2016 Berserk TV series: Episode 5

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

  • It was great.

    Votes: 10 15.9%
  • Some problems, but enjoyable.

    Votes: 34 54.0%
  • It was bad, but had some redeeming features.

    Votes: 14 22.2%
  • I hated it.

    Votes: 5 7.9%

  • Total voters
    63
  • Poll closed .
Walter said:
The manga was drawn in such a way that took advantage of the medium. The animation should do the same. Instead they're relying on the exact same framing for most of the shots, and even then, they're doing it badly. So the end result is something that resembles the manga, only looks shittier.

In addition to the above, the raw emotion present in the manga is absent in the anime. The voice acting, some scene/line removals, and so on hurt the very scenes lifted straight from the source material.
 
I think this adaptation is finally coming along. The last 2 eps have been solid, and everything is just starting to flow. The clang sounds have been pretty much removed and I wonder if it was an intentional change because Godot fixed up the DS. If this is the case, at least there was some purpose for them to have such a loud and obnoxious DS sound for the first 3 eps, so that we can feel and hear the change of the DS after Godot did his thing. So if here on out the SFX are like ep 5, I will be much relieved! As each ep passes, there is less and less that takes me out of the moment and I'm really starting to get down with this anime (aside from ep 3 where everything was pretty much horrible).

Also really pleased with Luca so far. I always liked her in the manga, and cool to see her come to life in the anime. The Guts fight with the Bakiraka was enjoyable and looked pretty good in my eyes. Loved the Puck & Isidro moments as I found the humor to translate well. Casca's voice is still TBD for me, so I'm crossing my fingers for that. The multiple uses and appropriate timing of Susumu's song was very welcomed to my ears! However, they did use that song a lot this ep. I hope it doesn't get to the point where it's overused. Lastly, the ep preview looks epic as hell, so I'm super excited for ep 6!
 
I liked this episode just as much as the last episode.

During the tent scene though it was really annoying how they switched between 3D models and regular animation, because they both look identical with one major difference. When the computer animation models talk their jaws physically move up and down as they talk. The regular animation though just animates the mouths the way you'd expect to see on pretty much any other cartoon show... I don't understand why this scene wasn't just regular animation because unless the character is yelling or turning their head about there really isn't any reason for their jaw to move at all. Like why didn't they just take a screen grab or whatever of the 3D models setup in the scene and animate the mouths as you would traditional animation?
 
they keep tickling my balls with epic half second shots and immediately after showing these characters that look like a bunch of muppets with their mouths going all waahwaahwaawha
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lets be honest, a lot of these hand drawn scenes are just still shots being panned up down left right, this is especially true with the opening which a lot people give praise to for its visuals. its full of still shots that just move left right up down.

look at this shot in episode 4, were they going for a simplistic art style? or is it just poor half assed work on their part? either way it doesn't look good at all.

yM7pSqF.png
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
ApostleBob said:
No more CLANG, less power metal sound track.
DirectDK said:
The clang sounds have been pretty much removed and I wonder if it was an intentional change because Godot fixed up the DS.

You guys probably shouldn't get too hopeful yet about the clangs. They're still very much here, just less consistently so and with a less annoying sound. But if you check when Guts lifts the Dragon Slayer off of Isidro for example, even him just grabbing the handle rings like a church bell, and setting it on his back sounds like he's closing a big wooden & iron gate. Same when he kills the first four Kushans, the clang is pretty loud there. I hope they'll be gone for good in episode 6, but it's too early to celebrate.

ApostleBob said:
I don't quite get the criticisms I've been hearing that this anime is 'merely' recreating the manga panel for panel with the same dialogue. Isn't this a good thing? It feels much stronger, I remember criticisms of the movies prior to this for diverting from the manga by quite a bit in composition and content. So which is it that we want? A faithful adaptation , or a director who makes it his own.

This is a perplexing remark coming from someone who identifies as a cinephile. What Studio 4°C did with the movies was terrible because the director "made it his own" in the stupidest way possible, and showed that he neither understood nor respected the original material. He just butchered the story and characters and brought nothing to the table on a cinematographic and directorial level, outside of a couple scenes like the opening castle fight of movie 1. So being faithful to the manga is a must. But the point of having an animated adaptation is for it to be animated. If it's mostly going to be the camera panning over stating shots (check out that wacky camera work when the Bakiraka appear :ganishka:), then we don't need it. That's what people are complaining about here.

