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I wish I could rate the first and second halves separately.

What begins as a fantastic and enthralling ride with a diverse cast of characters set in a beautiful historic setting ends with a nonstop rollercoaster, and not the good kind. Abrupt, nonstop, splash introductions of characters, places, and powers that had no relevance at all until this very moment are suddenly slammed right into your face for the sake of hastily pulling together surprise twists or over-the-top battles. One second, it's a samurai drama, and the next, it's Sephiroth vs Goku: cheesy one-liner edition.

I'd like to joke that the first half was written by someone ... with a large amount of talent who, due to a lack of funding, could not be hired to finish the script, so they just fed what he/she wrote into an AI and let it scrape together the rest. Go into this series expecting something along those lines.

An anime perhaps best renown for being filled with blood and gore, torture, -ual assault and the like; yet somehow the above are never once displayed in such a way that feels shoehorned-in or unnecessary. Minus the unstoppable force of nature (yet still just an ordinary human) protagonist, the entire ride can be felt as taking place in a very natural and living world, making it easy to be drawn into the lore and story. The character and monster designs are second to none, and the animation is always downright stunning. Well, scenes with large crowds rely heavily on unpolished 3d animation to fill in ... the background, yet for me personally I don't see this as a problem in the slightest and had no issue with it. The action scenes are all downright magnificent to look at.

I had long avoided Berserk, having a poor image of a ludicrously-juvenile and edgy work of fiction for every emo youth to enjoy; perhaps due to the memes regarding the series that you see time to time while browsing the web. For anyone else thinking the same thing, be sure it is an entirely different beast. Watch Berserk.