Hacker Cinema
Berserk
剣風伝奇ベルセルク
1997 · TV series · 23 min episodes · 1 season
ActionAdventureScience FictionFantasyAnimation
Guts, a wandering mercenary, joins the Band of the Hawk after being defeated in a duel by Griffith, the group's leader and founder. Together, they dominate every battle, but something menacing lurks in the shadows.
5 positive1 negative2 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
I understand, I had started watching these evangelion summaries thinking oh cool robots but then, I have been aware of the loneliness and other things within the series which were thought-provoking but also not really at the same time. I
I don't watch much anime (shocking within my generation which seems to be anime-driven?) but ironically I have also watched berserk's golden age arc also because of an edit that I had watched before all the horrificness is revealed but that's the reason why I haven't really read more about berserk other than the golden age.
Yu-Yu-Hakusho, death note, AOT and bersek/(evangelion? Only watched documentaries explaining it) are the only series that I have watched/listened about a lot in this sense I suppose.
With berserk and evangelion, perhaps there is something about the style of both of these, both lure you in with a particular sense of art but both have some aspects of darkness hidden beneath the pages.
I have listened to and slept listening to this song more times than I can count: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSEkh4mgYqc
There is something about first discovering it even knowing through comments that things would turn south but I still decided to watch berserk because it so captured my attention. I wished for it to be a bland piece where things turn happy ever happily but I think that berserk's decision to not do is somewhat fascinating too. maybe the lure to watch these increases knowing the fact that these aren't just single dimensional things but rather multi dimensional with deeper topics.
Evangelion with concepts like loneliness and I would associate berserk with pain and hope (hope to still fight even after so much pain)
Edit: should probably mention Its late night and I should probably sleep and I didn't really intend to send this message, I sometimes write somethings and don't send them (but save them for myself to read in documents)* because I find that I think deeper about something during this and I accidentally pressed enter, thanks for reading this but I am sure that I might not be able to give my viewpoint away but I am grateful that you read till the end. Looks like the world wanted me to send the message so I did :-D
> what would previously have been a manga
Completely out of touch to downplay the entire manga industry as "skill issue".
Akira Toriyama totally created Dragonball as a manga because he was just wasn't good enough to make an animated movie!
Berserk is a book because Kentaro Miura just had skill issue!
Only imagine if Tolkien wanted to create the Lord of the Rings if he had AI!
As if a medium only artistic merit because sufficiently advanced technology just didn't exist yet. groooaaaaan
To be fair, Gravity Falls is also aimed at children but is still fun for adults.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls
Back to the seinen anime, Monster fits into the category of mystery/thriller. For science fiction/horror see Parasyte -the maxim- and for dark fantasy see Berserk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)
Berserk in particular is a staple. It has influenced lots of other work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)#Legacy
Be sure to not watch the 2016 anime series, as it is reviled for its poor animation. The 1997 anime series or the film trilogy from 2012 are a better use of your time. Both cover the same section of the story. However, be forewarned the part they adapt is a specific arc of the story near the beginning and is thus unfinished. Still worth it.
But I’d still recommend you start with Monster if you’re looking for something closer to live-action shows.
I watched Redline recently. The animation is worth seeing but the "story" is paper-thin.
Ergo Proxy I just didn't get.
Psycho Pass I really enjoyed; good depth of story and exploration of the pros and cons.
GitS series is probably my favourite anime, and very high up in my favourite anything.
Berserk is good, and descends into Evangelion-level insanity as it progresses.
Ninja Scroll is forever a classic. Worth a re-watch every 5-10 years. I'm due.
The truth is kids are resiliant and not stupid. generations "survived" these types of stereotypes and in 20 years someone else will be wringing their hands about the misguided stereotypes the current crop of acceptable movies is involved in (including everything you listed as a positive).
I would never hesitate to allow a child to watch any disney movie, but I definitely would hesitate to allow a child to watch Berserk or a lot of the borderline loli content. I remember watching Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and waiting for the hammer to drop on the PE teacher who was constantly creeping on the teenage girls. When the season ended and it never happened I was completely confused, it wasn't until years later I found out that's an actual trope that shows up in a lot of anime.
What I'm saying is that I don't disagree with you that there are plenty of anime that's perfectly fine for children to watch, but the other posters concern is absolutely valid too, there's a lot of anime children shouldn't be watching (opening scene of elfin lied anyone?) and your hand wringing about Disney movies not being perfect doesn't move that needle in the slightest.
