Berserk Golden Age Arc I: Egg of the Supreme Ruler [Review]

How would you rate this movie?!

  • AMAZING. Loved every second!

    Votes: 21 13.1%
  • Enjoyable, but disappointing in certain aspects.

    Votes: 66 41.3%
  • Indifferent. It is what it is. Nothing more.

    Votes: 10 6.3%
  • Meh. I'll only keep watching cuz it's Berserk, but I'm not happy with it at all.

    Votes: 34 21.3%
  • HORRIBLE... it's an abomination to Berserk and Miura.

    Votes: 29 18.1%

  • Total voters
    160
Kavaron said:
Just watched the movie. I think it was amazing. Simply the best animated movie ever IMO. How could you not like it? All the battles were top notch with blood and crazy moves. Guts was simply terrifying! Only scene I thought was worse than the TV series was the Nosferatu Zodd one which felt empty and did not give me the chills. Maybe it was the music, maybe they made it too short, I don't know...

Preview for part 2 looks even better. I can't wait to see the 100 slain in top notch animation...

9.5/10 from me!

Not sure if top notch. From the preview it looks like a terribly awful CG. Probably worse than anything in the first movie
 
SuperVegetto said:
From the preview it looks like a terribly awful CG. Probably worse than anything in the first movie
To be technical the entire film is cg....the 2d was done digitally, no one uses cells anymore. The correct term would be 3d, and while it may not be great I don't think it's any worse than the first movie.
 
Watched it today with my brother and a friend. While we are all familiar with the manga, I told them beforehand that the animation will probably suck and is full of CGI and the runtime is too short.
But then I'm positively surprised that I was satisfied with the animation. Visible CGI stuff was all over the place but in comparison to the trailers and screenshots I saw before the movie I never felt disturbed by it in the real movie, when all was moving smooth and fast, with horses and Zodd probably the exception, but still acceptable. One thing that really showed the lack of skill of the animators though were the faces. Griffith looked like a totally different character at least 10 times in this movie. Casca in the beginning,... omg, improved later but nowhere like in the manga. While they gave Guts probably the most care, there were also some awkward moments. Minor characters ... well it's hard to fuck them up in the 3 seconds they had ... they still managed somehow though, at least in the case of Judeau.

I don't think we need to discuss the numerous omissions. While I still hold some hope for the next installments I can't see those magically becoming better with the overall lack of character development for all characters in the first movie. There's just too much missing: introduction of various characters and motives, background of Guts (childhood), relationships between characters, some characters were left out, etc..

While this is really an insult to "we want this to be faithfull", it's a good example on how to not adapt a movie. You can't just go, cut important events for character development because of runtime restrictions, only leave some flashy action sequences and think this will work out somehow. Who will care about Pippin getting killed in the third movie when he wasn't ever introduced to us properly in the first movie? I would even go so far and say, better spend more time with the small stuff like this in the first movie and cut less important stuff later like Wyald (though I'm very much looking forward to possibly seeing him). They really fucked this one up!
 
I thought the movie was okay. I'm hard-pressed to say anything about it, really, it's just a mediocre adaptation that manages to be enjoyable thanks to having good source material. It didn't do anything so particularly bad either that I really want to bash it. (Griffith flying on a few occassions made me laugh out loud, which probably wasn't the intended reaction :griffnotevil:)

I wouldn't recommend this first part for anyone, though, simply because it's not really a freaking movie. They didn't make any effort to end it at a point that could make the movie stand on its own, on the contrary, they rub it in your face that this is only part one of three: Only after you have all the three parts will you have one complete, slightly longer movie. If anyone has the patience, I'd thoroughly recommend waiting until part three comes out, and just watching them all back-to-back.
 
I enjoyed it. It wasn't the best adaptation I've seen, but its Berserk, and if it gets more people to discover the amazing story, and the manga its done its job. Some of the animation was a little jarring.. but I fell in love with Berserk by watching the original anime, which had cameras sweeping over still images instead of actual animation. I'll add more later, after watching it 10-20 more times :guts:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Predictably the film is a hit with the fanboy, apologist, and "people that just like cartoons" demos. :guts:

Some thoughts from the last few pages of this thread...

