Hi Ulty here, you may remember me from such classic reviews such as Therme Romae and Baki the Grappler, among other. Well I'm back to review thing people may or may not care about and on the stand today is Berserk: Egg of the High King. Sadly though if this movie was on trial it'd be found guilty on a charge of being awful and a few counts of amateur animation.
First a little background,this is the first of a trilogy of movies meant to tell the story of Berserk's Golden Age arc with hopeful attempts to move on to the arcs after that. It covers our main character,Guts, as he meets with the band of Hawks and ends shortly before the battle of Doldrey (I.e the main focus of the second movie). This is where the movie hits it's first major problem.
See what I just described is not the true beginning of the story, it really starts with Guts kicking some ass/world building then starting the big flashback that is the Golden Age arc. So the movie either skips it(in the case of pre flashback events) or hastily explains it( as in Guts' childhood). This trend carries over into the rest of the movie as well. Many minor events that build up the characters and what not are skipped just to rush to the next battle scene. The movie has no sense of pace and feels rushed. It doesn't help that they only had an hour and ten minutes to cover a massive amount of material.
This ties into the next problem,the characters are bad. Without all of the nice character moments to build things up everything just short of happens. Relationships change with little warning and it's jarring . We have no real understanding of the characters and therefore can't get behind them. With no reason to give a shit about them, we can't really care about the narrative either. So in this two legged race both story and character fall flat on their faces at first hurdle.
Okay so maybe the story/characters lost their event to make this a good movie,maybe the animation can win it's event and help at least take home the silver. Well unfortunately, someone put laxatives in it's sports drink and it is just soiling it self all over the course(and with that I've done to metaphors what Guts does to people). What I'm trying to get at is that the CGI is awful. It's like some one was trying to make a PS2 game and then they decided to say screw it and made a movie. There is some better looking animated scenes that only serve to make the others look even worse. To somehow make it even stupider, the changes between the two are clunky enough to give you whiplash. One moment Casca looks fine then the next she's a monstrosity.
Now this is where I saw some nice things about the movie:umm,hold on. Oh yeah, it's mostly uncensored,which is nice because the source material is extremely violent(for a reason). Also Griffith's eyes are still terrifying. Yeah that's about it.
So if you just skipped to here for a simple yes or no, then shame on you go read it then come back down here. My recommendation is skip this garbage and go read the manga or watch the TV series,rage at the ending, then read the manga and enjoy one of the best stories ever written. Until next time,don't die.
As always comments, criticisms and death threats are always welcome.
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