2016 Berserk TV series: Episode 2

What did you think of the second episode of the 2016 TV series?

  • It was great.

    Votes: 5 5.7%
  • Some problems, but enjoyable.

    Votes: 29 33.3%
  • It was bad, but had some redeeming features.

    Votes: 37 42.5%
  • I hated it.

    Votes: 16 18.4%

  • Total voters
    87
  • Poll closed .

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
This is the official discussion thread for the second episode of the 2016 TV series. Post your thoughts, impressions and reviews as you see fit.
 

Feeblecursedone

"This hammer has broken Daemons on my anvil, Elf.
Done with the episode. Deciding to put Guts/Casca flashback vs 100 men during the H.I.C.K felt quite random. I can imagine how confusing its going to be to new fans when out of nowhere there are flashbacks to an uknown woman and an uknown guy ( griffith ) talking to guts. Beherit also came out of nowhere, Guts simply had it with him.

It looks they decided to use the injuries from the possessed tree as a way to restrain Guts for HICKS. Ost is still terrible and feels chooped and remixed way too much. If you already start with Blood and Guts, then finish the song without mixing it with something else.

Can't say much about else since i dont remember Farnase's dialogue 100% from that volume, but I think the voice actor for Serpico suits him. Still quite terrible but less terrible than episode 1 I guess.
 
I don't know, it was slightly better than episode 1 but that's not really saying much. They really try to force the Golden Age stuff down your throat and it gets obnoxious. And I don't see any reason why Farnese should know about the Band of the Hawk/Falcon other than cheap fan service. Animation was terrible (especially that one shot of Guts running away from Puck.) My biggest problem is the lack of good facial expressions of the characters. It really takes out all the meaning from the scenes and it feels dull (good example being Gut's interrogation. He feels so bland when he's saying all this cynical stuff and then having nothing to show for it on his face.) Music was bad. Transitions were bad.

And I guess in the next episode they're hanging out at a Resident Evil mansion instead of just a random rocky area. Don't know how to feel about that.
 

Feeblecursedone

"This hammer has broken Daemons on my anvil, Elf.
Yeah, I really prefered Nobutoushi Hayashi as Guts' voice actor than this guy, guts voice feels too monotonous and devoid of any life/emotions.

Ditto on expressions and emotions given that is Miura's one of strongest suits.
 

residentgrigo

Excitement and Enjoyment!
Yōko Hikasa was good as Farnese, the episode itself is somewhat easier to understand than the pilot and Toni´s death was funny. A true :troll: .

I felt that less movement was present, the compressed nature of the show utterly undermines the source material, the scene-direction is awful and the soundtrack is worse than in the films, just unredeemable trash. The 3D to even worse 2D (almost no animation) switching is also inexcusable, pick a style GEMBA! 3,5/10 so about the same as last time.
I expect no improvements in ep. 3 and a "highlight" ep. could be an all action showpiece down the line where the staff puts a big chunk of the budget into. 3D animation for TV usually improves over time, Green Lantern 2011 is great example, but TV anime usual “slows-down” over time. We will see.

Final impression: I started at the screen for 20 min and felt nothing. It was bad, but had some redeeming features, as we now have more even options. Why? This anime season´s worst offered Hybrid × Heart (2/10) is 100% worse and even lost a distribution partner. Lol. Just power though it GEMBA, only 10 more to go.
PS: The ultra problematic opening is now set it seems... It is the one thing i want to be changed the most, to at least have a good Youtube ad for Berserk.
 
Goosper said:
And I don't see any reason why Farnese should know about the Band of the Hawk/Falcon other than cheap fan service.

I believe this is using the films continuity, in which case Farnese, Azan, and Serpico would have been at the Celebration where the Armistice between Midland and Tudor was announced and the Band of the Falcon were elevated to peerage. Not manga canon, but it makes sense if they are using the films.
 
