Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III - The Advent (2013)

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I think about this film a little differently from the other reviewers. I have read the Manga, and I have watched the anime, and I am interested in what this anime version adds to what has already been published.In my opinion Berserk fans should read the original, because it has everything--every last little detail, ranging from the evolution of Miura's drawing and storytelling style, to scenes omitted from both the animated series and the movie. These details are important for people who want to know the characters of Berserk and its world as well as possible. It also takes more risks artistically: plot points are more likely to be delivered out of order, there is more foreshadowing and symbolism, the number of sub-plots is greater....adaptations usually transform or simplify the original to match the conventions of a new target audience, so that its features can be more immediately recognized, digested, or even predicted. The original lacks these changes, and so is in a sense also a document of Japanese culture.I would recommend this movie with some caveats. If you can't read the original, you should watch the first 21 or so episodes of the animated series, and then watch this film. Watch the first two movies of the new trilogy later. Too much of what makes you care about the characters, and be concerned about their fate--which is grossly affected by this film--is missing from the first two movies. What is omitted is too important to the overall story: it explains why Guts thinks the way he does, why the characters came to be the way they are, their motivations, values, knowledge, etc. Too much of what follows won't make sense, or won't register with you, if you are not aware of what the characters care about. Assuming you do the above, the third movie is an excellent adaptation of probably the most powerful portion of the Berserk narrative. The animation makes the events come to life very clearly and very effectively. The mood is sustained, the suspense is maintained, the characters "look cool", and anticipation is built up for the next installment.

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

I hate this part 3 of this movie... First of all I loved the part 1 and 2. The fight moves were great. The plots were wonderful. It held so much promise for Guts and Casca; I knew from the start that they would be lovers. And they ended up so in part 3. Yet there was a lurking feeling of an upcoming dark moment that u sense in part 1 and 2; that things could go wrong. But i never expected that the dark moment was darker than I imagined, seen at the end of part 3. it pains me very much; the violence, the agony, hate,... I was emotionally disturbed... creepy and nauseating. In the End: Grifith became bad, Casca goes mad and Guts loses not only his right arm but Casca, the woman he loves ... this movie should be tagged "Tragedy"!!!

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.