Berserk (1997) · Season 1 · Crunchyroll
Berserk (1997) Season 1
Berserk (1997) Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 9.0/10. 25 episodes on Crunchyroll from 8 October 1997.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Berserk aired October 8, 1997 to April 1, 1998 on Nippon TV, produced by Oriental Light and Magic. The 25 episodes cover the Black Swordsman framing sequence and the extended Golden Age flashback arc - the peak of Kentaro Miura's manga. Critics have consistently noted the contradiction at its heart: a low-budget production with limited animation that nonetheless achieves extraordinary dramatic weight through direction, Susumu Hirasawa's hypnotic score, and the exceptional characterisation of Guts, Griffith, and Casca. The IMDb audience rating of 8.7 from over 76,000 votes places it in the top tier of all anime. Critics across blog criticism and academic writing cite it as proof that budget constraints are irrelevant when writing and direction are strong. The infamous cliffhanger ending remains a sore point for many viewers encountering it for the first time.
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The Room
“Even with its non-ending and cheap animation, Berserk still stands as a great series that earns its reputation as a classic.”
A Piece of Anime
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about — premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1The Black Swordsman8.2
The premiere establishes Guts as a figure of extreme violence operating in a world of supernatural horror, then jumps back years to show how he came to be this way. The framing device promises the audience that the Golden Age story they are about to watch ends in catastrophe.
The moment: The tonal whiplash from Guts' brutal present-day scene to the young mercenary who will become him.
- E25Overwhelming9.5
The finale adapts the Eclipse - the most famous single event in the Berserk manga - and delivers it with a directness that made the series notorious. Critics note that the episode is disturbing by design and functions as the series' thesis statement on ambition, betrayal, and the cost of surviving.
The moment: The eclipse ritual begins - the scene that the entire 25 episodes were building toward and that ends on an unresolved note still discussed decades later.