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