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Berserk 1997 Video Script
🕑 Added 2022-04-28 22:07:40 +0000 UTCINTRO:
Picture this.
You're laying in bed, on your side, your computer tilted sideways beside you, lights flickering slowly, lighting your face, illuminating the awe and shock you're feeling. Tiredness seeps into your bones and as the sounds and sights die down on digital screens, you look towards your window only to realize day has broken and you'd forgotten to so much as look up for the last few hours of your life. Your entire night has been spent on finishing a new piece of media.
That's what happened to me this past weekend, watching Berserk 1997.
I'd read Berserk before- It was always a manga I didn't have any taste for, some generic fantasy that I'd seen so many others do better. I'd always loved the art, but I'd never been able to access it. Something that was never made for me. When I was younger, I far preferred Full Metal Alchemist and Ranma 1/2, and even when I was older, the settings in Berserk that I'd seen so many iterations of since didn't appeal to me- and I would say that still holds true for the Berserk Manga writing this today.
A lot of ink has been spilled towards the quality of the manga, and I'll allow the people who love it to talk about it, but even now, after watching Berserk 1997 to the end, it's not my place to discuss the anime.
I only bring up my lukewarm feelings of the source material up because of the sheer joy the 1997 adaptation brought me. For me, someone who respected Berserk at a distance, I never expected to fall in love with its adaptation- Especially an adaptation that is as famously incomplete as it is. Berserk the Manga wasn't my cup of tea, but the 1997 adaptation is.
After watching this masterpiece, I craved media about Berserk, I craved analysis, I craved discussion about it, so I turned to the web to see who else had talked about it, but I found myself a little disappointed. For most videos about Berserk, from the Lady Emily piece on adaptation to the Eyepatch Wolf post-mortem, the 1997 anime was a footnote compared to the titanic legacy of the manga.
I might be alone in my preference for this anime over its source material, but I want to take a look at it as a whole, view it as its own, complete work instead of an anime that is a small part of a greater whole.
After this introduction, I likely won't be discussing the manga at all, treating the Golden Age anime from two and a half decades ago as a unit. Giving it the love that I feel it rightfully deserves.
PART 1: Masterful Story
Narrative, in a broad sense, is all about setup and payoff. Establishment and delivery. Narrative is like a massive joke, it needs to have a punchline, a point at which everything culminates and ties together, something that the viewer can look back on to gain some insight from.
This, of course, is not ALL a story is, but it is a significant part, and one that Berserk pulls off flawlessly.
The first episode begins with a flash-forward of Guts, the Black Swordsman, a broken angry man weilding an oversized blade mercilessly slaughtering a demon plaguing a town. In this episode, we see Guts as a tortured shell of a man, and his triumph over the Snake Baron does not feel triumphant in the least. Gut's fighting style is risky and needlessly reckless, his nights are sleepless affairs, plagued by the literal ghosts of his past, and even though he rids the town of a demon and saves the life of a woman about to be raped, our impression as the viewer of Guts is almost pity.
It's absolutely vital that this is our introduction to Guts, as for the next twenty-two episodes, the Guts we see is a completely different being, planting a question in our minds that is instrumental to the rest of the story: "How did Guts become what he is?"
This central question remains in the viewer's mind as they see Gut's backstory unfurl. In the flashback, we see a younger Guts, still weilding an oversized sword, as a young but accomplished mercenary. After being assaulted by a rival group known as the Band of the Hawk, the leader approaches Guts and challenges him to a duel and an interesting wager- If Guts loses, he must join the Band of the Hawk.
This man, Griffith, fascinates Guts, but he remains undaunted, ultimately fighting with Griffith and losing.
After this, Guts integrates into the Hawk, quickly climbing the ranks and becoming more and more accomplished, making a rival of his fellow commander Casca.
The story of Berserk is the story of three people. Primarily, it is about Guts, but calling him the "main character" is somewhat disingenuous, as that honor goes to Griffith, the man around which the narrative spins. The final person is, of course, Casca, the woman who, more than either of these two men, is the person who is holding up the Band of the Hawk.
