ThatAnimeSnob

Before this anime was out a lot of fools were defending it as amazing because of nostalgia, even though the trailer was nothing but bad CGI and the material it was adapting was nowhere as good as the one from the 90s. Boy, did they regretted being positive about it.

The 90s Berserk is the best dark fantasy anime of all times. The 2016 version on the other hand is yet another dark and edgy mediocrity with cancer CGI, awful directing, and terrible sound composition. You cannot watch 5 minutes without spotting a lazily made scene with bizarre camera angles and effortless lipsync. When Guts hits something, it makes a ridiculous metallic sound even when what he hits is not made of metal. And when he cuts someone in half, it looks like a plastic toy because the CGI is rendered cheaply. Berserk, the once best animated dark fantasy series of all times, degraded from a psychological drama to a horribly animated mindless gorefest. I mean, it always had splatter and violence, but at least the Golden Age arc was very focused on the relationship of the main trio. Each one of them had a completely different mindset which elevated the 90s anime to an exceptional character study. You could say it was edge done right.

The problem is, as soon as the Eclipse was over the story lost most of its appeal. Not only because the new anime is all in CGI and has terrible directing. It suffers from the exact same problem as the manga, which doesn’t look like shit. The character dynamics are gone, Griffith degrades to a heartless demon, Guts degrades to slaying mostly monsters instead of people which doesn’t have the same impact, and Caska degrades from a strong willed woman to a damsel in distress with the brain of a vegetable. Also, the newer cast is nowhere near as interesting. They are comic reliefs or background characters who are there just for the heck of it. Guts is the one doing all the work, he is so powerful compared to them that he doesn’t really need them. Yes, later on they help him not to be taken over by evil, it’s still doesn’t take away the issue of them being nothing more than support for the main character instead of having their own strong dynamics.

I also got tired of seeing Guts doing nothing but running after Griffith, as if I’m watching Naruto and Sasuke all over again. I was very patient with it, assuming all the shit that were happening in all these arcs is some sort of a buildup. They are not, the only thing that changes is Guts getting bigger swords and better equipment, stuff that do not count as character development. He just mutated from a man who can’t settle down to a mindless killing machine that wants nothing but revenge. How is that remotely interesting? The story is going nowhere for decades, it goes in circles as if I am watching Inuyasha all over again. The fact that Miura was more interested in playing Idolmaster than finishing the story was just salt on an open wound. He dragged the plot indefinitely so he can milk it with subpar videogame adaptations and then passed away after changing Berserk from an amazing dark fantasy with memorable characters into another edgelord throwaway series. What’s with this demonic invasion bullshit? It made things convoluted and took away the tragedy of death, since now it’s mostly about Guts butchering monsters. You don’t care about monsters, they are 1 dimensional spawns of evil. It’s still a fine spectacle if all you care about is goreporn, but it’s nowhere near as good as it was, and the CGI makes it unwatchable.