Review: ‘Berserk’ Episode 2

The Holy Iron Chain Knights

After an average first episode, the fear this series would be nothing more than a repeat of material already covered in other adaptations is put to rest. Despite a few flashbacks, the new series looks like it will be dedicated to telling the story of The Black Swordsman Arc. Considering after not getting new Berserk for years and when the movies were released they retold The Golden Egg Arc again, a bit of paranoia can be expected. Still, our fears have been put to rest. The new material has begun.

Guts meets up with the Holy Cross Knights, a pampered division which tries to take him in. Obviously this doesn’t go well for them. Don’t mess with the best gentlemen. Guts is way above your pay grade. Also, their captain, Lady Farnese takes an interest in Guts in the classic “Good Girl wants the Bad Boy” sort of way. It will be interesting to see where their relationship will go. It will also be interesting to see how a character who is so devout reacts to the fact there are killer demons in the world.

The animation also seems to improve in this episode. Unfortunately this is partly due to the fact this episode has more scenes in the day then the previous one. Also, the CGI seems to like to show the characters looking tougher and grittier by applying shading on them at just the right angles but looks very weird in scenes during the night. Hopefully they will figure out how to make the nighttime scenes look better without losing the characters in the gritty shading they like to do. Still, the series is picking up and from here on it looks like it will be filled with new violent content and the further adventures of Guts, the Black Swordsman.

Berserk is streaming on Crunchyroll.