Anime: Kenpuu Denki Berserk

يعتبر العصر الذهبي في مانجا بيرسيرك، ارك بديع يعرفنا بالقصة وشخصياتها...ورغم ان الارك الأول الذي تم اقتباسه في الحلقة الأولى من هذا الأنمي، يعرفنا بالعداوة بين غاتس وغريفث..الا ان بداية ومنتصف الارك الثاني، العصر الذهبي...ترينا واحدة من اجمل الصداقات بين هذين العدوين...فكيف تحولت الصداقة إلى عداوة ؟؟ هذا ما سنعرفه في بقية الأربع وعشرون حلقة من هذا الأنمي...
١-القصة
قصة الهائج من أوسع القصص التي تحمل حبكات رائعة وتويستات مفاجأة، لكن هذا الإقتباس غير عدة احداث في القصة، مثل ذلك الجني المزعج الذي تم استبداله بطفلة في أول حلقة واراه خيار جيد..فقصة بهذه التراجيديا تفسد بالشخصيات المهرجة ماضي غاتس
وأقصد هنا إغتصابه الذي لم يذكر قط والسبب مجهول وأخيرا شخصية فارس الجمجمة التي هي الاخرى تن الاستغناء عنها وارى انه خيار جيد مناسب للنهاية وفي نفس الوقت ثغرة لأهمية هذه القصة...لكن نحن نتحدث عن الأنمي لذا لا داعي ان تكون متواجدة...
٢-الإنتاج
إنتاج هذا العمل من الناحية البصرية متوسط، الأنميشن كسول في اغلب الأحيان فقط في اواخر الحلقات تم اشافة مشاهد ساكوغا جميلة، مع تلك اللوخات المبرقشة المقتبسة من اسلوب اوسامو ديزاكي والتي كانت جيدة رغم سوء استخدامها احيانا لكن الانتاج سمعيا..واو أوستات ايقونية ذات انغام مناسبة للمشاهد التي تضهر فيها وثيم كنائسي فاخر...
٣-الإخراج
إخراج عبقري...كل شيء اخراجيا في غاية الابداعية...الطابع اللوني...زوايا الكاميرا...السكريبت...كل شيء كان ابداعي جعل من هذه الخمس وعشرون حلقة تحفة فنية رغم تواضع الأنميشن...

When I was younger (12-13) I remember staying away from berserk on two different occasions. Thought it was gonna be super bloody on like a end of blood c type of level and nothing else. Didn't watch til I was 18 or 19 I think and it's been my favorite anime ever since. I always wonder if I watched younger would it still have been or did it just work out. As popular as it is I was able to go in completely blind so I won't say anything specific about the show. I love pretty much everything about berserk tho. The characters, setting, animation, music etc I also love romance and dark fantasy anime over everything. It has both more so the latter of course. Berserk was pretty much perfect for me so If you like the same I'd highly recommend it. One of the only anime I've watched and read the entire manga afterwards.

Story - Just as mediocre as the manga. Taking out the deus ex machina that was the Skull Knight was a good idea but then how did Guts ever get out of the Eclipse? Wyald was taken out which I thought was unnecessary. The fight with Wyald was one of the highlights of the Golden Age arc so taking that out was quite unreasonable. The rest of the story is mediocre as usual. Battle of Doldrey - Casca's forces got ambushed inside the Doldrey fortress, and Casca herself got shot with a paralyzing crossbow bolt so that she could barely stand. How did she win? By doing a somersault over Adon, landing behind him and slicing him across the cheek, of course! It made no sense, but then Berserk is full of things that don't make sense.

Art - Whilst Berserk MANGA had excellent art, the artwork in the Berserk ANIME is quite mediocre. To begin with, the majority of the action scenes in the anime were panned or zoomed stills rather than animated. When the action scenes weren't panned stills, they tended to be reused animation. The character designs themselves weren't so bad, but nothing special. If you compared the stills from the anime to pages in the manga you would see that the manga was much better drawn, which gives us even less reason to watch the anime.

