Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I – The Egg of the King

/ Rishard Chapoteau / 1 Comment

Berserk is ongoing manga series that has run since 1990.   The story appears to be set in an alternate world going through its dark age.  Kingdoms are warring for land using knights, giant armies, and hired mercenaries.   The series feels comparable to Game of Thrones as far as tone and violence.

The first story arc, Black Swordsman, sets you in  a  world of fantasy with demons, and monsters.  Back in 1997 they created an amazing 25 episode anime series based on the second arc of the manga called Golden Age Arc. The Golden Age Arc is a long flashback to what caused the world to become so dark.  It feels much more grounded in what could have been our past.   The Golden Age Arc focused on the early years of three major characters, Guts, Griffith, and Casca while they lead the mercenary group, The Band of Hawks.   While we would have called this period the dark ages, The Golden Age Arc basically refers to the good old days before magic and monsters ruled the land.  What happens at the end of the golden age is nothing short of horrific.

The basic story of Berserk starts off following Guts, who seems to be a loner, that seems to think only of survival and swinging his giant sword.  In his travels he gains notoriety, and the attention of the Band of Hawks lead by Griffith who decides to recruit him.  Through their adventures together in the Band of Hawks, Guts learns to stop being a loner, and craves the companionship of Griffith as his friend.  Meanwhile Griffith is leading his mercenary army towards his dreams of having his own country.

Fans have waited for a followup series for years to continue the other arcs. It seemed it would never happen.  Finally, for the 20th anniversary of the manga, a new trilogy of movies was announced covering the Golden Age Arc.   If this trilogy does well STUDIO4°C will give the rest of the series the same treatment.

As you can see in the above trailer the new movie is gorgeous.   I’ve discussed this movie with several friends over the last few days and every single time I do, I have to get into how fluid the animation is.  The original berserk anime was gory, but this movie felt much more so due to the quality of the animation.  Every sword swing looked elegant and real.  In the original anime Guts cuts through body parts very quickly.  You would get a sense of where he hit them (the torso, an arm, or a leg), but generally without a lot of detail.  Later in the new movie there is a scene where Guts is fighting his way out of a castle.  As he’s doing so you can see exactly where he cuts into his opponents.  Everything just feels more real.

Because of this feeling of “reality”, some scenes have more gravity then the original anime did.  There is a scene where Guts kills someone he didn’t mean to.  Watching him deal with it had a lot more impact then it had previously in the anime.

The new movie totals in at 77 minutes, which is its biggest downfall.  It encompasses the first 10 episodes of anime which would be around 220 minutes.  In order to squeeze that much in, they had to remove and condense a few plot points.  Some of the plot points were minor and easy to miss.  Unfortunately, they chose to condense Guts’ younger years into a 30 second fever dream.  This movie would have done itself a favor to have been at least 100 minutes long and take a bit more time fleshing out characters.
Having read the source material (and watched the original anime), I’m well versed in the story, but I’m not sure how someone new to the story would feel because of how much it gets rushed and pushed together.

This film covers Guts first meeting with The Band of Hawks and his realization that he isn’t really friends with Griffith.  Unfortunately I don’t think this movie goes far enough to show why Guts would have ever thought he and Griffith were friends to begin with. There are also a cast of side characters in The Band of Hawks that haven’t had a chance to get fleshed out yet.  Hopefully in the second movie they’ll get more screen time.

Thankfully the second movie Berserk Golden Age Arc II: The Battle for Doldrey has a runtime of 100 minutes.  Hopefully it won’t suffer the same issues as the first film.  That being said the first film is still a great watch for anyone that enjoyed the original anime or manga.  Even if you haven’t seen the original series, and you love action, check this out.  Hopefully the it won’t turn you off from what is a great series with a great story.

Viz is releasing the first film in America on Blu-ray and DVD on November 27, 2012, and the rest will follow over time, but there isn’t a current release date.  Viz also plans on streaming the film through their new service called Neon Alley, on the Playstation 3.

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Join us on 8/25/12 for Doctor Who at the Paley Center for Media in NYC!!

/ Christopher Lee / 2 Comments

Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

http://www.paleycenter.org/2012-doctor-who-screenings-8-25

Come see a screening of Doctor Who: “Spearhead from Space,” (8/25) the first episode with third Doctor Jon Pertwee, and have a chance to win one of two pairs of tickets to BBC AMERICA’s screening of the Doctor Who season-seven première “Asylum of the Daleks.”

The Paley Center For Media is located at 25 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019

Travel with us through time and space as The Paley Center for Media and BBC Home Entertainment present this special series of classic Doctor Who screenings on the last Saturday of each month from June to September 2012. These screenings will feature the digitally remastered episodes in the best way: on the big screen, with big sound, and the Doctor Who community.

There will also be Doctor Who trivia with the chance to win DVDs and more from BBC Home Entertainment.

