# This review will contain spoilers for the golden age arc of Berserk
--- I noticed that nobody made a review about any of these movies yet so I'll try my best to talk about all of them.
When it comes to Berserk adaptations the order usually goes as follows: Berserk 1997, The Berserk Trilogy, Berserk 2016. The reason for that is most likely that 1997 has cut the least amount of story while also being visually appealing. Berserk 2016 is infamous for its horrendous CGI animation and the Trilogy is.. ok? At least, that's the impression I had before actually watching it. Well, I really enjoyed all three movies and here's why.
First of all, it looks beautiful. The 2D scenes look miles better than the 97 adaptation and the animation is really good too. Unfortunately a lot of this is overshadowed by the use of horrible CGI in some really important scenes and it gives the entire trilogy a pretty bad reputation. That said, the use of CGI gets a lot less frequent in the third movie which I definitely appreciate, but it doesn't change the fact that you do notice the CGI and it did ruin my immersion at times.
Next, the story. Compressing ~90 chapters into just 3 movies, or roughly 5 hours, is obviously not gonna be a simple task and you can tell that they had to cut a lot of story and character development. Aside from the CGI, I think this is the trilogy's biggest problem. It just doesn't hold up in terms of story when compared to the manga or the 97 adaptation . They tried their best to include the most important scenes, but there's just too much that wasn't able to make it in the trilogy, resulting in a very rushed story. Berserk is all about the journey and experiencing Guts' and the other main characters' hardships alongside with them, but this movie just isn't able to convey that feeling because of the previously mentioned reasons.
However, I think the third movie does an amazing job at conveying the horror that is the eclipse. You can feel Guts' emotions, anger and pain while seeing him struggle to save Casca and the other members of the band of the hawk. As I said before, the use of CGI in this movie is at an acceptable level and it looks a lot better on monsters than soldiers and human faces so it didn't bother me nearly as much as it did in the previous movies. Also, the eclipse takes up a lot of screentime so I'm really glad they didn't rush that part.
Lastly, I want to talk about the sound design, which is really good. It's nothing special but I think it's at least worth mentioning that it's not nearly as bad as the 2016 adaptation. The english dub is really good and has a lot of the same voice actors as the 97 adaptation plus the music also doesn't disappoint and uses a lot of themes from older Berserk songs which I think is great.
--- So in conclusion, I think the trilogy fails as a proper adaptation, but if you just want to re-experience the golden age arc animated or want to see a shorter recap, which is the reason I watched it, then this is it.
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