Berserk – 2016 anime review

Berserk…

It’s a long running series, the manga appears to be entering the end game, the first season of its 2016 series just ended, there is a new PS4 game coming out soon! So, now seems like a good time to talk about this tremendous story.  This is planned to be a 3 part series.  This will be introducing the story and reviewing the 2016 series.  Next will be an article on the philosophy of the story of the main character, Guts.  Finally, a review of the PS4 game.

If you just want my thoughts on the 2016 series, hit page 2, it’s all there.  I need to set this up first, though.

How to even start describing this. Berserk is one of my personal favorite works. This may be a bit out there, but I think that Berserk is the anime equivalent of Game of Thrones. It’s a long running European style dark high fantasy tale with magical/mystical elements, mature themes, and a lot of death. I’ve been thinking about how to relate just what it is, but there is so much story I can’t do that.  There are so many nuances to the characters I can’t really do that either. So, instead, I’m going to explain what hooked me on the story.

Introduction

In the first episode of the 1997 anime, we open on a village.  Everyone is in fear, and thugs are terrorizing a bar.  A man comes in and quickly beats the hell out of the thugs with a repeating crossbow, a prosthetic metal hand, and a HUGE sword. The swordsman leaves one survivor to tell his lord that the black swordsman has arrived.  After he leaves, the black swordsman is seen being tormented by spirits, and in tortured anguish he gets them to leave him alone by firing a canon that’s contained in his prosthetic hand. When the lord of the area receives word of the swordsman’s arrival, he decides to mount up and raid the village himself, enjoying torching it, and killing the people.  The swordsman confronts the lord, and critically wounds the lord with the repeating crossbow. At this point, the lord shows himself to be a gigantic snake monster, who then smashes the swordsman, hurting him and picking him up by his head to taunt him.  The lord talks about how weak and fragile humans are.  The swordsman looks beaten, until he manages to fire the cannon in his arm, blasting a part of the snake lord’s body away, and freeing himself from the grip.  He slides back to grab his HUGE sword, and cleaves the snake lord’s body in two.  The swordsman stands over the snake lord, dying and in disbelief, and shoots him in the eye with the crossbow just to inflict more pain.  The swordsman says that yes, humans are fragile, but we will struggle and fight on no matter what. The swordsman then continues to shoot the snake lord in the face, refraining from delivering a fatal blow, simply inflicting more pain on this monster, letting him die slowly.

That is a hell of an intro, and this is still one of the most bad-ass things I’ve ever seen.  The swordsman, Guts, may even be the prototype of the huge sword protagonist. Take a look:

Cloud wishes he could wield a sword like that.

Cloud wishes he could wield a sword like that.

From there, the story goes back to explain how Guts became this half insane killing machine, including how he got scarred, lost his eye, and his arm, and the many MANY traumas that he went through to make him, as Boomstick on Death Battle called him “The scariest man in the world”. He has been through hell and back, literally, and is a tremendously compelling character who grows throughout the entire story.

The story itself has a lot of depth, too. It explores themes of family, friendship, purpose, will, ambition, fate, and self determination.  Fate and karma are mentioned a lot, as though everyone’s roles in the world are entirely predetermined.  One character describes them as the light of the moon reflecting on the water of a river, incapable of alt

Background

Starting in 1989, the Manga has been continuing for the past 27 years. There was an anime in 1997, a Dreamcast game in 1999, a PS2 game in 2004, a series of movies in 2012 and 2013, and now we have a new series, and a PS4 game coming soon.

The manga, obviously, is the source material. Its production has slowed in recent years, and part of that is due to the AMAZING art.  Some of the frames are HUGE and with ridiculously intricate detail.  See for yourself:

This is just one splash, and isn't even that impressive for recent volumes.

This is just one splash, and isn’t even that impressive for recent volumes.

The first anime covered the first major story arc of the manga, dubbed the golden age arc.  It was low budget, and some say that the art suffered for it, but I think it did pretty well.  It wasn’t visually arresting likean Akira or Eva, but characters stayed on model, the color palate was sufficient, and I found the splash image trick to be quite effective.  This is when they would take a frame directly inspired from the manga that displayed a critical moment, and leave it on screen, panning over it, to emphasize the moment.  It omits certain pieces of the manga, but those pieces wouldn’t fit in the anime anyway, so it works quite well.  It leaves on a massive tease/cliffhanger, and is a part of why I started tracking the manga down for myself.

The Dreamcast game was all new material (featuring the inimitable Tony Jay as a voice actor).  As a game it was decent, a good rental for the time that left a memorable impression, but the controls were a little clunky. The control problems made bears easier to fight than frogs, simply because they were easier to hit.  There was also a bit near the end when you had to run toward the camera and dodge obstacles, which is bad design.

The PS2 game covered a more recent section of the story, though it picked up long after the 97 anime left off.  The game was Japan exclusive, though, so it would take some work to play.  It’s a better game than the Dreamcast one, though, even handicapping for the loss of Tony Jay.

The recent movies revisited the golden age arc, that had been covered in the 1997 anime.  Replacing a 25 episode anime with 3 movies about 90 minutes long seriously affected the pacing.  For example, it skipped the entire Snake Lord sequence of the first episode that had me so hooked.  It didn’t really have enough room to let the story breathe, but it did a pretty good job of increasing the scope of battle scenes and hitting all of the important beats.  Extra credit for reuniting the english voice cast from the 1997 anime to reprise their roles.  Once done, many were hoping to see more, because that was the section of the story we had never seen presented in any other way, between the 97 anime, and the PS2 game.  This brings us to the 2016 series.

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2 Responses to Berserk – 2016 anime review

  1. Axalon says:

    As someone who started with the 2016 anime and went the opposite direction by watching the older one second, I can confirm that some of it was a bit confusing without that extra background. That was my own fault of course, so I stopped it at a certain point, went back and watched the older anime, then finished the 2016 one.

    It wasn’t completely unwatchable by any means prior to looking at the older material, but, for instance, I kept wondering why the show kept lingering on this mentally damaged person who I’d never seen before and that Guts wanted to protect for some reason. Or whatever the hell the weird demon baby thing was.

    It all became much more clearer with the older anime and some manga reading though, which was definitely helpful since the 2016 show just assumes you already know the older content already.

    That said, I did enjoy it overall.

  2. Baron Fang says:

    Enjoyed the 1997 series, loved the Dreamcast game, excited to see this!

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