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+======================
+ Berserk - movie 1
+======================
+:CreationDate: 2013-01-21 21:15:33
+:Id: anime/review/berserk-1
+:tags: - anime
+       - review
+:rating: 3
+:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/berserk-the-golden-age-arc-1-the-egg-of-the-king
+
+A boy born from a hanged woman. A sword capable of defeating
+semi-divine beings. A beautiful mercenary leader. Ambition so
+all-consuming that it destroys souls, friendships, love, and the
+barrier between worlds. Mythological creatures walking the earth.
+
+MIURA Kentarou (三浦 建太郎) started writing his epic manga in 1990:
+the first few chapters look like a supernatural splatter horror story,
+with the main character Guts felling monsters with his huge sword. By
+the third volume we get to see a 11-volume long flash-back: how Guts
+became a mercenary, how he got recruited into Griffith's "Band of the
+Hawk", how Griffith got induced into the group of semi-divine beings
+known as the God Hand. There follows and increasingly confused series
+of battles, wars, political ploys, and various levels of magic. We're
+now up to the 36th volume, with on end in sight. The pacing of the
+manga is very variable: sometimes dozens of pages are spent on a
+battle that lasts only a few minutes, sometimes weeks pass between
+pages; we may get very detailed briefings on socio-political
+situations, or we may just get "this is the king, he's evil". Despite
+this, the manga is still gripping, and I'm still buying it (we get
+about 1 volume a year…).
+
+The first part of the story, up to about volume 14, was adapted as an
+animated series between 1997 and 1998, to a mixed reception. To fit
+the story into 25 episodes, much had to be cut and reworked, which
+didn't please some fans, even if all changes were approved by the
+author.
+
+Now, a relatively unknown production company has embarked in a much
+more ambitious project: adapting the whole story into a series of
+movies. During the opening credits, we see images of most of the
+characters, including some that were introduced in the last few
+volumes published, which at the very least shows that the production
+is committed to the whole project.
+
+The first movie covers about 6-7 volumes' worth of story starting from
+the 3rd volume, compressing some spans of time, skipping over some
+sub-plots, relegating some back-story to flash-backs. I suspect that
+someone who's not read the manga would not get the whole significance
+of some of these flash-backs (Guts' relationship with his father, for
+example), but maybe they were considered just important enough to
+include, but not enough to devote much time to.
+
+Of course, this is a first movie in a trilogy, which is itself only
+going to cover a third or maybe a fourth of the manga. There's no way
+to get proper closure, but it still stands pretty well on its own: you
+want to see the rest of the story, but you don't feel short-changed
+for it.
+
+What I *did* feel short-changed for, though, is the quality of the
+animation. It's completely computer-generated, and if I had to hazard
+a guess, I'd say there was very little motion capture involved (more
+probably none at all). Movements and facial expressions are wooden,
+acceleration curves are unnatural, the lighting model feels
+wrong. It's very similar technology to that employed for the recent
+Appleseed movies: it looks like cell-shaded machinima, not
+feature-quality animation. I was repeatedly jarred out of the story by
+some shortcoming of the animation, and I feel this lets down the
+entire movie.
+
+If you like that kind of animation, or are better at ignoring its
+problems than I am, you'll find this a very good movie. But even with
+its visual flaws, it's still a promising beginning to a hugely
+ambitious project that I'd love to see to the end.