I said that American cinema is not engaging with that and never engaged - with rare exceptions.
On top of head, I think that something like Shigurui or Berserk would be great examples of art that engages with ideas and complexity. So would be Umberto Eco and the Name of the Rose, more or less. Even original Witcher books have huge amount engagement with ideas despite being meant for entertainment. The movie "Come and See" managed to make war sound not fun which is something too.
American cinema is just not about that. It is not about complexity, it is about simplifying and streamlining. Which is fine, it is just odd that someone claims opposite.
Fiction: Berserk. Not a book, but a long-running manga that began in 1989 by then-22-year-old Kentaro Miura, and which was ongoing until his tragic death this year in May. It is a fantasy; some parts are grim, some immensely tragic, but at its core it is human and uplifting, and we see moments of incredible beauty and deep emotion. On top of this, the art is absolutely gorgeous and is in a class of its own. If you're interested in Berserk, I recommend reading the original manga, but the 1997 anime is excellent as well.
Nonfiction: To Pixar And Beyond. The former CFO of Pixar, Lawrence Levy, tells the story of Pixar's IPO and the making of Toy Story. Very interesting reading for anyone interesting in Steve Jobs, Pixar, or the business of movies and tech.
All the stuff from before you were born is curated for you by society. It's pre-filtered, the cruft has been removed and for the first few years of your life you have no control over the filter.
Then, as agency is attained, you get increasing exposure to the great unfiltered, and you find hidden treasure and trash and you learn what you actually like and dislike - in preparation for the filter you apply to your own children - which helps to define you, to yourself.
Then you get a job, partner, mortgage / rent, kids, and, just the requirements to being able to afford all that goes with that, removes the time required for 'agency' and so you're locked in a fairly tight decade-era of culture for the rest of your life unless you actively choose otherwise; seeking out the alternative, following rabbit holes, opening yourself to the full spectrum of colour that is within surprisingly easy reach, following threads that your natural tendency for the easy path would be to drop.
Most of my favourite music that I listen to now is recent. My old favourites are from when I hadn't heard my new favourites. Some of my new favourites are contextual around life stages and activities I hadn't reached or participated in earlier.
I missed Mad Men, tried to start it a couple of years ago, realised it's 92 hour-long episodes, and worked out that I didn't have the enthusiasm for it after getting through a few episodes because the combination of my friend-base and entertainment value I was getting from it didn't add up to being worth 92 hours of my time.
Recently watched Berserk upon the recommendation of a work colleague. Worth it.
Squid game, worth it. For me anyway.
Live action Cowboy Bebop, enjoying it a couple of episodes in, will continue.
Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. But first, you gotta know yourself.
Listen to music you don't like to better calibrate what you do like. Watch the occasional blockbuster movie to help your appreciation for real film.
Can't see, hear, taste, or do it all, find your own channel but make sure to rub up against the edges regularly enough to determine if you need to change channels but didn't realise it yet.
Culture is about stories from which life lessons are learnt, and there are a lot more TV shows, movies, and songs than there are life lessons, so as long as you check those edges occasionally, you'll be pretty well covered.
The Wire destroyed and rebuilt my view of the world, and work, and government, and leadership and morality. The song King Kong as covered by Tom Waits recalibrated my musical brain (which was already uniquely calibrated by Mr. Bungle in the late 90's), The Mighty Boosh and Rick and Morty have been journeys into imagination like I never dreamed.
No. There's not too much culture.
Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT.
Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they want to make more episodes.
Today, people are spoiled with their options for genre fiction. Cowboy Bebop blew my mind as a kid. Berserk was also one of my favorites. I did not think anything could be cooler than Vampire Hunter D. This was before Game of Thrones or The Expanse or any number of other amazing science-fiction or fantasy media we have today. Coming from a small town, it felt like a secret that nobody else knew about and I loved immersing myself in this grim, beautiful, foreign worlds[0].
A lot of anime has a lot of gross "fan service" that objectifies their female protagonists, and that is something I was never a fan of. It was something you tolerated because there wasn't anywhere else to go.
Lain is a great example of all of this. Where else are you going to get a gorgeously rendered cyberpunk-horror series?
0: Probably at a younger age than I should have been allowed to. Though honestly I don't see myself censoring everything from my kids. Part of the draw was the adult nature and feeling like I was getting away with something.