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 .