Once Guts is assimilated into the band, Griffith shows his closeness to the man, opens up to him, most importantly about his dream, the dream to one day have his own kingdom. Guts also grows closer to Casca, and though they fail to see eye-to-eye, they eventually become close comrades.
Griffith's ambition leads him to new heights, becoming a knight in the kingdom of Midland, assisting the king fight against the Chudor army, ascending the ranks much to the chagrin of the nobles in the Midland court. Griffith also courts princess Charlotte, much to the rage of the Queen herself.
After a decisive battle against the Chudor army, Griffith and his Hawks are held in high regard, but Griffith now has to contend with political plots against him, forcing him to use Guts to assassinate a rival for the throne, Julius as well as the Queen herself, who was part of a plot to kill Griffith with a poisoned arrow.
The story is compelling- A friend of mine referred to this part of the story as "anime Game of Thrones," and the comparison is apt. In-depth battles and political intrigue mix to make something truly wonderful to follow.
But there is a dark underbelly to all of this, something teasing at the edges of the patchwork. Odd happenings and strange, supernatural things among Griffith's meteoric rise, all centered around Griffith's mysterious crimson Behelit stone.
For starters, in one of the earlier Hawk battles, the band has a run-in with a legendary warrior known as Nosferatu Zodd, the Immortal. In the inner sanctum of the fortress, Guts encounters a sea of dead bodies all leading to one solitary figure. Alarmed and enraged, Guts begins the fight, but upon wounding the warrior known as Zod, the terror has just begun. Zod transforms into a demonic, monstrous being, and far from expressing rage over being injured, expresses elation that he has finally found someone who is adept enough to challenge him. When Griffith joins the fight, Zod becomes even more excited- Overpowering both men at once.
Ultimately, the fight ends when Zod sees that Griffith bears the Behelit, flying away, but the incident leaves a scar on the reader's perception of the world, reminding them of the Snake Baron of the earlier flash-forward.
During later scenes, too, we begin to see another side of Griffith. A sadistic, cruel side, one we see when he retaliates against an assassination plot with a plot of his own that results in the death of the assassin's son, perpetrated by Guts.
And when the plot escalates, we see Griffith standing over the burning wreckage of a house he's trapped the queen and her cronies inside, gaining the cooperation of one of the scheming nobles by kidnapping his daughter.
Never in the story do we root against Griffith, but the viewer becomes slowly more and more alarmed by his behavior.
After a decisive win against the Chudor armies, Griffith and his band retire to live near the castle. Things look to be shaping up extremely well- If Griffith succeeds in courting the princess Charlotte, who is already quite sweet on him, he may be able to take the throne in earnest.
But tragedy strikes. Guts, our main character and the only man to ever shake Griffith's resolve, decides to leave the band of the Hawk.
This decision shakes everyone, most prominently Griffith and Casca, both of whom love Guts deeply in different ways. On a snowy field on a road leading out of the castle town, Griffith demands he and Guts duel once more, a shadow of their old battle to decide Guts's fate years ago.
But this battle is different. Not only does Guts win, he does so nearly effortlessly, shattering Griffith's sword in one strike.
In this moment, Guts is calm while Griffith is enraged, shattered by a percieved betrayal- Even though the only Guts struck out on his own was because his love for Griffith and need for his friendship. After all- Griffith said he doesn't regard his band as friends.
After this world-shattering heartbreak, Griffith can think of only one thing to do- Retreat into the arms of his beloved, Charlotte, and take her innocence.
It's unclear how much of Griffith's love for Charlotte is his ambition and how much is in earnest, but it's clear he considers her presence very comforting.
Sadly, that comfort can't last as the King's men discover his treason and imprison Griffith in the legendary Tower of Rebirth.
A year after Griffith's imprisonment and Guts's departure, Guts is in the woods, training with a blacksmith hermit and his daughter, seeming to enjoy his time alone. Even so, he gets word of news that alarms him- The band of the Hawk is now scattered to the wind, being led by Casca.
