Berserk

Original Title: ベルセルク
Romanized: Berserk
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Ever since birth his Guts' life has been one of death and sorrow. After all his years of hardships he continues to wander the land , seemingly always in battle, for that is all he knows and all he has ever done.

After the first episode Guts flashes back to his youthful days as a member of the Hawks, a rag tag group of mercenaries who, under the leadership of Griffen Guts and Caska, would go because the most famous warriors in Midland and would play a decisive role in the country's war with the rivaling nation of Chuda. And the proceeding events that would lead to Guts' terrible destiny.

Reader Review

Rating: 0 / 5
Reviewer: Chainclaw
Review Date: 2003-11-18

Poorly written, badly executed and ugly, Berserk is anime at it's worst. There is not a single positive thing I could find about it in all 25 episodes. As soon as the series starts, things begin to slide downhill and never stop. The first episode begins in a tavern where a helpless young girl is being terrorized be evil bullies. Of course, no one tries to intervene except for her frail old grandfather who receives a predictable beating for his efforts. Then all of a sudden a stranger (Guts) walks in and kills all the villains with absurdly implausible weapons and then leaves to go fight more evil, having just given Berserk one of the most unoriginal openings I've ever seen in a TV series. And it just never got much better for Guts or Berserk. In fact it gets worse. From that point on the entire series is just one big downward spiral with so many obvious and unforgivable flaws that it's hard to know where to even begin bashing it.

I guess I'll start with the plot. The plot is cheesy, predictable, and almost non existent. The whole thing seemed like one big excuse to allow the main characters to kill more people then John Wayne, Nicolas Cage and Mel Gibson in all of their movies combined! It does have a lot of mature and realistic themes that you don't normally see in a fantasy story, like rape and pedophilia. But the plot is too awful for them to be relevent and they usually are only used to create degrading situations for Caska, or just lead to nothing. A lot of episodes have no story development at all and do nothing to advance what little plot there is. And there are a lot of detailed character backstories and unexpected events that initially look interesting, but end up having no bearing on the series. One example is an episode where Guts is hired to kill a nobleman. Like every other job Guts does in Berserk, he accomplishes this perfectly with no problems. But on the way out he is spotted and he instinctively kills the person to prevent him from alerting anyone else. But then he discovers the person he just killed was the nobleman's innocent child. Sound like an interesting twist doesn't it? But it turns out that event has absolutely no effect on Guts or the rest of the series. Pointless events like that are all to common in Berserk and even further cripple what little plot Berserk has.

Another thing that greatly contributes to the downfall of the story is the characters. There are only three characters in the entire series that get sufficient focus and attention: Guts, Griffen and Caska. Guts is easily one of the most detestable lead characters in all anime. He's just another invincible anime killer with no character depth and very little intelligence. Nearly every episode has him tearing through entire armies of opponents with no trouble at all. But unlike most other invincible anime killers, he does this without displaying any skill. His fighting style is just basic swings and slashes that any bonehead with rudimentary sword training can do. And he swings his huge sword around with one hand so easily that it's obvious that the Hawks should start testing their members for steroid abuse. Whenever he is not in battle, he is usually rambling about how he has to keep fighting and can never stop. In general, most of his dialogue between battles is illogical, boring, and like almost everything else he does that does not involve killing, completely irrelevant. Griffen, the leader of the Hawks, is not much better. His displays almost as much god-like invincibility in combat as Guts even though he uses a small fencing sword that looks like it could not penetrate heavy armor. But Griffen rips through the thickest platemail as if his opponents were wearing nothing at all. Literally everything he does--from battle plans, to assassinations and political strategies--works perfectly with no problems or setbacks. For most of the series he does not display a single human flaw. Eventually we get to see a darker side of him, but this does not result in anything significant until the last few episodes and by then it's just to little, to late. Caska, a commander in the Hawks, is initially billed as a sort of love interest for Guts and Griffen. But actually, her main role into Berserk seems to be just getting into a lot of degrading situations. A few other members of the Hawks get minor supporting roles, but don't do anything important. The only other character in Berserk worth mentioning is a stupid evil commander who always spends several minutes before (and sometimes during) a battle explaining to everyone around him that his fighting skill/battle plan/castle/champion or whatever he has is unstoppable and no one can beat him, and then always ends up losing. Just about everyone in the entire series besides the members of the Hawks (and some of them too) act like mindless pawns who get easily manipulated and/or killed both on and off the battlefield, making the entire concept of Berserk very hard to accept.

