"You don't WATCH Berserk. You read it. And you enjoy it." - Berserk 2016 does it's best to prove this statement. Berserk(1997) was one of the first anime that I have watched. Even though I prefer "light and happy" anime and manga, I liked it. When I first found out that Berserk will get an adaptation I was extremely happy. And then - CGI came in. I thought to myself - well, this is going to be bad, but it still might work out. Berserk movies had CGI in them and it wasn't too bad. CGI can be a great tool for creating action scenes and it might allow this anime to become a masterpiece, because action in Berserk is incredible(yet it also has a good story and characters). That was pretty stupid of me.
Let's start with the cons:
1.Art:
When the first episode of Berserk came out I jumped right into it, full of hopes and dreams about how awesome it's going to be. A-a-a-nd it turned out to be a lot of worse, than I was expecting. Art shocked me - it felt like I watch some sort of poorly-made fan-parody. Models with dead expressions, weird shadows, nauseating frame rate - all the good stuff. But! It get's better! Art shoots itself in the foot by replacing poor CGI with a hand-drawn animation during some scenes. Because of that you can clearly see how bad the situation with art is. It destroys immersion completely. And it get's worse and worse with each episode, because it looks like that at some point, guys that were responsible for the art, decided to add more of the 2D "goodness" to the CGI mess they've made. "But it's a good thing!" - you might think. Wrong. Why? Well, imagine this: on the left half of the screen there are poorly drawn static characters and on the right side of the screen there are poorly made CGI characters. By the end of this anime I would hysterically laugh each time I see that sort of "high quality art". I have CGI PTSD now! Oh, and it's not just about "art" itself. Action scenes directed in a worst kind of way. Weird transitions, weird angles and stiff-poker-face(as dead as this meme)-expression on the !thin! face of Guts! Berserk with a kuudere Guts. Simply amazing. Because of the poor art atmosphere is created solely through characters and sound. And even then - if you watch it in HQ and pay attention to details - it burns. And it burns even worse when you notice all the half-*censored* censoring. Women have no nipples. Yep. Berserk with no-nudity and extremely toned down violence. All in all, it turned out to be so bad that I decided to read the manga version of Berserk and after I did that fell in love with it. Art(even first chapters look good), atmosphere, characters, story - everything about Berserk manga is great. Only because of that could I continue to watch this seires.
2.Story:
Lost Children side-arc is nowhere to be found. I read the manga and because of that I can understand that studio had their reasons to exclude this arc from the adaptation, especially if you consider how heavily censored it already is. From what I've learned from words of Reo Kurosu(Berserk(2016) producer), Kentaro Miura wrote the original script for the first and third episodes of this adaptation. You can watch interview with Reo on YouTube. In my opinion Lost Children arc is very important as it has a lot of moments that demonstrate true nature of Guts and the world he lives in, and well, it has some EPIC moments that make Guts look like the incarnation of Death itself. On the other side - I guess it's good that this arc didn't get an adaptation. With the art that this series has, it would look and feel terrible. Still #feelsbad though.
3.Sound:
"CLANG!" - this is what makes Berserk 2016 to be the best comedy anime in this season. Dragonslayer is not empty inside and zombies/knights/apostles/clots of ectoplasm/skeletons are not made of frying pans. Later on it is replaced with different sounds, but still sounds weird. And considering the fact that I am talking about Dragonslayer, it is:
a b s o l u t e l y d i s g u s t i n g
Now to the pros:
1.Story:
Yes, I included it in both pros and cons, same goes for sound. Story is good, because it's Berserk and Berserk has a good story. Adaptation adds some interesting details to the world of Berserk and for the most part(look at cons) strictly follows the source material.
2.Characters:
It's the same as the Story. Berserk has good characters and because of that adaptation also has good characters.
3.Sound:
OST of this adaptation is amazing. It greatly increases immersion(but art spoils it), sounds good and unique. I myself enjoy the OP song, and find it very fitting.
Voice actors did their best to bring stiff 3D models to life. Voice acting is superb.
"CLANG!" - just go to YouTube and search: "Berserk clang".
------------------------------------------
Summary:
Story - 9:
Story is great thanks to the source material. Lost children mini-arc is missing, but story as a whole is still good.
Art - 1:
It is terrible. It is disgusting. Some people get over it, some people don't. And I couldn't stand it.
Sound - 8:
This adaptation has great OST and voice actors did their best to bring their characters to life.
Characters - 9:
Characters are great thank to the source material. And thanks to the original script of Miura Kentarou, some of them get additions to their personalities.
Enjoyment - 5:
Music, voice acting and story were good. Art spoiled all of it.
Overall - 5:
I can't say that it was a bad anime. It has a good story, and it also has interesting characters and soundtrack. But I also can't say that it was a good adaptation. Adaptation should bring characters to life or at least increase this effect. If adaptations fails to do it - there is no need for that adaptation to exist. And sadly, Berserk 2016 suffers from that. Characters look less alive than they did in the manga(How do you even fail that badly, guys?! Your moving characters look less alive than motionless characters!). But! They have voices, nice fitting voices at that. And because of that they at least SOUND alive. And just think about it. If you're a Berserk fan - you should watch it. Because you will do it anyway, right? If you're new to Berserk, or if you don't know anything about it, you should skip this anime, at least for now. Go read the manga, or watch the Berserk 1997 and only after that give Berserk 2016 a chance.
