Berserk (2016) Review

Shin Itagaki's series skips the Lost Children chapter and opens in the Conviction arc, some of Kentaro Miura's best writing: the inquisitor Mozgus and his torture chambers at the Tower of Conviction, the starving refugee camp at its foot, and Farnese, the young commander of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, whose faith begins to crack once she has met Guts. Theron Martin of ANN rightly called her the most interesting character in it, and Luca and Nina, two women of the refugee camp, are drawn with real sympathy.

The images are the problem. Liden Films, working with GEMBA and Millepensee, builds the show primarily from cel-shaded CG models with pen-style hatching over the shadows, and it moves like puppetry: faces barely emote, bodies clatter together, and the camera work is disorienting. Jacob Hope Chapman of ANN called it abominably ugly while granting that Miura's story still shines through, and that is the fair verdict. Super-deformed comic cutaways for Puck and Isidro sit badly beside the torture scenes.

Shirō Sagisu's score is the strongest element, some of his best work by Martin's account. The second season packs in Schierke, Flora and the Berserker armour, and ends on the road to Vritannis, partway through the arc.