Ranked #317

Berserk Ougon Jidaihen II: Doldrey Kouryaku

The story continues where the last movie leaves off. The main focus is Guts reflecting on what Griffith defines an equal and true friend and the decision that Guts comes to and the effects it has on the team. Of course by revealing this, if you have any familiarity with the manga and/or the 1997 series, you have an idea of where it starts and where it ends. However, there will be 3 cameos from manga exclusive characters in this movie which is quite a treat.

The animation feels more uneven in this than it does in the last movie. This is more prevelant in slow motion. It feels really choppy like a disc in your game system skipping at times. But it runs much more smoothly at faster speeds. The violence and the gore is very well graphically depicted and makes up for some of the flaws this series has. The violence is just manically massive which is of course the nature of the franchise. I really enjoyed the scene where Guts becomes the 100 man slayer. But to me, the series broody effects would be more immersing if it was more grainy like in the 1980s and 1990s animation styles.

The difference in soundtrack compositions is also more notable. It is more orchestrated and has more acoustic sounds as opposed to the grand chorus style of Hirakawa Susumu. I feel for some fans who have had exposure to the previous series and the games, it will feel unnatural. But to newcomers, I suppose it does work. Other than that, the soundtrack reflects the atmosphere pretty good but of course I'd rather have Hirakawa do everything again.

In this movie, I felt that the performance of Guts' new seiyuu isnt really that great. These are part of the story arcs was where the original seiyuu really captured Guts. Caska's new seiyuu I just don't feel. Sakurai is ok as Griffith, but doesnt have the coldness that Morikawa Toshiyuki has. I really don't feel the voice acting in this one. I thought the last movie was ok, but this movie really made me miss the original voice cast. I suppose newcomers without any exposure to the original series or the games will be fine with the voice acting. Nobutoshi Canna really defined Guts in the original series and in the DC and PS2 games. I feel that this new voice actor just doesn't capture Guts as intimidating or as a bad ass. To me, he comes across way too much as a sarcastic cynic and tries to bring too much humor to the character.

In the end, I feel the only way we can see the true potential of these new Berserk installments is when this trilogy is over. What the fans want to see is the post golden age arc animated. Quite frankly, I am glad we have these new installments, but I want to see the berserker armor animated and all the other bad ass shit. And get the old seiyuus and Hirakawa to do the series again. read more

It goes without saying that due to the storyline compression, since it is a movie, after all, there will be some changes in opposition towards the anime series. I kept saying( as I always do when people make adaptations of books, for instance): "This is not how it happened in the anime! They omitted this, they omitted that, they added this, he wasn't there at the time..." and so on and so forth. It did affect some things immensely, this compression, and addition, and it amounted mostly to how we see the characters in both movies, especially this one.

Whereas in the anime series we get to see Griffith in one light, in the movies he appears more humane, new layers of him are being exposed, or should I say, emphasized. In the anime series, the emphasized themes were gradual character development, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, points of view on all that. In the movie adaptations, we don't get to see that much of character development. The movie mainly reveals more layers to the characters.
What is the most striking is the underlined homoerotic inclinations on Griffith's part towards Guts, I believe. Casca's character is pretty much unchanged. But, you'll see for yourselves.

Sometimes I really didn't like how they packed up the things and events, especially if I find such things crucial for the building of opinions about one character on the part of another (flashbacks instead of storytelling). However, there were really things worth omitting without doing any damage to the storyline. All in all it remains unchanged, and the message is somewhat conveyed. I'm still debating whether the anime series was more profound than this piece.

As for the animation, as one reviewer said, some motions sequences looked like they really needed debugging. Other than that, the new approach to things and new technology used to make this movie and its prequel, still leaves me puzzled. For ones who like battle scenes, I think this will be feast for the eyes. I especially enjoyed them!

Music and sound was okay, I think that the music used in battle scenes added to them being more dramatic and left me really excited. The spirit of the battlefield and the spirit of the Band of the Hawks is very well conveyed!

As for the voice actors, I think Griffith's voice actor managed to convey his overall character and charisma perfectly, thus made me thoroughly enjoy the battle scenes even more.

Overall impression is that I find this movie to be very good (8), especially for ones who haven't watched the 25 episodes of the anime series, this will be candy for the senses. The series will later fill up what is missing. And definitely this one will nicely warm you up to the third movie, which will be released February 2013.

