Both in the manga and the anime, Berserk has always been the kind of story that stirs horror and erotica with the same spoon.
For those unfamiliar, Berserk is a long-running, highly acclaimed fantasy-action manga which began its run in 1989 and continues to this day. It received an anime TV series from 1997-1998, one that is considered by many to be an all-time classic- a show that has one of the most famous and controversial TV series endings in anime history.
Due to the shocking and open-ended nature of this ending, and the fact that the manga was still going strong, a sequel season was rumored for the better part of two decades before finally coming to fruition this Summer.
It’s important to know that Berserk is a very graphic story with extremely graphic violence, tons of nudity, sex scenes and even graphic depictions of rape. There’s happy sex and not-so-happy sex. There’s fap-worthy fanservice at times yet at other times nudity is used to shock and disgust. And at times it’s hard to know exactly which of those two the author (Kentaro Miura) is going for. It seems as if Miura gets his kicks out of blurring that line between arousal and disgust.
I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum by saying that the 2016 “sequel” anime doesn’t actually start off where the 1997-1998 anime ended. It skips ahead from the “Golden Age” arc to the “Conviction” arc, which is handy for the purposes of this site since the Conviction arc has some excellent fanservice in it.
It doesn’t take long for one of the series’ better fanservice sequences to air, starting from the end of episode two to the end of episode three. While fleeing imprisonment, Guts captures the battalion leader Farnese de Vandimion and uses her as a hostage to escape. Vandimion is a noblewoman, a military leader, a cleric, and is just a wee bit of a sadomasochist as well. Farnese is voiced by Yoko Hikasa (Rias Gremory, etc).
Unfortunately for her (and fortunately for us), Farnese is topless and in the middle of penance by whip when Guts barges in on her. For the span of an entire episode she remains topless, with her arms bound behind her back leaving her totally exposed.
Anyway, here’s how the fanservice / adult content shakes out for the first three episodes:
Episode 01
Episode 02
Episode 03
Credits:
Webms:
For comparison’s sake, here’s how this scene played out in the manga:
This was a really awesome sequence in the manga and the anime does it justice in my view, the only thing that’s missing are areola (look closely and you’ll notice the presence of nipple bumps from time to time).
Considering that this sequence would be unwatchable with To Love-Ru style censorship do to the sheer amount of constant nudity, going the blank boob route makes a lot of sense here.
I can’t 100% guarantee that areola will be added on blu-ray for this show, but I’d say the odds are fairly good. The manga showed nipples, the original TV series showed them, the recent movie trilogy showed them too. The only reason for doubt is that this TV series comes from a different set of producers and animators than the recent movie trilogy did. So I guess we’ll see what they do.
I also tend to lean towards optimism here since a great deal of the shots focus intently on Farnese’s exposed breasts. It would be strange for the camera to constantly be zoomed and centered around them only to leave the blank on BD.
As far as the anime itself, I think the storytelling stays in line with the spirit of the manga and is mostly true to it.
The animation is mostly 3D with occasional flashbacks in 2D. The 2D stuff looks terrific, but the 3D stuff is mediocre as you would expect.
I’m enjoying the show and I personally think the criticism is way over the top- though I would agree that the show would have been far better in 2D. In fairness to the polygonal animation style, it does have merits sometimes, like giving us swooping, rotating boob shots.
