Review for Berserk: Movie 2 - The Battle For Doldrey

Introduction

A little consistency would be nice. At the end of last year, we got the first Berserk movie in three forms, one of them quite appealing. You had your basic DVD release, you got a DVD / Blu-ray combo, and you got the collector’s edition, which had the Blu-ray and the DVD, as well as a collector’s booklet all in some nifty packaging. And now, eight months down the line, we get the second movie of the Golden Age Arc of Berserk, The Battle For Doldrey, and you have the choice of plain vanilla DVD, or plain vanilla Blu-ray. There’s no combo release here, and there’s certainly no collector’s edition. Good luck getting those spines matched up on your shelf. I’m looking at the Blu-ray disc for this review.

Guts is a young mercenary looking to make a name for himself on the battlefield, with his deft ability with his unfeasibly large sword. His skill and his relentless aggression capture the eye of Griffith, the leader of the mercenary Band of the Hawk, and Griffith just has to have Guts no matter what. It takes a one on one battle to convince Guts to join, much to the consternation of Griffith’s lieutenant Casca, who has never seen her Captain so enthused about anyone before. Three years later, The Band of the Hawk has risen in stature to be the vanguard in Midland’s war against the neighbouring nation of Chuder. What’s more, Griffith’s star is rising in the royal court of Midland, causing no little annoyance amongst the established nobility. But Griffith’s ambition is limitless, with a dark core that is symbolised by the arcane pendant he always wears around his neck. Guts and Casca have no choice but to follow their Captain down the path of a dark and supernatural prophecy.

Picture

It’s the same again when it comes to the film’s image quality. You get a 93 minute movie on a single layer Blu-ray disc, presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p. The transfer is as disappointing as before, with the image stricken with digital banding throughout, particularly in darker scenes. There is a smidge of aliasing in one scene, which might from the source material, and once again, I hate the CGI in this film. For close up shots it uses traditional 2D style animation, for distance and especially battle animation, there’s no choice but to go with CGI. It’s when it goes to the mid-range, and starts doing character animation in CGI, where facial features are clearly visible, the whole thing looks woefully bad.

Sound

The Blu-ray comes with DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English and Japanese, with translated English subtitles, and a signs only track. The surround is excellent, with full blooded action and grand cinematic music. The dialogue is clear throughout, and despite the cast changing, I was happy with the Japanese version, although I do find that Guts’ voice actor is a little bland and nondescript. For fans of the English dub, it’s worth noting that the TV voice actors for Guts, Griffith and Casca, and some lesser characters reprise their roles, so there is a bit of continuity. There’s also a little continuity in Susumu Hirasawa providing the film’s theme song, although regular Bleach and Evangelion composer Shiro Sagisu composes the film’s score. He does manage to hold onto the essence of the TV series music though, which I thought was a nice touch.

Note that as per usual for Kazé releases, the Berserk disc locks the audio and subtitle streams during playback, and there’s no way of watching the film with subs if you are a hard of hearing dub fan. Unlike the first film, there’s no cheat allowing you to toggle the subtitles on and off on the Blu-ray.

Extras

The disc autoplays with a trailer for Bleach: The Movie 4 – Hell Verse. It presents its content with an animated menu screen, and there are nine chapters in the film.

Conclusion

Don’t waste your time. Buy the TV series. It’s 15 years old, with low budget animation, and its dub certainly hasn’t aged all that well. But it’s everything this movie is not. I gave the first film the benefit of the doubt, hoping that its lack of substance was down to teething troubles and a short run time. After all it had sped through a fair bit of the Golden Age Arc, which is basically a retelling of the TV series anyway, and with the subsequent movies having longer runtimes than the first, I hoped that there would be the space to do all the things that the first film did not. That doesn’t happen in The Battle For Doldrey. In every respect it’s exactly the same as the first film, it’s Berserk with the story, the character development, and the context stripped out. It’s 90 minutes of battle scenes, a bit of random exposition here and there, and some sex.

Admittedly the battle scenes are vividly staged. Guts’ legendary battle against 100 mercenaries is brilliantly choreographed, and everything that you wish that the TV show could have done. The same is true for the siege at Doldrey, and the battle that opens the movie. But without context and character, you may as well just be watching cut-scenes from a video game. The Berserk movies don’t bother to explain anything. Just why is Casca in the middle of a battle when her body is clearly informing her that this is not the right time for her to be exerting herself? Just why is the creepy old bearded guy so insistent on capturing Griffith alive? What motivates Guts to leave the Band of the Hawk? When did Griffith and the Princess get so friendly? This movie isn’t going to tell you. But blood and gore and animated rumpy-pumpy for the win!

The only positive to this film is that after watching it, you’ll be left with a whole lot of ‘huh?’ trying to figure it out. Some of you may even be convinced to buy the TV series to try and fill in the gaps. And that will be the best decision that you could make, as Berserk the television series is some of the best storytelling in anime. What I can’t get my head around is how the Berserk movies could offer some of the worst storytelling in anime, as it’s all adapted from the same source material. Apparently there’s one more film in the Golden Age Arc. I know that completists will want it on their shelves regardless. But if it should never come to the UK, I for one won’t shed any tears. And to finish on a positive, I repeat, the battle scenes sure look pretty!