As with anything from this time period (1997), some parts of Berserk have aged better than others. The overall, bigger picture narrative is still superb and more than holds up to this day. Some of the moment to moment writing, however, particularly in the English dub, would not meet modern standards. Throwaway villains in particular have serious cases of "bad guy voice" and have terrible lines straight out of Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series along the lines of "Hahaha... Now I'm going to crush you... WITH MY AX!!!!!!!!" in the deepest, slowest, most stereotypical villain voice imaginable. Additionally, characters lips moving are frequently imperfectly aligned with what is actually being said, which is something companies are a lot more on top of today.
Graphically, while this doesn't look like garbage, it obviously shows its age and couldn't come close to passing for a modern anime. It wasn't painful to watch just a month out from 2025, but even for its own time I don't know that its presentation was ever where it distinguished itself. It looks similar as far as graphics quality is concerned to many of its contemporaries. Thematically, Berserk was willing to go a lot darker than many anime of its time, and darker than many anime today, and what we saw in this anime was after significant REDUCTIONS to dark and violent scenes were made, with the approval of the creator. It certainly stood out in this regard as it was simply willing to go where many another anime will not.
Guts is a mixed bag of a main character. He is extremely powerful and badass, likeable and he's absolutely layered and evolves as the series progresses. On the other hand, he also absolutely falls into a number of tropes and stereotypes and he has Wolverine-esque recovery from countless, often extremely serious wounds suffered on the battlefield and Bryan Mills levels of general imperviousness to anything and everything his opposition does. To their credit, they at least show his scars and physical wounds and have a number of episodes where he is wrapped up in bandages or actively in the process of recovering, but nevertheless, the level to which this man is unaffected by crippling or lethal levels of damage, and the speed with which he bounces back as if these things never happened, are not realistic even within this universe and they are conveniently applicable to Guts alone because he is the main character and the plot needs it to be that way. He is stabbed very badly and very deeply in the shoulder and is bleeding like a faucet from the wound, but less than one minute later he's calmly making love to the person who stabbed him. That's an oversimplification of course, and I understand what scenes like this were going for, but they were among the more egregious examples of the "invincible main character" trope that this anime blatantly falls into.
The lack of a proper, ongoing villain plagues the entirety of the series. Generally speaking our protagonists are simply fighting against opposing military forces or something akin to "The Empire", but there's never one true big baddie, even on a temporary basis, that drives the plot forward. Once you get to the very, very end of the anime, and if you know what happens after that point, you can understand WHY this decision was made, but if you were to watch only this anime and not dig further for outside information the criticism that there simply isn't a proper, longstanding villain at any point during this entire 25 episode runtime is very valid. The plot at its core is about Guts and Griffith, their interpersonal and complex relationship and their relationship to other members of The Band of the Falcon (or Band of the Hawk if you watched the English dub, which is an obnoxious inconsistency) more so than a good versus evil or hero versus villain kind of setup. The other members of The Band of the Falcon/Hawk are a mixed bag. They generally fall into tropes and archetypes and don't ever meaningfully develop beyond the secondary, largely one-dimensional role the plot wants them to play, but they at least have adequate lines and screen time and are consistently present, even if clearly and ubiquitously less important than the main protagonists, in all the major plot events. There's only a handful of these characters though, as for an army supposedly comprised of hundreds or thousands of men at any given time, we really only ever get to know perhaps half a dozen of them. I would have liked to have seen more development of these core secondary members and I would have liked tertiary members and beyond to be less comprised of nameless throwaways. Ultimately it often feels like The Band of the Falcon/Hawk are a group of four or five people who matter and then a bunch of disposable, nameless throwaway nobodies who follow them. Also, other than one specific character, Corkus, who is set up as an unlikeable, antagonistic towards Guts jerk from the very beginning, there's a distinct lack of conflict and betrayal within the group, which is very unrealistic given its size, makeup and high turnover rate. Speaking of which, how exactly does this army keep replenishing the soldiers it loses in any given battle and how do we know the new recruits are skilled in battle or any amount of loyal to Griffith when it really comes down to it? Unsurprisingly, this is never addressed.
Pacing wise Berserk is largely in line with anime of its time period in that it's slower, more drawn out and more focused on telling a bigger picture story than it is on moment to moment entertainment. There's frequent combat and blood throughout the entire show, though a lot of that combat feels very samey, to break up slower sections. There were a handful of smaller stretches where I started to get a little bored, but it was never egregious in this regard, and there certainly doesn't seem to be any filler or any episodes without clear purpose. In 25 episodes of anime they adapted over 12 full volumes of the manga, which is a lot of meat on the bone, but that brings me to perhaps the biggest elephant in the room of all...
So the ending... IF you know where it's going/what comes after and IF you opt to do outside looking into beyond what the anime shows you, this is a fine and logical stopping point as it is a major, major plot event that sets up the entire rest of the series. If you DIDN'T look up more information, however, I can absolutely see how this ending would seem completely out of nowhere and nonsensical and be highly unsatisfying. If you were to go into this truly blind with absolutely no idea of what's to come, this would be one of the biggest WTF endings of all time. It happens very, very quickly and there's no way to anticipate it. CLEARLY this wasn't intended to be the end but rather a stopping point that they were going to continue in a future season, but we all know how that turned out, and therefore, if we're judging the anime solely on its own merits and assuming that any given viewer does not have prior knowledge of the series, this ending is very questionable. With all that said, they say the best endings are the most memorable ones, and this is CERTAINLY that...
At the end of the day I largely liked Berserk and I can certainly fully understand, with the benefit of hindsight, why this went on to become so ridiculously popular and influential. I come from a unique perspective in that I've never read the manga and I watched the anime for the first time one month before 2025, which is way, way after the fact. In its own time, this show was something special. Today, it has aged only decently, and has clear room for modernization. The setting, scope, bigger picture narrative and willingness to go dark and heavy are absolutely awesome. The moment to moment writing, voice acting (especially for villains), lip-synching and out of nowhere, unexplained, unresolved ending are all a bit more questionable. I tried to be as objective and neutral as possible with this review if we are looking at the anime and the anime alone and taking all other factors out of it. Where does that leave us? If you like dark fantasy, hit the damn like button for this review and go watch Berserk. :)
1997 RATING- 9+
2024 RATING- 7-8
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 7.5-8