Sound - The sound is mediocre. Forces didn't really fit the mood or the pace of the action, and the opening song really didn't convey the mood of the series either. Waiting So Long did convey the sense of despair and sadness from the ending of the anime though.

Enjoyment - Having read the manga I didn't enjoy the anime at all. I actually forced myself to watch it because I wanted to know just how bad it was.

Overall - A mediocre series that ruined the potential for greatness due to what I presume were budget constraint

The Following Review will contain subject matter that would not be suitable for young children, viewer discretion is advised

Critic's Log - Earthdate: February 16, 2013. Review #35: Berserk

let's annihilate our way through on Berserk!

This is the tale of Guts and his chronicles upon his days serving as a member of a group of mercenaries known as The Band of the Hawk, nicknamed "the Grim Reaper of the Battlefield." Led by the ambitious, ruthless, and charismatic man named Griffith, together they fight in the battlefield onto their way into the royal court, and are forced into a fate that may change their entire lives. This is a tale of a warrior’s fight for survival, a young woman’s search for meaning, and an ambitious man’s quest for glory.

To be technical, this is a OLM Inc. production and even though the artwork looks nice in Berserk, the animation is a bloody mess and it is pretty bad in this show and that’s one of the major drawbacks in Berserk. Enjoy the frozen images and… glorious slideshows? Yeah, parts of the show have some slideshow-like effect, which are nice for the end of some episodes, but not right in the middle of it. Oh well…The animation rarely moves but I got used to it right when I was in the middle of watching this anime.

The music by Susumu Hirasawa is something worth mentioning. There’s some medieval instruments used as well as some passionate folk singing which some themes sound a bit techno-ish, it is really fitting with the show and sounds amazing. There’s not a whole lot of musical themes used in the show and some songs are overplayed. The opening “Tell me Why” is decent outside the show; I don’t care for its insertion in this anime. “Waiting So Long” is a decent closing theme I guess.

When it comes to voice acting, the Japanese cast is excellent, the English dub is a little hit and miss. On the Japanese side, Nobutoshi Canna is great as Guts, Toshiyuki Morikawa is terrific as Griffith, and Yuko Miyamura is excellent as Casca. Other notable seiyus would be Akira Ishida as Judeau, Norio Wakamoto as Gambino, and Unsho Ishizuka as the Narrator as well as another character in the series that I’ll keep silent just for the sake of this review. On the English side, Marc Diraison is great as Guts, Carolyn Keranen is alright as Casca, Kevin T. Collins is hit and miss as Griffith, but his voice fits. Not to mention, he can sing pretty well.

or should I say he's sings pretty well to some extent?

If there’s any worthy performances in the dub, Christopher Kromer was great as Judeau even though he never gets many roles though. Rachael Lillis is also great as Princess Charlotte as well. Also, Sean Schemmel’s in the dub of Berserk as well. Don’t know Mr. Schemmel? Does the English voice of Goku ring any bells? That’s right! the voice of Goku is in the dub of Berserk! No joke. If you’re seeking better voices, stick with the subs here. If you want to give the dub a try, be my guest. Just don’t expect an all-star cast on the dub. The major flaw in the dub is that there are times when the voices don’t sync with the lip flaps. That’s my only major nitpick in the dub. The voices are not completely terrible to say the least. Michael Sinterniklaas was responsible for the ADR direction and I guess the dub was a decent effort on his part.

One of Berserk’s greatest strengths is the characters. The character writing is terrific in this show. The dynamics between Guts and Griffith is just brilliant. Guts is all tough, impulsive, and no tact while Griffith is skilled and a great tactician which compliments eachother perfectly and both characters change eachother drastically. Between these two , there’s the female warrior Casca and she’s by far a relatable character and a strong female character at that instead of being used as fanservice even though she is nude in some moments in the show, but that was because it was for PLOT REASONS! The Band of the Hawk members are also written pretty well too. Other characters are also memorable too. The characters are simply memorable because there are some characters you could relate too and most of these characters are three-dimensional and well-thought out.

