Berserk(2016) – 03

Forgive me for the delay on this particular post but I must admit that in light of Berserks quality my interest in covering it has somewhat declined. I know that for every episode to come I will have to dance around the elephant in the room but this series isn’t making that easy for me. As when coming close to enjoying the show I am constantly pulled out of it. My experience of watching Berserk is essentially a game of denial as I try to pretend the ugly visuals don’t exist. Perhaps I should find it cathartic as Berserk is a series which by its very nature is ugly. The things that make Berserk stand out as a series is it’s pure unapologetic brutality. Rape, gore, death of children and every uncomfortable theme you can think of is par for the course for Berserk. It is very much a pulp fantasy work and likely one of the finest in manga history. Plenty have tried to imitate but few have matched it’s glory. A true Berserk anime should be quite nightmarish considering the creatures that could have walked out of a Clive Barker novel, however the anime looks to be nightmarish for entirely different reasons.

Todays episode bring in some anime original content and if hearsay is to be believed, this was written by the mangaka of Berserk himself, Kentaro Miura. However when examining the content itself I must question what was the need for it. My original thoughts were that Miura was supplanting the less TV friendly aspects of the series by adding in different content. However the dark aspects are still here so I wonder why the change was needed. In the manga Gut fought a bunch of demon dogs till dawn and Farnese was nearly raped by a possessed horse. In this anime the exact same thing happened but instead we have the addition of a mansion and a encounter with a demon apostle. The encounter doesn’t add much of anything besides confirm that Guts is after revenge. It reminds me of a point in the manga where out of nowhere Miura decided to dedicate two chapters to a flashback with Gut’s meeting a fairy. The story itself was good but it’s reasoning and overall presence in the plot is utterly insignificant. It came at a time when Miura needed to get a move on and push the story to a climax but instead he decided to put in a filler story. This feels much the same, the fight against this dog demon is rather entertaining but when you plan to cover over sixty 30 page chapters in a single cour I think you don’t have time to waste on events that put the main plot on standstill.

However what really bugs me is that they adapted events of the manga and made them lesser. In particular there is a line Guts says about the demons reminding him of how he felt when he started all this. In the anime Gut’s just throws out this line upon meeting the apostle and it doesn’t have the same impact. In the manga Gut’s sees the horse about to rape Farnese and is suddenly reminded of Griffins rape of Caska. Which cause him to be filled with rage and say that line. It was a pretty powerful line and it just confuses me as to why they would keep the horse attempted rape and yet move the line to a different scene. What’s also puzzling is the sound design where they essentially decided that everything Guts hits with his sword will make a clang sound. I understand the idea of emphasising that his sword is more a huge hunk of metal instead of a blade but it really doesn’t make sense to have a sword clang when he’s cutting transparent beings or dogs made of flesh and bone.

It becomes quite distracting once you notice it. There is also the matter of Farnese’s non existence nipples. It’s likely something to be fixed in the blu-ray releases but I find it funny the priorities censorship has. Apparently the depiction of female’s nipples is out of the question yet showing a scene of forced Bestiality is apparently fine? I mean sure you darkened the scene but you still show her getting clearly molested by that horse. What is the point of censorship when it doesn’t censor the most damning aspect? This is the kind of thing that leads to weird fetishes forming. Where the story goes from now is a good question, Farnese has gone through an ordeal which has shaken her faith and put her in a rather compromised position. In particularly her rather kinky possession which lead her to nearly kill Guts while asking him to split her in two with his sword is certainly a story she wouldn’t want circled around the Knights. Her pride could very well lead her to hunt Guts down till her dying breath. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned after all.

~AidanAK47~