2024-06-05 15:54:00
www.gamespot.com
It’s been a nice year for fans of Berserk. The original 1997 anime adaptation released on Blu-ray earlier this year, and soon it’ll be joined by another new Blu-ray release. Berserk: The Golden Age Arc Memorial Edition, a Blu-ray collection of the 2012-2013 films, is set to launch on August 27. It’s available to preorder now at Amazon and Crunchyroll Store, and you can save on your preorder at either retailer. At the moment, you can save over 20% on your preorder at Amazon. Crunchyroll’s price is a couple bucks cheaper, but keep in mind you’ll have to pay for shipping, whereas you can get free shipping at Amazon. Essentially, Amazon has the better deal right now.
$54.67 (was $70)
The films in this release will feature both English and Japanese dubs, and for extras, you’ll get textless opening and ending songs in the two-disc set. While the cover art says it’s not final, it looks like this release will feature stunning art of Guts in a berserker rage.
The Golden Age arc of Berserk was an interesting experiment to revisit the manga. An anime adaptation originally aired in 1997, but made several major deviations from the source material, something the Golden Age films attempted to avoid. Far more faithful to the manga, the films mixed beautiful animation with CGI to mixed results, but overall, this is still a fantastic retelling of Berserk’s first major arc and it ends during the infamous Eclipse sequence. While the 1997 anime’s take on that brutal event is still horrifying, the Golden Age version is pure nightmare fuel in comparison. Some might say it’s almost as terrifying to watch as Berserk 2016.
Of course, if you’re a firm believer in Berserk 1997, you can get the show in its best format right now at Amazon. The Blu-ray release has regularly sold out several times since its initial release in March, but fresh stock of the 25-episode series is available again at Amazon and Crunchyroll:
Finally, you can never go wrong with the manga. The late Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy series has been collected in multiple different formats over the years, but the beautifully oversized hardcover volumes are the best of the lot.
