[2022] Berserk: The Golden Age MEMORIAL EDITION

You could link to it and we could weigh in.
I saw something about it too. Pretty sure it's about this scene from the intro of Episode 2.
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I'd be thrilled if they extended the ending to show Guts declare war and become the black swordsman. Ideally we would see Casca give birth, Rickert and Erica helping with armor, and a proper intro to the Dragon Slayer. That might be a big ask though.

For Redux I had to rely on the Musuo for Casca's birth, and extensive voiceover work with some voice actors over some reworked footage. There has never been a proper adapation of what happens between the Eclipse and Guts already being the Black Swordsman. Hopefully, they do it as a bridge into a new series. And hopefully, it's not so lazy that they combine all the scenes into one.

A Studio 4c take on Blackswordsman and Lost Children could be really interesting, especially with more modern techniques and lessons learned.
 
I would honestly prefer 2D to the CG. While it wasn't as artistic or picturesque as 1997 was, the 2D animation in the trilogy was mostly really well done. Black Swordsman / Lost Children would be really interesting to see in general but I fear it wouldn't hold up for a good adaptation if in the same style (visually and musically) as the movies / Memorial Edition.
 

Aazealh

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I loathe posting such non-news but the Mirage collaboration song between Mika Nakashima and Shiro Sagisu will play in the credits of episode 8 in place of Wish. Not that anyone cares.
 
I guess it makes sense to use it at the end of the material from the second movie, since the music of the song is a direct reprise of the ending credits of the second movie.

Speaking of the songs, I'm puzzled as to why they haven't announced a release of the new Susumu Hirasawa song yet.
 
The animation in the latest episode was the most awful so far, and by a long shot.
Seeing scenes where they blend 2D and 3D together is so disorienting, espically when the camera move so fast...

ohhh man I'd kill for a complete 2D adaptaion of Berserk, when they do it right its beautiful:ubik:
 

Aazealh

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Episode 8 was mostly untouched, as anticipated. It starts with a replay of the end of episode 7, like I thought. But they strangely linger on the tavern scene for over a minute... Then it cuts to Guts arriving on top of the hill where they all are and it continues from there. The episode's actual content starts at 2:10, when Rickert responds to Guts. Notably, they added a few seconds of internal thought from Judo at around 5:25. The intro starts right after that, and things resume at 7:05. Nothing much beyond that, except they shortened the fade to black after the duel.

As a side note, I had forgotten how cringey their changes to the Charlotte scene are. Also, since they cut all the developments with the king that are in the manga, Griffith's talk to him in the dungeon feels pretty unwarranted. It's quite a mess. Other than that, it's worth noting that some parts were censored for the TV broadcast (the sex scene, no doubt), but are available untouched on streaming services.

The special ending credits are... nothing special. Basically a 1:30 version of Mirage, and the visuals are some cheap effects superimposed on a few of the imitations of Miura's artwork that had been done for the movies. It's available here without the credits.

Episode 9 will likely be unremarkable as well.
 
Episode 9 will likely be unremarkable as well
Maybe not after all...

Today was published the interview with composer Shiro Sagisu, and while it was mostly unremarkable (and not even talking about music most of the time), there are two interesting things mentioned here: a total of 13 episodes for the Memorial Edition (that would be 5 episodes to adapt the 3rd movie, but iirc with its runtime it could be done in just 4) and that he wrote new music for a scene in ep.9 about Guts' childhood. No further details are added, but I'm wondering if they will do some of the major adjustments needed for the upcoming events, between Skull Knight's first appearence, showing the Donovan / Gambino flashback in order to have a more faithful adaptation of the Wounds chapters. It's too early to tell, but I'm really curious to see what (and if) they will fix another one of the major issues of the trilogy like this.

By the way, later in the interview Sagisu mentioned 12 episodes (even though he wasn't talking about the total amount) so maybe that "13 episodes" was a typo.
 

Aazealh

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Today was published the interview with composer Shiro Sagisu, and while it was mostly unremarkable (and not even talking about music most of the time), there are two interesting things mentioned here: a total of 13 episodes for the Memorial Edition (that would be 5 episodes to adapt the 3rd movie, but iirc with its runtime it could be done in just 4)

I broke it down in an earlier post but basically I expect there will be 13 episodes in total. They would need to cut material aggressively to fit everything in just four more episodes.

he wrote new music for a scene in ep.9 about Guts' childhood. No further details are added, but I'm wondering if they will do some of the major adjustments needed for the upcoming events

Ah, that's interesting. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not expecting extensive changes. Purely based on the run time, there's a natural cut where episode 9 should end (the rescue expedition) that doesn't leave much room for new material. That said I'm curious to see whatever it is they've done. Maybe we'll be surprised.
 