What makes Berserk enthralling regardless of which medium is the story. The story is a masterpiece in terms of Dark Fantasy with well written characters and unforgettable moments. Like the character writing, the writing to the story is also brilliant. I also get this feeling that the story plays likes something from a Greek Tragedy or a Roman Tragedy and so forth. Before I go any further, what I will say at this point will contain SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! One nitpick I had with this show is the first episode. In chronological terms, it takes place at the last. While the rest of the show is all backstory. Remember I mentioned about the animation being one of the major drawbacks, well the other major drawback is that when all hell breaks loose, the show…Ends!

That’s right, Berserk has the “Read the Manga” ending and its biggest crime is making this one of the most cruel mortifying cliffhangers in an anime…Ever! I kid you not, this show has no closure, it ends... ON A FUCKING CLIFFHANGER! A lack of an ending really hurts this show and this is the lowpoint of the entire anime. I am not the only one that was pissed off over this ending. One thing that could’ve been done is continuing the story as its own standalone series and give it a somewhat proper conclusion instead of being a commercial for the manga in disguise. But I digress, this anime got me to read the manga which the art is unbelievable and jaw-dropping and nothing is toned down regarding violence, nudity, sex, and even rape. It’s all in the manga in its untamed nature.

I strongly recommend reading Berserk if you watch the anime or want to see some unbelievable artwork in a manga.

Berserk was available from Media Blasters but since the rights expired, it is out of print. The manga by Kentaro Miura is available from Dark Horse Comics, A film series remake starting with “The Golden Age Arc” are licensed by Viz Media. At the time this review has been made, the first movie “The Egg of the King” is available from Viz Media, the Second movie “The Battle for Doldrey” has not been released yet, and the same goes for the third Golden Age movie “Descent”, which that movie is still in theaters at Japan at this time. Also, be on the lookout for the bloopers on each disc. They're downright hilarious to listen to even if you don't like the dub.

With all that said, Berserk has an enthralling gripping story as well as captivating unforgettable characters, an amazing soundtrack, and some good artwork. The Berserk anime suffers with poor quality of animation and an incomplete ending that will tear your guts out to shreds and leave you disappointed with a bad taste in your mouth, so read the manga as a remedy to cure all that frustration before you become emotionally upset with the anime's ending. It's still a great show until it ended.

I give Berserk an 8.8 out of 10, It is VERY GOOD!

Feel free leave a comment. Now if you'll excuse me, I got to take my meds after all that rage I dealt with.

Review
Kenpuu Denki Berserk (Berserk) is unique. Since its manga debuted and was converted into an animation, Kentarou Miura’s work has remained an outlier in the anime industry. The dark and gritty fantasy world, the representation of an untrustworthy church, the cruel demons of inhuman strength, the greedy men, and the cruel nations in the world of Berserk remain unchallenged, a true classic that breaks the barrier of what defines an anime.

The tale of Berserk is centered on the Band of the Hawk, a rising mercenary group amidst warring nations. Led by the ambitious and cunning Griffith, they seem unstoppable in the war and a key piece to the victory of the kingdom of Midland. They all become even more important when the brutish Guts joins their ranks, a young men with an unmatched talent for war and death.

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1. A dark fantasy
   Berserk is, perhaps, the only real dark fantasy in the anime industry. The world where the Band of the Hawk thrives is dreadful, wars raging in every corner, greedy nobles ready to betray their peers, mercenaries and soldiers dying in the thousands in combat, and unknown evil lurking in the shadows. It is a place with no heroes, no glorified adventurers, not even great spellcasters to save the world.
   
   What the manga and the anime do is present a setting unlike what we typically see in either japanese and western works set in medieval times. Like a mixture of Dante’s Inferno with a good deal of our own medieval period, Berserk is about people with a multitude of ideas, creeds, and allegiances. There’s no black and white here, but shades of grey that can be easily snatched to complete darkness with a simple twist.
   