Truder said:
this movie is far from the quality of the manga, but if the shitty '97 anime could get a large amount of fans for Berserk, then I am certain this movie will get even more fans for Berserk

Except the shitty '97 anime was sadly much better than this, both as a faithful adaptation of Berserk (seriously, I feel relatively ungrateful now) or just as a coherent, flowing story in its own right. I guess it's the "classic" Berserk anime now.


In any case, I'm not buying the trumped up backlash of the backlash against the film. People aren't trashing it because they're oversensative Berserk fans, they're trashing it because it's a bad movie. Conversely, people praising it aren't doing so because it's good, but because they're overstimulable Berserk fans (or one of the things I mentioned above, or worse, brand loyalists). As many have pointed out now, objectively this film is an awful mess that's more of a would-be highlight reel than a movie. Again, it's just a bad movie period, regardless of Berserk content. That it also distorts Berserk while being bad doesn't make me want to like it more (weird, huh?). Not sure why anyone would feel differently other than helpless devotion to... liking stuff? Positivity?

People that were hot for a new anime should be doubly disappointed because... this is it. Have fun pretending to like it the rest of your days, unless we get something even worse in 15 years you can pretend is better because it uses the latest in cheap non-animation techniques (seriously, before they used to draw a still and move it in front of the camera, now they don't even draw anything).

Anyway, the fact that the big defense of it, for those positivists honest enough to acknowledge the elephant in the room, is "it's not so bad" is telling in itself. Not only is that not very enthusiastic, that's not an argument for it, that's not even a take; it's more a state of mind somewhere between positive and apathetic ("whatever, it's bad, but I'm going to like it anyway"). I don't mind people liking it for whatever reason, my problem is the "it's not so bad" defense, because it IS so bad, and to say otherwise reflects back poorly on Berserk in general, which I do mind. Of course, trying to stem that tide is futile; people are going to want to express their devotion to being devoted to things. So, find pleasure in it if you will, but know that it's the guilty kind.
 
H

hellrasinbrasin

Guest
I would very much like to see what a complete analysis / comparison of the Golden Age Arc Film Project against the 97 Tv-Series iteration of the same arc would look like once all the films are released on Blu-Ray.
 
I turned to my friend and asked, "Do you get the impression that Guts does not like being touched?"

To which he replied, "No, not at all."

I saw this and I did not like it at all. The most offensive of scenes I felt was the introduction of Zodd, so non-threatening that we can talk exposition or whatever over-top of his fight with Guts apparently. But it was very, very "not that big of a deal." You should be just as terrified (I think) of his human form as his demon form, and neither were much of anything, and I seem to recall his human form looking like "just some dude." That scene shouldn't have been like that. A great disservice to Zodd. The only thing I was somewhat cool with was a liberty, and that was when Guts was falling back from the railing in the scene where Guts and Griffith reflect on their battle with Zodd. He even clutched after his sword like "I already got raped once without this thing! Fool me twice, shame on me!" But it was one of those new things that didn't really affect anything, and how unaffecting any liberty should be, especially if the story is as important as it is in Berserk. An example of a liberty I despised: when Griffith chases after Charlotte, whose horse has took off on her, he did some kind of superhuman leap from his horse ONto hers. I wasn't aware he possessed such powers before. I didn't think that was necessary at all, but there was a whole lot that I didn't think was necessary about this movie.

Everything was so ugly, and felt so detrimentally rushed; it looked like it was trying to only show the highpoints of Berserk, but they were messy, hole-filled highpoints. When Julius tried to kill Griffith, I had no idea WHY because we had barely seen him and I knew so little about him and his motives, like him being haunted by the intimidation of Griffith, that was a feeling that could have used showing. I was upset with the flashback, showing these people that you're never going to know who they are. If they show them in a later movie, then that creates a puzzle out of it, having to match flashback in movie 1 with better explained flashback/recap in movie 2 when you could have just been done with it in the first one.

