Berserk #1: Warcry Mediablasters 125 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 05/28/2002 Reviewed: 02/01/2005

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It's usually pretty smart to have faith in the kind of anime that Joel likes. I've seen the guy laugh through some of the worst comedies ever, but when it comes to Japanese cartoons he's got a sixth sense that cannot be rivaled. I can look at the box cover of something like Eiken and know it's bad, but if you tell Joel the name of some random creative work it's like he's able to divine through the cosmos whether or not it's going to be trash. He predicted that Parasite Dolls would be worthless before I even opened the cellophane. Maybe that's no so much a statement of his telepathic powers as it is one of my absolute blind faith to anything Knight Sabers-related, but that's not my concern. When I bought Berserk (and watched it a year later) I did it without the slightest bit of a tremor in my being. I'd spent so much time hearing Joel chuckle and bellow out its graces that there's no way it could be anything but superlative. Well, at least superlative in the way that a cartoon show about ghosts and snake people could be.

For all my posturing, I have absolutely nothing against a show that has no compunctions about being what it is (an absolutely gory mess) provided it's done well and in a relatively non-exploitative fashion. It's true that I adore exposition so much that it might as well be my middle name, but that doesn't mean there isn't room in my heart for a bit of the rough and tumble when such things should come up. Killing scores of army people has a certain panache that you can't get out of otherwise excellent things like Paranoia Agent. Both are great in their own right, you just have to be in different moods to watch them. I'm just happy that my moods can vacillates far enough to enjoy both ends of the spectrum. There's plenty of evidence for this, such as my excitement over the up and coming Shin Getter Robo series, only a month. Like a child with their safety blanket or pacifier, when times are tough there's nothing more comforting than 20 minutes of TV where the only thing exposed is someone's gray matter against a tavern wall. There's got to be some reason why I like that Fist of the Northstar movie so much, right?

Berserk is... a little weird. It wastes no time dropping you right into the middle of the violence, with the brutal swordsman Guts striding into a bar and pinning a crew of rapists to the wall with crossbow bolts before the first five minutes have passed. It's only a scant ten minutes later that he's dodging arrows on horseback and shooting a cleverly concealed arm cannon at a giant snake monster. That's what I'm talking about. When you watch shows like this they absolutely, positively have to be as brutal as possible. The kind of programs that shirk that end of the spectrum will find no love from me. This is because their creators obviously don't have the depth of character it requires to animate three simultaneous decapitations with an eight foot long sword. This is why I don't like spending a whole lot of time with the kind of stuff Jerry tends to like. There's always some chick and the main character is sixteen and nobody ever really gets hurt. At the end of a fight the bad guy is just kind of scuffed up and then the girl yells at the main character for looking at her tits. I think we all know where that leads.

What makes Berserk so great, besides the exploding heads I've been harping on, is that the show has no compunctions about going into these four episode long flashbacks. What's more, there is a point in this DVD where the flashback has a flashback. This isn't really a positive aspect or anything, I just think it's hilarious that the director had the balls to do this and the quality control board okayed it. In 125 minutes of show so far we've spent about 20 with the Guts of the present. Most people are going to think that's stupid, it kind of is, but that's what these shows do! I have a much easier time swallowing anime being stupid when it's 1) Funny in a "we were being serious" way and 2) Doesn't reek of being incredibly stupid 3) Not exploiting the female sex every chance it gets. The confluence of those three events is like the planets aligning. This isn't a speech I make all that often. A show like this should be a little stupid, it should seem like the creators are trying too hard to be serious, but there's a thin line you have to tread before stuff like that goes overboard. Berserk tightrope walks pretty well. Berserk's main draw is that the main character is such a total self-centered asshole. In these five episodes we haven't had a lot of time to do any deep spelunking into his psyche, but if I know these kind of shows then I think this general trait will hold true and there never will be any spelunking to speak of. The type of stuff that fits this schema is made for man's men. Real men don't have time to talk about their problems, they have an army of heads to explode with hidden firebombs and gigantic swords. If you can't understand that then I don't think I want to be your friend anymore.