D

Dragon Warrior

Guest
I really hate how they skipped too much and yet... they made Guts's injuries from the tree of the last episode! It really stupid to me. They skipped too much and they didn't even show us flashbacks of what they skipped which pisses me off too much.

The injuries would have make more sense if they didn't skip those episodes or at least they showed us some flashbacks. and the new fans would understand why Guts couldn't fight well against the whole army...
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Very pleased to see that as expected, the pacing was much improved from the first episode. Everything felt more genuine, as a result. Was glad they included a lot of the smaller details and interactions between characters (Serpico and Azan's antics, most of Puck and Guts' exchanges here). Though the visuals and sound effects still hold everything back, for me. I doubt I'll be able to get over that aspect.

The biggest change, I felt, was that Farnese is able to connect the dots between Griffith-Guts of the Falcons to the current day scenario. I can somewhat rationalize their choice in giving her such deductive reasoning abilities as a means of exposition, but it's going to create problems when they try to mesh that Farnese with the manga's Farnese, who still hasn't put together the pieces.

Another problematic thing: When in the cage, Guts is muttering that he doesn't have time to waste, then says Casca's name (even though he hasn't set out to find her), but then does a double-take on his motivations after he's out of the cage, implying that he's off to find Femto. So... which is it? Seems to me like they're setting up to leapfrog Guts' return trip to Godot's place, where Guts dedicates himself to Casca. We'll see.

I lament the change in Guts and Puck's relationship. Instead of the 1-1.5 years they've been traveling together at this point, they've only known each other here for ~24 hours. That colors all of their interactions, and ... well, I just don't really like that these two don't have a real relationship yet.

The debut of Hai Yo was muddied by its timing and placement in the episode. I felt like it didn't make much sense for a heroic sounding song to be in an otherwise very unheroic moment for Guts, and by the time the dialogue started, it was spoiled by the song lyrics. Probably would have made more sense as an ending theme.

Very interested to see how Miura changes things up in the next episode. I feel like if I didn't know he was attached, I'd probably be pretty pissed about the liberties they're taking with that scenario, but with him at the helm, I'm actually intrigued to see how he'll handle things.
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
Not much to say this time. A lot of my sentiments were covered by Imperator, Aaz, and Walter in the chat, and it seems to be shared by most everyone. Anyway, less egregious than the last, but the wonky animation really ruins it. I actually liked the emotion in the tent scene where Guts tells Farnese that she's as hollow as her idol, but then the animation completely took me out of it.

I also hate all the cuts between 2D and 3D, not because it's jarring, but because it's a constant reminder of what could have been.
 
Seems like they are taking the approach of trying to get new viewers to follow this series, with Farnese providing background knowledge and all. Guts' motivation also seems to have become to find Casca, which could mean that his meeting with Godot is getting cut.
 
Delta Phi said:
I also hate all the cuts between 2D and 3D, not because it's jarring, but because it's a constant reminder of what could have been.

It's weird how there's almost no attempt to make the 2D drawings feel like they belong to one cohesive style. It's like there's no correction, whatever illustration the animators produced was immediately accepted and crammed in there. I'd understand if there was a lot of movement, but we're talking about mostly static illustrations here.

Do these screenshots seem like they belong to the same anime series?

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Yeah visually it was a complete mess as expected especially the whip scenes, and Guts' teeth something wrong there. The pacing is definitely better but has everyone already said the visuals over shadow this whole adaptation
Edit: Also white Casca confirmed... :schierke:
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
Well, this was way less of a mess than I expected for the second episode. Taking in mind that it's some sort of a follow up to the movies, some changes did not bothered me that much compared to others. I think I'll watch the complete season for I am curious now.
 

residentgrigo

Excitement and Enjoyment!
Anime studios do key frames themselves and farm out the in-betweens to god knows where but GEMBA is doing 3D works here, so i assume that the other studios had no true frame of reference to work with for the highly inconsistent 2D bits. The few detailed ones as Guts eating are good though.
 