   The lands of Midland are barren, the halls and forests are dark and wet, the battles are bloody, the warriors are filthy, the nobles are prickish. Nothing is pure. Even the knight in shining armor, Griffith, is an ambitious man who will topple anyone in his path.
   
   It’s one of a kind
   Typically, japanese authors lose their hand in presenting serious and somber stories set in medieval fantasy worlds because the characters are too colorful, there are happy or comical anime tropes thrown everywhere, or the setting itself is so magical and distant that it becomes boring to a fault. It’s hard to get the dose right. We have Record of Lodoss War, Bastard, Rune Soldier Louie, Escaflowne, Guin Saga, and many other shows that fall into those trappings, failing to really create an ambientation of horror, dread, and despair in these fantastic worlds. They are all too exaggerated, too bright, too hopeful, too tame for that. It’s more often than not that these elements end up being devastating to the tales of politics, scheming, and zealots.
   
   Berserk has its feet on the ground most of the time, but it is about a fantastical world too. The first episode of the anime makes sure we understand that. Guts, clad in black armor, carrying a massive sword, and with a hand-cannon as an arm goes around and defeats a demonic abomination. After that however, we are given a world much like the middle ages of our history: warring nations, mercenaries, and deceptive rulers. It sets the stage to tell you how the world got so wrong and how our protagonist got so dreadful and powerful.
   
   It knows how to pace itself
   As Guts rises within the ranks of the Band of the Hawk, his prowess and skill becomes obvious and a relationship of both loyalty and rivalry with Griffith grows. Caska, a young woman fighting in places of men, is drawn between these two, sworn to fight to death for her savior Griffith, but watching as his ambitions soar and Guts takes her place.
   
   Berserk is, most of all, about these three characters. That’s why the gritty and filthy world works so wonderfully. Instead of tackling supernatural powers head-on, throwing mages and artifacts, or picking fights against powerful foes, Berserk dives into the personal problems and glories that those three characters achieve. Guts, Griffith, and Caska will learn about each other, about how the world treats them, about what they want and what they are ready to sacrifice. It’s a much more personal tale that one would assume after watching the first episode.
   
   That’s not to say it lacks the action, gore, and tension. In fact, Berserk thrives in those. The key here is that moments of despair and horror are rare, Guts puts his fighting skills to the test just occasionally, and Griffith shows why he is a genius leader only at certain moments. This sparsity of epic moments thrown in the middle of developing the cast’s personalities and tackling their problems make them much more special.
   
   And truste me, it gets dark
   Berserk’s manga is stunningly beautiful. Kentarou Miura does an incredible job at depicting the horror of this world with his pages, each a piece of art. The anime is not at the same level as the manga, but it’s still impressive. The darkness of the world is superbly given colors, with its dark halls and forests, battles with blood and gore, and the abominations being as horrifying as possible.
   
   Instead of flashy animated scenes with low-quality drawings, Berserk is more about giving us a single frame of art of incredible quality capable of delivering the message it needs to. It’s an incredible translation of the original manga and one that may, at times, even surpass the original work, thanks to quality music themes and sound direction supporting each scene.
   

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Comments
Berserk is not considered a classic for nothing. It’s an anime unlike any other. It succeeds in being this dark fantasy because it gives much more focus on the main cast, who are people with plenty of issues, ambitions, and human faults. When we have a cast like that, the horrifying discoveries about the world gain much more weight. There are few scenes as incredible as when Berserk delivers us a supernatural occurrence where our heroes are hopeless against, completely oblivious to that existence until that moment.

The anime also manages to do a hard thing that is translating such a complex and unique manga. Berserk is not initially about a super-powerful guy kicking the ass of every demon, as Guts, Griffith, Caska, and everyone else barely even see things out of the ordinary. Each page is so full of detail that creating an animation around those would most likely be impossible even with the highest budget of the japanese industry. What is done to complete this task is deliver what the manga cannot: the impact of a superb sound direction and a mixture of animated sequences with high-quality static frames. This combination makes the anime as special as the manga, perhaps even more.

