Oh hi. I'm just hanging out. It's Saturday afternoon, and I'm just sitting around and procrastinating. It's not like I'm not gonna do anything else that will get in the way of my important tasks today. It's just that I really don't want to start with those tasks right now. Do you want to take a moment and talk about sad video games, anime, and violence?
I've been looking into the late 90's anime adaptation of Berserk recently. I've never read the manga; I've only ever understood it as popular and violent. But of late, I've been playing the video game Hollow Knight and its spookiness, quietness, and dourness struck a chord with me. Now I have a sort of constant backround compulsion to seek out art that's similar to it. (I've not finished Hollow Knight yet, but I think once I do I might write a little something about it here.)
In my poking about I wound up learning about the Mamoru Oshii directed Angel's Egg, which is beautiful, and very tonally similar to Hollow Knight. I was also reminded of Berserk. Berserk doesn't look very quiet. Or beautiful. Berserk looks loud, and grimy as hell. And there's an edgelord teen hiding in a corner of my brain that just wants to watch some (perhaps unreasonably) violent cartoons. And, from what I know, Berserk is exactly that. I've not watched Berserk yet, but I get the feeling that I might be taking a sizable step away from the understated melancholy of Hollow Knight and Angel's Egg toward a more explicity ugly sort of story telling.
Again, this is all coming from a person who has yet to sit down with Berserk. My current understanding of the show is all based on a fancam someone made of the white haired fellow from the show (Griffith) along with a (now replaced) plot synopsis from Wikipedia. Here's what I know about Berserk:
- The main guy's name is Guts.
- Per that removed first sentence from the Wikipedia plot synopsis: "Guts (ガッツ, Gattsu) is a wandering mercenary who has known war and death since he was born from a hanged corpse and saved by his adopted mother, who died from the plague when he was only three years old."
- Per the fancam: There are big swords and scary guys and a white haired guy named Griffith.
I have no confidence that this will be a good show by any means. But what I do know of it promises a sort of death metal excess and dirtiness that makes my heart go pitter patter. I see a show that could give me striking (maybe obscene) depictions of struggle and conflict that I'm sort of itching for right now. I hope it might find neat ways to use a dirty, bloodslicked, medieval-esque setting to talk about being sad and scared. I know there are a lot of bad ways that this could break for me, but I'm gonna cross my fingers and plan to have a good time with it either way.