The Egg of the King
Ko Ransom of Anime News Network (ANN) gave the film a B+ and wrote, "This concise and well-adapted story results in an exciting, intense action tale full of intriguing characters and drama. Unfortunately, the decision to heavily utilize 3D CG throughout the movie drags the overall production down, but does not quite deal a fatal blow to the film, which despite this shortcoming should find a receptive audience from fans of the series and newcomers alike." Fellow ANN reviewer Carl Kimlinger, in a critique of the film's Blu-ray release, was similarly receptive, awarding both the Japanese version and the English dub a B and stating, "That The Egg of the King isn't crushed under the weight of our expectations is a testament to its strength. That it cannot in any way measure up to its progenitors is proof of its weakness. It is a good film, rousing and occasionally deeply felt, but also a truncated one—an introductory lesson in Berserkology that falls somewhere between the full version of Guts' saga and the Cliff's Notes." The film was deemed "one of the best animated action films of recent years" by Hugo Ozman of ScreenAnarchy.
Richard Eisenbeis, in a review written for Kotaku, lambasted the film, especially the pacing and computer-generated animation, and concluded, "As an adaptation of the Berserk story, it succeeds well enough; but as a piece of film making, it just fails. It is an ugly, poorly-paced wreck of cinematography." Dallas Marshall of THEM Anime Reviews was also critical of the "haphazard" CG animation and lack of character development, gave the film a score of 3/5, and concluded, "Do not think that this is a bad anime, it is a good one, but in hindsight it could have been a great one if some extra care was taken in terms of the art, and a little more time was taken to develop the overall story."
