Berserk lives in an anime limbo, lacking a faithful adaptation of the series, so today we’ll be looking at the attempt made by the 2016 Berserk anime and why it deserves a chance.
Berserk fans can tell you that the anime situation is pretty dire, with the best adaptations of the series stuck retelling the same story repeatedly with slightly better animation – but no new content outside of these adaptations. That was until 2016 when the Berserk community was graced with one of the most bittersweet adaptations of Berserk.
Enter Berserk 2016, the only anime we’ve received that moves away from the more realistic and politically charged stories of the Golden Age into the realms of fantasy adventure of the following arcs. It’s a shame that it’s a widely hated adaptation due to censoring, poor sound design, and the atrocious animation. Still, it’s worth watching – hard to believe, we know – and here’s why.
Why is the 2016 Berserk anime so hated?
How long have you got? While the story is what brings people to the table, it’s almost everything else in the series that’s dragging it down.
The subpar animation: why the team behind Berserk 2016 tried to mix adequate 2D and uncanny valley 3D animation is a mystery, because the series flips between the two so frequently that it can’t decide on a specific art style. When it does, the awful 3D animation often dominates the scene with horrible facial expressions and awkward movements.
Despite working with 3D for a long time, studio GEMBA, whose first major project was the 2016 Berserk anime, couldn’t pull off that iconic Berserk style in their 3D fashion. This led to demands for better animation, ideally in 2D. The final scene is beautifully designed in 2D – and while good, it also infuriated fans into thinking, “Why couldn’t we have this the whole time?!”
The infamous sound design: while the soundtrack is generally accepted as good, sometimes even great, the combat is hard to work past. The team decided to use a singular “CLANG” sound effect whenever Guts swings his iconic sword, the Dragonslayer. In a series involving a character jumping into the fray to fight with his giant sword, you’ll hear this “CLANG” every time, and it gets really annoying; it’s closer to the noise of pots and pans being banged together than a sword slash.
Most of all, the 2016 series is heavily censored and omits essential arcs. Berserk is known for its violent graphic imagery that challenges readers with a dark premise they must work through, much like the main character, Guts. With that said, the Lost Children arc may be the most risque story in the entirety of Berserk, next to the infamous Eclipse. It contains a lot of violent imagery, including children, that could turn people’s stomachs. Naturally, most distributors would try to censor this content, leaving it an unfaithful adaptation.
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What redeems Berserk’s 2016 anime?
If you couldn’t tell by the previous section… extremely little. But it’s a port in any storm situation with Berserk receiving an anime adaptation, so what makes the 2016 anime worth watching is that it’s the only version of Berserk outside of the manga that tackles any content that goes beyond the Golden Age arc of Berserk, leading into more fantasy related stories of magic and monsters versus the down to earth political nature of the Golden Age.
For too long, the story of Berserk has been contained within its Golden Age arc because that’s a good point to wrap the story up, ending it on the awful, gut-wrenching note: the Eclipse. Still, it’s an out writers can work around versus the unknown nature of the series moving forward from the Eclipse. Rarely does the story in Berserk give a presentable exit for the series.
There’s so much more to Berserk than the Golden Age: Guts finding a new family, new characters all with interesting stories of their own, Guts finding a just cause to pick up his sword, learning to move past his hatred to protect those he cares about. All of this remains on the page with outstanding artwork but deserves a faithful adaptation.
Berserk’s 2016 anime deserves a chance because it finally gives these stories that expand the world of Berserk a chance to shine on the screen. The 2016 anime ends linking up, approximately, with Chapter 249. The manga is currently in Chapter 375. There’s plenty of material to continue a Berserk anime or start over as the Golden Age ends with the Conviction arc.
This opens the debate on how a new Berserk anime should approach the series. 2016 kept the ball rolling from the 1997 anime, so a new one could pick up where Berserk 2016 left off. Still, it makes sense if a new studio with a fresh take on Berserk starts at the very beginning, retelling the Golden Age one last time before finally moving onto a good adaptation of the following arcs.
That’s why we think Berserk 2016 deserves a chance and is worth a watch. If you want to check out the original Berserk 1997 anime, a Blu-Ray remaster of the series is available to pre-order now, and if you’re looking for the funny side of Berserk, check out our picks for the funniest moments in the series.
