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I had been meaning to watch this anime for some time, but I didn't expect anything special. To my surprise Basilisk turned out to be an incredibly enjoyable anime. It starts off a bit slow and even confusing, but after a few episodes you start to get the hang of things.

The plot is basically a Battle Royale or survival game between two clans named Kouga and Iga. Each clan has 10 ninjas or elite warriors with supernatural abilities. Many of these ninjas are amazing characters. You have "beautiful heroes" and "ugly monsters" on both sides. No clan is fully good or fully evil, which is ... something I appreciated a lot. It's up to the viewer which clan to root for. I am #TeamKouga for sure though, mainly because their characters appealed to me more and Iga had one too many rapists...
(There's a central romance to the plot as well.)

I caught myself cheering at times when Kouga used teamwork to outsmart the Iga or to kill them. Gyoubu, the psychically strong "chameleon", was involved in a few of those. He was probably my favorite character of all. Rarely do I get this engaged while watching a new anime series.

Some scenes were surprisingly powerful emotionally. A great soundtrack adds to that.

To sum it up; Basilisk is a fantastic anime for those looking for medieval action-fantasy with romance.

Berserk '97 is the anime that got me into manga. It was my first taste of anime for adults, having basically only seen kids shows and Ghibli-films prior.

The first episode can be skipped, or rather watched after the remaining episodes as it takes place after everything that happens. The series starts off somewhat average with that episode, but it gets better and better with each episode that slowly but surely draws you into Kentaro Miuras dark fantasy world of Berserk.

Miuras masterpiece manga will never get a perfect adaptation, because that would literally be impossible. The '97 anime however is as close as it's ... gonna get. Many things have been cut out, partly for censorship reasons, but the anime adapts enough of the manga to keep its depth there for all to experience. Unlike the incredibly shallow and ugly movie-trilogy, this anime does the manga justice as much as it can.

The animation is clearly of low-budget, but it is faithful to the manga in its style and the coloring is really superb (unlike the movies, once again). There are no flaws to point out other than a low-budget animation.

The Japanese voice actors are truly outstanding, you won't find better voice acting in an anime series I'd say. However, the English dub is not to recommend. Most of the actors do an alright job, at least as far as English dubs go, but Griffith (one of the main characters) might as well have been voiced by Stephen Hawking. His monotone voice with zero acting behind it makes me think the actor was just a random guy they found on the streets and not an actual actor. So if you don't mind reading subs, take my advice and watch the anime with the amazing Japanese voice actors.

Susumu Hirasawa has to be mentioned. A musical genius who created a masterful and unique soundtrack bringing the atmosphere of the anime to a level of its own. It sure makes up for any of the visual flaws that the low-budget animation brings.

For those who are looking for a medieval fantasy anime that is dark and violent, or just an anime of very high quality, Berserk is the one for you. Just stay away from the movies and especially the disgraceful joke of the century that is the newer 2016-2017 adaptation.