Berserk still continues in the manga, while the anime ends up at a climax point. Perhaps that is for good reason. Although the manga continues with high-quality pages, it slowly loses itself to the anime tropes it avoided so gracefully in the first arc. The never-ending wandering of Guts makes him an immortal shounen protagonist, underage girls start robbing the scene, and there’s a sense that we may never ever reach a proper final. The anime stops right when things get really on fire and this arc represents the best of what Berserk has achieved.

A classic and one of a kind. If you haven’t watched it, you must.

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I like epic fantasy, dragons, wizards, and knights and stuff. If there is good action and interesting characters, I like it a lot more. And then this baby pops up, with a really dark, violent and erotic take, instantly hooking me with its aesthetics. It had medieval kingdoms, big swords, frenzied warriors, gore, nude, sex, intrigue, betrayal, demons, a quest for vengeance, and an ending that was screaming for a sequel. Why shouldn’t I like it? It remains to this day as the top Dark Fantasy anime and the main inspiration for Dark Souls. Here is the rundown of all the things I liked.

1) The pilot episode. It ain’t shitting around with a slow build up. It begins at a point in the future (a flash forward) where the lead character is already somehow betrayed and mutilated by his best friend, and he is on a quest to kill the sucker. The very first episode tells you with a scene from the future how the world became a dark and morbid place, where the people live in fear and demons have crawled in powerful positions of authority, toying sadistically with innocents. It is an extremely powerful plot device to hook you for what is to come (but didn’t). Many later anime used the fast forward gimmick; from Gungrave and Gai-Rei Zero all the way to Boruto. It may not feel so special today but back then it was the first time I got to experience it and I loved it.

The second episode is the story told from the start, as we gradually see how the protagonist grows up in the battlefield, gets more powerful, wields bigger swords (I mean, REALLY bigger swords), how he makes allies, friends, lovers, and enemies. You already know how all that will have a bad outcome because of the pilot episode so you are interested to see how it happened. It was an amazing way to attract the viewer with this sort of glimpse to the future for two reasons. First, if the lead and his enemies were so powerful from the start, chances are you would be bored with the series fast. There wouldn’t be room for improvement or change in general. Showing how strong he will eventually become and then flashbacking to the past, means you have all the reason to expect something good in the end despite how weak he appears to be at first. Second, one would be fooled to think the show doesn’t have major battles or much of a grim story if the pilot episode didn’t offer a glimpse to the future, and it was starting straight from the beginning.

2) Gore, splatter, nude and sex. This almost goes without needing an explanation. Sex and violence always sell and this anime has buckets of it. Sounds like brain-dead superficial entertainment, but unlike most shows Berserk is only using them as attraction and not as definition. Such elements become part of the themes and the plot instead of being there as edgy nonsense. There is also close to no silly comedy for deflating the grim atmosphere as most anime tend to do (Akame ga Kill, Goblin Slayer, Hell’s Paradise). Plus, it uses a form of violence that is quite appealing to me; sword-to-sword battles between frenzied armoured warriors. Using magic or lasers just doesn’t look raw enough, because it’s long-ranged and comes off as special effects and CGI.

3) Interesting characters. You gradually see them revealing all their inner thoughts to you, their pasts, their goals, their desires and hopes. You see them getting beaten, learning from their mistakes, maturing, becoming broken by betrayal and coming out more crazy than what they already were. Shows which do that in such a degree AIN’T that many. Plus, the aforementioned violence is used to bring out their weak side and inner thoughts, something which other anime like Hellsing or Devil May Cry don’t and have their leads in a permanently frozen state of brainless battle-frenzied euphoria, flat as pancakes and with no room for change.

