Berserk Musou's Marketing Campaign

I can safely confirm that the upcoming Berserk game developed by Omega Force is easily one of my most hyped games for the coming year. While I don’t enjoy the mainline Dynasty Warriors, I am a fan of the anime spinoff games such as Pirate Warriors and Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn. The pacing of the Berserk manga makes it ripe for adaptation into a video game and when combined with the fast-paced, hyperactive, over-the-top of the Dynasty Warriors engine, it seems like a match made in heaven. However, if there’s one thing that’s concerning me right now it’s the way the game has been marketed since it’s reveal, in particular the treatment of the character of Casca.
The reveal trailer opens up with Casca being held by some tentacles while being suspended naked in the air, before the tentacles wrap around her body and lead to the brand of sacrifice. Long-time fans will immediately recognize this as the infamous Eclipse, wherein the Band of the Hawk was sacrificed to Godhand in order to allow the band’s leader, Griffith, to become the 5th member, Femto. Afterwards, he proceeded to violently rape Casca, the protagonist Guts’ love interest, in front of him. This is easily one of the most iconic and disturbing scenes in the history of the series and has resulted in the series unable to be talked about without mentioning this scene. So what does the reveal trailer decide to do? Focus on the scene itself. At first I was disturbed that Koei Tecmo would use such a scene in order to drum up hype for the game. Afterwards, once more information was brought forward, however, I was just baffled as Koei Tecmo decided to have a huge focus on the sexual aspects of the series. Berserk is a violent manga with a huge emphasis on action as well as on world-building, so Hisashi Koinuma’s statement describing the series as a “violent and erotic manga” feels only half true. To add on to that, the fact they even went so far as have a pre-order bonus were Casca wears the smock after she’s recovering from the events of the Eclipse and it’s described as her “bathing suit”. This feels so disjointed compared to the tone that was set for this scene as this is the first time that she shows her fear of men due to what happened to her. This actually leaves me worried for he rest of the game as the developer has gone on record to say that they plan to adapt the Golden Age to Millennium Falcon arcs, especially since towards the end of the Golden Age arc is when the sexual aspects shoot up, before going by the wayside after the Conviction arc.
Overall, while I feel that on the gameplay side of things the game looks fine, especially after the recent gameplay trailer, but I feel that if the developer is not careful on the way that they handle the sexual aspects of the game, they could very easily come under fire for portraying rape in a poor light. I hope this isn’t the case, but they need to find some way to portray as tastefully as possible.