Feb 3, 2023
After watching the original 1997 anime, which I loved, I really expected this to be at least decent and decided to give it a chance despite the reviews. BIG MISTAKE. This show is the embodiment of everything I dislike about anime; it takes all of the worst anime tropes as ingredients and puts them together in one disgusting pie. I have not read the manga yet, so I will review this as a series, not as an adaptation.
Part 1) The Plot
The plot contains many of the biggest issues with this anime. Very often, it feels like things happen suddenly and for no reason. The biggest
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example is the Kushans, who are an antagonistic nation, like the Tudor in the 1997 show. The issue is that pretty much no context is given about them at all, and it feels like they only serve as a plot device for Griffith to appear as a savior. Who are they? What is their goal? How big is their army, are they a real threat? Where did they come from? NOBODY KNOWS!
Also, the tension and stakes throughout the entire season are minimal, and nothing really interesting happens at any point; it is incredibly boring. And of course this does not exclude the ending, which is not even an ending really. Literally nothing of note happens in the final episode. I have seen filler episodes with more plot relevance than this final one. There is no conclusion and no climax, though I did find it fitting for a show like this. I guess the one thing of note here is Guts receiving the Berserker armor, which was pretty cool to see.
Part 2) Animation & Audio
The animation is far from the biggest problem this show has, but it is still awful. The biggest problem is the fact that the animation is mostly 3D, which rarely, if ever, works well for anime. On top of that it also pretty poorly done in a lot of occasions, specifically in dark scenes. I also remember specifically a scene where Guts was 'walking', and it was clearly just his model being dragged from left to right. Movements and facial animations look very stiff but I have seen worse. Griffith looks surprisingly good in contrast to literally everything else.
The sound design, like the animation, is very subpar and rough around the edges. A lot of things just sound off, like Guts' sword, though it's not a huge dealbreaker to me. The soundtrack is actually pretty good, especially some of the of the tracks that play during fight scenes, although it can be hard to hear due to the poor volume mixing.
Part 3) Fight scenes
This might be a minor thing, but it is very glaring. Most of the fight scenes are very bad, and for more reasons than just crappy animation. Most fight scenes suffer from one of the worst anime tropes: constant interruptions. It is really bad here; sometimes you will have five seconds of fighting, and then a minute of side-characters just talking about the fight like 'wooohhh look at guts swinging his big sword'. A lot of characters are literally just describing what is happening. Like yeah I just saw that happen, I'm not blind, you don't have to spend an entire minute telling me that Guts is getting hurt by the berserker armor. I can not find a single positive thing to say about the fight scenes.
Part 4) Characters
The characters exacerbate the previous issues enormously. Most of them are either uninteresting or incredibly annoying, which is a very big issue since they take up a lot of the screen-time.
By far the worst character in this anime, and potentially all of anime, is Isidro. This is the kid character that lingers around guts for no good reason. This kid barely has any personality besides being incredibly annoying. It is infuriating how often this kid makes a stupid, unnecessary comment in the middle of a serious or emotional scene, which just ruins the entire thing ("You know what this dark, mature show about vengeance needs? A comedic relief kid sidekick who erases all tension and is not funny at all!"). This character ruined this show like Griffith ruined Casca. This kid alone feels like he takes up more screen-time than Guts himself, despite having no character motivation or goal whatsoever. He also falls into possibly the worst anime trope of all: being a pervert for the sake of 'comedy' (seriously though, who actually finds these things funny? It's incredibly cringy, how did we go from Berserk 1997 to this?). There are two scenes in particular, around the middle of the season, where this reaches peak cringe. In the first one, the kid squeezes a girl's chest and comments on how small it is (why? Why would anyone think it is a good idea to write this?). In the second one, it is just an incredibly generic peeping tom scene where he secretly watches women taking a bath. In the previous season I recall Puck saying that the kid is similar to Guts, but this is just completely wrong because the kid is a clown.
Farnese, Serpico, Schierke, and the skeleton knight are kind of interesting, but their characters are not fleshed out enough to really care about them.
Puck (the little fairy) is similar to Isidro, but much less annoying. He does not really seem to have a good reason to stay with Guts, and he doesn't offer much to the plot.
Griffith was kind of just there, doing Griffith things. His side-story is alright but should have been fleshed out more. He doesn't do anything significant character-wise, and is mostly off-screen doing things.
Casca is also just there. You would expect some kind of development after two seasons of nothing, but nope. She just moves along with the party, occasionally doing something dumb so that the show can have some action.
Finally, the protagonist Guts is of course still the most interesting character. He struggles with his own sanity, which could provide a good character arc. Sadly, this show does not do nearly enough to make it as interesting as it could be (Imagine if Guts accidentally lost control of himself and killed Isidro, wouldn't that be incredible?).
Part 5) Conclusion
This show takes everything that made the 1997 anime special and throws it into the garbage. It has become an incredibly generic fantasy anime with bad animation, a boring plot, and annoying anime tropes. It seems to be unable to decide on an audience, mixing a more adult setting and themes with very immature humour and almost no real tension. The plot is boring and feels directionless, with no real stakes, which is only made worse by the characters that aren't fleshed out enough to care whether they live or die. Even if you liked the 1997 anime, I would not recommend watching this disgrace.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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