I plan on arriving at noon. If anyone wants to meet up earlier for breakfast or just coffee. Let me know in the comments either here or click here for the Facebook event page.

It’ll be an epic way to start the weekend and one of the last chance you may have to win tickets to the “New Who” season 7 première! Don’t forget last year’s première when Matt, Karen, and Arthur showed up with donuts for everyone! Plus, the screening was hosted by the cast and Steven Moffat!

Marvel No Way!

/ Rishard Chapoteau / 4 Comments

For years Marvel Comics has had a big problem. While they have made a ton of money from their movie properties, they seem to have an issue with selling . . . comics.

Just over 20 years ago, Marvel shipped over 8 million of copies of X-Men #1 to retailers. Now the only comics that sell well for Marvel are their special events and major crossovers.  The Avengers Vs X-Men crossover sold  around 175K copies an issue in July.  Standard top-tier titles haven’t fared anywhere near as well.  The next best-selling title for the month of July was Uncanny X-men which sold 66k issues.
The Avengers movie grossed over 600 million dollars.  In July the comic book sold 63k copies.

Marvel has tried to find a way to turn sales around for a while and just haven’t been able to accomplish it.  They relaunched Ultimate Spider-Man about a year ago.  Issue #12 sold 42k copies in July.  They tried it with Fantastic Four as well with two different comic titles (Fantastic Four, and FF), both of which sold well under 40k copies.

Despite the poor sales, for years Marvel was the #1 selling comic book company . . . until this past year.  DC took a huge gamble a year ago and rebooted the DC Universe with the what they called “The New 52”.   Since they made the change DC has outsold Marvel consistently, but not by much.

The DC Pew 52At NYCC in 2011 I was hoping to hear something exciting from Marvel.  I went to the X-Men panel hoping that they would revamp the line, and cut some titles.  Instead they announced more titles.   I think Marvel had something like 17 different X related titles getting released, which is just way too many [ed. Agreed!].  As a lapsed comic book reader that used to love the X-men I was looking to jump back in, but at $4 an issue and 17 different titles why would I bother.

The changes Marvel made last year just weren’t enough to help their bottom line.  To combat this Marvel has announced Marvel Now! which at first glance looks like a relaunch of the Marvel Universe.  They are canceling most of their top-tier X-Men and Avengers books and relaunching them with different costumes and creative teams.  The list of titles that Marvel is canceling and replacing can be seen at the Marvel NOW! wiki page.

Unfortunately this isn’t what Marvel needs to do.  Marvel needs to cancel EVERYTHING and start again.   They need to give lapsed readers a clean slate to come on board with. To make things worse they are adding extra titles.  So instead of making the Marvel Universe easier to follow they added even more complexity to the situation. The major plot point involving the Marvel Now! involves time travel . . . yeah, that’s going to go well.   As a lapsed Marvel reader this isn’t what I want to see happen.

This whole Marvel Now! initiative feels like an event mini series that will have everything back to normal next year with another major event.  Perhaps Marvel will eventually have the balls to do what needs to be done and reboot the universe with less titles.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Video Game review

/ Rishard Chapoteau / 2 Comments

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is a follow-up/sequel to Transformers: War for Cybertron ​by High Moon Studios.  It uses the original characters from Transformers Gen 1, but changes the story up.  Both games take place before the Ark crashes on Earth which makes them prequels to the original 80’s cartoon.  Unfortunately they made story decisions to the game which would completely alter cartoon continuity.

​If you were a huge fan of the cartoon then some of the changes they decided to make, like  Shockwave creating the Dinobots on Cybertron,  might bother you a bit.  That being said, getting to smash everything in sight as Grimlock is an awesome experience.

High Moon might have realized they were going to upset some fans with certain choices they made, but they made up for it with all the fan service.  There were probably at least 10 different quotes I recognized that were the original animated movie.

The graphics and sound are a good improvement on what was already a good start from War for Cybertron.  They also made improvements on how open the world feels in some levels.  In War for Cybertron I always felt a bit on rails as far as where I could go and when.  This game still has a bit of that, but the Starscream level stands out as feeling very open world.

Another great addition is the upgrade system.  You can now collect different weapons and upgrade them via Teletraan 1.  Once I finally got Megatron’s cannon, I was a destructive force, but once I unlocked all the upgrades I felt unstoppable.

However, it’s not all Roses.  This game has some issues with interacting with items.  If you are too close to something you need to interact with it won’t give you the option.  You often need to stand in an exact spot for it to work.

The story felt a bit disjointed at times.  There were a few plot holes that just didn’t get completely resolved, but for the most part you can forgive them because they aren’t that relevant in the end.

The game takes about 6-8 hours to beat which means that if you have no interest in multiplayer you can rent the game and go through it in a weekend.  The game was hard to put down so you can go through it pretty quickly.

I hope they create a third game, but I don’t know exactly where they can go from here without completely destroying the G1 continuity more than they already have.  If you are reading this site, you should at least give this a game a try, but you probably already know that.