Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

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Mik
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Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:22 am

One Word Review: Motherfuckers.


Background:

A remake or OVA as they seem to be referred as for some reason, of the classic manga(comic book) of the same name, The main character is a fella by the name of Guts(or Gatsu if your all japanese and shit) and his adventures around the land of Midland hacking the ever loving fuck of thing with his increasingly smaller weaponry and cleverer tactics (just kidding, larger swords and more direct tactics).

This has nothing to do with the 1997 anime, in fact it's covering almost exactly the same story and the hintedp ossibly of a little bit more. In case you didn't know, the 1997 series had massive budget problems, primary they didn't have much and secondarily it ran out fast.

This means that the series ends on somewhat of a cliff hanger, which is fine, in actual fact it fucking insanely badass, so much so that it's almost the greatest ending to anything in the history of time. Except that makes no sense, the main character is fucked, he's doomed, he is a second away from death, surrounded by enemies and he just had to hack off one of his own arms to free himself from a trap. The screen fades to red then black as he gets one his eyes gets stabbed.

AWESOME.

Depressing as all hell but still, awesome. But wait, in the first scene of the anime the character is shown with a prosthetic arm and one eye and after happy slapping some evil doers, we flash back to him as a child, we then spend the next 25 episodes traversing through his life to get to his current level of turbo slayer of evil, the black swordsman (which is an odd name for a guy that is white and has a sword that is sort not all that black).

The Good:

Jesus Christ it's pretty. '97 was 15 years ago and boy it shows on the original, plus they had no money so there was more than a few times that the just fucked a painting down on the screen and scrolled across or down it to the soundtrack of action in the background, often covering several bits of dialogue while showing no movement of any of the characters what so ever. They also repeated footage once or twice but it was vaguely subtle.

The CG scene's and the 3D elements I could have done without but largely I thought they did a bang up job, they managed to keep the look and feel of the original manga and anime but clean it up and make it look pretty. I've seen a few other reviews of it and all there is is constant bitching about the cg and proportions and the combat. They can fuck off it's fine.

The Bad:


The Music is pretty meh, the anime OST was top notch so following it was always going to be a tall order and simply copying it would have been bad form so something that's trying to reinvent the series for a next generation. But fuck me I can't remember any of it, at all. Whereas the anime's version is soo awesome I still could hum it too you now and I last watched it about 3 years ago.

The Ugly

Fuck me, the cuts.

There will be 3 movies, so ~2hours each (360minutes) vs 25 episodes ~20minutes (500 minutes).

This means there will have to be some cuts to story in order to fit it all in, this isn't helped at all by the fact that this the first movie is barely over 90 minutes, including credits. if that holds true then its 270 minutes, so nearly half the anime and the not only want to cover the same story ground but finish off the Golden Age or Blackswordsman arc. The original anime already cut several characters and merged a few together how can you cut it by half again ?

I'll tell you how but basically dropping the story for explosions.

What the actual fuck were they thinking that this was a good idea, one of the pivotal scenes in his young life is that he's sold to a paedo by his foster parents for a night at the age of ten or so and raped. They show some few fragmented blurry nightmare scenes were if I didn't know what happened to him, I would be none the wiser.

Guts in his core, it's just the avatar of rage and hatred, in battle he becomes a beast, fucking up everyone in his path because fuck you, that's why. He's been betrayed and fucked over since forever and his only outlet is focusing it on throwing himself into impossible situations, battle after battle, 50-50 attacking fight because he doesn't know if he deserves to live and what he wins he doesn't know what to do with himself, so he does it again.

it's kinda tragic, but if you don't show what happened then he's just a reckless asshole.


I'm not a hater, I wanted to love this soo much, motherfuckers.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Masteroftheweb » Sun Jul 15, 2012 1:45 am

I was wondering when this would come out.

I'm sad to learn it's a retelling of the same story and not the "season 2" I wanted it to be.

Eh... I still have the manga for continuing the story.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:35 am

The Japanese rarely do a 'season 2' of anything, it one of the more frustrating things about their story telling style.

The Golden age arc is probably the best of Berserk after that, it kind of descends into silliness imo, Guts teams up with Griffith at one point, his aborted foetus of a son has magical powers, it's taken 15 years (irl time) for them to travel to Elfland (yes, the land of elves) etc. So I don't really mind them focusing on that, I just wish they'd focus on it, it's almost perfect as it was, leave it alone, cut nothing.

I watched a 90minutes movie, they are almost up to Guts leaving the Hawks, which occured like 18-19 episodes in, in the anime. We know none of the Hawks, like at all, Guts, Griffith and Caska are featured heavily but all the Raiders that Guts is friendly with, Rickett, Judeau, the big that never speaks, have all been cut, so we don't even feel it's a hard decision for him, he doesn't really have camaraderie or friends for the first time in his life, or if he does, we don't know. Large portions of character development of both Guts and Griffith are totally missing. I don't see how any of the big things that they are rushing towards can have any dramatic impact without knowing why, they do what the do, what Griffith has had to endure for his dream, the growth of Guts (emotionally).