When Guts reunites with Casca, he finds a broken band, Casca near suicidal, his entire world seeming to have shattered in his absence.
Guts and Casca embark on a mission to save Griffith, but when they retrieve their comrade and leader, the entire band is shocked to find that over the past year, Griffith has been tortured past any recognizable visage. His tongue is cut, leaving him mute, his tendons snapped and muscles atrophied to keep him from so much as holding a sword.
And when Guts reunites with Griffith, Griffith wraps his weakened hands around Guts's neck, trying to strangle him.
After their escape, Griffith begins hallucinating a castle in the distance, representing his dream of becoming king, and in trying to run towards it, he pilots a carriage, careening into a shallow pool. Griffith casts his head into the skies as he laughs one last time, attempting to impale himself on the splinters of the carriage.
It's unclear if he fails because he is too weak or cannot go through with it, but after his feeble suicide attempt, something floats by in the river, something familiar. His Behelit.
As the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the Behelit's mouth unleashes a scream that pierces the heavens.
What happens next is, by now, not just famous, but iconic. The world explodes into hell, engulfing the band of the hawk and unleashing a horde of demonic, horrible entities upon them.
Four Gods appear before them and welcome Griffith as kinsman, offering him power beyond measure if he simply chooses to sacrifice his band.
Needless to say, the broken man accepts.
After the massacre of the sacrificed band, only two living people remain: Guts and Casca, the latter driven to mute madness after what she'd seen, the former driven to uncharacteristic bleak rage. With his hand caught in a demon's mouth, Guts can only watch as Griffith, reincarnated as the demonic god Femto, descends to rape Casca, the love of his life, Femto's eyes full of bitter spite.
Guts cleaves his own arm to get free, but he fails, pinned by innumerable demons as the end credits roll.
The only glimpse we see after this is Guts repairing himself at the blacksmith's house, no doubt to set off to become the Black Swordsman the viewer remembers from the first episode.
A great many people consider this ending to be a "cliffhanger," but I don't agree. I do concede that there is more to the story later, but as a contained unit, the Eclipse as the ending of the story feels complete. It doesn't feel good, it doesn't give the viewer closure, but it is complete- One of the rare stories where the villain well and truly wins, a villain hidden in plain sight all along: Griffith.
Without considering the manga, the 1997 anime is worth analyzing as its own piece of media, as its own story, either taken as separate from the source material or as a companion piece to it.
PART 2: Theme
When analyzing Berserk online, the main buzzword seems to be "causality." Very critically, this is a different word than "Fate," as the causality in Berserk is something different than the western idea of fate entirely. Where fate gives a focus to an end point, causality is more concerned with the blossoming results of people's decisions.
In the 1997 anime, causality is explored in an interesting way that is quite different to the manga as a whole. One of the primary ways Berserk 97 explores this is through the concept of Choice and how free will is executed in humans.
In media, there are essentially two perspectives on cause and effect. In a manga like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the power of fate has a strong grip on events, essentially implying that free will is false and that the only winners and losers of fights are decided beforehand. This gives the reader a strong sense that they are upon a roller coaster, simply watching the exploits of a character.
Other media like Fullmetal Alchemist and even Naruto has a different view: That humans exact their free will and nothing is set in stone. This leads to some characters dying seemingly senseless deaths and occasionally viewing glimpses into other lives the protagonists could have lived had they made other different choices.
Berserk, however, has something of a synthesis between these two. Berserk offers free will, as many of its plot points revolve around the choices the characters make, most critically, Griffith's choice to sacrifice the band of the Hawk to the godhand, but critically, those choices that are made are, in many ways, out of their hands.
Imagine being Griffith. Imagine being broken beyond repair, with fresh memories of torture in your mind, obtaining an offer to undo that torment. Even without his Kingly ambition or percieved betrayal by Guts, it would be impossibly difficult for Griffith to do anything else. His choice is indeed a choice, one he has the free will to choose between, but his choice at the same time is inevitable. Griffith has no reason to make any other choice, even if that choice comes with massive consequences.