Like I told the geniuses who kept saying "an adaptation must take liberties" to justify the movies' terrible decisions (that includes choosing to adapt the entire Golden Age arc as a feature film), it is actually possible to do an adaptation that is both very faithful to the original material and yet takes full advantage of its own medium. It's just a matter of knowing what you should be faithful about. There are many examples of such successful adaptations from manga to anime. But it requires the people working on it to actually be good at their job. That wasn't the case with Studio 4°C and it isn't the case with whoever's working on this (to be fair they clearly don't have the budget for it anyway).
 

nomad

"Bring the light of day"


Pretty much the only single shot I have enjoyed through this entire series. I see flaws, but still love the look.
 
Aazealh said:
You guys probably shouldn't get too hopeful yet about the clangs. They're still very much here, just less consistently so and with a less annoying sound. But if you check when Guts lifts the Dragon Slayer off of Isidro for example, even him just grabbing the handle rings like a church bell, and setting it on his back sounds like he's closing a big wooden & iron gate. Same when he kills the first four Kushans, the clang is pretty loud there. I hope they'll be gone for good in episode 6, but it's too early to celebrate.
Well, i can understand it making a sound when he grabs it with his metal hand because it has magnets in it to let him grip the sword, but i just checked and he grabs it with his real hand. :mozgus: Wow. :ubik: Great i was trying to be positive and this is what i get. At least it wasn't clanging when he cut up the wheel dudes. However... the movement in that scene is really bad. When it shows him swing 3 times without changing camera angles.
 
This is by far the best episode of the series, some bad zooming in shots, awful music placement choices, but at least the story hasn't been butchered, I wish they would have kept in one of my favorite jokes. :puck: . I wonder though, why the hell did they bother including Isidro in the tavern scene if they were going to include his original introduction? It doesn't make any sense. I'm also let down that some of my favorite fight scenes are reduced to stills from the pages a better looking manga, I watch anime for moving images, especially 3d animation.
 
Aazealh said:
This is a perplexing remark coming from someone who identifies as a cinephile. What Studio 4°C did with the movies was terrible because the director "made it his own" in the stupidest way possible, and showed that he neither understood nor respected the original material. He just butchered the story and characters and brought nothing to the table on a cinematographic and directorial level, outside of a couple scenes like the opening castle fight of movie 1. So being faithful to the manga is a must. But the point of having an animated adaptation is for it to be animated. If it's mostly going to be the camera panning over stating shots (check out that wacky camera work when the Bakiraka appear :ganishka:), then we don't need it. That's what people are complaining about here.

If it's those wonky camera pans over still frames like the Bakiraka one you mentioned, then yeah I'm in agreement: they look cheap and desperate to evoke something. Most of those are done so fast the mind can't take in what they're trying to do. The shot of the rebels running down from the cliff in the last episode was a particular offender of this.

But lately they have only been doing this type of bad 'animation' of stills a couple times per episode. The remainder of the episode felt pretty faithful, as well as animated (with the exception of the torture scene). It had it's problems like a tasteless scene with Luca and Jerome, repeated models for the wheel zombies, and the above mentioned bakiraka shot.

It's by no means amazing quality, but it has improved significantly since it started, and in the areas we'd been griping about. The art is much better, the music isn't as awful (bland but not distractingly bad), we have varied sound effects, and they seem to be following the manga faithfully with some minor exceptions (nothing as egregious as omitting the bonfire of dreams). Maybe the early episodes have lowered the bar for me, but I've gone from loathing this to being a bit more optimistic for the end. We'll see though.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
ApostleBob said:
It's by no means amazing quality, but it has improved significantly since it started, and in the areas we'd been griping about. The art is much better, the music isn't as awful (bland but not distractingly bad), we have varied sound effects, and they seem to be following the manga faithfully with some minor exceptions (nothing as egregious as omitting the bonfire of dreams). Maybe the early episodes have lowered the bar for me, but I've gone from loathing this to being a bit more optimistic for the end. We'll see though.

Yeah I think we all agree it got much better compared to episode one. I'm with you in hoping that it keeps getting better. But I just understand why people are fundamentally disappointed. They wanted something glorious and not just something. Alas, it wasn't to be.
 
This has been my favorite one so far, improved in nearly every way. Of course, they still have plenty of episodes to go. Hopefully they can maintain this C- grade of quality throughout.

I'm wondering how everyone would've reacted to this anime if the 4c movies were never made. Similar to the effect on the 97 anime, this work appears much better when compared to studio 4c's abomination.

The old anime will be two decades old in just a few months and it's somehow still the best Berserk animation, cheap and dated as it is.
 
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