User reviews

Emotionally scarring and very intense. The 2 previous Berserk movies have to be watched before taking this one on.

They actually show what happens next. Stunning visuals, powerful scenes. Sad ending. Honestly this movie is the best out of the other two. You could skip those ones and watch this one.

I loved the original series of Berserk and this movie series has been a great addition. The animation work is superb, crisp, clear and colourful, it's a pleasure to watch. Last review I wasn't too happy but I understand they are fast-forwarding through the story. If you've seen the original series, you'll still enjoy this for it's visual treat, and if you're new you'll like it all the same hopefully. The story of Berserk is great, I hope they stick to it faithfully. Anyhow if you're looking for an entertaining anime series to watch, definitely check this out you won't be disappointed. And now my review has come to 10 lines I can end it respectfully, check this out! :)

A year after guts and Griffith part ways, he and the band of the hawk conduct a rescue mission to bail Griffith out of jail. I came across the first movie on Netflix and thought it was great, caught the second one on youtube and thought it was even better than the first, and bought this one off of iTunes and it was so intense and so brutal that it made Dante's inferno: an animated epic look like a walk in the park. The first two were action/adventure/war films, but this one was action, adventure, horror, and dark fantasy all rolled up into one. this is quite honestly the best animated film I've ever seen, and it's even better than the first two if you ask me. I definitely recommend the The berserk trilogy to fellow anime fans, they have great stories, great voice acting, they're filled with brutal action, they're creepy, they're dramatic, they're intense, they're raw, and they have insane amounts of gore. they won't be disappointed

The third installment of 'Berserk: The Golden Age Arc' movie series which was based on the manga series. As expected the movie didn't disappoint me but still first two are the epic compared to it. Yes first two were war genre, fully gore, awesome movies and this third one was slightly turned out fantasy-horror. After where it ended in second part I thought the revenge will commence in its follow-up story but it surprised me and took us on the different path.

This story follows after a year since Guts and Griffith parted. Some of the escaped Hawk bands prepare for the rescue mission in the Casca's stand-in command to bring back their leader. Soon, Guts join them, the rescue team becomes much stronger. Not wasting much time the mission commence and what comes next is the unexpected twist and theme transformation. The dark world unleashes, without a mercy it assault the heroes and leaves the unforgettable scars. The best part of all these three movies were the way the movie ended. It leaves something broad open which makes us to guess what will happen next like a mind twister.

Yeah I know most of the people like Guts and it is my favourite character as well. In this part The Griffith character was weakened but we knew it coming. As he was a mysterious character from the very first movie especially with his 'golden egg' I knew there must be some story behind it. This movie did not explain that portions very well, maybe we can expect that in the next part, I hope so. And Casca was as usual supported very well.

The sex scenes were stronger like in 'The Battle for Doldrey', so the movie is not suitable for everyone. Those who like sword-war theme and Anime especially gore will enjoy it. If you have not seen first two, begin with those, you will love this trilogy for sure. Now I am eagerly waiting for its fourth. Highly recommended for adults.

8/10

OK we need the rest of the parts now. Ending was incredible and if anyone has actually read the manga I'm sure you will understand we need more, we NEED the rest.

Whereas the first two films ranged from merely passable to a downright butchering of the story, Descent finally finds a comfortable groove and is definitely the best one of the films so far.

Descent has many points in its favor before the film even starts; this movie covers the most important and character-focused part of the story without any massive battles or political plotting. The movie is focused solely on the survival of the Band of the Hawk, with the battles being small-scale skirmishes than entire armies clashing and the story moves away from the mundane and medieval aspects to the (personally) more interesting stuff with demons and the supernatural. This allows for a tighter focus and structure.

The pacing is far from perfect, but it's finally at least decent. After the first 20-30 minutes, the film finally takes some time with the characters, and actually manages to establish some emotional attachment to them. It's definitely a positive for the film.

