Forum - View topicBerserk: The Golden Age Arc (movies + TV) (w/ index).
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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1997 Series - Berserk (TV 1997) (discussed here) Movie 1 - Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I - The Egg of the King (movie) Movie 2 - Berserk: The Golden Age Arc II - The Battle for Doldrey (movie) Movie 3 - Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III - The Advent (movie) Movie Trilogy TV Cut - Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition (TV) 2016/17 Series - Berserk (TV 2016) + (TV 2017) (discussed here) Genres: action, drama, fantasy, horror, supernatural Themes: conspiracy, gore, medieval, mercenaries, military, monsters, swordplay, tragedy, ultraviolence, war Plot Summary: Guts is a young and highly skilled mercenary living in a medieval era of the Midland monarchy. During the siege of a castle, he catches the attention of Griffith, leader of a mercenary army called Band of the Hawk. As the two meet again, Guts ends up joining the notorious group. The Band of the Hawk participates in the Midland war campaign. On the bloody battlefield, they conquer decisive victories that lead them to Doldrey, an old fortress that will decide the outcome of the war. Amid all this carnage, Griffith´s words still resonate in Guts´ head and make him wonder what should he do once this conflict is over. Guts and the remainder of the Band of the Hawk join forces once again to try to rescue Griffith from the depths of Midland. This is just the prelude of a nefarious ritual intended to brand the end of the Golden Age arc. 1997 Series - (Currently not streaming) Movie Trilogy - FUNimation 2016/17 Series - Crunchyroll Movie Trilogy TV Cut - October 1, 2022 (Saturdays; Crunchyroll) ---------------------------------- EPISODE INDEX (Clicking on the episode will take you to my post that has a summary, comments, and screen-caps) Movie 01: The Egg of the King - Episode 01: The Golden Age - Episode 02: Nosferatu Zodd - Episode 03: Master of the Sword Movie 02: The Battle for Doldrey - Episode 04: Prepared for Death - Episode 05: Campfire of Dreams - Episode 06 - Episode 07 Movie 03: The Advent - Episode 08 - Episode 09 - Episode 10 - Episode 11 - Episode 12 ---------------------------------- Didn't see a thread made for the movie trilogy, so I decided to make this the main thread for those, as well as the 10-year Memorial TV Cut currently airing. At this point, I'm sure most fans of the franchise have seen the movies. And doing the math for all three runtimes, it looks like this'll be roughly 13 twenty-ish-minute episodes. When these movies came out, I wasn't a big fan of the 3DCG. Then the 2016/17 series came out, and suddenly, the movies didn't seem so bad. OLM's traditional animation for the '97 series wasn't super-detailed, either. But I'm more impressed with the craftsmanship of 2D animation versus 3D shortcuts. At least the movies' and '16/'17 series' CG isn't EX-ARM-bad. My one anime pipe dream is if Madhouse or ufotable would do a gory, sexy, uncut OVA adaptation for the whole franchise with the original '97 voice cast and Susumu Hirasawa doing the score. Hell, I'd even settle for a good U.S.-made production in the style of Netflix's Castlevania. As highly rated as both, the manga and '97 anime are, I'm surprised Berserk hasn't gotten as much notoriety since then. I guess seinen isn't as big a money-maker in Japan. Last edited by Tony K. on Sat Nov 05, 2022 12:28 am; edited 9 times in total |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 01: The Golden Age
Summary: A soldier named Guts attracts the attention of a mercenary group, The Band of the Hawk, when he kills an enemy champion during a siege. He is forced into joining the group after being defeated in single combat by its leader, Griffith. ---------------------------------- Comments: Looking back and forth between this and the '97 series, there's actually some really good art for the character closeups. It looks sharp and a little too clean, lacking that detailed grittiness that Miura's artwork is known for (which is part of what made him so great, may he rest in peace). But I tried to take screencaps that highlighted more of the characters and some background details and less of the CG hordes of soldiers, sieges, and horses most people tend to dislike. The animation isn't too bad, either, especially when there are just a few people on the screen. Some of the more subtle movements and CG hordes feel a little weird, but for the most part, the important sequences have what they need. Musically, Shiro Sagisu has always been a very dependable composer. Evangelion, Kare Kano, and Bleach have some really great themes and pieces. The man has a knack for traditional classical instrumentation with the occasional electronic twist for good measure. And as much as I love Susumu Hirasawa, I feel like Sagisu's work gives the show a little more medieval ambiance. The ending song by Mika Nakashima seems like an odd choice. I'm familiar with her work and think she's an awesome vocalist. But her forte is jazzy romantic ballads, which Berserk is neither jazzy, nor romantic. The voice work is okay. Guts' and Casca's seiyuu don't have much of a portfolio, but all they have to is sound pissed off most of the time. Takahiro Sakurai, however, has been gold for the last 15 years, and he's very charismatic as Griffith. It's more of a bishounen-esque charisma than what Toshiyuki Morikawa had, but I like it. ---------------------------------- Caps:  
 
