“Why don’t I ever realise what I have until it’s lost to me?” Hopes, dreams, ambition, the meaning of life, your place in the world, connection with others, betrayal, and continuing to struggle through life no matter how dark it gets. These are some of the themes that encompass: Berserk. What starts as almost a classic but more complex medieval knight’s tale of a band of mercenaries fighting in a war to gain favour with the king so that one day the ambitious leader of the band Griffith can get his own kingdom fulfilling his dream, eventually turns into twisted outrageous horror, it turns into the legendary story of Guts and his perseverance. It follows the life of Guts, the strongest warrior in all the band as he navigates his relationships with his comrades such as his only equal Griffith, his love Casca - the only female warrior around, or his other close friends: Judeau, Pippin, Corkus, & Rickert. The main driving theme of this story is dreams and what they mean to each of us, and Guts struggling to figure out what his dream is as he has only ever lived his life with the way of the sword, killing people on the battlefield to live. Whether it was as a boy completely alone born into fighting, or eventually under The Band of the Hawk helping Griffith achieve his dream of having a kingdom. Guts has always been living knowing nothing but fighting, but the glistening White Hawk that is Griffith influences him to think deeper about his life and what his reason for living really is. Berserk is renowned for being insanely dark, but also nuanced, and mature. Though this anime is slightly toned down, don’t jump into this if you’re not ready for something that will leave you completely horrified. I mean literally, the ending will forever remain one of the craziest things I’ve seen. It ends on a cliffhanger, which is annoying yes but it actually makes for this to be a great entry point to Berserk if you really like it because you can read it and simply continue further, it adapts the story 90% accurately I’d say. And what you DO get to see is peak anime, as this is peak fiction. It only adapts around a quarter of the manga’s full story, and there is no anime that covers further. Except for 2016, but we don’t talk about that, no one talks about that. There are lots of sites you can read the whole manga for free, not even hardcore pirating they’ll just be called “read berserk” usually and some don’t have any pop ups or anything sketchy. Maybe the copyright holders struggle to find them because it’s originally Japanese, Idk I couldn’t tell you why all manga is extremely easy to access for free. It really is great for anyone who wants a mature story simultaneously larger than life, but one that is also true to life. Even though I know what happens next, the ending really isn’t a satisfying ending point which is really infuriating because if it was ONE singular episode longer it would have a satisfying ending point. If you don’t want to jump into an entire manga though, “Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition” is another anime adaptation of this part of the story except quite a bit worse though still pretty good in it’s own right, but it does really succeed on the ending, going that one singular episode further to end at a good point. You can literally just watch that final episode of Memorial Edition and see what happens right after the cliffhanger this one ends on. Free advice. Watched in english this time, people really love it but I feel like there’s a little more substance in the original japanese, though the english voices do match the characters well and it’s not a BAD dub. Favourite episode: 25 - Time of Eternity