3 out of 5

Directed by: Toshiyuki Kubooka

Sharing the pacing problems of the first film, the second golden age trilogy entry initially compounds those issues by applying them to giant character arcs, squeezing them down to 30 or so minutes, removing the impact from some key interactions.  Mostly this involves our leads, Guts, Casca and Griffith: Casca’s jealousy of Guts and his subsequent actions and comments during the 100-man battle feel disassociated from what we’ve this far seen on screen, making their actions seem melodramatic; Guts’ progression from aimless fury to disenchanted follower has occurred in about five minutes and thus lacks gravity; Griffith’s loss of Guts’ dedication suffers a similar fate.  And the side characters are fairly empty shells, most notably General Adon, whose comedy relief antics feel like unfortunate fluff instead of a good running gag.

Buffering this a bit are the interesting shifts the film takes with its tone versus the anime, to which the script on the first flick was so strongly indebted.  Guts and Griffith both get more “natural” personalities, not necessarily only expressing one extreme.  While, as mentioned, this doesn’t fully justify some of the interactions, it does make the latter half of the movie more fluid, and – dare I say – resonant.  Griffith’s “downfall,” in particular, takes on an entirely different tone that makes this more of a tragedy than a building horrorshow.

Animation-wise, it seems like most people are more critical of the CG / drawn blend than I am, but I again was generally pleased with the fluidity of the action and expressions / body language during dialogue sequences.  They sort of over-used the spinning cam / blood-splatter-on-the-lens bit here (or I’m just inured to it after being wowed in film one), but, sure, it’s cool, so whatever.

Covering even more ground than the previous film, The Battle for Doldrey gets bumpy when trying to establish character arcs that required some buildup.  However, smoothing out and slowing down in its second act, it starts to hit some emotional high points, setting us up for what’s hopefully an insane conclusion.