But the worst aspect of Berserk is the battles. Nearly every episode has a battle in it. That would be fine if they were any good. But they are not. Pretty much every battle in Berserk is just a mindless and nonsensical display of the main characters' super human combat prowess and their invincibility against massively superior numbers. Almost all we see in the battle scenes are wave after wave of brainless drone enemies running up to the main characters and getting promptly obliterated with no trouble or effort. And the combat skills displayed by everyone, even the main characters, are pathetic. Most of the battles are preceded by a war council in which the king of Midland or highest ranking officer in the room says something like "We need to take this enemy castle, but have been trying to do so for months and have failed every time." And then Griffen responds with something like "Don't worry, my guys will take it by ourselves with no problems at all". Even though this always turns out to be true, most of the people at the council object to this and are always overruled. Then Griffen and the Hawks ride off to battle and easily win every time. There are only two fights in the entire series that I found to be even remotely interesting. The first is a duel between Guts and Griffen that was decent, but nothing special. The other is a fight against a demon called "Zodd the immortal". But Zodd is invincible and can kill hundreds of guys at once (he does) so it really is not much of a fight at all. Even so, he can't kill Guts and Griffen. He does badly wound both of them and then flies away. This led me to believe he would play a major role in Berserk, but he doesn't. Guts and Griffen don't fight him again. In fact we almost never see him in the rest of the series. And as soon as the fight ends, Guts and Griffen instantly regain their "untouchable god" status. Back at the home castle in the next episode, Guts tosses a few guards out of his way like they are rag dolls (that's how almost all of his foes are depicted). Which might be possible to believe except for one problem. He's limping around on crutches!

And unlike most similar anime, the fights and battle get progressively worse as the series moves along. The best example is a battle near the end when an enemy commander surrounded by his crossbow wielding troops takes Griffen hostage and orders the Hawks to drop their weapons. But Guts just runs up to the commander and kills him without the crossbow guys doing anything. Then instead of pumping Guts and Griffen full of crossbow bolts, the enemy troops pull out their swords and run up to Guts who easily kills them all. Now I know every anime fight is unrealistic and all medieval fantasy stories, anime or otherwise, require some suspension of disbelief. But Berserk goes way to far. Not even James bond overcomes insanely impossible odds as easily or often as the main characters in Berserk. In every battle you can just feel your IQ plummeting. In addition to being stupid, the battles in Berserk are completely devoid of substance and/or visual appeal. And unless you absolutely love watching one person slaughtering dozens of guys without any problems and don't mind bad animation and bad combat skills I don't see how anyone could like them.

Apparently the creators of Berserk were smart enough to see that good animation and music would not be enough to save it, because it looks like they did not even bother trying. Some of the character animation is decent, but the background artwork is terrible. Every environment, from castles and war camps, to battle grounds and forests is poorly drawn, devoid of detail, and just plain ugly. This is especially damaging to the already horrible battle scenes. The battle grounds are so badly animated that most of the time you can't even see anyone fighting besides the main characters and even their combat is badly done. As expected, the amount of blood is absurdly high and has the typical anime "red paint" look. The soundtrack is even more disappointing. Berserk has very little music in it, and most of what it does have is mundane and repetitive. There is one excellent song and the creators of Berserk were smart enough to use it in the trailer and post episode previews. But it's almost never used in the series itself. It should have been used as Berserk's opening theme. Instead it's opening theme is a terrible alternative rock beat that is completely out of place in the fantasy setting.

But like I said good animation and music would not have been enough to salvage Berserk. I don't think there is anything that could have saved this disaster of a TV series. In every aspect, Berserk is as bad as anime gets. I you love one sided fights and battles you might want to give it a look, but otherwise you should probably stay well clear of it. Even as a rental, it's a complete waste of time and money

US DVD Review

The six DVDs contain a selection of outtakes, art galleries, and trailers. The first disc is avalable either alone, or with the artbox that the complete box set comes in.

Content Guide

Has a lot of mature themes.

Violence: 4 - Not a lot of detailed gore, but still a very hight blood and body count.

Nudity: 3 - Especially in the later episodes.

Sex/Mature Themes: 4 - A lot of degrading situations for Caska.

Language: 3 - Profanity.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a 1991 comic series by Kentaro Miura, some of which are available in English from Dark Horse.

Availability

Available on six hybrid DVDs, or as a complete set. Subtitled and dubbed VHS versions of at least the first volumes were also produced.

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