Choice in Berserk is presented as free will but free will is presented as cheap. People, says Berserk, are not comprised of their choices, far from it, they are a product of their conditions. Griffith made the only choice that was sane to make. His choice wasn't inevitable, but it would have taken him incredible willpower to decline.
Beyond this, too, we see this inevitable choice be exploited by those in power throughout the story. In Griffith's case, the godhand exhaustively convince him to take their offer of sacrificing the Hawk, even though it's implied that they were responsible for many of the grave things Griffith went through.
We also see Griffith exploited sexually by a nobleman who offers funds for sex acts. Griffith makes this inevitable choice too because he is afraid of risking his comrades in battle.
Or Griffith himself forces a choice from Guts, though inadvertently. Guts clearly considers Griffith his truest friend- If naked water fights are to be trusted- and in hearing Griffith proclaim that he doesn't consider anyone in his army a peer, Guts has no choice but to leave and strike out on his own.
Griffith forces another choice over Minister Foss, kidnapping his daughter in exchange for conspiracy.
This idea of forced choice and causality links to the next theme- Idolization and Abuse.
Berserk has three main characters: Casca, Guts, and Griffith, each one with their own past and traumas, each with their own struggles. They're also tied up in a miasma of love- Calling it a "love triangle" isn't quite right, since romance isn't the only type of love here, but their dynamic is deeply interconnected.
Yet at the same time, though this may warm our hearts, the dynamics here are also deeply flawed. Guts loves Griffith, but Griffith refuses to recognize a peer in Guts. Casca loves Griffith, but he can never love her back. Griffith loves Guts, but he seeks only to control him.
Casca and Guts both idolize Griffith deeply due to seeing him as a savior figure after their traumatic pasts, but Griffith, just like anyone else, is a flawed human. More broadly, the entire band of the Hawk trusts Griffith, but he sells them to demons in moments.
Griffith pulls people into his orbit only to be used and abused by him, whether it be as sacrifice or as a casualty in battle. Forced to reconcile this endless death, he makes a choice to steel himself to the suffering of his followers. In becoming more powerful, he becomes less human.
But on the flip side, Casca and Guts coming together to save Griffith shows a different path. In treating one another like equals, Guts and Casca form a strong love and obtain the respect of their troops not as idols but as friends. Griffith's entire approach is flawed: Colored by his own personal ambition.
Essentially, all the evil IN Berserk can be traced back to Griffith's ambition.
In most media, ambition and will to power is presented as a positive trait, from anything as simple as the Lion King to power fantasies like Breaking Bad and House of Cards. Even when we understand the protagonist as "evil," we understand their ambition as at the very least, compelling. Berserk rejects this outright.
Griffith's will to become a king is not only destructive to those around him, but completely arbitrary. During his backstory, we expect to see some deep-seated reason he wants to be king, but all we experience is him running in the streets as a child, deciding to become king on a whim.
Knowing that drive, that arbitrary, senseless ambition is what so many people gave their lives for is intensely jarring. Griffith's weak rationalization, too, the idea that "since his band made a choice to follow him, he is not responsible for their deaths," line, is also astonishingly callous and cruel.
On the other hand, when Guts frees himself from the Hawk, he is found training in a serene vista in the mountains, making friends with a blacksmith and his daughter. Guts, this ambitionless man, feels a growing humility in contentment, busying himself training, seeking challenge only for sport, and bettering himself.
But as we've seen, this idyllic peace is something that Guts refuses to rest on, showing the viewer that it's not necessary to have grand ambitions to become powerful. This juxtaposes Guts's intense learned strength over Griffith's hollow will to power.
And critically, this peace is shattered when Griffith re-emerges into Guts's life.
All in all, the main theme of Berserk 1997 is a critique of power in general. It tells us in no uncertain terms what those who have power over us think of us, how our choices can be forced by their hand, and how we can be made into monsters by a few simple decisions.