What is also very interesting is how each one, despite his prowess in battle, is still limited to a certain role, even if he or she would rather be something entirely different. Basically, they can’t use violence to fix their issues, an antithesis to the logic of Dragonball. Guts never manages to live a peaceful life, as he is constantly thrown in battles he can’t escape from and is addicted to mayhem. Griffith never manages to fulfil his quest to gain his own kingdom, without constantly having to sacrifice more and more of his humanity, to the point he stops being humane just to get an impersonal piece of land. And Caska, no matter how much she tries to be an independent woman, who can fend off herself and protect Griffith, eventually her own body limits her to the role of support and a target of lust by many horny men. All that are rarely seen in other shows, which follow the very simplistic view of “You can be anyone you want and achieve anything you want if you really believe in it and work hard.” There is no limitation there and as such those characters are never defined by what they can never be. Some things are simply not as easy for some as they are for others, purely because of body restrictions or lack of charisma and/or talent. Sounds depressing but it is true and this anime had the guts (bad pun) to admit it, creating a wonderful set of main leads in the process.

4) Political power struggles. The show is not centered on a team of warriors, strolling a generic kingdom and doing stand-alone missions. The world they live in has affected them and is affected back by them, all part of Griffith’s goal to leave his mark on the world by getting his own kingdom. Along the way many aristocrats get annoyed by his continual successes and fearing their power getting stolen attempt to assassinate him. And he reacts by plotting his own assassinations. All of which happen in secrecy, while the kingdom is at war with its neighbours. So it is not a story about a few brave warriors protecting their good homeland by invading monsters; it is a war of political agendas between local kings for whom gets to have all the land for himself. And not only that; it is also about the internal double crossing the aristocrats do to one another every time one wants to steal the glory from the other. This double battlefield, the external and the internal, adds a layer that is lacking from most shows. And yes, it was not unique to Berserk, since Rose of Versailles and Legend of Galactic Heroes also had that and it’s why they are top material in their respective genres (period drama and space opera). And I know many are going to mention Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad as series that did the same in a far more elaborate way. They came afterwards, and were not animated. I am talking about the anime at the time it came out, dammit!

5) Amoral take on humanity. Religion is a topic usually ignored in anime, or when it’s used it’s just for having one-dimensional bad guys. Berserk takes it a bit further and has the demons being former humans who gave in to their dark desires. Ideals and hopes are mocked as means to control the weak, while ambitious leaders commit all sorts of crimes behind everyone’s back. I really liked how monsters are not treated as generic incarnations of evil or plain misguided mortals; they are shown to be the pure form of ambition liberated by the constraints of morality, emotions and ideals.

6) Psychological symbolisms and imagery. Many parts of the show, usually those involving demons, are full of WTF sceneries, all of which have to do with basic carnal desires and fears. Unlike most shows with demonic dimensions, which are nothing but generic depictions of torture of the damned, here all the monsters and their Eclipse world are directly attributed to their personalities having been given in completely to their desires. The characters are not scared of getting crazy because of them. Heck, they are mostly terrified of becoming like that as well. Not because it is bad or wrong, but because it feels inappropriate for any human being to end up like that. Which is again very interesting as a concept.

7) Cliffhanger ending. This is a part most hate about the show, as it ends in the most exciting and agonizing way possible. Ιn reality, it was the best trick to make people go read the manga just to see what happens next. So yes, it is a very smart way to promote the manga version, and even making it necessary to read it from the beginning, since many things were taken out or were changed.

8) Sound. The music score is blood boiling pieces of grudge rock and orchestrated epic music. The characters have appropriate voice actors with no stupid pitches in voice. Even the sound effects were on point, as simple as they may have been.

As for the negatives, most will point out at the artwork and the animation. The budget wasn’t the best, thus they were cutting a lot of corners when it came to battle choreography and background details. There are moments they just slapped a static manga panel with a few rough color overlays and called it a day. It’s still very effective as an image that transmits raw emotions, but not as a motion that is supposed to show things... moving.

Anything else? Not really; that is the only real negative and not even that is that bad. Berserk rightfully deserves a place in the hall of fame in its genre. Nothing ever came close to what it achieved in a few dozen episodes. Not even the rather similar and far more polished Vinland Saga (which became some boring farmland drama).