The definitive anime adaptation for Berserk's Golden Age arc. To preface this, Berserk by Kentaro Miura should be experienced in manga form before you embark on any anime adventures for it, IMO — please go read the manga before trying any version of the anime, including this. With that being said, the Memorial Edition anime has cemented itself as the must-watch version of the Golden Age arc. The Memorial Edition is the best bang-for-your-buck as far as length/number of episodes and content covered. It does not cover every single event (it's 12 volumes/102 chapters of content covered in 13 episodes, so keep that in mind); however,it covers most major events, and for what it does cover, it covers well. It also finishes the arc and does not cut off in the middle of the climax. With over 30 minutes of additional new/extended scenes, it adds the Bonfire of Dreams and Wounds chapters, as well as other moments. Not enough can be said to compliment these additions. I don't think anyone expected the number of or quality of additions when this project was first announced, or even when it was announced that there would be additions included. With these additions also came new OST music, including a new song by Susumu Hirasawa for the Bonfire of Dreams scene. The CGI models were touched up as well, which goes a long way, especially when compared directly to the movie versions of the models. There are still some spots where the CGI sticks out, but they are mostly minimal background characters or when they are in large groups. There was a fair amount of negative feedback for this project when it was first announced, that only seemed to ramp up at the beginning of the season. This was all done before any real changes had been allowed to be shown (the additional content/scenes came in episodes 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13), which is just plainly unfair, and a perfect example of why you shouldn't write something off so early. Especially in a case like this, where they have advertised new things to come later on. Not sure how one can claim it "provides nothing new" when they have advertised new content that wasn't in the initial few episodes, for example. Berserk 1997 "elitists" (for lack of a better word) will still find a way to downplay this adaptation, even when 1997 has more glaring flaws than this does. Do not let it discourage you from watching this wonderful memorial project from Studio 4°C. Between the project itself and all the interviews throughout the season, you can tell the passion and care that they had for this project, Berserk as a whole, and Miura. There was no announcement for a continuation following the finale episode, but I would personally welcome a continuation of this level with open arms.

As a manga reader, I'd say this was an excellent adaptation of Kentaro Miura's magnum opus. The Golden Age Arc is huge, so I can forgive it for not adapting some of the plot points. Even so, it leaves no loose ends in the anime and all the major plot points were covered. I am just a little disappointed that Gut's childhood did not get adapted, apart from small glimpses of flashbacks. I really hope they can add more details of it in future adaptations. The music and voice acting is excellent. The animation is amazing. Given the atmosphere of the setting, I think the lightingand coloration is just perfect. The CGI blended in mostly, with some notable of exceptions of a few side characters, who were mostly entirely CGI, and stood out is some parts as odd. If you haven't read the manga, you can still watch it, but know that in the manga there are a lot more details. You may want to catch on later to get the full experience. If you have read the manga, you have no reason not to see it - its a well rounded adaptation of the manga, and watching the scenes from the manga animated is a treat to the eyes. Do not miss it.

Berserk: The Golden Age Arc - Memorial Edition retells the original trio of movies, showcasing the rise, fall, and rebirth of Guts, Griffith, and the Band of the Hawk. Witnessing Guts transform into the Hundred Man Slayer, and later The Struggler was a delightful experience as always. It reminded me why Berserk is considered one of the finest dark fantasy works available. I saw the three movies and the series long ago, and it's a good thing I forgot many important scenes. I enjoyed watching this. It was a good refresher. It looks like new scenes were added here and there. This movie was also visuallyimpressive, featuring a good blend of CGI and traditional 2D animation. Despite being based on an older film trilogy, the animation quality is as good as that of the more recent anime series, which is both impressive and surprising. While it tends to lean heavily on CGI, I overlooked this fact and appreciated the tweaks made to the animation. Overall, I was satisfied with the improvements made in the Memorial Edition. Also, I must say that the explicit scenes were the chef's kiss! I don't remember seeing them in the movie trilogy, or maybe I wasn't paying attention back then. Overall, I'd certainly recommend this to fans of Berserk. I hope they'll also remake or remaster Berserk 2016-17 in the future. Maybe once the manga has been completed?

It adds one of the more character-defining, beautiful-horrifying-tender scenes in Manga/Anime history. The depth and vulnerability it displays consequentially touches on a lot of this series. It's one of the things that are not addressed in the old-school 1997 production. Yet this version still doesn't capture the looming underbelly of the darkness of the series that 1997 captures, choosing to focus on keeping things truly diet light "Golden age" so to say, than fulfilling the lore around certain characters that will carry the series further in validating their on-screen reputation, other than being the obvious main character. If after watching this, you decide to readthe manga in hopes of more you'll soon realize that there's more you'd like to see, even without sticking 100% to the source material. To me, many smaller feats are left out, matter in the crescendo of events, as you could say a lot of things are orchestrated by "divine" will. Ultimately it just seems like they are kind of milking off the animation that's already there in a director's cut that's still lacking. If that's what it's some OVAs/movies become Animes, but if this is a definitive "reboot" attempt into the next arc... This story deserves so much more than an average afterthought cut. It's a good intro to Berserk if you have no context, as the story is immaculate that you could get away with releasing an okay product but there are a lot of just okay releases. Being overly critical it's a 7, even though compared to most these days it could be an 8.