"We passed the corpses of a man and a girl, and a number of skeletons that look like they've been dead for a thousand years THAT WAS YOU WASN'T IT?!"

What a confusing way of introducing Pucks telepathy ability, anyone who isn't familiar with Beserk will be left wondering why Puck is able to see flashbacks. And Farnese knows about the Band of the Falcon? What's the point of interrogating him if they already know who he is? it takes the spiritual grandeur out of what they're doing if they know exactly who the black swordsman is. I enjoyed the animation in the Golden Age flashbacks, though the way they're included in the episode is unnecessary and intrusive. That being said I'm looking forward next episode and the long grueling duel with Swine Apostle, quite possibly the most dangerous apostle Guts has ever fought.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
So no big surprise but I think this is much more coherent than the first episode. They mostly follow the manga panel by panel, which ensures a certain level of quality. However, no matter how good the scripts become, they can't save this from the dreadful visuals, animation and sound. It seemed obvious to me in this episode, almost more so than in the previous one, that this show has got an awfully low budget. This shows for example when Guts rushes to get to Farnese in the woods and two soldiers try to intercept him. We just hear two big frying-pan-style clangs and then see a still image of Guts having cut them down. Same technique the 1997 anime used, but somehow executed more shoddily. This also explains things like why they didn't show Azan's blows crushing rocks and trees during his fight against Guts, probably because it's too difficult or costly for them to animate.

This is most problematic during scenes where strong expressions are required, like when Farnese whips Guts in a frenzy. Her face has no expression at all, it completely ruins the effect. Despite the overall faithfulness to the manga, there's also still problems because of how they've cut through the story. For example, Guts' armpit wound sustained during his "fight" against the tree (and shown for only half a second at the time) isn't really believable here. They also skipped the part where Azan prevents his men from hurting Guts after he's down for the count, which I felt was detrimental to the establishment of his character. On another note, we knew it from previews, but the beherit is confirmed to be grey instead of green. It's a small change but I just have to wonder why change it at all? It's even worse for Casca, whose skin color is again shown as porcelain white instead of brown. A perplexing and disappointing change.

Another perplexing addition was Farnese's deep knowledge of the Band of the Falcon and her basically recognizing Guts as one of their officers. In the manga, this information still hasn't been fully put together by Guts' group, but here Farnese knows all about it. It's just so the viewers who didn't see the movies can get some exposition, but it felt problematic to me, assuming they do plan on animating more of the series. After the whipping session, we see Serpico smiling (as if Farnese's mental problems were cool to him), while he shouldn't be. Again, a detail, but it messes with the portrayal of his character during his introduction... The Hirasawa song plays during Guts' escape. I'd say it's not one of his best efforts, but it's also used stupidly, with lyrics playing over dialogue. Other than that, the music and sound effects are pretty bad.

The scene where Puck frees Guts is cut short and I guess that works, since they've known each other for such a short time in this alternate universe. It's somewhat similar to their relationship in volume 1. That being said, it's again somewhat clumsy since the rest of their interactions are straight from the manga where they're the fruit of having known each other for a while. There's also a confusing reference to Casca that Guts makes while he's imprisoned. One would assume that he's still going after Femto at this point, but that scene needlessly sows some doubt, when presumably he'll take the decision to go after her in the 4th episode (receiving the warning from his son and going to the tower directly, without going to Godot's place).

In the end, a conversation I had earlier with Imperator Hanseatic sums up my feelings on this. Even if the scripts are good enough in future episodes, they'll only ever be passable and unremarkable because the execution holds this adaptation back anyway. I guess it's better than being straight up terrible, but I still would have wanted more... Much more.
 
This was such an improvement over the first episode! The only real cringe worthy animation moment for me was when Guts was escaping in Farnese's tent. Some very poorly animated guard opens the tent to tell her Guts has escaped and the way Guts hits him and he falls back... it was a face palm moment for me.

