The story is basically of a vagabond by the name of Guts, who is extremely skilled with the sword or rather has enough brute strength and skill to defeat ranked opponents. This is when he meets Griffith - a man of grace and charm (that may as well be mistaken for a woman) but skills that surpass Guts'. Guts is forced in a way, to join the Mercenary group that Griffith leads of which Griffith's loyal and skilled swordswoman Casca is not happy about and the story continues with their involvement with a Kingdom and the politics that is at play there. Alongside, the relationship between the three major characters already mentioned surfaces and they see glimpses between the natural and supernatural.
Converging the anime into three movies is undeniably a huge task. This is something that has to be grasped before criticism. Scenes had to be omitted and there were characters that could not be introduced. But if we compare with the original anime, much flaws will be seen. Keeping in mind what the purpose of this movie was, we can analyze it more neutrally.
Now coming to critically analyzing the aspects:
Story:
The story, as described above is good - it holds the elements of maturity, an accurate presentation of the era shown and a glimpse that the show will have both mythical creatures and reality but entwined in a well defined way. While this holds, the feeling of incompleteness lingers. I saw the movie before I saw the anime and I had had this feeling beforehand. How time seems to be skipping, how only major storyline based events seem to be shown. It feels that the ending is reached a lot earlier than it should have. If we compare it with the original anime we see further issues with the storyline but I will not bring them up. Thus, while good, the story felt incomplete and a bit hasty.
Art:
CG animation has been coupled in places with the traditional animation like in Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. For me, it produced a good effect. The animation was realistic, well defined, with suitable color selection and shadow generation. Expressions, environment, small details, all seemed to have been done tremendously well. While the animation seemed flickery at places, it didn't bother enough to point that out as a great negative.
Sound:
The main attribute of sound was to replicate the atmosphere that comes with warfare. That was done well. Scenes that displayed outdoor sitting were also well complimented and the music themes in the back also did justice to the movie.
Characters:
With little natural procession there comes the problem of not enough time for characters to properly display their personalities. Keeping that in mind, Berserk handled that well - while only the major characters got much screen time, secondary characters like Members of Band of the Hawk and the Royalties were defined quite wel. There weren't too many situations for full development but nonetheless it was good. Especially with Guts, Griffith, Casca, Jedeau, Pippin, The king, Princess... rather there was a fixed number of secondary characters (different than the original anime) that were given reasonable development.
Enjoyment:
Despite the hastiness of the plot and the exclusion of a "normal life" touch from the movie, it delivered well it terms of bringing a realistic anime portrayed in the era of Kingdoms and warfare which also showed a tinge of supernatural but did not over do it. The story shows potential as well if the slight issues are coped up with in the mind. The game just starts and while the original series takes it more seriously, the first part of the movie leaves a fine ending.
Thanks for reading! Any constructive feedback is appreciated!
