Story 4/10
Berserk initially had many fans, myself included, anticipating its return. In this installment of the once great franchise the story and plot lacked the intensity & excitement the original series presented. This series was supposed to follow the manga according to what is on file in the MAL/ANN database. For the most part, it didn't follow the original source as much and sort of pulled random things out its ass to improvise. I found this to be both unprofessional and lazy on the director’s end. Of the many, one of the most disappointing things about the story is its overall presentation. It comes off ass.. (He he, I wrote ass) as, lazy.
It appeared as if Berserk was only made just to cash in on the franchise some more. The story is painfully weak in terms of plot & narrative. The beginning and middle, rising action, parts of the story were perhaps the biggest turn off. The amount of action, gore and death in the story felt limited. This ruined a majority of my experience with the beginning and conclusion of the story. I strongly believe that the writing could have been much better.
Few moments into the introduction, the first episode pretty much plays homage to the original anime series. Guts arrive at bar or brothel saves a woman, etc. Except, now in the 2016 version Guts saves a woman, befriends a possibly homo-sexual fairy, who doesn't shout "Hey, Listen" and the two become buddies. I don't remember the time it takes for all of these events to happen, however I believe it was about 10 minutes into the show that I wanted to drop it simply because of that. The stories appeal is bad enough to make even people who haven't seen the show turn away from it. Lastly, the main story gets even worse when it gets taken over by an awful intrusive sub-plot that focuses more on some of the most uninteresting characters in the series. This isn't so much the case in the manga however, I digress.
Towards the middle of the series, during maybe episode 6-9 (69.. ha ha children, see I have sex jokes) the story focuses less on Guts and his goal to save or abduct his mentally disable, brown sugar skinned goddess. Instead the story decides to focus more on the supporting and non-supporting characters. This wouldn't be so bad if only the characters were not so annoying, troublesome rather. For example when the prostitutes arrive, and Elaine is first show, at this point in the story is where I felt things became horrible. . The settings that the story took place in were not as visually horrifying nor did they set the tone for any new developments. The narrative, or rather, the way that the story was told, it failed improve successful elements that the original story used.
The unfortunate thing is that although the story is somewhat part of the original work, the way that its' been directed so far, makes Berserk feel like a horribly put together fan project. Shallow story, coupled with bad action scenes, animation and horrible dialogue made me cringe.
Kentaro Miura should be ashamed for agreeing his work to be animated in CGI poorly. His Penmanship, his detail in the original work is God-Like! (No exaggerations needed.) The Golden Age Arc of the series looks like perfection compared to this ugly, unappealing and awful, simply awful visuals. Details, there was a lack of the detailed gore like dismembered bodies and such for berserk. The dark settings and somber tone berserk once had seemed to have vanished. For some strange reason, berserk, the settings seemed to have taken a JRPG style setting. Woods, forest, deserted battle fields etc. Detailed animation on these settings was very minimal and unfortunately took away a lot of the enjoyment.
In all honest though, the type of CGI, the art style is what ruined this once great series for me. I felt that I focused too much on how bad the art was that it completely turned me away from the story. It needed more work, it needed to feel more realistic not forced! Or over the type.. Or "Edgy" as the hip people say.
CGI, CGI, I still feel like CGI based anime is still a work in development. I would not be surprised if Berserk was used for this very reason and we were all the test audiences. If this is the case I do fear what else animation studios are planning to redo or "re-master" in full on CGI. I digress, using CGI over the traditional style that made berserk such an amazing series that is what hurt the series the most for me. There was simply no enjoyment, nothing to saw "wow what amazing settings or detail, and I feel that it was the CGI to blame for that.
The voice acting was on and off. Sometimes I felt that a majority of the actors were over-exaggerating when it came to screaming. When there were serious moments in the dialogue, I wasn’t convinced that events were as bad as the characters said they were. The soundtrack wasn’t impressive for the show. Fight scenes were not nearly as intense because of the music.
Enjoyment
I was not impressed with any of the characters. Lack of character development and bland personalities is what kept me from making any sort of connection. As mentioned earlier everyone was riddled with problems and awful traits.
The show didn't seem like it was ready for release. It's sort of like a video game... which ironically there is a game coming out. There were so many problems with it that it needs patches to fix them. I felt like what was released, wasn't the shows full potential. It almost feels rushed. Perhaps they didn't have any editors to look over it before release. I don't know what they were thinking when releasing this. However, it totally could use work on the story, animation, and settings. Maybe a dialogue that isn't so stale a cat wouldn't even eat it. Overall, I simply was not impressed with Berserk 2016.
