Berserk was my second anime I’ve ever seen right after Naruto. It was long time before I created MAL account and long before I started to watch anime actively. Honestly I watched quite a lot anime since then, but no other evokes such emotions in me like Berserk. It left me with my mouth wide open and with tears in my eyes. I was so "depressed" it ends that I went to order manga right away.
For me personally these anime and manga as a unit are masterpiece so I will not even try to be transparent, because I’m so attached to this story it would be impossible. My attachment to this masterpiece is same as for Lord of the Rings, which is my favourite saga of all time that shaped me from my youth to my adulthood. I still find this anime adaptation one of the best animes to this day.
[Story:10/10]
Well if I should describe story of Berserk in one word, it would be struggle. Main characters and not only them, but whole world is going through so much shit it almost feels like hell. We all know it’s not even close as bad as it will be in the future, but constant battles, corruption, politics and struggle for power, raping, killing of innocents, berayal etc. are terrible enough.
Especially first 20 episodes before all that supernatural stuff feels so real, and it’s not so far away from real medieval mess.
On the other hand struggle is not only thing that Berserk offers. Story is well balanced with moments of friendship, chivalry, joking and last but not least LOVE. Love story between Casca and Guts is one of my favourite romances before all that eclipse shit.
What started like pure hate/jelaous relationship blossomed to comrade/lover relationship. It feels so real, because that realtionship is build slowly through real converstaions, by solving their problems, opening their hearts and it’s not only some crush build from nothing or from one "chivalry" act overtime. Story of Berserk is dark, scary, brutal, unfair but at the same time mysterious, dream like, and it pulls you in very quickly.
Characters:10/10
There is no doubt characters are just as amazing as story. There is great dynamic between main characters of the Band of the Hawk and each character got some role, which they fulfill perfectly. In other words each one of the main character evokes different emotion in you and is driven by one main emotion or feature himself. Let’s look at some examples...
Guts x anger, Griffith x ambition, Judeau x friendliness, Casca - jealousy/obsession, Corkus x rancor, Pippin x calmness... These emotions are delivered on point and you feel exactly the same as any of the characters mentioned throughout the series.
Main focus is obviously on Guts - the main character. He goes through biggest evolve and he’s fighting with a lot of past demons.
When it’s starting to look better there comes always some kind of obstacle. Despite this there is enough time to look into the heads of side characters and know how they think.
If you like bizarre characters it’s another reason to watch Berserk, because antagonists fits this description perfectly! When you look at them you literally feel disgusted and aroused at the same time IYKWIM.
Art: 8/10
As an average enjoyer of older anime I don’t mind if animations are little bit worse. I liked zooms or close ups on characaters details and grimaces which captures their emotions and feelings elegantly. On the other hand animations of background are nothing special even for the year of airing. It’s one of the very few things I can little bit criticize on this version of Berserk.
On the other hand these rough or gloomy animations probably fits the world much better than these new smoothed out CGI type of shit in recent series of Berserk.
Sound/Music: 10/10
There isn’t more enjoyable song in anime for me than Guts Theme to this day. Don’t get me wrong this anime don’t stands on one song entirely and whole music throughout this masterpiece is breathtaking. If you by some kind of incomprehensible mystery didn’t heard Guts theme to this day listen to it. As would Keanu said „it’s really going to be breathtaking".
Enjoyment: 10/10
My enjoyment was as high as your average crackhead on Kensington avenue in Philadelphia, nothing more nothing less.
Overall: 9,8/10
As I said at the beginning I cannot really be objective and I won’t even try. It’s one of the best animes out there and it adapts manga very nicely. It’s really hard to find anime of this kind and there is noone to this day which I would enjoy as much as Kenpuu Denki Berserk!