 
 
 
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 02: Nosferatu Zodd
Summary: The Band of the Hawk are employed by the Kingdom of Midland for its Hundred Year War against the Tudor Empire, and Griffith rises in the kingdom's hierarchy after a successful battle. During another siege, Guts and Griffith encounter the demon Nosferatu Zodd, who notices the pendant around Griffith's neck and warns Guts that Griffith will be his doom. ---------------------------------- Comments: The episode begins with a pretty spoiler-filled montage of things to come. So if, for some reason, you have absolutely no idea what's going to happen, prepare to be spoiled, or just skip to about the 5:50 mark. As for the actual story content, it very quickly glosses over the Hawks' battle and pretty much skips the team-building camaraderie that's supposed to be there, which is a shame, because I feel it really diminishes the effectiveness of, what will be, the tragic end to this arc. After that, Griffith gets knighted, and they skip some more of the political buildup, then jump straight to the introduction of Zodd, then manage to condense that a bunch, as well. This is why I keep pushing for a hard-MA-rated TV series or a take-all-the-effing-time-you-need OVA route. Movies tend to cut a lot out, sometimes really important stuff. Why leave good stuff out, when you don't have to? Anyway, there's quite a bit of CG in this whole episode because of all the army battles and action sequences. But I will say it makes Zodd's demon form look pretty awesome. So, at least, there's that. ---------------------------------- Caps:  
 
 
 
 
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 03: Master of the Sword
Summary: Griffith's rise in status is ill-received by Midland's noblemen, and there is a failed assassination attempt on Griffith by the king's brother, Julius. Griffith charges Guts with murdering Julius, but Guts also accidentally kills the noble's young son. Emotionally scarred by his actions, he overhears Griffith say that The Band of the Hawk are his comrades, but for people to be friends they must purse their own dreams and not someone else's. ---------------------------------- Comments: Welp, they cut out a semi-important conspirator sub-character, a lot of political intrigue, and even a whole castle raid to build the Band of the Hawk's reputation, then skipped right to Julius. It's the little things, like this, that make the slow-burn buildup for this entire arc so great; and they just left it on the floor. One day.. One day, this franchise'll get the complete adaptation it deserves. The main thing you can take away from this, however, is that Griffith is still ambitious, and Guts will do whatever he says. But it's also at the point where their paths start to diverge from one another, as apparent from Griffith's little speech to Charlotte about people pursuing their dreams. Griffith is an interesting character in that he has ambition, is charismatic, and possesses the capacity for kindness. Yet at the same time, he's also quite brutal in pursuit of said goals and won't let anything get in his way. It'll eventually turn into a very polarizing kind of dichotomy down the road. Conversely, Guts feels way less developed in these movies than the old '97 series. These movies omitted a lot of those little things that highlight the roller coaster of his journey from starting off as a volatile brawler, turning into to the broken down man he will become, the resurgence he has to pursue his own dreams, and then back down to a man who lost it all and is out for vengeance. It's frustrating to see that so much potential went waste, here. But at least it looks and sounds good. ---------------------------------- Caps:  
 
 
 
