Born from a hanging carcass,young mercenary named Guts lives, kills and sleeps on the battlefield as it is the only way
of life that he knows of. He was brought up by a relentless mercenary called Gambino. He taught him how to use a sword
and also how to kill with it. He would often use Guts and take his hard earned money from the battles he participated in.
Guts would risk his life day in day out just to make enough money to cover his basic needs, to survive. After a certain battle Guts
set off to look for a another battlefield where he meets a certain band, the Band of the Hawk which is led by Griffith. After a fateful
duel with Griffith, Guts ends up being forced to join his band where he continues to uncover his true nature...
The universe of Berserk is really dark and cruel. It consists of layers of people who are trying to fit in, to find a place
in that world of theirs. The setting is a take of a western European medieval fantasy driven world.
There are many philosophical questions entangled within Berserk... Nihilism and Causality are the ones that are the most pronounced.
Guts, our protagonist,developed mental problems and became antisocial becuase of the constant physical and mental abuse from Gambino.
Because of those problems, Guts only knew how to express himself with his sword which was always besides him, an extension of his body so to speak.
That's how he became a extraordinary swordsman. Guts became cruel and bloodthirsty. He took joy in torturing his opponents.
Guts isn't a classic protagonist who has the goal of becoming the next Hokage, he isn't someone who is innocent and naive and someone who has an equally innocent dream.
The pacing of the anime seems like it would leave Guts behind and continue on without him if he were to stop for a second.
It's a really good thing, it makes it so that it doesn't seem that the world revolves around one character.
There are dozens of people who are chasing their own dreams, ideals, fame etc.
The ones who stand out the most are Casca and Griffith himself. Although the manga did it better,there are also a number of side cast characters that
have good background stories and their own takes of an ideal world, their dreams.
Casca, for one has a very strong background story. She was a daughter in a farmer family which lived off of the earth.
Casca had lots of brothers and sisters, more heads to feed. They lived in a mountainous area which bordered with other countries.
It meant that they got robbed, pillaged and killed quite frequently. They would often lose everything they've ever built, planted, raised
so ultimately they got used to losing everything and having nothing.The taxes would take the food out of their mouths.
A nobleman was passing through when Casca was working in the fields and, as usual, he took a liking to her.
Naturally as he had money, he offered it to Casca's father so he could buy her off. She was the youngest,smallest and
the weakest one. After quite some thinking her father decided it was the smart thing to do, she would end up with a nobleman,
he would have one less mouth to feed and he would have a generous amount of money for the rest of the family.
Of course we all know what happens next, as soon as they have passed the farm, the nobleman jumped on Casca and tried to rape her.
Out of nowhere, like a knight in shinning armor Griffith appeared the only thing is he doesn't save her, he just gives her the means
to save herself. He throws his sword next to her and was like "Either use the sword or get raped and possibly murdered."
This was one of the many scenes that made an impact on me .From that moment on, Casca idolized Griffith as some kind of an angel, a second
chance that God gave to her. She immediately started following him even if it means piling up bodies along the way.
Casca is represented as some kind of a outsider, her gender, her skin color, her character as a whole is used for the purpose
of showing a difference. Even though she was a woman she wanted to participate in battles and do everything Griffith would order without any
second thought.
Going deeper into her character would mean spoiling the show, so I'll just say that the main emotional plots that affect the show's pacing
are revolving around Casca. Later on she goes through changes, changes in her way of thinking, her acting etc.
Even after those changes she remains the proud warrior who would watch the backs of Griffith, Guts and the other members
of the Band of the Hawk.
Now onto Griffith... First of all I'm sure you've read or heard somewhere the infamous "Griffith did nothing wrong",
I stand behind that and I'm going to clarify it a bit for you.
Griffith is a crucial member of the Band of the Hawk, without him it would fall apart just like that.
Griffith is a person who is chasing his own dream no matter the cost(even if it means sleeping with an old fart)...
Because of the nature of his dream, he is forced to walk over a mountain of corpses to achieve it.He tries to escape from
that responsibility by not forcing his men to follow him, but rather by giving them an option to let themselves be trapped
inside his fangs. If they accept, Griffith gets to choose where and when they will give their lives for him.
He is the same person from start to finish, he doesn't change his way of thinking. He thinks that all of the Band of the Hawk
are his able soldiers who devote their whole beings so he can achieve his ambition, his dream. He doesn't see them as friends, as they
would have to be his equal.
Griffith proves to be a great leader, tactician, warrior, nobleman and an intellectual. For the sake of not spoiling I will exclude further entries about Griffith.
The animation for this adaptation from 1997 is surely aged. They had to compensate for the low budget by inserting still images followed by sound.
Even so, they did it perfectly.
When Guts swung his sword, the picture would follow his sword and then swiftly go back to Guts in order to pronounce the weight of the sword and the swing itself.
Berserk has an "engrish" opening song "Tell Me Why" by PENPALS, it is catchy and it sounds decent surprisingly enough.
The ending song "Waiting So Long" by Silver Fins is decent.
The OST music by Susumu Hirasawa is on spot with the mysterious feel of the show.
The color palette is soothing for the eye, a tad bit on the darker side. No strong colors whatsoever.
With all that said I think that Berserk is a really solid adaptation of the manga, not perfect by any means but still, rather good.
It somehow managed to convey the dark gritty feel of the black and white manga. In my opinion this is as good as it gets when it comes
to adapting this manga.
Berserk started airing in Fall of 1997.Coming in strong Berserk blew up in popularity and no other anime that aired at that time
could go up against it. It had a huge impact on countless other creators. If you were to take a look at most of today's protagonists you would
see the influence of Guts smeared all over them.
Another example would be the titan in video game industry that created the Dark Souls franchise. It was greatly inspired by Berserk and it has a
couple of references as well. If you want to immerse yourself in a world very similar to Berserk's, I would recommend giving Dark Souls 3 a shot.
