After nearly twenty long years, the anime world finally gets what it was waiting for: the long-awaited animated continuation of mangaka Kentarou Miura's legendary manga series, Berserk. But while the quality of the previous 1997 adaptation was balanced in both story-telling and animation for its time, the anime world has been longing for an adaptation of the arcs after the ever-retold ‘Golden Age’ arc. Does this new-age contender live up to the hype and the amazing story-telling and artwork that Miura is known for? Let's find out. Obviously, SPOILERS will follow. Ladies, gentlemen, and others, I am Cypherial, the Gaming Otaku, and today I bring
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you my anime review for the 2016 adaptation of Kentarou Miura’s Berserk. (INSERT CLANG)
STORY:
The story focuses on the arcs after the ‘Golden Age’: ‘Black Swordsman’ and ‘Conviction’. The first thing to note is that the writers decided to gloss over the ‘Black Swordsman’ arc and outright skip the ‘Lost Children’ arc in favour of the more action-packed ‘Conviction’ arc. The first three or so episodes are a sh*tshow of fast pacing and awful animation (more on that later), and the first episode in particular is just downright bad. Some characters not even in ‘Black Swordsman’, ‘Lost Children’, or even ‘Conviction’ are introduced right off the bat, and the anime rushes the events in 'Black Swordsman' to set up their segue into ‘Conviction’. Some elements included in ‘Lost Children’ are set up in the first episode, such as the introduction of Isidoro's character. It is also interesting to note that this anime is twelve episodes, your standard half-season. Personally, a better way to do this anime would be to have 24 episodes: seven dedicated to ‘Black Swordsman’, seven dedicated to ‘Lost Children’, and ten dedicated to ‘Conviction’ and the climax. Even so, overall I think the writers did a decent job with what they were trying to do. However, some scenes feel out of place without the context that ‘Black Swordsman’ gives. On another note, some crucial scenes lose a lot of their impact because of the way they were written for this adaptation. For example, Miura himself was involved with the writing for episode 3, which contains the Horse, one of the most controversial and simultaneously crucial scenes in the entire manga. However, because of the way the episode was written, the Horse scene lost a lot of its impact because of its execution and the setting that Miura chose for the episode.
CHARACTERS:
The portrayal of the characters in this adaptation are mostly correct, taken from the manga. Guts is portrayed about how you'd expect, Casca as well. The gripes I have are that Schierke (from the ‘Millenium Falcon’ arc) is in a scene in the first episode with absolutely no context that the average viewer would understand (also the line she says is huge spoilers for the end of ‘Conviction’, which I guess I understand as foreshadowing, given that they ended the anime right at that point), Isidoro is introduced way before he ever showed up in the manga, and Puck is relegated to a comic-relief/brevity character. On the subject of Puck, yes, I realise that is his role in Conviction onwards, but because the anime glossed right over ‘Black Swordsman’, the average viewer doesn't get to see that Puck's character actually has a purpose. Moving on, the portrayals of Serpico and Farnese are actually spot-on, which I'm really impressed by given that Serpico is one of the more badass characters in the manga. The only gripe I have towards him is that he has all of two badass scenes in the anime, and one of them is obscured by F*CKING CREDITS, which has nothing to do with the portrayal of the character. Finally, Skull Knight. Badass portrayal, doesn’t have enough screentime (but that’s all on Miura, boys).
VOICE CASTING:
The voice casting for this adaptation was actually well done. Guts is voiced by Iwanaga Hiroaki, his voice actor from the movies, and he does a very good job, despite him having relatively few lines overall in this adaptation. Puck is voiced by Mizuhara Kaoru, known to me for her role as Amano Rea in Mirai Nikki. A lot of people found her voice to be annoying, mainly because for most of the anime, Puck is portrayed as the colloquial “Chestnut Puck”, the chibi rendition of him when he’s to be the source of comic relief for the scene. As a result, the voice for Puck and Chestnut Puck differ in the same way that, for example, Haruhi and Konata differ. We rarely get to hear Puck’s actual serious voice, which isn’t really a plus. Farnese is voiced by Hikasa Yoko, known to me as Weiss Schnee from the Japanese dub of RWBY. Personally, I think she did a fairly great performance as Farnese, however, nothing really stands out to me. Serpico is voiced by Okitsu Kazuyuki, known for his roles as Jonathan Joestar from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Seishin Muroi from Shiki. Serpico is one of those characters that is simultaneously ditzy and badass, and Okitsu-san really manages to nail down the voice, despite the fact that, like Guts, he really doesn’t have many lines. Isidoro is voiced by Shimono Hiro, known for his role as Katsuragi Keima in The World God Only Knows. I personally am not too familiar with his voice roles, but for Isidoro’s character, I think he did a great job as well. Finally, Skull Knight, voiced by Ootsuka Akio, known for his role as Wammu from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and as Skull Knight in the third Berserk movie as well. Perfect voice actor: dark, mysterious, commanding. Love the choice of seiyuu for this character.