I was so eager to like this, because I loved the trailer with Hirasawa and AI. But this movie was so ugly. The 3D really, really stood out and in a bad way, and the animation when they tried to mix the two together. I couldn't believe this had made it into theaters, or that it might have been a big-budgeted production. When Guts and Griffith were walking through the camp, it reminded me of the end of Blazing Saddles when there were cardboard cutouts of everyone in the town. The members of the Falcon looked that cheaply done in the background. I laughed at the difference from the manga/anime depiction of Guts and Casca's altercation versus this movie's take on it. In the manga, Guts looked ready to snap on Casca. He challenged her, he dared her to call him a mad dog again. In this movie, it looked like Guts was about to cry because Casca was picking on him, and then he would run off and go tell Griffith. I recall the fight scenes in this movie and imagine the fights later on -- the fights I want to see, even the fights that have never been animated before -- and I do not want to see them done in this way. I would rather they stop after their three movies if it is going to look like this, because this is horrible. That feather... that damned feather... never blowing off... always taunting me...
 
Handmade_lion said:
In the manga, Guts looked ready to snap on Casca. He challenged her, he dared her to call him a mad dog again. In this movie, it looked like Guts was about to cry because Casca was picking on him, and then he would run off and go tell Griffith.

Making me laugh achieved
 
I wonder if the movie is more enjoyable with good subtitles. We as fans know what is happening and what is being said, but I wonder how 'fateful' the texts/words are to the manga. Obviously since alot of scenes are raped or just missing the script will be different as well, but by how much?
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
jackalj said:
I wonder if the movie is more enjoyable with good subtitles.

Knowing the dialogue didn't help my enjoyment of the movie at all, as I specified in a previous post.

jackalj said:
I wonder how 'fateful' the texts/words are to the manga.

You mean "faithful". And to answer your question:

Aazealh said:
The dialogue mostly follows what's in the manga and when it was changed it was arguably not in a good way. What I found puzzling in your statement was the claim that Studio 4°C had some sort of vision that would come clear when having the full experience, when the dialogue didn't help anything as far as I'm concerned. For example, they depict the battle against the Black Ram as if it was incredibly desperate on Midland's side, not just risking the loss of a key position in the war, but having the king himself killed. And Julius is there in the battle, not doing much except being ineffective. Then later on you have characters babbling about how Julius had to be ransomed after being captured in another battle. What does this achieve except making Julius, Midland's best general before Griffith came around, look like a loser? And since they removed Foss and all of the more political aspects of the story, Julius is left looking like even more of a sore loser. I don't think this sort of simplification benefits the story, nor that it will help make the rest of what bothered people more palatable. Lessening the other characters also makes the achievements of the protagonists look less awesome by comparison.
 
Having recently seen this movie, I've got to say it was incredibly underwhelming. Like everyone here, I had high hopes for it when it was first announced, and the little bits that were revealed over time kept me really interested. Then I actually saw the thing :sad:

My major gripes with the movie:

-Zodd's introduction. The length of it was an issue of course, but I think the biggest crime the scene committed was removing any real sense of tension/fear. In the manga, Guts is absolutely terrified by what he's experiencing, and it's palpable: his legs are shaking, his teeth are grinding, and every blow that he blocks rocks his entire body, all the while wondering how the HELL a monster like this could possibly exist. NONE of that is present in the movie; at best Guts leaves his mouth open when Zodd transforms. There are other instances of neutered emotions too, like the mad dog scene that was referenced above.

-Removing Guts' first raid with the Hawks. The film transitioned far too quickly to the three year timeskip, glossing over the first time Guts really got to know everyone, in the process eliminating most if not all of the early development for key secondary characters and diminishing it for the major ones. In the film :judo: got all of, what, five lines? And poor Gaston had about 30 seconds of screen time, give or take.

-Opening the film with an extended battle sequence leading up to the Bazuso fight. Admittedly, it's not that I have a problem with the scene itself (although the animation was pretty poor in sections), but if they were working with a ninety minute run time, why devote so much time to it? Opening with spectacle is nice and all, but the fact that it took precedence over actual development irked me.