To conclude, this movie is a must-watch and I hope it won't leave you disappointed. Enjoy yourselves! read more

Griffith's words about true friends still resound in Guts' head. They haunt him on the battlefield and in his downtime, making him question his moves and motivation. This doesn't stop him from fighting for Griffith as the Band of the Hawk joins the other forces of the king to take down Doldrey, a nigh impregnable fortress that has never been successfully besieged. In between battles, Guts continues to ponder where his life is headed if he sticks with the Band of the Hawk, strengthens his bond with woman warrior Casca, and ultimately makes a decision that will have a great impact not only on his future, but on the rest of the Hawks' as well.


So, if you’re like I and you watched the first movie before the series but you managed to watch the second movie after (or at least the dub version that aired on Neon Alley), the events taken place mostly resembles of episodes 11-19 with a few parts that might have been skipped over, most likely the events that happen in episode 18 but it doesn’t stray too far from its narrative with a few scenes that involve the characterization of Casca, her past, and her dealing with the misogynist warrior she went up against….oh, and the way she deals with him in the end is very satisfying, that is, if you thought what happened in the series wasn’t deserving enough of that guy.



Characterization does exist in here but mainly for the main three characters, that being Guts, Griffith, and Casca and for the other members like Corkus, Rickert, Pippin, Codeau, etc. are merely just side characters doing whatever in the background and there were some slight changes in characterization, especially Griffith in the last 25 minutes of the movie, but if you already know what happens in that runtime, you don’t need me to explain it.


The animation is just about the same as the last movie, as while Studio 4°C continues to struggle with their problems of CG usage in the movie as it still looks like an early computer demo of the movie rather than the finished product and the music is still as epic as the last movie and the series, the theme from last time is still here although the end credit music has a change in instruments for the first half.


The Viz Media/NYAV Post dub is on par with the last film although I thought in the first half, Carolyn Keranen’s performance as Casca felt less energetic than she did in the TV series, but mostly in the scenes where she’s being confronted by Guts. Marc Diraison’s performance was more light-hearted as Guts than the last time and the unimportant characters’ performances, as forgotten as they are, rate from OK to acceptable.

FINAL VERDICT: Well, I don’t have much to say as I already did say it in the last review but if you want to know more about Berserk in under less than 10 hours, the movies are a good deal. This one does have all the action and battles from the series but missing a few important details that can make it incomplete to others. Still, I would give it a watch and then a potential buy.
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Berserk is one of my all time favorite series in anime or manga but i so far am generally displeased with the movies. The characters and Story are the same but its the way its all presented to me that really brings down the quality of the series. So though i may praise characters and story it lacks in other ways.

The art is one of the biggest sufferings for the movie,instead of traditional anime they use a incredible amounts of CGI and 3d models. Other than looking like a poorly rendered video game with clunky models and primitive move cycles the show doesn't feel like berserk at all. They took away all the grit and grime of the original, everything's clean and polished with flat smooth images and CG. They kept the blood but that doesn't keep the show true to itself enough, there was a whole level of earthy natural colors and textures that went along with berserk that made it DARK. The worst part is this animation style looks pretty bad with any series but on berserk it feels so unnatural and gross. The one good thing about the art is the backgrounds that don't fit the characters in anyway, the background quality is extremely high but the characters are just CG body's with animated heads, it clashes horribly.

The story in the movies is so compressed and it just speeds along important events as if they had nearly no impact on the story. You kinda get lost with whats happening just cause it feels too fast paced to have happened in the span of a minute. Though with any movie a series has to be really streamlined and quick this just is not a series to be shortened. Part of the charm of berserk is the steady pace and the building of characters and plot.

The characters of berserk have always been great to a series fan but anyone who has not been part of the series so far will probably find the characters very shallow in this interpretation. The movie moves to fast to really showcase a characters personality too well and it down right makes some look irrational and paranoid. Movies should really make you understand your characters a great deal but this one just kinda leaves them out in this odd dead zone of personality.

The one good thing about the show is the sound, all the effects work correctly and the voices are perfect. Its too bad the rest of the movie makes that amount to nothing in the big picture. Even the score and music is perfectly suited for the situations happening but it still does not redeem this.

