With that premise, you would think that the task of turning such a story into a series of animated feature films would be arduous. Twenty-two years in, still going strong, in what is possibly one of the greatest stories ever told. Friendship, ambition, causality, the supernatural, our ambivalent nature, the struggle for power, love and hate. They hold secrets, they cheat, murder, conspire, but they are also capable of great kindness. The characters in Berserk are genuine, real, endlessly complicated, troubled. Reality has no shortcuts, no easy way, and that is reflected in the story. The themes treated are difficult, and never simplified for the sake of the reader. Miura's genius permeates in each page, down to every minute detail. It is a solid punch of crude reality hitting you in the stomach, and you have no way of guarding yourself.
There are no flashbacks constantly reminding you of what happened before, no fill-in episodes, no sweetening of the pill. It is hard, violent, and not easy to follow. Beware, Berserk is not an ordinary series. This encounter will forever change his life, and that of everyone else. That is, until he meets Griffith, the impossibly beautiful and charismatic leader of the undefeated mercenary band called "the Band of the Hawk" (鷹の団 Taka no Dan). He strives to escape his nature, that of a man born from a dead body, already between this world and the other, with nothing to lose except his miserable life. His life is meaningless, his actions have no honor nor reason, except survival. He buries his blade deep into the flesh of his opponents, fighting like a madmen in battle, reminiscent of the nordic berserks, coming closer and closer to death, maybe to finally feel alive. Set in a fictional version of medieval Europe, Gatsu is a young mercenary who travels with no direction nor purpose, swinging his huge sword in merciless fights in order to survive. It tells the story of a Guts (ガッツ, Gattsu), a boy born from the corpse of a woman hung on a battlefield, who struggles to fight his unfortunate destiny. Written and illustrated by the legendary manga artist Kentaro Miura, Berserk (ベルセルク) is an epic fantasy saga that knows no time, no boundaries, and no has end.
Few stories can capture your mind and soul in a visceral way from the beginning, and never leave you.
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