Kenpuu Denki Berserk

Guts, a man who will one day be known as the Black Swordsman, is a young traveling mercenary characterized by the large greatsword he carries. He accepts jobs that offer the most money, but he never stays with one group for long—until he encounters the Band of the Falcon. Ambushed after completing a job, Guts crushes many of its members in combat. Griffith, The Band of the Falcon's leader and founder, takes an interest in Guts and duels him. While the others are no match for Guts, Griffith defeats him in one blow.

Incapacitated and taken into the Band of the Falcon's camp to recover, Guts wakes up two days later. He confronts Griffith, and the two duel yet again, only this time with a condition: Guts will join the Band of the Falcon if he loses. Due to his fresh injuries, Guts loses the fight and is inducted by Griffith.

In three years' time, Guts has become one of the Band of the Falcon's commanders. On the battlefield, his combat prowess is second only to Griffith as he takes on large groups of enemies all on his own. With Guts' immense strength and Griffith's leadership, the Band of the Falcon dominate every battle they partake in. But something menacing lurks in the shadows, threatening to change Guts' life forever.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Guts Main

Canna, Nobutoshi Japanese

Griffith Main

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Casca Main

Miyamura, Yuko Japanese

Judeau Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Nosferatu, Zodd Supporting

Utsumi, Kenji Japanese

Pippin Supporting

Amada, Masuo Japanese

Rickert Supporting

Yajima, Akiko Japanese

Slan Supporting

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Void Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Godo Supporting

Nishikawa, Ikuo Japanese

Nakatani, Toshio Producer

Okuno, Toshiaki Producer

Takahashi, Naohito Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Chief Animation Director, Key Animation

Tsurumaki, Kazuya Episode Director

Reviews

Sep 4, 2010

Moonlith

Recommended

I'm one of those guys who usually read the manga before watching the anime. You can imagine, then, what my sentiments were like when I began watching a 25-episode-anime of which I'd read 300+ chapters of manga. To clarify, I was preparing for a completely unripe anime-draft of a manga praised to the heavens that'd actually been worth it, and then some. To my pleasant surprise I discovered the anime adaptation of Berserk lost to its original version in nothing but length and detail.

But the main elements, the magic that made the epic manga what it is are all present in the animated version. Guts, ... The Black Swordsman, is still the hapless avenger wandering in search for revenge and peace of mind. The world in which the story is set is still that medieval realm right down to the brilliant castles with their greedy landlords, the disadvantaged common folk, and the never-ending wars. And, perhaps most importantly along with the characters, the story is still the same tragedy of fate, friendship and love.

Perhaps one point of criticism for some could be the outdated artstyle. Having aired more than ten years ago, the art and animation will inevitably seem rough and simple for those (like me) who've discovered anime rather recently, through recent shows with more high-tech appearance. Upon closer look, however, I'd say that instead of a shortcoming, Berserk's old-school animation works exactly in the shows favor. The story is, after all, rough by nature and set in an age long gone, in which case the ancient animation actually accentuates the overall mood quite nicely. I wonder if the series's impact would've been the same had it been done in the 2000s, closer to this day. I dare doubt it.

An avid listener of music though I am, I rarely pay much attention to the tunes played in anime. But whereas most shows fail to catch my admiration with their musical score, Berserk did so in spades. Far more than once I found myself being chilled to the bone as the horror scenes rolled in, aided by terrifyingly fitting ominous sounds without which the anime's horror elements would've lacked greatly. In comparison, the joyful tunes of bonfire festivals, the musical elegance of the upper class's dances, and the emotional pieces of the more waffy scenes all help to highlight the sentiment of each situation. 10/10 score for this department; a true rarity given by me.

One might wonder why I've so far mostly talked about aspects many would consider minor in comparison to an anime's story and characters. Well for one, both animation and music contribute so much to the show's overall score that there's nothing minor about them in this instance. As for the other reason, if I'd start to go on detailing bit by bit what makes the story and characters of Berserk so unfathomably excellent, we'd all soon be looking at a review of more than 10,000 words. And since reading all of it would be that much more away from your Berserk-watching (or reading) time, I'm going to keep it simple. Just imagine a story so compelling and layered you'll truly find yourself gasping at times, a cast of characters so real you actually start to care for them though they don't even exist, and a high-fantasy medieval world so immersing you can almost feel the reality around you blur away.

But an adaptation from a manga as this is, there's no way to escape the shadow of the original work. An no matter how excellent an anime this is even forgetting the manga, fact of the matter is that Berserk is the greatest MANGA ever made, and the anime is just a colorful side-kick next to it. At the beginning of my review I said the anime loses to the manga in nothing but length and detail. True. But ponder on this: the anime is one of 25 normal length (a bit over 20 minutes) episodes. The manga is one of over 300 and still going on chapters. The conclusion being, Berserk anime loses A LOT to the manga in length and detail. I didn't even care to count all the scenes an details of the original work that didn't exist in the anime, and now as I'm doing so for the sake of writing this review, I can't help but note that, again, A LOT is lost when such a number of details that helped understanding the characters in the manga, for example, are nowhere to be seen in the anime. To refrain from writing a novel-length review, again, let's just say that even though Berserk manga had nothing but text and black and white drawings to reach me, I never felt nearly as immersed by the anime as I did by the original.