I used to enjoy Berserk A LOT but this is a boring and unexciting mess of style blending. They should have kept this animated traditionally with all the effort of keeping the show feeling dark and dirty without the clean pressed smoothness that comes with computer generated characters. The presentation of this movie is awful, i know it was trying to be different but they just shouldn't have bothered. Berserk is great in the traditional medium and would have looked even greater if they had kept everything up to par with the backgrounds and made it feel more natural looking. Watching the clumsy CG models just doesn't give the excitement you want in a battlefield it distracts you from whats happening cause you sit there and question why they made them move like robots with wobbly joints.

Overall i consider the Berserk Movie Set a flop, it feels bad to watch it. It makes me as a fan just regret watching it. It lacks all the charm the actual series had or even the manga. It just feels clean and polished like they had never looked at the manga before. I cant say this movie wouldnt entertain people but as a fan i just feel let down. I cant say i look forward to the next movie but i hope after another decade they revisit the idea of a better movie.
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Art: Same issue as with last movie. Watch Adon's face. It belongs in a fucking video game. Who the fuck thought this was okay to put in a movie? Watch the scene where Griffith rescues Casca from being raped in the forest.

Animation: Ruined by the CG again. Lack of blurring and hand-drawn effects make the animation look choppy and stupid. Watch the animation of Griffith riding up to Gennon at the end of the battle to see what I mean.

Choreography: Guts vs 100 men in the forest is probably the highlight of the movie in choreographic terms. Yet it fails in every way. It doesn't look good because the art sucks shit. The movements look awkward. Watch that scene where someone throws a sword at Guts and he literally hits it back like hitting a baseball. Fucking ridiculous. Once again, in the forest surrounded by 100 people, Guts still manages to fight 1 on 1 because the enemies behind him always seem to fuck around doing nothing.

Conclusion: Another soulless 3DCG animation with inexpressive animation and mediocre choreography. I won't be watching the 3rd movie. read more

When I first heard about the Berserk manga series being adapted into a movie trilogy, I was actually pretty surprised. Firstly, because there was already an television series adaptation. Why remake something that is fine the way it is except cut even more out of the story than their already was. Secondly, the anime didn't do well in America anyway, so why bother? All this film did was disappoint me, once again. But I will give it some credit because it was a step-up from the first train wreck of execution.

-STORY- 6/10
The plot follows Guts, Griffith, and Caska's development after the incident in the first movie. So it does have a different feel in environment because of the character development. But I felt like they relied too much on violence to move the plot along. The pacing also what hindered the emotion of the story. There was too much action and too little dialogue for a movie in which so many things were happening at once. Too much was to be implied and interpreted which made some scenes hard to understand. If everything was explained in more detail I wouldn't have been so lost. This movie clumps together everything and expects it to be suspenseful. In a good narrative, you should never use the same technique over and over again for emphasis unless you put a small twist on it (which this movie fails to do).

-ANIMATION- 2/10
The animation was just disgusting. I can't stress enough how bad CGI looks in a seinin anime art style. They made the same mistake in the first movie by using these computer graphics to save money. Berserk isn't suppose to have this smooth character look anyway. It's suppose to be gritty, scary and dark looking. But instead of doing this they make it look like a kid's shounen battle movie. In addition to this, the CGI doesn't even balance with rest of the damn animation. You could at least try make it look natural. Hell, you could have even made the whole thing CGI and I would have preferred it (which really means something coming from me because I despise CGI). But anyway, this is another huge downfall to this series.

-SOUND- 7/10
Now the one thing about this movie that was pretty good is the music. They didn't reuse the soundtrack from the television series which I appreciated. The music did help to keep me interested and it added to the dark feel unlike the animation. So it wasn't bad at all.

-CHARACTERS- 4/10
My third issue with this movie is the characters. Not the characters, but the characters. Let me explain lol. I like Griffith as a character,I like Guts as a character, and I like Caska as a character. But what I didn't like was the way they were portrayed in this movie! Just like the first movie, everything about the characters and their back story was skipped, but the characters acted way more dramatic then what was necessary.They should have spent more time on the characters past by using flashbacks instead of the characters overreacting to things that were extremely trivial. In this movie they just bring up controversial topics such as "female issues" and expect you to sympathize. In result, the whole cast seems so melodramatic and irritating.

-OVERALL/ENJOYMENT- 6/10
In conclusion of the mediocre storytelling techniques, awful animation, and forced characterization, this movie becomes what is a could-have-been. Instead of taking their time to slowly progress the story each movie, they expect you to appreciate what is a rushed product. If the characters would speak more instead of exaggerating violence and battles I would have liked it more. I just couldn't enjoy the melodrama and dreadful animation. read more