In the first films the blend of hand-drawn animation and CG ranged from looking terrible to at best alright, but here it is finally used rightly. It's not perfect, but it's lightyears ahead of the first two. The studio has cleverly chosen to use CG for the character models, but their faces are animated in 2D. This does a good job of abridging the two different animation styles, and the moments when the two clash are far less numerous than before. The film being more character-focused also gives us more moments where they are animated fully hand-drawn, and it looks great. When the Eclipse begins, the movie really becomes a treat for the eyes: all the various monsters and the surreal landscapes of the demon world look great, and the action scenes are very well directed and animated.

But despite all this, Descent is far from great. The problems are smaller than before, but they're still the same. The biggest one is undoubtedly the pacing; the film still feels like a heavily cut down cliff's notes version of the story. If the film was 30-40 minutes longer, maybe then it could have covered everything that's in the story. The most outrageous examples of this are that a) we never find out what Guts has been doing during his year of absence and b) one scene where Caska seemingly arbitrarily switches between three completely different emotional states in the space of only a few minutes.

Despite the praise I gave the animation, the CG on the humans still looks jarring and is very easily noticed. It's less problematic than before, but still an issue. The score is a mixed bag; at times it's appropriately booming and ominous and at others bizarrely inappropriate. There are moments where mere silence would have suited some scenes better than the music in the film. In fact, the more ambient-styled score of the original series suited the Eclipse's nightmarish events better, and that's quite an odd thing to say, considering the original's fairly weak score.

The odd thing about Descent is that for every thing it does better than the series, it seems to get something else wrong. Here we finally see how Guts escapes the Eclipse, but Rickert's own mini-story has been almost entirely cut out. The animation is far better than the series, but the voice acting is clearly inferior. The film completes this part of the story, but so much that is important to future events has been cut out that continuing from this will be quite hard. The definitive animated version of Berserk might lie somewhere between these films and the original series. Perhaps by making a supercut of the two one would end up with a masterpiece.

Recommendation: Despite all I said, I enjoyed this film. It has its problems, lots of them, but the good ultimately outweighs the bad. Worth watching.

PS. For all you expecting Wyald and the Black Dogs: they're not here. Sorry.

The other 2 movies were great and all, but this is not what I was expecting. Absolutely scaring and a very horrid ending. But still the good action like the others... 😳😟

The cinematography suffers in this film with a lot of close-ups and narrow framing, and the music is not great either and doesn't fit most scenes. The series was way better, and even the ending was in Purple rather than Red, which makes it less intense. Also the 3D is noticeably worse in Arc III, vs Arc I and II. And the Worst bits are a Lot of tie-ins to their own series, Berserk 2016, which is just a terrible, unwatchable, series. The original 1997 series played it close with the manga But Also had it be a confined story, even leaving the ending ambiguous about his survival. The movie just straight-up smashes it's own agenda into the narrative and it is distracting, because you won't know anything about these random scenes because they are totally disconnected with the presentation of the Arc trilogy. Overall, it's a good movie and a fine conclusion to the trilogy, with many things left to be desired. Not much of the friend characters again like Judeau and Corkus that the series had, not as inspiring nor impactful as the series, and all with questionable cinematography and cinematic decisions that reduce the overall spectacle. the 1997 series remains a 10/10 Masterpiece for me, it might even be Perfect with the only improvements possible in the FPS and animation Quality (details, more frames, etc); but the Movie series Overall, as in all combined, is definitely a 7/10 but certainly worth a spot on the shelf in a box-set. Also Way too much "magic" in this film, whereas the series was all physical and mostly realistic.

This is the peak of what the Berserk trilogy has to offer in terms of drama, gore, nudity.

It is an extraordinary conclusion for this rather disturbing saga. The battles are as abundant in this film then it is predecessor, but they surpass everything, speaking of bloodshed. The motivations of those battles are more than ever relevant to the theme and the plot of the saga so we are enormously concerned about their outcome for our 3 protagonists.