-The animation, which has been talked about to death at this point I'm sure, was all over the place, with some sections looking absolutely beautiful (The assassination sequence, which was my favorite part of the film), and others like the Stonehenge sequence with Guts and Griffith looking very mechanical.

I did enjoy the voice acting (although it's hard to judge it fairly since I don't know Japanese all that well) and the score was great for the most part even if it was misused in sections, with the ending credits theme being my personal favorite. The assassination sequence was also very well done, and the small changes made to the scene didn't really bother me. On the whole though, the movie left me feeling ambivalent. Really, it's far from an accurate representation of what Berserk is about. It hits the main plot points, but it sacrifices character dynamics and development in the process, and Berserk really does deserve much better than what it's getting, especially from an animation studio that's put out some really good stuff in the past.
 
hellrasinbrasin said:
I would very much like to see what a complete analysis / comparison of the Golden Age Arc Film Project against the 97 Tv-Series iteration of the same arc would look like once all the films are released on Blu-Ray.

Am I one of the only guys here who liked the 97 series? I think most fans who saw the 97 series before they read the manga are probably in the same boat. A buddy introduced me to the Berserk anime in 2002. Loving it and being curious for a sequel, I searched the new to find that I was out of luck...but wait a minute, there was this 'manga' thing that the anime was based on, and it actually continued the series!!!

After buying & reading the manga, you (I) just realize that the manga is even better, so you feel good! (progression from awesome to badass excellent is a good thing).

Based on what has been said here I will be going from Awesome (1st experience with 97 berserk) to Excellent (Manga) to Shit (new Movie)....and so ends the positive progression. Sounds like it could be a bigger letdown than The Phantom Menace.
 
Guts_100 said:
Am I one of the only guys here who liked the 97 series? I think most fans who saw the 97 series before they read the manga are probably in the same boat.

While I wouldn't be surprised if you were correct in thinking this. I for one saw the anime first, after several glowing recommendations but really didn't like it at all. I thought it was boring and kept waiting for it to get good, but out side of the final 1.5 episodes it just didn't do a very good job of keeping me interested. It was too bad because I really really wanted to like it.

About 6 months later it was summer time and I was pretty bored. Thankfully someone convinced me into checking out volume 4 of the series, and I was instantly hooked. I felt the quality in detail and storytelling was so much better that I had no problem rereading the every volume I could find and the purchasing them once Dark Horse got the NA license.
 
Having finally had the chance to see it, I feel it fair I at least share my thoughts on this new film of Berserk.

The days of ever seeing a season 2 of the Berserk Anime are gone, now in the current age we are living in when it has come to anime it's changed for better and for worse. With alot of people's expectations regarding this movie, I had high hopes for it and I really hoped that it would be every bit as good as the Anime that was back in the late 1990's and possibly much more.

I think that what this movie suffers from is trying to cram too much into too little time that it has available to do so, as we all are aware Berserk has a huge and expansive story with a detailed mythos. This movie manages to only cover a few of the basics and it does it's job in some places and some places it doesn't, while this movie did have some good points I can point some of the major problems that this movie suffered from aside from just the too much in too little.

- Right away I had a problem with the animation from the get-go, the cgi in this looks like it was pulled out of a video game and it looks almost unfinished and sloppy to look at, while it is nice to see the rest of the movie animated like anime usually is the CGI is just one set back that drags the movie down terribly. I'm aware that it would have taken even longer to animate this whole movie traditionally with only a few bits of CG to help the action scenes and save alot of money, but the CG could have been so much better in this. On a positive note though the characters were drawn beautifully and the backgrounds were just breathtaking.

- Like TheLastMariachi pointed out, Zodd's Introduction felt really rushed and that sense of fear, tension and dread Guts felt when he met Zodd really is removed from this and Zodd is just more like your standard villain who just shows up and fights the protagonist with no real drama to build up.

