Earlier this year, the trailer for Berserk: The Black Swordsman dropped online. The latest adaptation of the late great Kentaro Miura’s legendary dark fantasy will take Guts back to the beginning by adapting the manga’s first arcs. What sets this anime apart from Berserk’s previous adaptations is that it’s technically not official. Berserk: The Black Swordsman is a fan-made project spearheaded by Studio Eclypse. As stated in their YouTube channel’s description, Studio Eclypse is a “fan-made animation group” comprised of amateur animators and lifelong anime fans. Besides Berserk, the studio is also adapting the fan-made ending to Attack on Titan titled Attack on Titan: Requiem.
Berserk fans were surprised and excited by Studio Eclypse’s announcement. Many joked that the anime came to be because fans got so sick of waiting for a new Berserk adaptation, so they just made one themselves. Truth be told, this may be one of the major motivators behind Studio Eclypse’s passion project. This, in turn, raises a very interesting question: Why is Berserk so difficult to adapt? Although the manga’s legacy and quality are beyond question, the same can’t be said for most of its adaptations. The acclaimed Berserk (1997) is more the exception to the rule, but even then, it could be argued that it’s not a proper adaptation. Berserk is one of the most influential and revered manga in the world but, ironically, its chances of getting a good anime seem cursed at best.
Berserk Was Adapted into An Anime More Than Once
Berserk’s Anime Started Strong in 1997 but Dropped the Ball in 2016
Berserk is beloved and revered higher than the majority of anime and manga franchises, and its quality goes far beyond its dark, harrowing content.
Berserk’s first chapter was published in the magazine Monthly Animal House in 1989. In 1992, the manga transferred to Young Animal following Monthly Animal House’s cancelation. From that point on, Berserk enjoyed high sales along with high praise from both critics and readers. Almost every modern dark fantasy owes something to Berserk. It wasn’t long before the manga was adapted into an anime. The manga’s first animated adaptation came in 1997 from OLM. Even if this adaptation of the Golden Age Arc cut entire storylines and abridged others, Berserk (1997) set such a high standard that all succeeding adaptations were measured against it. To this day, the 1997 series is considered to be one of the best dark fantasy anime ever made.
Despite the 1997 anime’s cliffhanger ending and audiences’ clamor for more, it would take more than a decade for Berserk to be adapted again. Beginning in 2012, Studio 4°C retold the Golden Age Arc through a trilogy of digitally-animated movies. Collectively titled Berserk: The Golden Age Arc, the three movies reintroduced Guts, Griffith and Casca to a new generation of audiences. While the first two movies — The Egg of the King and The Battle for Doldrey — received mixed responses due to how much they abridged, the finale, The Advent, was unanimously declared a nightmarish masterpiece. Unfortunately, plans to follow up this trilogy with more theatrical adaptations of the manga were scrapped. Rumors pointed to the movies’ lukewarm box office performances in Japan and international territories. This, in turn, led to the now-infamous Berserk (2016).
Acting as a sequel to the trilogy, studios GEMBA’s and Millepensee’s adaptation continued the movies’ use of digital animation, but on an obviously lower budget. What’s more, it pushed the story forward by moving past the Golden Age Arc and adapting the Conviction and Hawk of the Millennium Arcs. This was a big move for Berserk as a whole, since it’s been stuck in the Band of the Hawk’s glory days for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately and hilariously, Berserk (2016) was so poorly-animated, it quickly became one of the most notorious guilty pleasures in anime history. Not helping was how it was also a horribly rushed and abridged adaptation of two of the manga’s most popular arcs. Berserk’s (2016) second season was a mild improvement over its first half, but this wasn’t enough to save it from cancelation.
Besides tarnishing the legacy of one of the most beloved stories ever written, Berserk (2016) was the last time any official news about a Berserk anime came from a major studio. It was understandably blamed for killing Berserk’s resurgence and studio interest in the property. In the years after Berserk’s (2016) failure, the biggest news about a new anime came from fans and independent creators. Before Studio Eclypse began work on The Black Swordsman, Adi Shankar — the producer of Netflix’s Castlevania anime and the creator of the Bootleg Universe — expressed his desire to adapt Miura’s magnum opus. Although he has yet to be approached by the manga’s rights owners in an official capacity, Shankar said in his 2018 interview with Forbes that getting a shot at Berserk would be a dream come true.
Berserk Is Too Big & Daunting to Adapt by Modern Standards
Berserk’s Darkness Isn’t That Much of a Problem These Days
Guts was powerless to stop Berserk’s Eclipse, but things could’ve gone differently if he were the Black Swordsman.
