Reviews

I thought it sounded interesting when I first read about it. Then I saw it. It's like Lovecraft funny. Like "human language is inadequate to describe the horror blah blah" funny.

It's like every action/adventure show EVER packed into a half hour, but the most obvious comparisons would have to be "X-files" and "Knight Rider." (Heat Vision is KITT) The only thing I didn't like was Owen Wilson's flat reading of Heat Vision's lines. And even that wasn't bad the whole time.

So why didn't it make it on TV? It's a half-hour live-action comedy without a laugh track. How many of those have EVER made it? (Apparantly people need to be told when it's funny.)

A friend of mine told me about this around 6 months ago and I've only just gotten round to seeing it. I thought it sounded...idiotic, boring, ridiculous. It might be idiotic and/or ridiculous, but honestly, I should have figured out by now that everything Leiji Matsumoto has been involved with in the last 30 years has had a premise that just screamed "DOOMED." And it's been just about impossible not to love everything the man has done in 30 years.

I'd heard Daft Punk, of course, but never associated the music with the name. I'd seen and liked a lot of Matsumoto's stuff, but the two just...I didn't have the imagination to put the two together mentally.

This is an awesome movie. Visually and aurally, it is a thing of beauty, that rises above the occasional cheesiness in design, the occasional visual or narrative cliché, and the occasional track which would really not be terribly listenable on it's own. The synergy here is tremendous.

To the one who panned this series after watching an hour and a half of it: That's like watching the first 15 minutes of >insert title of any complicated, intelligent movie here< and dismissing it.

As for the music, it's not standard anime j-pop crap. It's not movie-score like music either. It's definitely not for everyone, as far as just listening to it goes (but I must say I've developed a liking for Susumu Hirasawa's work), but most of it fits quite well (although with the rampant re-use it's bound to not work sometimes), and some of it is great regardless what it's presented with. "Behelit," and "Forces" being the real stand-outs, both in terms of being listenable, AND in terms of reuse with varying degrees of appropriateness. The opening theme does suck though. No question. (In stark contrast to the end credits song, which, while also being an abomination of Engrish, sounds perfect.)

I used to be really into anime. I fell out of it a few years ago, and stopped giving a crap about almost all the anime I'd ever seen or heard of. But as all the chaff blew away, this was one of the few grains to remain. It's unforgettable, especially if you watch the whole series in order. It's unspeakably grim when viewed as a whole, but contains a growing optimism throughout most of the series.

There are only a tiny handful of animes which can stand beside Berserk in the quality of their storytelling. Hell, only a small portion of ANY fiction can be compared favorably to it. Berserk is not just good anime, it's good drama. If you like the fantasy genre in any format, you must see this show. If you like stories about people growing through hardship, you must see this show. If you like stories about unrelenting badasses, you must see this show. If you don't care about anything but eye candy, or you're an anime dork looking for wank-fuel, look elsewhere. Berserk may not have something for EVERYONE, but it has something for MOST people.

This movie is not TOTALLY incoherent, as at least one other reviewer seems to think. The only part that is hard to follow is how they kidnapped the kid to begin with (I must have missed that part...no wait, I didn't, it just wasn't there).

Some people have said that "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" is better than "JSA," (the director's previous film) but the only respect in which I would say this is true is in that the bad in this film is not as bad as the bad in "JSA." The good also isn't as good, however. Plot-wise, and in the ending, I am (perhaps irrationally) reminded of "Penn and Teller Get Killed," in which a series of retaliatory practical jokes spirals out of control and everyone dies. The same general idea, here I guess, except much less comedic. (Hell, "Penn and Teller Get Killed" even featured unlicenced surgeons, kind of like "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance!")

Also, unless I miss my guess, I think a direct translation of the title would be "Vengeance is Mine." Which sounds better than "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," in my opinion.