Half the shock of the last two episodes was the sacrifices Griffith was prepared to make, how far he would go and the loss of all the characters we had come to know, even Corkus who is a total dick, you felt sorry for, how can we do that now when they've had maybe 10 lines between them.

I hold out some hope that part 2 is 4 hours long and they use a fuck tonne of flashbacks.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Masteroftheweb » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:05 am

I highly doubt your hopes will bear fruit...

And to be fair... it's not that the japanese don't do season 2's, it's just some things don't make as much money as others, so they essentially get canceled.

As long as the manga has been running, it surprises me that they didn't make enough to warrant a season 2.

Also, I am aware of the happenings in the manga, I might be a chapter or two behind, but I've been keeping up with it fairly regularly.

If I recall correctly, Berserk and Hellsing were the final straw in terms of "anime with shitty ass endings" that drove me to pretty much reading manga exclusively. For years I hd a habit of watching an ahime to find out if it's any good, then I read the manga to get my actualy story fix.

then I cut the watching anime from it entirely.

Lately they endings have been getting better though, so I've been watching more anime lately. But to prevent nerd raging over a shitty ending, I read follow the manga as well. Fuck you shitty endings.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:41 pm

Berserk's ending is great if you cut the 5 minutes off the first episode and apparently some after credits scene I've never watched.

Hellsing for all the ranting I heard about it, wasn't that impressive, though I felt like a right retard that I didn't notice the Alcuard shit for a while.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Masteroftheweb » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:09 pm

I suppose you could look at it that way, but wondering how the shit fuck he survived that encounter was all the more interesting when I found out how. It was something to look forward too.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:26 pm

My recollection of his escape was rather underwhelming, didn't the Skull Knight just appear and wizard him away ?
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Masteroftheweb » Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:16 am

Pretty much.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Sun Dec 23, 2012 3:53 am

Watched the 2nd movie, it's better but I still find it rather lacking in emotional punch, they cut out soo much of the character interaction that it's hard to think of it at same show some times.

The ditched a few plot lines all together, like the Queen's gambit, she's totally missing from the story now. I did like some of the additions though, like the whipping of Griffin by the King, before being left to the torturer was new and quite revealing. Now that I think of it, the King was so much in a bromance with Griffith it did seem like it was out of character for him not to play down his crimes, even if it was his own daughter, he owes him the crown pretty much. The jealously angle might have been just Grif pushing buttons but it looked to hit home at something.

I'm a sucker for detail and actually a bit of a daft soppy old git, I feel like my favourite scenes all ended up on the cutting room floor or drastically altered.

Guts vs 100 men, is the lead badass moment of the TV series, it's devastating interesting and honestly the removal of the boss type solider (with his armour 3 times thicker than a normal mans and an axe twice as large as something something) was actually refreshing and heartily accepted. In greater detail, it's more graphic, in a way cooler and almost more believable, the muted sound, the thoughts of Guts, all super.

What killed it for me was the Caska element, it's almost carbon copy with the Tv series but for one minor detail, in the beginning when they are fighting together, he covers for her, allows her to rest, he's injuring himself for her and it's probably the only reason she actually runs when he tells her/ acts like she's useless. It's one of the most tender moments between the two of them and perhaps the bedrock of what comes later. She also sees right through the bullshit, perhaps it's still implied but I felt like the extra 30 seconds could have been spared for it.

Right after that, the night sky in the camp and Griffiths return to greet them, cut or merged into the ballroom scene, I felt that was alright they got all the key elements in there. However, I feel like it wasn't given enough time to marinate in the story, the compacted nature makes it all seem very abrupt. Now, it's like Guts decides to leave and the next morning he's away. Where as before he hints to her that following Griffiths dream isn't enough for him anymore, before the campaign at Doldry, so he has plenty time to make up his mind one way or the other. He even says in a inner monologue before the charge something to the effect of, this is my last battle as a Hawk, live or die. But he doesn't leave till well after the celebrations, which is some several weeks later.

The removed the other very tender moment between Caska and Guts, when she got slow poisoned and can't move after the covert op into Doldry, he carries her down to see Griffith (as she can't walk) it wasn't much but I feel like all those quiet moments (which are now pretty much all missing) with the softening of her attitude towards him, really blossomed into the later relationship.

Still it all ends in tears anyway.

TL;DR version:

Much better, but still a pale shadow of a tv show that could have been easily visually bested considering it also could have done with a dialogue transplant for at least half of every episode.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Masteroftheweb » Sun Dec 23, 2012 4:59 am

The CGI looks so horrible... I didn't really enjoy it at all.

And the Zodd fight was much better in the original.
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Re: Berserk Golden Age I Egg of the Supreme King (2012)

Post by Mik » Sun Dec 23, 2012 3:08 pm

It looks alright, the original was a sheet of paper they wobbled about while a guy talked over it.

I think it's a more compact and streamlined version, I hope it inspires a new series.
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