Not Your Father's Berserk

Berserk the anime was a huge hit among US fans. Uber dark and violent, the series hit just the right chord with older shonen viewers. As a fansub, it was instrumental in the formation of FIU's anime club at the north campus. It still has impact today.

I'm watching the series for the 3rd time, the first on DVD. The improved quality is rather surprising. The VHS fansub was dark and murky; by contrast the DVD is so bright in parts it seems seems positively cheery. Still, it has the same harrowing, bleak attraction as ever. My 17 year old son is captivated (he's been waiting years to get Mom's OK for viewing), and so am I. And yet, the anime is so much less than the manga.


Don't get me wrong. The anime is great, but the singularity that makes it strong also weakens. In a 25 episode series on what was then an unfinished, 9 year manga (It's 21 years old now, and still not finished), something has to give. Various characters and themes were dropped to focus on the relationship between Gatts and Griffith. A lot of the humor that contrasted with the extreme violence was left out, with the aim of creating a dark and hopeless saga. It all works, of course, but if you think Berserk is only what you see in the anime, read the manga.

The manga has a lot you would never suspect from watching the series. There's Puck, an androgynous little fairy who accompanies Gatts, serving as conscience and counterpoint. There are a slew of fascinating secondary characters who sometimes threaten to upstage the main event. Miura, like the best of mangaka, breathes life into a wide variety of people, making even the most despicable interesting and sometimes even sympathetic. Although still looking good for an anime of it's time, the cartoon cannot compare with the intricate draftsmanship and composition of the printed page. The broader themes of the manga, Fate, and Man's place in a precarious and coldly uncaring world, are more fully developed in the longer telling of the comic.


Finally, and most surprisingly in this bleakest of all worlds, there is Hope. It's a startling thing to encounter after the anime, and there isn't much of it. But it's there, and all the more luminous for the darkness that surrounds it.


Seeing Berserk the anime is like reading The Hobbit. It's a tiny piece of a much vaster world. If you loved the anime Berserk, or if you didn't, you should try the manga; it's an altogether different, and more rewarding, experience.