I found the flash back to when Guts killed 100 men to be appropriate. He was tired, he didn't have Casca with him so he basically toyed with these guys instead of slaughtering them, which let's face it, he would have done had he gotten a good nights sleep.

The flash backs to Griffith are good to. They're telling us the significance of the behelit, and showing us glimpses of their friendship they used to have.

I wish this series was as well drawn and animated as the movies we got. The skies were beautiful, their attention to shading was spot on, characters were drawn pretty smoothly and consistently throughout. Hopefully we'll get there someday.

I'm cringing at the thought that next episode we might get to learn if they know how to draw the reproductive parts of a horse. :magni: We saw what they did to a rabbit's feet.
 
1. 2D animation was good for the most part. :guts:
2. Good pacing and it was nice to see that they didn't skip the minor interactions between the characters. :ubik:
3. CGI and facial expressions don't go hand in hand in this adaptation. :sad:
4. Guts gets knocked out by a couple of wounds, a piece of log to the leg and a stab to the shoulder!? :schierke:
5. No explanation for the Behelit. Farnese apparently knows that the corpses in the Red Lake were the Band of the Hawk and that Guts was a member of the group!? :???:
6. Terrible OST. :magni:
7. Please tell me we will get to see the legendary Rape Horse in the next episode.

Overall, it was better than the first episode but still has problems that take a lot away from the experience.
 

residentgrigo

Excitement and Enjoyment!
@hearTes About Farnese´s knowledge. She saw the Falcon´s in the 2nd film during during the victory ball, i guess. The show should acknowledge the film continuity though, for that to work. Not that they will. (The public knowledge that Guts is the Black Swordsman will rip more holes in the continuity later too, not that we will get that far.)
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
PENumber2 said:
I'm cringing at the thought that next episode we might get to learn if they know how to draw the reproductive parts of a horse. :magni:

Miura has written an entirely new scene for the next episode. Guts and Farnese will take refuge from the dogs in the mansion. I doubt the horse will be featured.
 
residentgrigo said:
@hearTes About Farnese´s knowledge. She saw the Falcon´s in the 2nd film during during the victory ball, i guess. The show should acknowledge the film continuity though, for that to work. Not that they will. (The public knowledge that Guts is the Black Swordsman will rip more holes in the continuity later too, not that we will get that far.)
Ah right, completely forgot about that, thanks.
 
I felt like Griffith when he got reincarnated and tried to see if Guts could make him feel anything, watching this episode but contrary to griffith my heart didn't skip a beat once and my face was blank the entire time...
 
I was pleasantly surprised to find out this didn't totally suck like the last episode. The visuals are all over the place, including flashbacks that vary a lot in quality. The colors are a bit too vibrant for my tastes and as Aaz said, a lot of the nit picking probably comes from a super low budget. The sound continues to be average to bad, with one of the worst dub step remixes of the movie score I could have imagined. I continue to stress what dog shit this lazy 'score' is and how much it hurts the experience.

However it's a pretty faithful adaptation of these episodes with only and handful of omissions and changes. I agree with Aaz on most of these, but I don't mind Farnese's detective work as it does two things for the show (I know blasphemy). It catches up new viewers or old viewers who need a refresher (it has been a while), and it gives Farnese a little bit of competence to add more conflict to the scene. She knows something about him but is drawing all the wrong conclusions. Overall I liked the scene.

The show continues to have flashbacks throughout, which I'm speculating may continue. We may get to see the Black swordsman arc in a series of flashbacks, showing the journey he's been on. That might be frustrating to have it in abridged form, but it would at least connect the dots.

It strikes me that even if we don't have a black swordsman flashback, a new viewer could watch the first episode of the old anime with the Snake Baron before the first of the new one, and it would fix a lot of my problems with it. But then again, we shouldn't have to come up with creative solutions for the studios screw ups.

A last note, it's weird that they still haven't introduced Puck's healing ability. It seems like something you'd want to establish early on here.
 
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