An anime perhaps best renown for being filled with blood and gore, torture, -ual assault and the like; yet somehow the above are never once displayed in such a way that feels shoehorned-in or unnecessary. Minus the unstoppable force of nature (yet still just an ordinary human) protagonist, the entire ride can be felt as taking place in a very natural and living world, making it easy to be drawn into the lore and story. The character and monster designs are second to none, and the animation is always downright stunning. Well, scenes with large crowds rely heavily on unpolished 3d animation to fill inthe background, yet for me personally I don't see this as a problem in the slightest and had no issue with it. The action scenes are all downright magnificent to look at. I had long avoided Berserk, having a poor image of a ludicrously-juvenile and edgy work of fiction for every emo youth to enjoy; perhaps due to the memes regarding the series that you see time to time while browsing the web. For anyone else thinking the same thing, be sure it is an entirely different beast. Watch Berserk.

Golden Age arc. The iconic story arc of Berserk, marvelous manga created by Kentarou Miura. This is the third installment of it in animated format, or I should say "final version of the second installment". Let me explain. TV series from 1997 was the first anime adaptation of Golden Age arc. Later we've got the movie trilogy released in the years 2012-2013. Memorial Edition is just episodic version of the movies, however with many additional things added to the original material, such as improved art, animation, new music tracks, additional scenes, new cuts, etc. That's why it'd be wiser to call the Memorial Edition asthe final version of the movie trilogy, just in episodic, TV series format, and greatly improved in many ways. Art and animation have gone through many improvements. Some of them were small, but made a huge difference if compared to the exact scenes from the movie trilogy. More detailed facial expressions, 2D close-ups, improved CGI. Everything can be found in Memorial Edition and all changes I noticed myself were either good or very good. Sure, still few scenes had odd looking moments with either weird looking CGI or animation feeling odd, but they were way less noticeable than in the movie trilogy. I was able to detect one, maybe two moments like that. Each one lasted for around 1 second, so unless you are not paying too much attention to such elements, you might not be bothered by such moments at all while watching Memorial Edition. Music was already good in the movie trilogy and it was delightful to hear one more time tracks composed by Shirou Sagisu during the movie, however, what I absolutely loved in Memorial Edition was hearing Susumu Hirasawa's music once again, including one brand new track. Mika Nakashima's performance was great as well, same as "Wish" song. Episodic format really helped in making the whole series more enjoyable to watch and anticipate next week's episode, especially if somebody started watching it completely blindfolded, without being familiar earlier with the series from 1997 or with the movie trilogy the Memorial Edition was based on. While I could still feel that many scenes should've been slower, but richer in content known from the manga, I didn't feel they were rushed as much as I had felt while watching each one of the three movies. Few words on additional scenes: they were of high quality and fit the rest of movie material. They blended well with it and had good direction. While there were more extra scenes than I thought there would be before this series had started airing, it's a shame there weren't more of them. They'd surely flesh out few characters more and improve the story by adding more depth to it. Like I said, additional scenes were awesome to see, but after finishing this series one might think not about how they were in the show, but how this show could've been like had there been more of them. In conclusion, I recommend watching it. It's the very definitive version of Golden Age arc anime created by Studio 4°C. Sure, it is not perfect and story-wise it is inferior to the series from 1997, which had more episodes. But nevertheless it was done with passion and care for details, and was simply extremely entertaining to watch. It's definitely superior to the movie trilogy. (I also wrote reviews for each movie of Golden Age arc trilogy. I recommend checking them out as well. They are not mandatory to read and understand Memorial Edition's review, but might provide bigger perspective on how I saw Studio 4°C's take on adapting Golden Age arc, and why I decided to rate Memorial Edition 7/10 instead of just going with a mean score of all three movies, being 6/10)

I wanted to write this review, just to be safe in case someday Berserk fans come and judge me. right now I really like Guts as a character. I just hate this anime because Guts doesn't have many moments/scenes, because I can't stand to see another (bad) adaptation. I'll try to start reading the manga... I don't have much experience in reading action manga and live to the fullest by romance standards. I'm not ready but I'm sure it will be worth it. I've said everything I wanted to say so enjoy.. : lone mercenary Guts drifts from battle to battle, striking down powerful enemies with his unwieldysword..everything changed after Griffith and the Band of the Hawk attacked. Guts still has a lot to learn but in this age of war and destruction Casca believes BL will save the world... I'm kidding.. but be prepared. Casca will always remind us that "Griffith didn't want the world he only wanted one man" I still have a lot to say.. but I'm afraid that this Reviews will be read by children. so enjoy