THEY CAN DO IT NOT CG! – Berserk Season End

Those of you who normally see our podcast/read our articles at BAYOG should know the team’s general opinion of CG animation used in anime. *Read: We fething hate it* Also those of you who normally see our podcast/read our articles at BAYOG should know my opinion of Berserk *Read: I fething love it* But for all of its amazing moments of action, dramatic plot and the beautiful audio that is almost unbelievably amazing there’s a glaring issue to be found here. You can likely guess I’m referring to the predominantly terrible CG animation style. This includes times where motion cap was poorly done and additional details were clearly put in for no value add or reason. Note the below poorly CG animated dog. The soldiers, cart, witch, and even dust moved and were added with the base breathing (no matter how robotic looking) while this dog stood here and did NOTHING.

When I first saw the trailer and initial episode, I fell in love with the action in spite of the terribly made CG, because it is not half bad when the action kicks up and they aren’t talking too much or just wandering around. I then marathon’d all of the Golden Age Arc anime and caught up to chapter 150 or so in the span of 2 weeks. The end result was that I just absolutely fell in love with the plot, the action, the art, and the characters most of all. My point with the above blurb is that honestly the reason why I don’t flag this as the perfect anime that tops my love of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and simply ties it, is the God-Emperor damned CG. THESE ASSHOLES PROVED THEY CAN DO IT.

From what I’ve gathered I’m not the only person who lost their shit when they saw this end scene as NO ONE seems to actually like the CG, its only tolerated. While a follow up season has yet to be confirmed, I know this one has been much more well received, mostly because well BESERKER ARMOUR. For real, this particular item is the reason I marathon’d up to chapter 200 or so because someone briefly said in a comment chapter 140ish “Just wait until he gets the berserker armour.” And I did, and it was absolutely worth it. After this things seem to get great and serves as a very appropriate turning point. This is not Goku running on Snake Way for a dozen episodes to be able to secretly learn techniques to fight the Saiyans. This is a normal human being who went through just absolute shit and had the Guts (sorry) to persevere and not give up hope. Through use of a titanic sword and and even more gigantic balls, Guts cuts, hacks, and slashes his way through daemons, ghouls, and magical ninjas. This is the culmination of his life and now he can fight these monsters toe to toe and come out on top against things that no amount of grit will kill. This armour however is not just some godsend that lets him stomp monsters. It cranks to 11 his already severe PTSD about seeing his only friends in the world be betrayed and brutally murdered along with the very vicious non-consensual relations of the the woman he loved and his now daemonic best friend. This armour removes the pain and inhibitors of the body, pinning and clamping into flesh to hold together splintered bones. One is as likely to murder his allies as he is his enemies in an uncontrolled blood lust. Guts, in a way I do not at all empathize with, has anger issues of a high caliber and he feels this is enough to temper him to whatever the armour will make him do and he is WRONG.

Anyway, The show is just amazing and I can’t wait to see this animation team just brush up their skills and/or hire on proper animators to do this. I recently (as in while writing this article) found out that the reason for this whole debacle is just a very green and inexperienced team. The last scenes were not a giant fuck you to fans and I have to give them credit for trying and going forward. Just like us at this blog, humans are always moving forward and improving and hopefully you as our readers can see that and like it. If you do, or if you just like my stuff in particular, leave a like or a comment otherwise I can’t guarantee a poorly CG’d Zodd isn’t going to squish you like a Gallagher watermelon.