Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen I - Haou no Tamago

In the Kingdom of Midland, a mercenary named Guts wanders the land, preferring a life of conflict over a life of peace. Despite the odds never being in his favor, he is an unstoppable force that overcomes every opponent, wielding a massive sword larger than himself.

One day, Griffith, the mysterious leader of the mercenary group Band of the Hawk, witnesses the warrior's battle prowess and invites the wandering swordsman to join his squadron. Rejecting the offer, Guts challenges Griffith to a duel—and, much to the former's surprise, is subsequently defeated and forced to join.

Now, Guts must fight alongside Griffith and his crew to help Midland defeat the Empire of Chuder. However, Griffith seems to harbor ulterior motives, desiring something much larger than just settling the war...

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Guts Main

Iwanaga, Hiroaki Japanese

Griffith Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Casca Main

Yukinari, Toa Japanese

Judeau Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Nosferatu, Zodd Supporting

Miyake, Kenta Japanese

Pippin Supporting

Fujiwara, Takahiro Japanese

Rickert Supporting

Kotobuki, Minako Japanese

Corkus Supporting

Matsumoto, Yoshirou Japanese

Gaston Supporting

Yao, Kazuki Japanese

Bazuso Supporting

Kobayashi, Kendou Japanese

Kamagata, Eiichi Producer

Ooshima, Mitsuru Producer

Yonemori, Hiroto Producer

Shimada, Akira Producer

Reviews

May 25, 2024

lordJahoo

Recommended

Let's keep this short. I have no problems with the audiovisual design or the voice acting. And it's Berserk's story and characters, which are great.
Would be 1 point higher if there was less cut content and it would be a 10 for me if on top of that it had Junketsu no Maria level of combat and armor realism.
Instead, it's even worse than in the manga. For example, what the hell was that scene with just hitting with like 10 overhead slashes in a row and the other guy just holding out the axe horizontally in the same position the whole time?
Why wear that ... heavy and expensive lamellar armor when you can still be easily skewered to the hilt with a normal arming sword by a normal person? Why wear that shiny and REALLY expensive plate breastplate when a bolt from a small crossbow easily penetrates it?
It would make more sense to fight naked under those circumstances, at least they wouldn't be slowed down and overheated by that overweight cardboard.
7.5

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 5, 2024

SIG442

Mixed Feelings

This needs some explaining and this could get lengthy.
But it needs to be done really.
Quick note; I watched a American-English dubbed version instead of the original Japanese version. This could have been part of why it gives me mixed feelings as you will read. Often the English dubs are really cringe and makes a mess of the original. So please keep that in mind, it could be the case here as well.

Now I won't talk about the story directly so no spoilers are given away.
But I can talk about the story progression, which is all over the place.
You get a lot of snippets of the ... past and the present at different times to see. However nothing is really in order, nothing is really following common sense either. This makes it most of all very difficult to follow. Now if this was done in a more decent way so you could actually follow the story, then it would actually be a great anime. This took away 2 points off for my taste.

Now for the last missing point that I took off, this is due to the story not really saying much which makes it rather vanilla.
This making in combination with the previous point makes it rather tiresome to watch. Now, I am from 1982 myself, so the "you don't get it because you're too young" doesn't fly as it's right in the window of my teens where I watched a lot of anime and cartoons overall. So I do know what I'm talking about.

The graphics look rather 90's style, which in 2012 would be out dated clearly. Even now it looks rather dated. However you have to give credits to the studio for doing more research about actual European middle-ages then anime normally would get. A lot is actually very much aligned with realistic historical things. How banners would look, armor to a degree, weapons and even clothing. Yes it very clearly did get a fantasy treatment but well within reason. This while the hairstyles are a mixed between realistic and anime depending on the character.

I still have more a mixed feeling about this anime, due to it's major storyline problem.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 23, 2021

spiderboi

Not Recommended

A pretty bad adaptation of one of the greatest manga arcs of all time. I do think adapting this arc as a movie trilogy provides more positives than negatives. Although it would suffer from some cut content (which in turn would affect the characterization and thematic depth) due to not being able to adapt everything in comparison to a TV series that has more time, it would be able to reach the extremely high artistic standards of the manga.

Berserk has some of the greatest art in any comic book, which makes it one of the hardest manga to adapt properly (also in part because ... of other aspects, like how it uses the comic medium to its full potential). A TV anime would not be able to do it justice because of the limited budgets and extremely tight schedules that plague a lot of shows in the industry. The budget, resources, and schedule of a movie would be able to emulate the ridiculous standards set by the manga to a much larger degree than a TV series. Unfortunately, the movie fails here and in many other parts too.

Right from the start, the film is littered with janky and bad CGI in a mediocre battle scene that showcases many of the other issues to come. CGI is used a lot in this film and it does not fit well at all with the 2D animation (which by itself is relatively decent). This in itself is pretty disappointing considering the art is one of the biggest strengths of the Berserk manga. The movie fails largely in the animation and a lot of the visuals, not living up to the transcendently dark yet beautiful atmosphere of the manga. Although, an apparent strength in this movie is the background art, which is pretty good most of the time.

As mentioned before, although some depth could be lost by reducing this arc to a movie trilogy because of cut content, this can be saved by some rewriting and making each film around 2 hours. The runtime of this film sends a bad sign as when removing the theme song, the preview of the next movie, and credits it’s less than 70 minutes. This issue is reflected in the terrible pacing, and an egregious amount of cut content that removes almost all the characterization, thematic depth, and subtlety that make this manga so amazing. If this is your first time getting into this series, these fantastically written characters like Casca, Guts, and Griffith will seem stale and boring to you.

This film also weirdly prioritizes a lot of action scenes and trivial scenes that are largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. In turn, largely skipping a lot of the character-building moments and dialogues (until the last 15-20 minutes) that make Berserk so beloved. Important parts like Guts backstory are skimmed through in an uncreative and poorly directed 30-second nightmare sequence (where if you were new to this series you wouldn’t get it at all). Speaking about the directing, IT’S ASS. It seems this director has a pretty limited idea about what makes the source material so beloved based on a lot of decisions in this movie. Even with the running time being bad, the film itself could have probably been a lot better if it were handed off to somebody more experienced.

If you want to get into Berserk just read the manga because this series will not get a great adaptation anytime soon. It’s one of the best dark fantasy series in fiction. The 1997 TV anime adaptation of the golden age arc is pretty good, the only issues are some cut content (although it’s mostly minor and nowhere near as bad as this movie) and a limited budget which could be seen in the animation being stiff at times.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Who else thinks this art is better than the 2016 series? MrYandereFan26 - Apr 9, 2024	9 replies	by Liberandum_ »» Apr 10, 2024 10:32 AM
	Poll: Berserk Ougon Jidaihen I: Haou no Tamago Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) amirhoss - Feb 4, 2012	160 replies	by BorednSpicy »» Oct 14, 2023 3:38 PM
	Berserk fell off after Golden Age removed-user - Jul 27, 2021	36 replies	by -DxP- »» Nov 27, 2022 5:48 AM
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	when to watch this? Hystique - May 22, 2021	10 replies	by Zoldra0 »» May 28, 2021 3:47 AM

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