I broke it down in an earlier post but basically I expect there will be 13 episodes in total. They would need to cut material aggressively to fit everything in just four more episodes.
Right, I recall seeing an estimation earlier, I didn't remember the details. Thanks for linking it!

Ah, that's interesting. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not expecting extensive changes. Purely based on the run time, there's a natural cut where episode 9 should end (the rescue expedition) that doesn't leave much room for new material. That said I'm curious to see whatever it is they've done. Maybe we'll be surprised.
Yeah, as it is there isn't room for much change. If I were in charge of the changes I'd use those 3 minutes off of the Skull Knight introduction scene from the trilogy and use that time at the beginning of the episode for the proper manga-faithful introduction, without requiring extra runtime. And if they really want to tap into the Guts childhood flashback before the lovemaking scene, I think they could move those Griffith in prison scenes that open the third movie to the next episode.
Hopefully we might get more information of what they'll do from the first screenshots of the episode, which should be uploaded on the website tomorrow.
 
Hopefully we might get more information of what they'll do from the first screenshots of the episode, which should be uploaded on the website tomorrow.
Screenshots are out, but there's nothing concrete to speculate on here: https://berserk-me.com/story/?id=09
As always I should lower my expectations :ganishka:
These don't exclude changes or new material but curiously enough, for all previous episodes having new stuff they always did show at least one image.
 
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Here are two new scenes from the end of the Memorial Edition, sourced from a 2023 calendar. That's looks like some sweet 2D animation at least!
I guess they're planning to end the memorial edition with a bang... Somewhat.
These still shots do look pretty good though, can't say I'm not interested to see that scene re-animated. It was horribly done in the 3rd movie.
Also, don't get your hopes up for the scene to be fully 2D animated, as we saw in the episode 2 intro, it's definitely going to still be 3D, we might get a few 2D close-ups at best.
 
Yeah, I remember that scene, even though honestly I didn't notice it at first viewing. I take it that they'd use CG for most scenes but can do 2D for closeups (if they want). As long as the CG doesn't look awful (like the ugly walk in the Bonfire of Dreams or the tavern scene), I guess I'm fine with it.
 
Two new visuals for Guts and Griffith drawn by Naoyuki Onda have been released. They're also available in textless and larger res on the main website (here and here). I wish there had been one for Casca as well but alas, I suppose they don't consider her a main character... :judo:
I like that they went with Miura-inspired artworks, but they're not that great overall. I guess that not drawing Berserk characters for a decade shows here :ganishka:
I wonder if these will be used for the (eventual?) home video releases.


For those interested, there are also clips that show him drawing the visuals on Twitter. I find it a fashinating sight.
 
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The ending of episode 8 is so good, the mashup they did with blood and guts is solid, and the visuals are also nice.
Moments like the ones in this episode are reminding me why I love Berserk so much, this is truely a masterpiece of a story.
 

residentgrigo

Excitement and Enjoyment!
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 hurt. 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.
 

Aazealh

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So, episode 9 does have 6m20s of new footage. More than I thought they could cram in there, to be honest.

They did the intro credits during Griffith's hallucinatory flashback to save time. Some small cuts were also made to quicken the transitions between scenes. Casca's face was redone in a few scenes during the Silat fight and her talk with Guts. Guts' face was redone in a scene too. This is just the usual improvements they do, but it's notable that these don't really look better than the original ones IMHO.

It seems like they added a few seconds of footage during the love scene at 16:40, where Guts is shown opening Casca's legs. Maybe that was a pre-existing Blu-ray only "unrated" scene though, I'm not sure. I'm not going to bother myself comparing between versions. In that same vein, parts of the scene were censored during the TV broadcast, but the Crunchyroll version is untouched.

They also lengthened the scene by a few seconds at 17:25, but Guts is still very much made to be a quick shot with how it's edited. Embarrassing.

At 17:30, new footage begins. It reuses some of the material from Guts' previous flashback, but it's mostly new stuff, and the first picture makes it very clear he was raped as a kid, unlike the existing dream-like sequence. However, since it's inserted at the wrong time in the sequence of events (compared to how it happens in the manga), the way he ends up strangling Casca feels like a continuity error, it's a bit nonsensical. On a positive note, the dialogue is mostly faithful.

