In this world, man’s destiny is controlled by some transcendental entity of law. At least man knows he has no control over his own will.

We begin the story with someone calling himself the Black Swordsman who is after a demon. Who is he? Where does he come from? We don’t exactly know. What we’re really seeing is the end of things. In order to understand how he got to this point, we have to see the rest of it – so at the end of the first episode we rewind back to when the man is a young boy, about to fight a very large foe.

The first five episodes take us to the past of this Black Swordsman, whose real name is Gatts (others have said his name is “Gutts” but I’m going with how it’s spelled in Japanese ”Gattsu” and the subtitles I have). We find out a little of where he came from, what he’s been through, and why he acts the way he does. We first find out who Griffith is, who was only a name with a vague picture in the first episode. But in the past, Griffith was a pale-skinned, pale-haired boy (almost elven) that was brave and strong. This brings up more questions – how did Griffith become the bad guy? Why is Gatts after him now?

We see time progress as Gatts joins up with Griffith’s group, the Band of the Hawk and proves to be one of their best fighters as shown in battles time and time again. We meet the only woman in Griffith’s group, named Caska, who is one of the most loyal soldiers to Griffith there is. In the final episode, the Band of the Hawk becomes a part of the King of Midland’s fighting force…and here begins Griffith’s rise to power – but if he’s so good, what goes wrong?

The only way to find out is to continue on with the series – to Berserk Volume 2: Immortal Soldier.

I’d heard about this series for a while now, and have just only recently gotten some of it and plan on getting the rest. There are only 25 episodes total in 6 volumes. So far I’m intrigued. I really want to know how Griffith got the way Gatts saw him in the very first episode, though I have some of my own suspicions. It does take a little getting into for a while, because a couple of episodes are just them in small battles with nothing particularly exciting going on. It’s a lot of character development, but it’s important and it’s not as though you’re going to get way bored with it. Episode 4 was pretty interesting. There is some swearing, and a fairly decent amount of gore, so use parental decisions for this one. I have a feeling things are going to go from the average medieval to pretty bizarre – but I don’t really care…I’m all about that kind of stuff.

As usual, I’m all about subtitles, but if you’re not a fan of reading stuff at the bottom of your screen and listening to programs in a foreign language, then you should go with the dubbed versions.

Episodes included in this set:
1. The Black Swordsman
2. Band of the Hawk
3. Baptism of Fire
4. Hand of God
5. Sword and the Wind

NT

The rest of the series:
Berserk Vol. 2
Berserk Vol. 3
Berserk Vol. 4
Berserk Vol. 5
Berserk Vol. 6

Recommended:
Yes