Momentarily ignoring the anime industry’s opaque economic side and the performances (both financially and critically) of each of its prior animated adaptations, Berserk is simply one of the most difficult manga to adapt. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t because of its grim material. Obviously, the manga’s most disturbing events would cause controversy if they were animated. There’s a reason why all of Berserk’s anime excised any mention of Donovan or Wyald. However, events and implications that were worse than the aforementioned characters were animated more than once. The Eclipse was Berserk’s darkest hour and one of the most horrifying events in fiction. It infamously killed most of the story’s named characters up until that point, and subjected Casca to one of the worst fates ever conceived by an author. Despite this notoriety, The Eclipse was animated twice. The same went for the possessed horse, the trolls and the Great Goat in Berserk (2016).
Even accounting for the occasionally (and laughably) egregious censorship imposed by TV stations and ratings boards, anime standards are looser now. Dark fantasies that are more graphic and offensive than Berserk, such as Goblin Slayer and Redo of Healer, aired with little to no cuts. At worst, the anime’s creators willingly toned down the source material’s most disturbing moments while still finding ways to retain the mangaka’s vision. Barring extreme cases, this is even done with the authors’ permission and approval. In fact, gore, torture and sexual violence are their own troubling clichés in contemporary dark fantasies. For better or worse, Berserk wouldn’t be out of place in today’s crop of anime. If anything, anime creators would probably fight among themselves for the chance to adapt Berserk first, since it’s the pioneer of many of the modern dark fantasy anime’s conventions.
The real challenge to adapting Berserk is its daunting scale and scope. For one, animating Miura’s highly detailed art is incredibly time-consuming and expensive. The 1997 anime cut the manga’s biggest battles and displays of the supernatural partly due to time and production constraints. At best, large-scaled scenes like the siege of Doldrey or Guts’ stand against 100 soldiers were condensed into still paintings. Similarly, part of the reason why The Golden Age Arc and the 2016 anime were made digitally was because these were some of the only techniques that could do justice to Miura’s illustrations while also speeding up the animation process. Even then, these weren’t enough to save these adaptations from lukewarm box office numbers and reception.
Griffith is a complex character that Berserk fans both love and hate, and here are five of his greatest mistakes, along with five of his triumphs.
Another problem is that Berserk is a really long epic. Even if its in its final arc, the still-ongoing manga has 376 chapters and will need a few more years before completion. Unless the manga in question is already a massive hit like Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, studios aren’t as willing to invest time and resources in season-long anime like they did in the ’90s and 2000s. Realistically, a complete Berserk anime would need at least 100 episodes. Studios are already averse to producing shows that are 25 episodes long, meaning a new Berserk isn’t a priority for them. And while Berserk is a bona fide classic, it’s not exactly the hottest manga of the moment.
Time & Age Are Berserk’s Biggest Roadblocks
Nostalgia and an Enduring Legacy Are Not Enough to Get a New Berserk Anime
Berserk has had multiple anime adaptations, but none of these have adapted all of the original manga or handled the material the way it deserves.
Right now, Berserk is almost 40 years old. Although its impact can still be felt today and even if it will influence countless works in the years to come, Berserk simply isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. This isn’t a slight against its quality, just a sad acknowledgment of the passage of time. Besides the fact that Berserk only has a handful of anime that kept repeating the same storyline, the manga’s chapters slowed down to a crawl in the 2010s due to Miura’s failing health. As a result, Berserk gradually faded from the public consciousness.
Miura’s untimely death in 2021 certainly didn’t help. Even after Kouji Mori and Studio Gaga vowed to finish the manga in Miura’s stead, Berserk’s future still remains uncertain. It’s not surprising that newcomers are hesitant to get invested in Guts’ pursuit of vengeance, while some longtime fans gave up and moved on. Beyond a loyal fanbase that’s only getting older and smaller by the day, there’s currently no widespread demand for a new Berserk. Studios, understandably and frustratingly, aren’t rushing to adapt an old manga again that doesn’t guarantee immediate success and profit.
Obviously, things could change for the better. After all, nostalgic revivals and reboots like Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Rebuild of Evangelion and Urusei Yatsura (2022) are some of the biggest anime of the 2020s. It’s possible that a determined anime director and the right team of animators could convince a studio to let them adapt the entire manga. Berserk could even enjoy a lucky break soon, assuming The Black Swordsman becomes the smash hit Studio Eclypse and fans want it to be. But as of this writing, there’s no incentive for studios to give Berserk another chance. The 2016 anime squandered the new lease on life that The Golden Age Arc trilogy gave it, and studios aren’t keen on risking a repeat of this mistake. Berserk’s biggest hurdle to getting the anime it deserves isn’t its darkness or quality, but time and harsh realities beyond its control.