English Dub Review: Berserk of Gluttony “Hunger Boost”

Overview:

Unable to stand by and do nothing, Fate follows the kidnapper into his warehouse. While Fate learns to grapple with the nature of the Gluttony skill, he also works to find his place as a new servant at the Hart estate.

Our Take:

Once again I’ll get the negative out of the way first. Crunchyroll still hasn’t translated the on-screen text, and since it tells us about Fate’s skills I think it’s pretty important. The episode didn’t become available until later last night so I thought since I was getting to it a little later that, that might have given them a chance to get to it. Turns out I was wrong and I don’t think they care given how long this issue has persisted.

This episode was also two tales of voice acting. The villain at the beginning of the episode was caroonishly bad with how “evil” he made himself sound. I don’t know what was up with that guy but this episode gave a night and day difference when it came to Fate. Garret Storms does the voice of Fate and in this episode I loved how he voiced the character. One thing I have a lot of respect for with this show is giving other actors a chance. I never thought someone could bring a lot of personality to a sword but Chris Gardner manages to do just that as Greed. We haven’t seen a ton of Roxy Hart so far but the little time we’ve had I think Emily Hornsby has done a great job. I hope these roles lead to more work because I’ve been impressed so far.

The content of the episode itself was a lot more enjoyable because we learned more about what exactly is going on with Fate. Now that he killed someone, the true nature of his skill has unlocked. It’s called “gluttony” because he is constantly starving for souls, which is about as metal as you can get. Fate has learned he needs to hunt every night, whether that means giant beasts like a goblin king or just run of the mill goblins. Yes, this makes Fate a typical overpowered protagonist but at least there are some drawbacks to it as well. Since he is partnered with the sword Greed he needs to keep him happy as well and it turns out that he needs to give him all his power to the sword in order to strengthen it. This means that he will be starting all over a lot of the time if it means powering up his sword, I think this is a great balance.