Berserk is the story of Guts, a muscle-bound, relentless, brutal mercenary in a dark-fantasy, western European, medieval world, who wields an impossibly large, blunt sword. It’s a stunningly beautiful, blood-soaked show with a surprising amount of depth, that is somehow too long and too short at the same time.
Note: I’m including this in my Année Anime 2024 challenge, though I wrote this in Dec 2023. I’ve been working on the idea for the anime challenge for quite some time, and this review was part of that effort, so I’m cheating just a little.
Title: Berserk (1997)
Type: TV Series
Seasons: 1
Episodes: 25
- Total: 87%
- Static Art – 95%
- Animation – 90%
- Audio – 90%
- Integrity – 90%
- Plot – 90%
- Narrative – 80%
- Delight – 80%
- Genre: European Medieval, Dark Fantasy, Military, Love Triangle, Coming-of-Age
- Merits: Gorgeous, Phantasmagoria, Budget Conscious
- Flaws: Suddenly The End, Akane Syndrome, It’s a Big Dick We Get It
As an unhinged warrior-child, Guts joins an elite mercenary army led by two other prodigal warrior-children, Griffith and Casca, and they all grow into adulthood together while achieving success and acclaim in the employ of powerful nations locked in military conflict. There is an implicitly erotic love triangle that develops between himself, Griffith, and Casca, but despite Griffith’s calm exterior, none of them have the emotional maturity to be sure how to deal with it, much less to recognize what actually drives these feelings. This triangle is the crux of the show, and the emotional development of all three of these main characters is rooted in their relationship to each other as Griffith rises to higher and higher power within military and courtly circles. As an interesting side note: Griffith’s helmet is 100% modeled after the Phantom from Phantom of the Paradise (1974).
Guts is a disturbed man who can’t connect emotionally with those around him. He gets praised for his feats of strength and daring on the battlefield, but he is self-aware enough to know these are not acts of courage. When he is in a fight he doesn’t have to think or feel – he can dissolve into a state of non-being, allowing him to escape the pain and uncertainty of his existence. When the fight is done, he has to go back to being himself; something he has never known how to do. We get to watch Guts slowly mature over the course of these episodes: he becomes more aware of this disconnect with himself, explores motivations for his actions that don’t always pan out, grows affectionate towards those under his command, and eventually even goes walkabout to take control of his own identity.
The artwork is wonderful. The characters and character designs are all lovely. The art style, excepting the demonic, is relatively realist for a fantasy anime, although everyone is HELLA ripped. The landscapes are done in vibrant watercolour, and the whole program has a certain “fantasy glow” to it, until the army gets into a battle, when the landscape gets violated with rivers of blood, and corpses stare at the sky with glassy, dead, open eyes and agonized expressions. The dark, demonic forces of the world, when they do appear, are stunningly beautiful and horrifying at the same time – they are an absolute feast of phantasmagoria. This show holds its demon-cards close to its chest, and only doles them out at key moments, but when it’s time to get evil this series cranks it to eleven. None of the logic of the demonic is ever explained, and it doesn’t have to – it’s not like the characters have any more idea than the audience what the hell is happening, and they’re too busy being eaten or eviscerated to care.
The animation is noteworthy. There are times when a scene is animated beautifully, and you can really feel the flow of the carefully hand-drawn cells. There are other times when pan-and-zoom gets used, but it gets used the right way. The show is aware of its limitations, of time and budget, so its animators spent time drilling in on the beautiful, key moments of motion and energy, but were still able to put together stunning landscapes and sweeping still-images full of dynamic energy. There are also times when the animation dials down, like there is a pacing to the animation, but it never fails to communicate effectively; different animation gets used like different art brushes for different purposes, and I thought they were all used very effectively.
Despite the big-dick energy of the brutal, tree-trunk wielding protagonist, there is a lot of depth to this show. Guts experienced incredible trauma as a child, but it doesn’t get played for laughs or (just) to prove he’s tough. Instead, we can tell, as the audience, where other characters might see valour, Guts feels drawn to a masochistic numbness that blots out the significant pain of his own trauma, eventually realizing most of his life is a long-running trauma response which continues to grow in complexity. Though they are harsh and visually striking, I think a little more depth could have been given to the extent of his trauma, especially since it’s such a critical character point, but its inclusion makes him much more than just a brawny one-man-killing machine.
I know this series was based on a long-running, highly regarded manga, and having read a couple of the first volumes, I know there is a vast amount that did not get included in the show. I stopped reading the manga because I wanted to watch the show as-is, and not in comparison to its source material, but even before having read any of the manga I got a sense that something was missing, or cut out, of the final draft of this series. It’s hard to put your finger on it while you’re watching, but it’s like you know you’re skimming something important, or you’re getting a close-up of the emotions of the love triangle when, just maybe, there is something just outside the camera you feel like you missed. There isn’t always depth despite the heavy pathos. Then again, maybe that depth was also missing in the manga, I can’t say.
Given how much ground gets covered in the series it’s not surprising the story got marched forward the way it did. There are no filler episodes, though there are a few filler moments. I especially dislike the shrill, one-note comedic relief of one enemy commander, Adon Coborlwitz, but those moments are few and far between. The narrative remains focused on the story at hand, and there is a good forward momentum to the story. It was very binge-able in that regard.
Is the story deep? It is and it isn’t. Guts is a burly, but disturbed, Monkey King-type character who attached himself to the the hot, androgynous swordsman who actually managed to beat him in a duel. A love triangle quickly developed between them and Casca, the second-in-command of the mercenary group, and the group’s only female member. This love triangle is critical to both the over-arching plot of the series as well as Guts working his way through conflicting ideas of who he wants to be, and why. I found the triangle to be interesting but it wasn’t enough to carry the sudden ending which, while epic, didn’t satisfy me.
I found the growth of Guts to be far more interesting than the love triangle itself. He knows he’s not like other people and he seeks to figure out what drives him, he grows older and reflects on the decisions he made, and these reflections can be seen how how he deals with the changing circumstances of his life.
Casca was also an interesting character: a black woman who defied anyone to treat her as anything less than the soldier and commander she was, with her sword if need be, but she also viewed herself as a woman and grappled with her wavering ideas of what that meant to her in a very masculine, medieval, military, overtly chauvinist environment. Being a woman, to her, often ended up meaning attaching herself to a man, and while I’m I don’t agree with everything they did with the character, at least it felt like she made her own decisions and lived with, or suffered under, the consequences. Guts even learned some respect for the brutality of existing as a women in that world because of her. The sudden ending of the series was especially jarring for Casca’s character. After so much time slow-burning the pathos of the love triangle, and finally getting to zoom in on her own development, I think she got bulldozed under a need to quickly end the series.
I don’t think this series is for everyone, but I think it will appeal to more than the young male demographic it feels aimed at, and while I don’t like endless series, I think this one could have used an episode or two more, to make a better closing-of-the-book for these characters. It features graphic violence, torture, rape, child abuse and murder, and emotional trauma, which may not sit well with all viewers, but serves a purpose. It’s also beautiful, and when it’s grotesque, it is exquisitely grotesque. It avoids many anime tropes, though I noticed the Akane Syndrome grew stronger as the series progressed. It’s a solid series.
Lotus Reviews 