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Berserk
Episode 12

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 12 of
Berserk (TV 2016) ?
Community score: 3.5

In Berserk 2016's last episode, Isidoro sums up my thoughts on the story and the show itself perfectly: "If we don't get out of here after all that, I'm calling bullshit!" Yes, after a long night of roasting ooze blobs in a desperate bid for survival, Guts and friends greet the morning only to find themselves at the business end of scimitars wielded by a giant army of Kushans, who have appeared to foreshadow the next arc of Berserk, coming 2017! That's right folks, we're getting a second season, but it will still be executed with the same off-putting CGI that sent so many would-be fans packing in this first season's earliest episodes. As the Skull Knight might say, "Such are the cruel whorls of karma."

I wish I could tell you that this first season went out with a bang, but frankly, this was a pretty underwhelming whimper of a conclusion compared to the more directorially ambitious endeavors of previous episodes. Much like the first couple episodes, this finale felt like it was running on autopilot, cutting casually between shots filled with nothing but flat scenery and those eternally awkward CG character models flapping their gums. Shin Itagaki's directing style works well for mystery, horror, and melodrama, but I guess his imagination goes kinda limp when he's stuck with exposition and denouement. There's a few surprisingly nice shots in the mix (my favorite was the closeup on Nina's damaged finger as she took Joachim's hand), but in terms of production work, this was definitely Berserk 2016 at its most "just as bad and embarrassing as people said it was." When you know that even this compromised creation can do better, it hurts all the more to see it settle into its cringiest lows right at the finish line. That Zodd the Immortal model definitely does not live up to the demon's name, and why is he so purple?

At least on a story level, we got nothing but solid and rewarding closure that transitioned seamlessly into the seeds for the next big arc. If nothing else, Berserk 2016 at its most awkward has never been able to dampen the strength of Miura's writing. After the Ooze overtakes the tower while a precious few survivors (our heroes included) scramble to safety, the completed pseudo-God-Hand erupts into a pseudo-Eclipse by melting from a haunted Jell-O glove into a screaming n' steaming blood orgy, whose hellish heat incubates Egghead's core of Fate. As he hatches (and dies), Egghead smiles gently, having known some peace and purpose at last before the end. As I guessed earlier, his life's purpose was to bring the newest member of the God Hand into the mortal realm in corporeal form, which means we finally get to see Griffith again in his natural state: nude and fabulous.

I'm not entirely clear on the rules surrounding Griffith's powers, but this is probably intentional considering Berserk's roots in gothic horror. Femto becomes scarier when we don't know exactly how he works, so I'm content with a little confusion, provided I'm not missing out on any key context that the manga provided and this anime may have cut out. My understanding is that Griffith-as-Femto was not able to become corporeal for the same reasons as the other God Hand fingers, limited to acting through Behelits and Apostles because his demonic power would irreparably bend reality in the mortal realm or some cosmic horrible thing like that. So now that he's been reborn in "human" form through Egghead's sacrifice, has he lost some of his powers? Is it sort of a Christ/Superman situation, where he's basically a super-powerful infant who doesn't really know what he's doing and will have to be reminded of who and what he is before he can resume his quest to take over the world? It's still a mystery at this point, but even in a potentially compromised state, reintroducing Griffith to the mortal realm has absolutely changed the game, although the threat is somewhat diminished by seeing him sail off buck-naked atop Zodd, the two-eyed two-horned flying purple people eater. (I'm sorry, why did they choose that shade of purple? Come on now.)

Griffith's rebirth and the Kushan ambush force our arc-exclusive characters and central cast to split up, so we get to bid a fond farewell to Luca and her friends while cheering on the future exploits of Guts's posse. Even though her comrade Azan survived the Oozening, Farnese has decided she's had enough of the church for now and might only find clarity by joining Guts after all, bringing Serpico with her by proxy. Isidoro claims he's going to make his own way down the mountain, but it's pretty obvious he's headed after Guts and Puck for his own reasons, and I wouldn't have it any other way. All three of these new characters have won me over completely, so I'll be happy to see more of them come season two next Spring. Still, even though they've been separated, Luca has some words of wisdom that might have served Guts to hear: "The strength to protect someone is different from the strength to be with someone." He's successfully protected Casca, but even after all Guts's effort, she still reached out for the shining specter of Griffith in her madness. Ouch. Someday, Guts has got to learn that choosing to suffer and be vulnerable alongside the ones you love can be both harder and more rewarding than choosing to strike out and protect them from afar. But I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. What are the odds that he's going to abandon Casca to try and take revenge on Griffith in the near future instead?

In the end, the only character with a complete arc in this season was Nina of all people, who takes Luca's advice meant for Guts and applies it to her own life. After experiencing her own incubation and re-hatching inside an ordinary barrel in the ooze-flood, Nina is finally able to accept her crippling weaknesses and make a constructive choice on her own. In an echo of Berserk's pervasive dog-eat-dog themes, Nina recognizes that the cycle of violence and fear around her is perpetuated by strong people hurting the weak, and weak people hating the strong, even between people who love each other like she loved Luca. She accepts that she will never be like her mentor and chooses to travel instead with someone whose weakness she can relate to and understand: Joachim. Just like Nina, Joachim can only work up enough courage to apologize profusely for his betrayal, fully expecting that she'll never want to see him again. However, Nina takes Luca's advice about communion vs. protection to heart, realizing that just as the strong must support the weak physically, the weak must support their fellow weaklings emotionally. "I will go with this man, who has the same weakness and sin. If I'm with him, I think we can both become a little stronger." It's a beautiful and surprising note to end the season on, a friendly reminder that for as cruel as Miura can be to his characters, he always does his best to empathize with their struggles.

In the grand scheme of Berserk's humongous plot, this arc mostly just served to introduce a handful of new supporting cast members, reunite Guts and Casca, and bring Griffith back to Midland, but it was all the little details that made it shine bright as a memorable story all on its own. Say what you will about this anime adaptation's disappointing production values, but even the original anime series, with its dastardly cliffhanger landing at the end of the Golden Age Arc, never made me want to check out the manga, since its ending changed the game completely in such a devastating way that it was hard to imagine a future for Berserk's characters. Now that this series has shown me that there's hope and excitement beyond the cruelty of the Eclipse, I think I'll finally pick up the manga in preparation for the next season of Berserk in 2017. See you all then!

Rating: B-

Berserk is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.


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