Be that as it may, Berserk is truly one to deserve the title "epic" in the history of anime. It is an obligatory watch for anyone who likes Japanese animation. It is a classic right there among Evangelion, Miyazaki's works, or any other anime one might deem ageless and undying. It is right there among them, shining in their midst as the bloodiest gem of them all.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Mar 12, 2009

Credulous

Mixed Feelings

As I write this review I realize that I may have been slightly too hung up on the thing I'm hung up on that results in me giving this anime a lower rating than it probably deserves. The thing is, Berserk is a good anime, I enjoyed it immensly with its shady animations and art that you just have to love yet you wonder if you should take it seriously. I loved the characters of this anime, they were all so tragic, almost too tragic on the verge of being funny, yet it never crossed the line over to funny, so they were tragic, really ... tragic. Truth be told the entire anime was pretty tragic, even when the plot went into lighter things it still had tragic undertones, or overtones.

In any case, the story of the anime was pretty straightforward yet really complex, something that may seem paradoxal, but when you're watching Berserk it's the most natural thing in the world. In all honesty I still, to this day, don't forgive Griffith for his role in this anime and how it all played out in the end. Something which might contribute to my overall rating for this anime, but the main reason for my relatively low overall rating for Berserk is the ending.

I felt robbed as I saw this anime come to its conclusion, when the final episode came to an end I was stunned at how betrayed I felt by an ending that can be described with words like; 'displeasing', 'unsatisfactory' and 'disappointing' yet, it does not even begin to describe to what extent. I am sure many disagree, or perhaps they were just satisfied with the journey to the end, but for me the ending to Berserk felt unnatural which is why I gave this anime a 6.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 12, 2025

the-adventurer

Not Recommended

Funny

Having watched this anime, and reading some of the reviews on the manga now, I've come to the conclusion that Berserk is vastly overrated.

(Caution: This review contains sarcasm and a decent helping of bitterness.)

Of course, I cannot gauge whether there is some saving grace to the manga or the main anime series, but as for the prequel; I would only recommend it to the die-hard Berserk fans who won't a flaw in anything Berserk-related anyway.

First things first: I was recommended this series by someone who thought "You like FromSoftware games? You must love this."

Uhm. No.

One thing I dislike about Dark Souls is the medieval setting, ... and thus, I don't really like Berserk's setting, either. It's been done to death. Almost every Fantasy story and every second RPG uses a medieval setting. I'm tired of castles and knights, but it's a flaw I will overlook if the franchise brings some other original concept with it.

What about the animation? It's stiff. Uninspired. The backgrounds feel bland. I could give it a 6/10 at best as it wasn't horrible to look at, just boring. I was expecting an action series, but there was surprisingly little action in it.

The characters? I couldn't relate to the majority of them, and they weren't particularly interesting to me, either. Griffith proved to be an ass, and Guts - who knows what's going on inside of the strong and silent type, anyway? The only character that had me invested was Casca, because she was a female mercenary in a world that disrespected women, and had been abused in the past. Unlike with Guts or Griffith, she faced a daily challenge to prove her standing and independence. I was rooting for her to stand strong in battle and show those men up. I ... was starting to have doubts when Guts had sex with her.

But surely the story made up for all of that?
Nope. For an anime about an awesome swordfighter, it had very little awesome fights. It didn't have a lot of monsters, either. Most of the time, characters were just talking, and I never quite got what it was all about. There was some political intrigue going on, and the only real fantasy aspect in this series up until its finale was Griffiths super weird "egg of god" pendant. Actually, I think the prequel might make more sense if you've seen or read the original series first.

I was tempted to drop the anime several times, but since Berserk is super popular, I kept watching in hopes it would get good eventually or at least save itself with some awesome twist.

Well. There was a twist.

At the very end, the anime cranks the grossness level up to 11.
Griffith transforms into some kind of ugly-ass demon and rapes the only character I was remotely invested in. And we don't even see her fight back much, despite of her being a mercenary and fighter. By comparison, she was raped and abused in the past, but that wasn't explicitly shown, and she had no fighting skills at the time to even try to fight back. Moreover, it gave her a reason to learn fighting, and it served to establish the overall world setting. This second time, by Griffith, served only to appal and disgust; the narritive itself objectified and abused her. And holy crap. I will NOT let a series get away with showing rape, especially if it doesn't serve a strong enough purpose in the narrative, because it's a indicator the author did it because he liked it.

Guts fights gross demon Griffith, stuff gets bloody and gorey for a bit, and that's that. The closing scenes of the final episode (Guts fighting demons and Griffith having taken control of the country) were more intriguing in terms of story than the entire rest of the anime.

Huge thanks to the guy who recommended I watch this because I like SOME FromSoftware titles - Thanks for wasting several evenings of my life and making me never want anything to do with Beserk ever again.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Poll: Berserk Episode 25 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Friendlysoul - Mar 11, 2008	529 replies	by ShibitoMatuzaka »» Oct 16, 9:03 PM
	Poll: Berserk Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Ston3_FreeN7 - Jul 25, 2009	87 replies	by strikeguysAlist »» Oct 13, 1:24 PM
	Poll: Berserk Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Zell182 - Aug 4, 2009	64 replies	by Archys_hell »» Sep 26, 2:03 PM
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