 
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2596 Location: Germany |
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Ep 4 is the first that includes new footage instead of removing it. Sigh. I would not have noticed that there was new stuff if I wasn´t told what to look for. So it is both seamless and not spottable (in a bad way). An old scene that was now finished? To save everyone time.
The new bit starts at 14:14 and lasts till 15:25. That is what needs to be sliced into movie 2 to at least pretend that Casca has an inner life. Both characters are CG models that barely move for the entire duration, the animation is limited and closeups on the neat backgrounds and panning shots are used to pretend that this is a moving picture. I´ll eat a broom if the bonfire of dreams has more money and artistic vision put into it. |
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2596 Location: Germany |
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Ep 5: The bonfire lasts from 8:07 to 21:46 in the 1997 anime and why Griffith wasn´t removed from the rescue? His inclusion is as bonkers as removing the bonfire and makes Guts and him look like besties. Take out his model of the scenes as he already does nothing, keep Judeau´s head steady when they look at each other and replace his model with Judeau when he approaches Guts. This would be easier to do than any of the CG touchups.
Gut´s walk cycle in the 2 shots of him leaving the hill are as bad as anything in the 2016 anime and was what I expected for the whole scene. The rest looks fine but not cinema ready as the old scenes have far more "effort" put into them. Not that films 1&2 were ever cinema material. Today´s The Dragon Prince S4 premiere showed how to do limited animation CG with 2D backgrounds right. It fresh on my mind could have made me more critical and switching from 2D to 3D at random drives me bonkers in the films. The bonfire luckily settles on 3D. We got an adequate, if incomplete, take on the source. The missing bit with Griffith leads to a loss of a human element + humor and Griffith not being there explains why Guts would start talking about him. Guts being carried to the doc is a far easier cut. Viewers will also have no idea who Guts is talking about with Gaston as no one was introduced in film 1. It’s why I always liked film 3 the least. It finally looked like something but who are these people being killed? Why should I care? The source material feels reduced to somewhat tasteless gore schlock. Forget the additional opening and ending in ep 14 of 1997. The low-angle shot of Gut´s sword when he talks about it being his strength puts that version into a different dimension of quality. It really caught me off guard when I went to compare. The 2022 version instead moves the camera up the blade so it and Guts aren´t connected by the end of the shot. Why? Again, it´s all adequate and twice as long as I expected. A 5/10 ep with a 6 to 6.5/10 sequence. The 10.5 new minutes so far are of course deeply needed. Film 2 is being improved so far. No question. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 04: Prepared for Death
Summary: While fending off the attacks by the Tudor's commander, Adon, Caska is cornered to a cliff, where she is saved by Guts. However, she passes out, nearly falling off, with Guts barely grabber her in time. But when he’s hit by an arrow, both of them fall into the river below. —— Comments: One thing that often bothered me about Casca was her jealousy towards Guts. She disliked him because Griffith “desired” him more than any other member of the Hawk, which got in her way of being Griffith’s right-hand woman. On top of that, she’s also annoyed by his proclivity for impulsive combat and jumping into fights nilly willy which, if he ends up getting seriously injured or dying, would further complicate Griffith’s ambition, and also still annoy Casca. For as tough as she’s supposed to be portrayed, especially with being the only female warrior amongst all of the Hawk, her constant tension with him always came off as petty, to me. Even after he selflessly saves her from falling off a cliff, uses himself to shield her unconscious body from crashing into a river, and prevents hypothermia with his body heat, she’s still mad at him. And it took fighting off *100* soldiers just a for a *chance* for her to escape for her to realize he’s not such a bad guy, after all! Granted, Casca had a rough childhood resulting from, at least, one, if not many shitty men in her life. But the fact that Guts had to “prove” himself to such a degree feels a bit overboard. Thankfully, these course of events pretty much mark the end of her anti-Guts attitude, so thank goodness that’s over. —— Caps:  
 
 
 