However, be warned this anime is probably not for everyone. it deals with bizarre imagery, many torture sequences, rape, depression, shattered friendship, etc.

This is my favorite part, I can't describe it. The least thing I will say is this part that will shock you

"Berzerk: The Golden Age Arc I-III" = 7.9

It's not often that I find myself rooting for a man to slaughter people, for any reason. And yet, I never stopped rooting for Guts once. The Berzerk films sport a thoroughly engaging dark fantasy narrative, supported by entertaining and well animated action scenes. This series effortlessly glides between very funny and very serious, whichever it's trying to be at any given moment. The only real problem I have is that the dialogue can be really cheesy, clunky, if not simply detached from reality. Chalk it up to the translation, I suppose. Regardless, this film series is the sort of thing I show to people who think anime is silly, nothing but Dragon Balls and Narootoes, and it rarely fails to open minds to this huge world of animated cinema.

The Berserk manga is my favorite peace of modern literature, i wear a Behelit around my neck every workday and this review is a response to D. Stockard lenghty 1/5 amazon review which you all should look up as his thought encapsulate mine perfectly but i liked a few more scenes: One would be Griffith's trippy transformation and his short fight against the Skull Knight. Thus i give it a slightly better rating but the movie committed the worst sin of all. Being boring, besides being irritating, which is a given at this point. The animation process again wasn't finished, as always. Movie 2 is the worst btw. from a cinematic standpoint as it was just 3 extended scenes with no context but movie 3 straight out vomit over the last parts of the Eclipse as it glorifies rape. I thus would love to know what Miura thought of this adaptation. Who knows what the studio will do with the rest of the manga but they should just stop. The folks at skullknight forums would love that but this project will at least give me a few nice AMVs and maybe a new Susuma song? Well, one can only dream...

After the first two good movies of this trilogy, this last one,"The Advent", is a disappointment.

The story continues after the events that ended the previous one. Guts is back, and he gets back with Casca and the others. Pretty soon there is a rescue mission to get Griffith back and out of the dungeon where he is languishing.

What follows is a mess that lasts for over an hour.

What could have been a cool rescue mission or some nice fight scenes (as in the previous two), here descends into purposeless carnage, with gore, blood and monsters just making their appearance for not particular reason, and characters that had been developed in the previous two movies left as little more than just caricatures of themselves. We are not getting into this kind of action movies for their plot, but at least a little bit of interest in developing it and the characters is expected. And the action does not help in this case, because, as said, it is boring, repetitive and lazy.

Fans may enjoy reuniting with the characters, but there is little else to recommend.

After seeing the first two episodes, (and enjoying them), I was not expecting the third act to go in this direction. I felt like they run out of ideas and went into this totally different horror fantasy direction. But it seems that the story is simply following the original Manga. So maybe real Fans would have known what to expect but for me I felt like I was watching a different show.

The only thing good about The Golden Age Arc is that the animation is sort of better.

Especially since the most important part of this story is the "ending" (which as most people in these reviews apparently don't know is just the beginning of the manga).

The voice acting is nothing compared to the original. And the score was awful. And while it would still have the shock factor, the anime from 97 feels a lot better. Since the ending is so controversial it is very important to do it justice, which they didn't.

I remember wanting to see how they would remake it when it was coming out and then being seriously disappointed as soon as I saw the Nosferatu Zodd fight. Berserk still remains the reason I got into anime. The storytelling is incredibly mature and to this day remains probably my number 1 favorite anime. The 1997 one!

And just to give you a hint of how good it was... after finishing the old one I spent half an hour replaying the Gatsu piano theme and staring at the ceiling, thinking about what had I just seen and thinking how everything else I watch from now on would be judged more harshly. The music, the acting, the images, everything was haunting and surreal.

This feels like a cheap remake and all of the great moments are (at least to me) ruined...