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It's good to have hindsight and think things though; Berserk was one of the anime which got me invested in the medium many years ago and I've never stopped thinking about it since. It has not only informed my interests but my personal development also, for better or worse.

At the core of Berserk is a moral question - do the ends justify the means? However, the charm of it all is that Berserk understands that pragmatically a world of moral imperatives is not always possible. There are fragile, crude and unfulfilled human beings which these morals bounce between. As such, if you want an ... answer to Berserk's question you will have to dig through the mess that is its humanity, presented in the most carnal and depressing way possible. This is where more of its charm comes in: in the fact that is is brutally honest. Berserk tries to portray any moment where our characters are not seeing the brighter side of life as a net negative. They go through constant struggle though battle, conflicts between each other for selfish reasons, unpredictable supernatural events and other such things. The moments where only the mundane happens rarely become memories, after all. In that sense, the setting does a lot for Berserk - not only does it elevate the supernatural through dark fantasy conventions but it also gets across a constant primitive "dark ages" notion of humanity where people struggle to even survive through the "mundane". The urgency of getting a nights rest while worrying about demons or bandits definitely complicates things, to say the least. The world of Berserk is eager to take but it rarely gives, this is how our protagonist has come to understand it at the very least.

Guts himself is worth talking about: it is easy to brand him as a generic masculine self insert, which isn't necessarily incorrect (and there's nothing wrong with that), but there are other aspects to him also. For most of the show he is directionless, with anything that could ground his identity being painful memories that scar him. As such, he is forced to reject any part of himself that he has not forged with his own hands other than his physical body. Although he is forced down this path through explicit pain, it results in creating a character who sets a good example in his actions while also being easy to like. Guts at this point in his life is searching and this manifests itself as honesty and endless struggle against the brutality of the world he finds himself in. Any moment where you are not striving for something better is a moment where you are waiting around to die, for Guts this reality is literal.

An important part of Berserk is its technical presentation. Visually, the show is gorgeous most of the time. Beautiful watercolour backgrounds are definitely the highlight in this department, it frankly speaks for itself and any flowery nonsense I can say of the figures "caressing the landscape" is vapid at heart anyways. There is more to talk about regarding audio however, especially the music. If not for its cultural importance, Berserk is known for its soundtrack. The entire thing is so incredibly raw, its powerful when it needs to be and delicate when it doesn't. To say Susumu Hirasawa outdid himself would be an understatement, his signature blend and re-contextualisation of opposing elements prevents the soundtrack from feeling dated or easy to define in any way at all. "Forces", with its mean and dirty synth line, is such an exhilarating rush. It perfectly fits the displays of grandeur and violence it accompanies, romanticising the physical struggle that conceptual conflict actualises - adrenaline as a song. The opening and ending themes are very important parts of the show for me also. The opening in particular with is messy, amateurish sound thanks to the odd whiny guitar tone feels like a perfect introduction for Guts and his difficult existence - it's extremely rough around the edges but impassioned in the most melancholy way possible. A fantastic song I listen to often outside of watching the anime. The ending also is beyond fitting too, equally messy and rough but all the more genuine for it. It evokes a bitter calm after storm much better than anything glossy could.

Something also is to be said for the relation this anime has to it's source material. To be blunt, I think the Berserk manga is a perfect example of how pointlessly padded and stretched out manga can get. It has no good reason for still publishing and not being concluded after so long, like other once great manga it's been downgraded to slow release fodder than will never live up to it's previous greatness for whatever industry reason. In that case, the anime is perfect because of the changes it makes and the things it removes - The Eclipse arc works wonderfully as a self contained story (even with that first episode). Ending on such a powerful and bleak note is not only much more poignant, but also ballsy. To avoid spoiling too much, I'd rather have something abrasive which makes me think, and that is the least Berserk's ending does.

Those are the random thoughts I've been building up about this anime over the years. It absolutely deserves the hype and is dearly important to me. Berserk never gave me a pessimistic disposition, it only nudged me in the right direction. Most of life is pointless abstract suffering, but the few moments between all that where we see beauty can make it worth our while. Berserk will make you very sad, but hopefully it will also help you think about what the point of even doing whatever you're doing is. By the end of the anime Guts has his reasons, what are yours? Where do you see beauty and what are you willing to do to see it again? Beauty isn't always a thing, sometimes it's the time you get to see things for what they really are and appreciate them properly. The point is that once you have memories of this beauty, you have something worth fighting for.