Suffer like Guts did.
What They Say:
Episode #1: “The Branded Swordsman”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A quick history lesson. Berserk is a manga by Kentaro Miura, it started serialization in 1992 and is still running, and it has a certain reputation as one of the darkest fantasy stories around. It’s had a huge influence on tons of media that has followed, from video games to novels to anything you can imagine. The original anime adaptation of its first major story arc, and it’s shocking ending, left an impact on anime fans and the industry.
The story follows Guts, a damaged warrior with one arm and a giant metal sword as he goes on a revenge quest in a really shitty fantasy world full of monsters and betrayal. It’s graphically violent, sexually violent, and often indulges in depicting gore and rape. The exceedingly dark subject matter has softened over the years because there has to be a light of hope to drive the plot forward and Guts is slowly regaining some of his lost humanity. It took seven years for characters to get off a boat (8 days in the comic) because of frequent breaks in the serialization. In 2012 we got the first part of a movie adaptation of the Golden Age story arc, which had already been animated once before. It was heavily criticized for cutting some story elements and for it’s CG animation. Fans longed for an animated continuation of the story.
Well, here we are.
This is very much an introduction episode. We meet stoic warrior Guts and get to see him bash some heads and take out some skeleton warriors while he explains that the brand on his neck is a mark of evil. We get a look at his weapons and how he works. Death follows him, and we see that he’s not all there mentally as he can only shrug off two more innocent bystanders deaths. It works as an introduction to his character and to the little fairy Puck, who is our comedic relief.
It’s been some time since I’ve read the chapters where this adaptation is picking up. It’s skipping the Black Swordsman Arc and the short Lost Children arc. Instead, it takes elements of Guts first meeting with Puck and moves it forward in time. Likewise, it also condenses the story so we meet Isidro working as a serving boy in a tavern for a group of mercenaries. We also get a quick cutaway to a little girl witch and a group of soldiers finding the results a massacre. Now what we were all worried about.
Brace yourself, I’m going in on the animation.
I’ve read some things about frame rate in Japanese CGI animation and why they seem to be caught in a loop of bad practice when it comes to how many frames a second there should be. I don’t know if any of what I read is true. What I do know is that some of the pans in this are smooth, most are not. Most jerk and jitter the screen so badly that at one moment I had to stop the video and look away to make sure I wasn’t going to get motion sick. You don’t usually notice how many pans are in cheap animation because they’re usually smooth. Here, there are jittery pans nearly every minute. You know how bad arguments about steady frame rates in video games can get? Multiple that by twelve.
Then you get the camera swing, and let me tell you the director is absolutely in love with circling the camera around people in this. This is a camera movement that in traditional filmography is very difficult. Once computer composition became a thing it started showing up everywhere. It’s lost it’s dramatic effect because there’s nothing majestic or stunning about spinning your audience in circles anymore. The first major battle we see involves Guts taking out some skeletons, and the director thought it would be cool to focus on Guts massive sword. So the camera is placed practically on it as it moves around. Get your Dramamine ready.
There are other strange choices for scene framing which place the camera on people’s backs at various moments right after a cut. This wouldn’t be a problem if we could tell exactly what we were looking at, but there’s no follow-through, and more than once I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. The battle in the forest is so dark that you’ll want some black-out curtains in your viewing room of choice to make out the details.
The only character which seems to get some love and attention in the animation is Puck, oddly enough. Puck looks great. Some, although very few, closeups appear to not be locked into the CG animation models. Every time there is a close-up where the animation is hand drawn it’s a million times better looking than the rest. The rest of the time when a CG character is talking they look like marionettes. Each movement is unnaturally slow and mechanical. Guts is so stoic that he’s not as noticeable, but almost every other character doesn’t move in a natural way. The little girl in the wagon and the old man are perhaps the worst. Elsewhere, there are some strange color pallet choices, mostly in Farnese and Serpico’s armor, but those are at this moment the least of this anime’s problems.
And while the opening is a steaming pile of garbage, the ending is actually quite lovely. Probably the best part of the show with they nice song and light brush style sketches of the characters.
In Summary:
Berserk is a story about suffering. Being a Berserk fan is suffering. This anime is going to make you feel that, viscerally, just probably not in the way we all wanted. If you are prone to motion sickness you may want to keep some medication handy if you want to dive into this. The variable frame rates and some questionable direction are going to make your head and stomach spin. The rest of the animation is serviceable at best, dark and confusing at worst. I seriously hope the animation staff can somehow make this better going forward, but I fail to see how to escape the wooden performances of their CG models unless they drop it. It’s a shame the animation is dragging down what was otherwise a smart compression of the story to get to the arc they want to animate. (Although, the skipping of story elements between what is happening now and what came before isn’t going to do anyone new to the property any favors.) If you’re not an invested and masochistic Berserk fan then there’s very little here to compel a new viewer into watching the show.
Episode Grade: C –
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