- As wonderful as hearing Susumu Hirasawa's Aria was in the opening of the film, this movie was missing something greatly. It was missing Hirasawa, Shiro Sagisu did a good job with the soundtrack for this. However the one thing that made Berserk work so well was Hirasawa's score, I have said once or twice that Hirasawa's music and Berserk go well together like Bread & butter and to have someone take over the music composition almost feels hollow compared to what Hirasawa did all those years ago.

There are many other complaints about this movie I could list but I know it would take forever to run them off one by one.

Final thoughts regarding this movie, While I think the movie managed to hit perfectly on some of the plot points and symbolic tones that Berserk always will have, this movie feels almost rushed without some character development and some time to step back and see characters interact with one another and have them unravel in some way, the animation for all it's flaws needed some work and to me at least...this didn't restore my faith in anime abit like I thought would abit. I was disappointed with this film.
 
I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that Zodd's arm does not get decapitated by Griffith in this adaptation--most unusual because it's something commonplace throughout the movie and even the 97 anime was able to include it. To those 3D models limit things like that in the movie?

Guts_100 said:
Am I one of the only guys here who liked the 97 series? I think most fans who saw the 97 series before they read the manga are probably in the same boat. A buddy introduced me to the Berserk anime in 2002. Loving it and being curious for a sequel, I searched the new to find that I was out of luck...but wait a minute, there was this 'manga' thing that the anime was based on, and it actually continued the series!!

The anime was pretty good for a low-budget effort. The pacing between the beginning of the Golden Age arc and Griffith's imprisonment was quite good outside of that lame Adon filler. It got a bit dodgy after that, but the most impressionable thing about it is that it ends with the Casca rape and Guts struggling in a helpless state. Definitely an attention grabber.

Though I won't lie--the animation and the American dub of that anime added about 50% more camp to series, so even if the anime did drag I'd come across a few scenes with unintentional hilarity, wither by some awkwardly animated scene or a strange delivery by one of the anime's American voice actors. I still remember some of those line deliveries to this day and have a good laugh.
 

Darkman

Obey the one Law of Tooth & Claw
Overall, I enjoyed the movie! We all have our different perspectives! Here is my 2 cents.

I do agree that Zodds appearence was less effective than the 1997 anime and overall the tone feels much less menecing. My first exposure to Berserk was the first anime and that scene got me hooked as it sent chills down my spine.

Personally I liked and enjoyed the animation, nothing bothered me about it.

For 76 Min running time Beside Zodd I felt the flow of the film was good and I thought the Directing was well done, some really interesting shots, angels and cuts.

I am going to be hopefull and say perhaps things will get better :ubik:

I am in high hopes that a Black Swordsman Arc is up and coming and is done right.

I liked the idea of the 3 Arc concept for The Golden Age but What really sucks is the only way we are going to get something identical to the manga is if the running time is up around 3 hours per movie like Lord Of The Rings. Perhaps one day we will have a live action movie that is those 3 hours long and three part concept.

All hail Peter Jackson, Please Do this and be faithful to the manga afterall the manga is literally one giant screenplay!
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Darkman said:
Overall, I enjoyed the movie! We all have our different perspectives! Here is my 2 cents.
......
I am going to be hopefull and say perhaps things will get better :ubik:
Wait, I thought you liked it?

I liked the idea of the 3 Arc concept for The Golden Age but What really sucks is the only way we are going to get something identical to the manga is if the running time is up around 3 hours per movie like Lord Of The Rings. Perhaps one day we will have a live action movie that is those 3 hours long and three part concept.
I don't believe anyone asked for "something identical to the manga." I'd have been happy with something that didn't suck.

All hail Peter Jackson,
No thank you. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers literally put me to sleep, opening night, in the theater.
 
Darkman said:
I am in high hopes that a Black Swordsman Arc is up and coming and is done right.

I liked the idea of the 3 Arc concept for The Golden Age but What really sucks is the only way we are going to get something identical to the manga is if the running time is up around 3 hours per movie like Lord Of The Rings. Perhaps one day we will have a live action movie that is those 3 hours long and three part concept.

