Source (More Comparison Pics)

Here is what the Berserk re-release has to offer, that the original release didn't:

1. A beautiful progressive encode, straight from film masters
- Sharper image
- Better color
- Even better than the original Japanese DVDs
2. A Japanese stereo track
- As some know, the original release had mostly a Japanese mono track.
3. A tightened up English dub
- There were sync issues with the original, so I re-aligned as much as I could in the given time.
4. A balanced (volume) Japanese and English audio track
- On both the Japanese DVDs and our previous DVDs, the volume level of each episode fluctuates up to 9db sometimes, which I found to be really annoying when watching episodes back to back. I want my Berserk marathons to be seamless!
5. Audio pops / dropouts / noise removal
- There were tons of these glitches in both audio tracks, and even present in the Japanese release! Now gone.
6. Japanese disc art
- The new discs now have the Japanese disc art which is pretty cool
7. Japanese slates
- Some might or might not care about this, but cool for the purists
8. Re-timed subtitles
9. FIXED TRANSLATIONS and SPELLINGS (well minus B E H E L I T, sorry!)
- This is what gave me the most trouble but I think is one of the most valuable changes to this re-release. The translations, previously, were HORRENDOUS. Not just simple grammar and typos (to my horror there were a ton of them), but the very meaning and word choice of the translations were just wrong! To me, since I don't particularly like watching anime dubbed, the subtitles are the most important aspect of how the story is told, especially for a show like Berserk! There is so much philosophy and the characters are so deep, that misinterpreted translations can utterly ruin the whole experience. Now, granted, I don't know Japanese, so for me to fix the translation errors by myself is utterly impossible. But, I read through all the english subtitles over and over again, searching for sentences that sounded awkward or out of context, and brought them to our in-house translator. She would then study my proposed changes alongside the Japanese dialogue/script, and together we would re-write them if appropriate. Fortunately, the translator this time around (the original release was done by someone else) paid more attention to the context of the show and was very patient with me when we would spend 15 minutes searching for the perfect way to phrase something. In the end, we probably changed 30-40% of the subtitles, which is a shit load of editing!!!

Here are just some quick translation examples to see what I mean:

Original
Casca is always rebelling against her station, and her life as a mercenary.
Re-release
Casca gave up womanhood long ago and lived her life as a mercenary.

I mean, that original sentence is completely backwards!! Cmon now!

Original
He is coming...
His presence is imminent...
The King of the supreme beings...
It is the advent of the four guardian angels!
Re-release
They are coming...
They are near...
The rulers of the supreme beings...
It is the advent of the four guardian angels!

Simple mistake, but the original is confusing.

Anyways, you get the point! Now, to tackle some of the complaints I've been reading:

1. Blu-ray... I hear ya guys. Berserk on blu-ray would be awesome for us HDTV owners in THEORY, but not in REALITY... It's not a matter of SD or HD, because Berserk was originally done on 16mm, and that is the limiting factor for blu-ray. If Berserk is on blu-ray, you will only see more film grain! The only real advantage will be putting more episodes on a single disc, which is certainly cool, but not necessary by any means.

2. 5.1 audio track... We don't have any of the original Japanese stems, and they aren't available to us either. Getting permission to make our own Japanese 5.1 mix is difficult and improbable. I suppose we could have done an English 5.1, but for a low budget show like Berserk, the only real thing that would play in the surrounds would be music, some sword clangs, and reverb, and most audio receivers can handle that to a certain extent. For a show like Cowboy Bebop, (I own the original Perfect Sessions and the Remix DVDs) I definitely love the new 5.1 tracks but I mean, that is fitting for a show like Cowboy Bebop. Loud explosions, guns, bullets flying everywhere, lively music... But, me personally, I just couldn't see much benefit for a 5.1 track for Berserk. I guess we just have to agree to disagree on that front.

3. Same extras... Yeah, it would have been cool to put some new extras. I wanted to sneak in an easter egg slideshow of pictures of my Berserk kits but well... I wasn't sure if I'd get in trouble for that! LOL But yes, I do apologize, there are sadly no new extras. All the menus are the same as the original release too. That, unfortunately, was out of my hands.

IN CONCLUSION...
...this Berserk release is really for the hardcore fans out there that want a prettier, cleaner, as-close-to-the-original, better-translated Berserk DVD set. Honestly, when I was working on this project, I was thinking of you guys all the way through. I was in touch with Aaz (you can see his name in the credits even!), and I really just wanted to make the most definitive Berserk release that I could do for the community. I REALLY hope it doesn't disappoint and I seriously hope that I didn't do anything that will bite me in the ass later. I'll have you know I pissed off a lot of my coworkers while working on this. There were times when me and my co-worker would find tiny audio glitches like an audio dropout in the waterfall sound in the right channel for 1 frame long, and we would have a whole new build made just for that one change. I have to say, a big special thanks to Sean Molyneaux, Clark Cheng, Yuki Urakawa, and Dave Beinlich for all their help!!!

[Update: uploaded a higher-res video clip]
And finally, for your viewing pleasure, here you can download a side by side comparison of the Berserk Opening!!! Also, down below you can see side by side screenshots, directly from the DVDs themselves. This would probably be the best thing to look at if you want to compare the image quality.