Berserk: The Egg of the King is the
first part to a series of films based on The Golden Arc of the
Berserk manga. Set in a medieval time our story starts off with an
army raiding a castle only to be blocked off by a axe-welding warrior
who can wipe out a ton of soldiers with one swoop. He then gets
cocky and opens a challenge to the invading army to see if their
strongest soldier can beat him. We are then introduced to one of our
main characters who is named Guts (sounds like a name of a GWAR band
member if you ask me) and he is up to the challenge and fights the
big metal monster. The fighters clash with Guts winning in a very
gory fashion and the army continues to raid the castle. From a far
we see our other main characters, Griffith, and Casca admiring the
battle. Celebrating victory they then offer Guts to be a higher
ranked member of the army but he refuses as if the army was a useless
thing. Guts then starts riding into the horizon but is then ambushed
by bandits. Guts slices though them very easily and before he could
kill Casca, Griffith stabs Guts with his sword knocking him out. We
soon find out that the so called bandits were actually Griffiths men
sent to test out how strong Guts really is. (Click "Read More" to read the rest of the article).
Guts wakes up at Griffith's
headquarters and is very surprised and angry that Griffith let him
live and then Guts challenges Griffith to a duel. If Guts wins he
gets to kill Griffith but if Griffith wins he gets to own Guts for
the rest of his life. Guts loses the duel and is forced to join
Griffith's army. The story flashes forward three years to Griffith's
army defending their kingdom against another army. During the battle
Guts decides to go after a swordsman in the castle which rumor says
that he is two-hundred years old. Guts confronts the swordsman and
is shocked to see that it is a creature that he thought was a myth.
Once the battle ends the beast gives Guts a warning about his future.
What does this mean? What was that creature Guts fought? Why do I
always use this gag to close off paragraphs in my reviews?
I gotta admit I did find the movie to
be pretty slow at first but once it flashes forwards three years
(which is pretty early in the film) the story picks up greatly and
you will get pulled into a whirlwind of entertainment. The
characters are really well written and you will feel for them
greatly. The film was also very graphic so if you are squeamish to
the sight of limbs getting sliced off then I recommend watching
something else as this ain't no chick flick honey.
The animation is a weird blend of 2D
and 3D computer generated models which left me feeling quite mixed up
about it. First of all the 3D animation is rendered very badly and
it is very choppy making it very hard to watch at some points. The
3D models they designed aren't that bad looking but it does feel like
that I am watching a cut-scene to a Dreamcast game from 2002.
However on the other side of the coin the 2D art-work is pretty good
and it is animated pretty well. My only complaint for the 2D
animation is that the mouth animation can be a bit odd looking in
some parts. But don't let the artwork put you off as the story is
strong enough to keep you from turning off your movie players. The
English dub won't make anybodies best of lists but it is decent
enough to sit through without having to switch to the Japanese dub.
One little gripe I have is the main menu's sub-menus (from before you
start the screen) is really fidgety as when you try to select
something it just goes straight back to the main menu instead of
going to the option you want. I thought I was just pressing the
wrong buttons at first but no matter what direction I press it always
seems to skip what I want to select. Despite my complaints I do
recommend checking out this film as it has a very good story that
will draw you in to the point where you will want to continue to see
what happens next.
Title: Berserk The Golden Age Arc 1:
The Egg Of The King
Genre: Animation/Anime, Action, Fantasy
Running Time: 76 Minutes
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Rating: MA15+ (Strong bloody violence)
Price: $34.95
Recommended: Yes
0 comments:
Post a Comment