 
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Episode 05: Campfire of Dreams
Summary: After Guts fends off 100 men for Casca to escape, she returns with the Hawk to find him tired and bloodied. During a celebratory campfire, he tells her of a revelation he had about pursuing one’s own dream. ---------------------------------- Comments: We get a short amount of downtime and a glimpse into the divergence between Guts and Griffith. Griffith has some pretty big ambitions. But as referenced in his speech to Charlotte, he doesn’t consider anyone a “friend" unless that person is pursuing his/her own dream. By that logic, while he claims everyone in the Hawk is his comrade, they’re also expendable, because his charisma will make them trust and do anything he says. Guts realizes that every soldier in the Hawk has their own dreams and that each little fire is representative of that hope and, in turn, creating the large inferno that is Griffith’s ambition. However, Guts claims to have known nothing but battle all his life and starts to wonder what exactly he’s fighting for. I think this says more about the effects of battle/war than anything else. The bigger the ambition, the steeper the slope to climb. And here, you’ve got Guts who has a such a high body count, but no mountain of his own to call a goal. Fighting is simply in his nature, and he doesn’t know what the heck to do with it, other than let people use his strength to their advantage. One of the cool things about Guts, though, is his bluntness. He’s a tough dude and really vicious in battle, but he doesn’t beat around the bush and also says whatever’s on his mind. It’s almost shounen-esque how honest he is. At least he’s getting to the point of thinking about himself, as opposed to doing for others and simply trying not to die in the process. Even with how truncated these movies are compared to the ’97 series and manga, they’re making a stride to setup the big turning point. ---------------------------------- Caps:  
 
 
 
 
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2596 Location: Germany |
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Ep 7: The bar conversation with Judeau starting at min 10:08 is new to the films. It lasts till 20:08 so exactly 10 minutes are new but 2 minutes of it has to be stock footage. It's all cheaply animated (no budget for winter cloth models could be found), badly directed and has tons of stock footage but is the longest of 3 new scenes so far. The Bonfire had more new footage made for it of course. Korcus is also missing so the character conflict is removed this time. Lame. The end result is so cheap and missing context that no new info is brought to the screen. A memorable scene in the manga/97 anime has now been reduced to exposition. Exactly what I feared the ME would be finally comes true.
Only episodes 4, 5 and 7 have new footage but all those scenes are already in Berserk 97 and in longer form. Episode 12 or 13 is confirmed to have new footage of Guts using Skullknight´s sword during his declaration of war. It might be the only new scene not found in the 97 anime. Film 2 was improved in the ME but film 1 lost a few short bits as it was crammed in just 3 episodes and is worse off here. The CG was touched up in most scenes so far but still sucks. Film 3 always had better CG so new improvements might lead to a solid look from episode 9. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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[Reserved for ep. 6]
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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[Reserved for ep. 7]
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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[Reserved for ep. 8]
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2596 Location: Germany |
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Ep 9: The new scene starts at 16:30 and proves that this team is as bad a choice as the 2016/17 one to adapt the manga. Guts attacking Casca being skipped in the 1997 anime and the 3rd film was always a black eye for both but seeing it adapted this cheaply hurts. Skipping vital scenes might be the right choice if the alternative is something this tasteless and thrown together. The jumps between the feature budget animation and whatever this 2D animation is is also an eyesore. Easily my least favorite new scene. The scene ends at 22:57. Having this many scenes with credits over them is mind-boggling.
A few bits that ep 1-3 skipped from movie 1 have shown up later btw. Formerly missing scenes from Gut´s flack back are used here for example. https://berserk-me.com/ The countdown on the site for the ME ends in 2 weeks. On the day ep 11 (of likely 13) airs. Griffth´s sacrifice will happen halfway through that ep or at its end if a few new bits are inserted over the next 2 weeks. No one knows that this Crimson Behelit countdown exists as no one knows this expanded cut exists so few will be disappointed if nothing happens. The only way for Berserk adaptations to get out of the muck is to re-start with Vol 1. That ain´t happening any time soon so the 2nd best choice is to get nothing. At least the post-mortem releases by Studio Gaga and Kouji Mori are bringing the heat. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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[Reserved for ep. 9]
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11443 Location: Frisco, TX |
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[Reserved for ep. 10]
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