Even the king of Midland, who seems affable and kind, uses his power to torture the man who deflowered his daughter mercilessly- Notably Griffith's sex with Charlotte is one of the rare consensual sex acts in the entire show, with Charlotte even aiding the Hawks on their recovery mission.
Berserk warns us not to engage with those who would hold themselves above us, no matter how much legitimacy their reign is offered. No one deserves to be above any other, and anyone who claims to will betray you in the end. It's remniscient of classical Anarchism, the idea that power in and of itself is evil, the ultimate folly of the world being people giving themselves and their will to others.
Griffith does not become a villain during the Eclipse, he is only revealed to have been one all along.
PART 3: Existentialism
A lot of ink has been spilled about Berserk's link to existential thought, primarily about links to Berserk and Nietzsche. While I agree with this for the most part, the idea that Berserk is existential is somewhat questionable and worth critique.
For starters, there are some direct links to the work of Nietzsche and Berserk's setting, such as the "world of ideas" that Nietzche believed in being a literal part of Berserk's universe, but the differences to existential philosophy are encapsulated in the maxim "God is dead."
In Berserk, particularly 1997, God is very much not dead. God, or in this case, Gods, exist in a literal sense, controlling and manipulating the world. The causality of the universe also contends with the idea of a pointless world, rejecting nihilism that is so often wrapped up in existentialism, in a certain sense.
Existentialism emphasizes at its very core, the idea of free will and free agents. The idea that you have the power over your own development, free from any fate- And while Berserk doesn't aspouse fate in the same sense as other works, causality still exists. I discussed earlier how the choices in Berserk are essentially inevitable, how there was bascially no reality where Griffith could have chosen not to sacrifice his band. This does not absolve him from responsibility, but the choice was inevitable.
Another significant part of Existential thought is the so-called existential angst, or the anguish over the realization that nothing matters. The solution to this, as many Existentialists and even Absurdists like Albert Camus aspouse is to in very simple terms, make your own purpose. One of the most empowering things in existential thought is the idea that you control your fate.
But ambition in Berserk, as I've discussed, is only an avenue for exploitation and horrific death. Griffith himself could be taken as an existential hero, rejecting any power above himself and living his best life, siezing his dreams against all odds.
Yet Griffith ends as a miserable, tortured god, spitefully raping his comrades. The existential man is presented as quite literally a cosmic horror. Griffith is always acting in his authentic self, and yet it leads everyone around him to ruin.
The philosophy of Berserk is tricky to pin down, especially where the manga is concerned, and Existentialism is a good lens with which to view it from, but it's hardly an existentialist work. As I've just described, it completely undermines existentialism entirely.
And yet, it doesn't particularly aspouse any alternative, either. After all, though God is not dead in Berserk, God is presented as five former humans enacting their wills. Perhaps God IS dead. Perhaps to be authentic is vital.
Berserk mostly explores concepts as negatives- it presents horrible, terrifying things, not as reaching for any one philosophical viewpoint but as a cautionary tale of philosophical viewpoints as morality.
Berserk says to us, perhaps existentialism holds something of value, but here is what happens if it is followed without thought. Perhaps there is no God, but perhaps we should not make Gods of ourselves. Perhaps one's own ambition is the only thing that can save him from existential dread, but perhaps that ambition must be tempered.
PART 4: The End
At the same time, these questions make Berserk so compelling to discuss. It is rare among fiction in that it is so dark and horrid and brutal that it is hard, among that darkness, to find any guiding light, but at the same time, intense comfort can be drawn from it.
Because for each Eclipse, for each sordid ending, there is Guts and Casca sharing intimacy after heartbreak. There is Griffith and Guts laughing over a water fight. There is a small, tiny sliver of a smile among the horrible darkness.
I would say if Berserk has any positive philosophy at all, it is that comfort is other people. The only way to live without turning into a twisted demon like Griffith, is to reach out and love others, no matter the horrid, searing, unbearable pain it brings.
If nothing else, this video should tell you one thing by the end. Watch Berserk 1997 and read the manga, and most importantly, rest in peace Kentaro Miura.
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