Hello there Thought Corner readers, this is Mang4life checking in and today I figured it would be fun to write a review of a very fun and interesting anime series called “Berserk”. Berserk is a story of devotion, leadership, war, death and love, this series draws out many different emotions while watching it and you will most likely range from being thrilled to feeling sad while the tale of a man and his sword unfolds before your very eyes. Things start off with a traveler who goes by the name of “Guts”, while minding his business the man is attacked by a member of a group who call themselves “Band of the Hawk” and is forced into battle, after easily winning the fight Guts is then challenged by the groups leader (Griffith) under the rules of if he was to lose the fight that he would have to join the group and serve as a member. Guts loses the fight and joins Griffith in his conquest to defeat as many armies as possible, soon after he joins the group a series of events leads to Griffith being knighted by the kingdom and eventually captured as a hostage, meanwhile while this is happening Guts finds himself falling in love with Casca, a member of the Hawks who is hopelessly devoted to Griffith and one day wishes to take her place by his side. Eventually Guts and Casca would become the leaders of the Band of the Hawk and set off on a mission to find and free their fearless leader, but when they finally are able to get the job done they discover that things are worse than they thought and then all hell breaks loose, literally. The story was really good and the relationships with the characters really stood out as being strong and well written, but the high point of the series would definitely go to the action sequences, the action was intense and very hard hitting which led to inspirational fight scenes early on and toward the middle-end of the series.
My only real complaint with the story is that toward the end of the series things started to get weird, especially the final two episodes where all these weird monsters began trying to capture and eat everyone in the Band of the Hawk, I didn’t see why it had to turn all demonic like that and why they couldn’t have come up with a better scenario to end the series, but in the end I enjoyed what I saw and other than a couple of random tidbits (I’ll discuss them later) I was really satisfied with the series. One of the best parts of this series was the progression of Guts and Casca’s love affair, you could see it coming a mile away but it took a while for everything to come to a boil, there were little instances where you saw a possible spark and then nothing would happen until later in the series when they finally lay it all out on the table to each other, it was well written and really enjoyable to watch progress and it took your mind off of the fact that Berserk in an action anime.
The animation in Berserk was really good for it's time when it was released in the mid-90s but when you watch the series today you can't help but to feel that it comes off as a little bit dated, but it doesn't distract you from enjoying the anime it just makes it feel like your taking in a piece of history, after completing the series I felt the animation was overall pretty good and worked well with the style of story they were trying to tell. The music on the otherhand was nothing special, nor was the english dubbed voices or the sound effects used, they all came across as low budget and it was kind of annoying at times because the voiceover came across as cheesy and the music didn't really drag you into the scene as much as other anime programs out there. It wasn't like I would avoid the series because of the weak audio, but it definitely was not one of the high points of Berserk and I wouldn't try to sell someone on the series based on it's music or dubbing. I may try to rewatch this series in it's native Japanese audio and see what I think, I've been told by many people that Berserk was far better in Japanese than it was in English so It's worth giving it a shot, I just hate subtitles and I find that it distracts me from taking in the full experience of battle scenes and scenes that are emotional between characters. Despite the flaws that this series has I did really enjoy it and I would reccomend it to anyone who is looking for an anime that has a lot of action, a great story and a nice little love triangle, check it out for yourselves and let me know what you think!
Art & Animation - 7.5/10
Music & Sound Effects - 5.0/10
Story & Writing - 8.0/10
Fun - 8.0/10
Overall - 7.75/10
As always I want to thank those who took the time to read my blog, it's much appreciated and you can always check me out at www.twitter.com/manga4life as well as TZ and FUNI.
Take care,
***Manga4life***
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.