Berserk: The Movie(s)

It was revealed in Newtype (via Anime News Network) that the forthcoming “Berserk” anime project is going to be a series of movies that will theoretically adapt the entirety of the manga.  I speculated on the thought of a new “Berserk” anime a few months back and I find the news to be… acceptable.  It’s not what I wanted, but the idea of seeing the series re-animated as a movie does pique my interest.  Of course, it’s in the sense that it’ll be a new take on existing material rather than a retread of stuff that we’ve already seen.

There are still several questions about this project that I’d like to see answered before its release; primarily, how much of the manga will the first film adapt?  Trying to cram the entirety of the TV series into one movie sounds like it would be a fool’s errand, but if the filmmakers are judicious in their editing, it might be possible.  (And it assumes that they’ll be given a running time similar to the massive 2.5+ hours that the recent “Haruhi Suzumiya” movie got, which I don’t think is likely.)  So I’m cautiously optimistic about the whole endeavor, and I hope that at the very least the first film is successful enough for us to see more of the story than we did in the TV series.  Given that the popularity of “Berserk” doesn’t really hold a candle to that of “Evangelion” or the aforementioned “Haruhi,” I’m probably setting myself up for disappointment here..