I just hope we even get to the Black Swordsman Arc, if this trilogy doesn't do well its hard to see them bankrolling another Arc. I don't know how the anime industry works, but money talks.

Personally I've always thought if HBO or Showtime picked up Berserk and made a 10+ episode series, they could do a good job with it. Hell with Game of Thrones doing as well as it is, someone could piggy back that success and do a Berserk series.
 

Th3Branded0ne

I'll be back.
I watched it, finally!

I didn't like the opening, showing puck,black swordsman guts and skullknight. It felt as if they were telling berserk fans that here's your animated characters you didn't get in the '97 anime series. The pace was way too fast, it barely scracthes the surface on how this characters are. I felt cheated, this seemed more like a recap of the beginning of the Golden Arc. The animation wasn't the worst I have seen, but it could have been done better. Did I enjoy it, to a certain point to see it animated was exciting, but as the movie continued, that feeling of exciment came down to just watching something that was related to berserk ,but wasn't even close to the "faithful" adaptation they were talking about. My expectations weren't that high to begin with, but this even made them to be lower. I guess I'll stuck to the manga, but I"ll watch the rest of them just out of curiosity.
 
Hi everyone, this is my first post (sorry for my English).

My thoughts:

I'm not the kind of person who will cry about Casca's skin color, Genon's beard, or things like that. I'm not gonna talk about overuse of CGI and animation. Same goes with introduction of small changes that are not seen in the manga. I can even understand the need to cut out content & some characters (that we all love).

When they announced Berserk in a movie format, it was clear they will cut out so much. I mean, how could you fit everything in 280-300 min total?? There's no way! I feel sorry for people that are depressed now, because it was so obvious from the start.

And even with the missing content, I believed they would make a decent movie. A movie I can show to my friends, and even dad (likes to read comic books). Boy I was wrong.

Studio4C sucks when it comes to storytelling. I think it was possible to pull it out, even with the short amount of time. It is sad, but the first 10min is probably the best part of the movie. There are some scenes that I liked (guts & adonis scene), but overall the movie felt like a big highlight. Zodd scene was the worst part of the movie, with no build up, emotion... just empty.

I will keep watching this saga project, but I'm not happy with it.
 
I would say the first movie was fun to watch as stand alone movie. But as part of the Berserk series it is lacking.
They should have had 1:40 movie or something and include all the manga stuff instead of adding new stuff.

The only changes I like were between Caska and Guts in the bed scene. Very nice to make it more significant moment between them and why she punch him and so forth. Plus Caska looked very nice. But the flashback should have been longer and more clearer instead of grainy look and fast fwd approach.
I also liked extra fight scene length and music during the assassination scene.

I think they made a better looking Berserk for the most part, very few parts did look terrible with the CG that looked like bad video game cutscene. But for the most part the hugh battles looked better compared to the original.

I enjoyed it but hope the next movies include more of the key points of the manga like they originally promoted these movies to be strongly closer to the movies vice the anime. But the anime had more of the key scenes which is disappointing so far. So I really hope the key scenes between Caska, Guts and Griffith stay in the new movies. Please keep the romance between Caska and Guts in the movies or it won't really work in why he does fights on for Caska etc.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Joey said:
The only changes I like were between Casca and Guts in the bed scene. Very nice to make it more significant moment between them and why she punch him and so forth.

On the contrary, they made that scene a lot less significant, and I can't see how you'd like the changes there. The reason she punches him is because she was forced to sleep on top of him in a rather humiliating way. Adding the second "horse" punch lessens what actually matters.
 

Gobolatula

praise be to grail!
Casca loves her horsies in this movie. It's pretty funny. Even during her fight with Guts, she takes a quick moment to wince at the sight of her horse in pain. Oh Casca you goofball.
 
Joey said:
The only changes I like were between Casca and Guts in the bed scene. Very nice to make it more significant moment between them and why she punch him and so forth.
I enjoyed it but hope the next movies include more of the key points of the manga like they originally promoted these movies to be strongly closer to the movies vice the anime.

Contradictory statements if you ask me :carcus:.
 
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