was severely bleached out in the Golden Age movie trilogy, so maybe the studio is going for the same. Why they would do it is beyond me (I'd hesitate to call it racism but at the same time I can't think of another explanation). Maybe it was a weird aesthetic choice for the flashbacks, it wouldn't make sense for them to make her white when later on in the manga arc that this is supposed to cover spoiler[she is going to be referred to as "the Black Witch"] |
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CaRoss
 Posts: 457 |
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Why is it that out of all the new anime adaptations for manga from the 90's, the only one to really excel was Ushio and Tora? While Sailor Moon Crystal has definitely picked itself up, and Parasyte started out strong, both of those had some serious issues as well.
Add onto that the fact that Berserk seems to be struggling somewhat under its presentation and I'm a little shocked. This series has some utterly amazing storytelling, something that is blessedly still present within this adaptation, but one would think that more money and effort would be put into something like this. You wouldn't really think that this would be a series given to the studio behind the last few Teekyu sequels and a completely unknown secondary studio. That said, I am enjoying this series from a story perspective. Miura's a crazy brilliant writer, and artist (though that seems to have less bearing here than it should), and has left a definite mark on Dark Fantasy with this series. It's fascinating to explore these troubled characters and I cannot wait to see how the whole thing progresses overall. Also, Serpico has easily won the position of my favourite character already. There's something about that archetype that he is currently filling that's just awesome, and some acquaintances who have read more of the manga have implied that he only gets more awesome from there. |
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Caramichael
Posts: 114 |
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As a manga reader I like the ramblings of Jacob as he tries to guess what will happen to the characters and the elements of the story.
I can't correct you without spoiling things for later, however you could search the Secret Chapter (Chapter 83) on the internet which was removed from publication as Miura felt it revealed too much plot points at the time. It is set during the Eclipse and is basically Griffith point of view during his transformation and tackle this issue. But knowing you come for a Christian background I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on it. Same way, I don't want to spoil too much but a lot of characters have some nice evolution during the course of the series, especially those who came in contact with Guts, so look forward to it 
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Chacranajxy
Posts: 14 |
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This was a very... generous review. I'm over how awful the show looks -- we all know it's an abomination, and there's really nothing to be said about that at this point. What bothers me more, though, is how horribly paced the whole thing is. It's not taking any time to let Berserk have its quieter, more thoughtful moments like the manga or the original series did. It's basically Berserk for the ADD generation -- you're gonna see violence, broadcast-friendly nudity, and attempted horse rape... and while those things are cool, that's not really why Berserk is great.
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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This is one of the primary reasons I haven't read the manga, and yes, I do have a problem with it. Unfortunately, because I am reviewing Berserk, I can't just go on and on about this obvious stumbling block of the source material every time. It's sorta the same thing with Game of Thrones; if you're watching Berserk at this point, you know it has gratuitous rape in it. The women get raped, the men get raped, the children get raped, literally all three of our core main trio have been raped multiple times. That either doesn't bother you or you've made peace with it because you really want to see what else happens in the generally well-written story. But yeah, the sheer level of unnecessary rapin' that happens in Berserk really brings the experience down and forms another one of the key reasons that the anime is my Berserk experience of choice, I don't really see the need to read the manga. I'm sure Berserk 2016 will have a lot of that rapin' in there, but maybe like the original anime, they'll cut some of it. They're obviously cutting and combining a lot of different monster fights and encounters to begin with, which is a-okay by me, because the post-Eclipse material meanders a lot according to friends of mine who've read it. So yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with this series. ^^; |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I'm just sad that Slug Count and Lost Children were cut out, since they were both good arcs that allowed a lead up to Conviction. Slug Count especially, since you get the God Hand and Guts in the M.C. Escher painting.
Also for the rape aspect; they all get raped and them horribly disemboweled or worse, or then they also, spoiler[from the TWICE removed Wyald chapters from right before the Eclipse, get de-limbed and stuck on pikes.] I wonder if having that left intact would have drawn away some from the shock of what was to immediately come next, but I still would have liked to seen it animated. |
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Caramichael
Posts: 114 |
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I feel that the Lost Children Arc would have been "too much". Sure they didn't censor other thing like the rape horse but I felt that the Lost Children Arc was really hitting me psychologically (and that was surely the purpose). But I am also sad since the Lost Children is the an Arc that, contrary to the others where generally Guts only overcome his physical limitation, shows the ones he crosses psychologically. |
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jroa
Posts: 537 |
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Actually, that is not truly the case. Miura is merely given the obvious "original story" credit because everything in the new Berserk anime is based on his work, but there is nothing in the actual Japanese credits indicating he played any active role in the writing process. In the end, that rumor is probably just a mistranslation of a producer's throwaway remark. |
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Souther
 Posts: 602 |
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To be fair, Reo Kurosu was at Anime Expo, and said in English that episode 3 was an original scenario written by Miura. If I'm being honest, I think Miura came up with the scenario and worked with them a bit to work out what to cut out and what to leave in and combine, but probably not much more than that. At any rate, even if he did, I thought it was the worst episode for me.
EDIT: Forgot to mention Reo is the producer of the anime. Last edited by Souther on Sun Jul 17, 2016 4:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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I think a lot of people got stuck in the Golden Age arc and the Conviction arcs. If we had to put a horror-meter, these two are probably what break it, but the following arcs dwelve in a completely different idea, gradually making Berserk more of a high fantasy, especially in the last three arcs.
Actually, Farnese is the perfect example of Miura slowly shifting his writing to something with much more content and character.
Wyald's arc is arguably the most horror and shock-inducing, given how unnecesary it was and how Casca's role seems to have gone to the dumpster by this point. I give it the credit for being an amazing fight to give us insight on how much Guts can do against an Apostle without Dragonslayer. In my case, it didn't water down at all what came next, it only made it worse in the sense "Okay, why THRICE in a ROW?!" (Wyald tried and funnily failed, then the monsters, then Griffith). That's why I consider the movies and first adaptation take on it much better, since only the last one makes sense in the context and for the characters, it serves an actual purpose. It's not as if Guts needed more reason to go rampage mode than that. And also why I couldn't believe when not only in the OP, but also in episode 1 and 2 flashbacks they briefly show that page, censored. In the case of the OP clearly has a titillating purpose. |
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Peebs
Posts: 419 |
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That form switching is canon. I don't know if it's a way to make Puck's actions/words seem cuter or what, but he does it a lot in the manga. When I see him like that, he reminds me of a fruit fly. |
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