ANIMATION:
Studio(s): GEMBA, Millensepee
From the studios that brought you Teekyuu! and…. not much else, its Berserk (2016)! Personally, I don't know if this was a gigantic troll or if they really just wanted to try and run this series into the ground, but...DAAAAAAAAAAAAMNN!! First thing to note, two animation studios. Never a good sign. One of which has done sweet F-A, the other... EIGHT SEASONS OF F*CKING TEEKYUU! All sense of foreboding dread aside, when I heard that the series would be done in full CGI, I personally was excited. I imagined studio Ufotable’s Fate series, and how well that was animated using CGI, I thought of the Berserk movies which blended 2D and 3D cel-shading, I thought of the brilliant usage of 3D CGI in David Productions’ Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I was excited, despite what people thought. But…those first three episodes…they were garbage. The animation was horrible. Utterly horrible. It looked like some fifteen-year-old got a hold of a copy of Poser Pro and pumped this out. Granted, the animation got WAY better for the second half of the series, and they even tried to compensate by throwing in some 2D scenes for the actual events of the anime (not just in flashbacks as they had previously done), but ultimately, the animation balances out to just slightly below average for me. Don’t get me wrong, what we ended up with was decent. But this isn’t just some moe-trash or horror anime that only got made to make boatloads of money off fat neckbeard weeaboos. This is Berserk. This is Berserk, and damn it, the animation had better damn well be able to at least hold a candle to Kentarou Miura’s breathtaking art. “Decent” is horrible for Berserk. Berserk, at the very least, deserves PERFECTION where animation is concerned.
OP/ED:
Inferno – 9mm Parabellum
The OP for Berserk (2016) was actually very good. Sure it doesn’t have the horribly-pronounced Engrish and nonsensical verbal nostalgia that “Nothing Will Be Wong” does, but to me, “Inferno” looks, sounds, and feels more like what Berserk should be. “Inferno” basically recaps the Golden Age arc in a flurry of adequate 2D and 3D animation, and you can differentiate which time period it’s in by the animation. The visuals were actually not garbage, despite what Reddit likes to say, and the song did fit the visuals very nicely.
Meimoku no Kanata – Nagi Yanagi
Berserk (2016)’s ED is a very good one. The visuals are simplistic, much like the original Berserk anime’s ending. The ending is basically ethereal outlines of Casca, Isidoro, Serpico, Guts, and other characters on a backdrop of a cloudy night sky which, over time, parts to reveal a full moon. The melody for the ED is one of the more beautiful melodies that I’ve heard in an anime ED, and I can definitely say I liked it.
SOUNDTRACK:
If there was anything perfect about this anime adaptation, it would be the OST. The OST is absolutely astounding, as I expected it to be. The music for Berserk is by and far the best that I’ve ever heard in an anime score, and this adaptation does not disappoint. I only wished they played “Hai Yo” a LOT more.
PROS:
-The great world of Berserk
-No one ever thought Berserk would ever get a continuation ever
-Guts cleaving bitches apart
-Serpico
-Dat ending tho
CONS:
-Below average animation
-Nina
-A lot of cut content from the manga, and skipping the entirety of ‘Lost Children’
-CLANG
-Nina
-Horrible pacing for the first three episodes
-Hey look, more f*cking Nina
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Berserk (2016) has been one hell of a ride. I went from being excited, to utterly despising it, to being very tentative about it, to being fairly satisfied with it. Ultimately, it is not by any means the desirable or ideal adaptation that we all wanted, but the fact that we even got one at all is astounding. Awful animation aside, I can definitively say that this adaptation is adequate. However, I would not ever recommend this to anyone who has never read the manga, or even seen the original anime. It is so difficult for the average viewer to go in blind and be able to extrapolate what the f*ck is going on. Overall, I pride the anime on its source material and soundtrack, and the fact that the two animation studios managed to save the second half by pulling their heads halfway out of their asses. However, good music design and source material are not enough when it comes to anime adaptations. The execution needs to be flawless for it to take off, and unfortunately, this adaptation had a lot of hiccups. The memes spawned from it are some of the funniest I’ve seen, but ultimately, not even CLANG can bump up my score. On another note, I am somewhat conflicted about the announcement of “Season Two”, which will apparently cover the ‘Millennium Falcon’ arc, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Hopefully the animation studios and directors learned a thing or two from the problems that this anime had, and strive to fix them in Berserk Season Two. My final score for the 2016 adaptation of Berserk stands at a 6/10. I recommend it only to those who have read the manga, and even then, take it with a grain of salt, as it is not anywhere near the best that it could be.
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Sep 16, 2016
After nearly twenty long years, the anime world finally gets what it was waiting for: the long-awaited animated continuation of mangaka Kentarou Miura's legendary manga series, Berserk. But while the quality of the previous 1997 adaptation was balanced in both story-telling and animation for its time, the anime world has been longing for an adaptation of the arcs after the ever-retold ‘Golden Age’ arc. Does this new-age contender live up to the hype and the amazing story-telling and artwork that Miura is known for? Let's find out. Obviously, SPOILERS will follow. Ladies, gentlemen, and others, I am Cypherial, the Gaming Otaku, and today I bring
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