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Berserk - movie 1
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: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.