Visually, the 2D is passable in close-ups, but looks embarrassingly amateurish in wide shots.
They also give Guts some ridiculous eye movements when he tells Casca about Gambino (eyes moving independently from one another), which just looks stupid. Frankly, it's kind of an insult to the character and to the gravity of what's depicted in the scene.

For @Imperivm97, the new music starts at 22:25. I would describe it as unmemorable. The end credits start at 23:30 and are overlaid on the scene while it keeps playing. The new footage ends at 23:50. The music ends at 24:00. The episode runs overtime at 25:04 and ends abruptly as Guts and Casca lie on the blanket, right before the transition to the Skull Knight scene. Makes me wish they'd salvage it in episode 10 by not having SK appear to Guts while he's naked with Casca right next to him but inexplicably impossible to wake. Sadly, that'd be be too much work.

I have to say, it is truly painful to watch this mangled version of the story. I appreciate the Memorial Edition's efforts to right some of the wrongs of the movie trilogy, but unfortunately it's just not enough.
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
Thanks Aaz for these episode summaries! You're taking one for the team here! :ubik: I had happened to see some screenshots from the love scene on Twitter, so I was curious to see how it was revised. To be honest, I was surprised that they had decided to include it at all, just because the previous edition had completely avoided the more important aspects of that segment.

It's a shame that it sounds like they didn't use this opportunity to better convey what Miura put down on the page for this. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that it's a part of the series that's very dear to my heart, and plays such a crucial role in understanding everything about Guts and Casca and their relationship. I can't think of much to say, except that I'm heartbroken that other newer series nowadays get the VIP adaptation treatment, and Berserk continues to be misunderstood and misrepresented. :sad: It's right there in the volumes, come on!!
 
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Thanks guys for the posts here and @Léon-Solide for the comparison, great work as usual. I am surprised to see they went with all this stuff! Maybe I'll watch it tomorrow if I have enough time.

In that same vein, parts of the scene were censored during the TV broadcast, but the Crunchyroll version is untouched.
Just out of curiosity, how is the censoring applied here? Just adding some dark spots (like I saw JoJo do during TV broadcast) over some areas or they are re-editing stuff to have the scenes less explicit?

This part cracked me up so much, they literally rotated 90 degrees. Is Casca okay??
Holy shit, that looks so painful to watch. It just shows how cheaply this project was made with. Tbh I'm surprised they went 2D here instead of CG.

Btw on Twitter surfaced an image preview of next episode and it shows the SK scene just like it was in the trilogy.
Three changes given, none taken to get it right, unbelievable.
 

Aazealh

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It's a shame that it sounds like they didn't use this opportunity to better convey what Miura put down on the page for this. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that it's a part of the series that's very dear to my heart, and plays such a crucial role in understanding everything about Guts and Casca and their relationship. I can't think of much to say, except that I'm heartbroken that other newer series nowadays get the VIP adaptation treatment, and Berserk continues to be misunderstood and misrepresented. :sad: It's right there in the volumes, come on!!

Well, like I said above, it does feel like the skeleton crew working on this TV edit tried its best to course-correct towards being more faithful to the manga. The problem is that the movies were such a bad adaptation to begin with, there's only so much that can be done without starting over from scratch. It might be unfair to say they're just polishing a turd, but it definitely feels like it's "too little, too late" to make it worthwhile.

To me those movies will always be a huge missed opportunity for the series, and this memorial edition doesn't change that.

This part cracked me up so much, they literally rotated 90 degrees. Is Casca okay??

Yeah I winced when I saw that. Embarrassing stuff.

Just out of curiosity, how is the censoring applied here? Just adding some dark spots (like I saw JoJo do during TV broadcast) over some areas or they are re-editing stuff to have the scenes less explicit?

No idea, I'm just going by the official announcement, I didn't bother checking it out. I'm watching each episode exactly once and never again. I'm really just doing it so I can document it here for other people.

Holy shit, that looks so painful to watch. It just shows how cheaply this project was made with. Tbh I'm surprised they went 2D here instead of CG.

To be fair, that's the laziest one they did. The rest isn't quite as badly animated. There are several very poorly drawn scenes however.
 
No idea, I'm just going by the official announcement, I didn't bother checking it out. I'm watching each episode exactly once and never again. I'm really just doing it so I can document it here for other people.
I see, from your comment I misunderstood that you were watching the TV broadcast first and the uncensored version later.
 
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