Ranked #160

Berserk

Berserk was, is, and will always be one of the greatest anime I have ever seen.

The story is one of the deepest, most absorbing and original that has ever been done in anime. Set in a medieval world with knights, sword battles, castles and kings, a young warrior named Guts travels and tries to simply survive in a vicious society filled with evils ranging from the natural to the supernatural. The anime has an intriguing plot, starting the series at a point where Guts is a worn, embittered, restless soul somewhere in adulthood. We are then taken back to the beginning in subsequent episodes where we learn what exactly has been done to this man, and trust that you will indefinitely be absorbed by the amazing story that is told.

Admittedly, the first time upon viewing Berserk, the art was rather displeasing to the eye. I had only seen it about two or three years ago to this date, and it looked horribly dated. There are many still-shots and most battle scenes were merely giant immovable watercolour portraits with the sound playing over it. Other than that, there are actual instances where the art and animation was actually brilliant--namely in some of the one-on-one fight scenes and some of the more violent and gory scenes. However, it must be said, once you get into the anime, you won't even notice the flaws in the art and animation. It becomes a non-entity, overshadowed by the brilliance otherwise seen.

The sound is amazing. There are original compositions that totally suits the anime. A chilling, haunting score that definitely gets to you on an emotional level. Gut's Theme, for example, is one of the best character pieces ever made for an anime.

As for the characters, the protagonist is Guts, who seems to be a tragic hero. His life is a tough, interesting one. He is a deeply perturbed and troubled young man and we see his strength and endurance against what appears to be a violent, literally "dog-eat-dog" existence.

Griffith is an amazing anti-hero mostly because he carries himself as a prince and not a villain. His Macbethan mentality is one of the anime's most powerful driving points other than his enchanting charisma. He is a man who truly will stop at nothing, a man who will sacrifice everything to get what he wants, and you will simply sit back in wonder and gasp at his deep and frightening ambition.

The third most important character is a young woman named Caska. She is definitely one of the first and best Amazonian creatures anime has ever seen. She is one of the strongest warriors ever seen--female or not--with a great amount of authority, reverence and honour to her name. The rest of the cast consist of a magnificent group of side characters, each with great personalities that will certainly interest you.

You won't stop Berserk once you've started. I watched the entire series, jaw-dropped most of the time, and was actually horrified that it had ended.

Some words of warning is that it is definitely not for the squeamish, and it is not for young children either. There is a lot of explicit violence, gore, strong sexuality and some themes that are definitely not suited to a younger audience.

One grouse is that the anime ended at a point of the manga where more questions had been asked than answered, so if you don't like anime with stories that are "unfinished", then you won't like this about Berserk.

I can only tell you to watch this. It's a brilliant anime, with deep characters, an engaging storyline, strong and intricate themes such as jealousy, ambition, honour, and identity, and it's filled with so many ugly moments that you'd find yourself not knowing whether to cry out of sadness or joy when something beautiful is seen.

This is truly deserving of the title 'Masterpiece'. read more

Personally, I think this is just an advertisement for the manga, but for all the right reasons. Yes, I will acknowledge that it ends at a bad place but there are reasons for that. First off, when the anime ended, it was technically caught up with the manga so they really couldn’t continue yet, but the bad news is, the anime still cuts out a lot and I felt they really rushed things through, but still covers the central basics with the characters and themes. I say what really brings people into the anime outside of the action is definitely the themes this anime has on friendship, acceptance, fate, destiny, and life in general. It really makes you think in that kind of way. The characters all have their uses and they all stand out where you really get to know them. Also, I liked how Guts and Griffith really contrasted each other in terms of personality that you would have to see to understand because I don’t want to spoil it. But I just felt that the absence of the Skull Knight, or Knight of Skeleton and Puck and when they fought that other aristocrat in the manga just really stood out to me. I do have a strong pet peeve when adapting anime and I just felt that those elements being cut out I wouldn’t say offended me, but still bothered me because of how passionate I am of the actual manga.

Well, the character design is very faithful to Miura-sensei’s art style, but I just feel it’s not the same without his way of shadowing and cross hatching. But going on, the designs of the core characters really come across as threatening and intimidating where you just want to say to yourself, “I don’t want to mess with this guy.” The fights are pretty intense, brutal, and gory. Guts’ fighting style where he just goes for broke is very appealing because he’s just a man that’ll do anything to win. Even though he really has no graceful form like a fencer, it’s just his experience and his instincts really define his fighting style and makes it really exciting. The designs of the monsters are really gruesome and scary as well where you may have nightmares of being chased by them in a place where you can’t escape from them.

I’ll open up this part of the review by saying, the dub sucks, don’t bother watching it. But I still feel that the dub from the Dreamcast game was much, much, much superior and very excellent. I felt that Nobutoshi Canna was born to play Guts, or Guts was created to have Canna voice him, I don’t know, but they clicked like peanut butter and jelly. Miyamura Yuko, the voice of Asuka from Evangelion is also an excellent choice to played Caska. Caska sort of reminded me of that character and I felt Miyamura’s talent brought that presence into the show. So with these two names alone, you got a very excellent voice cast in which they represent their characters in a very accurate and believable manner. Other names I wanted to mention is Morikawa Toshiyuki as Griffith. He was just very charismatic but yet very cold. And Utsumi Kenji was simply born to play Zodd.

The music is also pretty frickin’ sweet if I say so myself. You got heavy metal, mystical music, midevil, you just got a whole bunch of things that really represent the dark atmosphere of this series. It’s also cool that the composer, Hirasawa Susumu was brought back to do the music for the games on Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 and still keep that feeling of intensity in this franchise. Despite being dark and gritty, it’s still very intense and addicting. Especially one of the insert songs, Forces.

Well, in case you haven’t been listening, I personally recommend you read the manga instead of watching the anime. I just feel you’re being cheated if you’re more familiar with it. I hear all kinds of rumors on why they won’t continue Berserk such as violence. I say fuck that shit. I feel we’re owed that much. Anyway, I say the closest you’ll get to more Berserk anime is playing the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 games, which I recommend you do get and I personally like them a lot. Even though I have criticized the anime for its execution and length, I felt that the music and the voice acting brought a different kind of definition to the franchise which gives it a different sense of identity rather than just the story and the art of the manga itself which makes the anime very worth watching . read more