Berserk's 1997 Ending, Explained: the Eclipse and What Comes After

The 1997 Berserk anime ends inside the Eclipse. As Wikiquote's English transcription and an Anime News Network essay record them, its last two episodes cover Griffith accepting the God Hand's offer, the slaughter of the Band of the Hawk and Griffith's rebirth as Femto. Then the series stops, without explaining how Guts gets out. This page separates what those two sources record from the reasons given for the sudden stop, and says where the story goes next.

Jump to the last two episodes, why it ends there, what the ending means, what the films add or where the story continues.

What each source can answer

The evidence behind this page and its limits

Source	What it records	Limit
ANN's episode list	Episode 24, "Eclipse", aired March 24, 1998; episode 25, "Perpetual Time", aired March 31, 1998.	Titles and dates only. Wikiquote heads the same two episodes "The Eclipse" and "Time of Eternity".
Wikiquote's English transcription	Dialogue and stage directions for both episodes, including the episode's last lines.	It cites no source and does not say which subtitle or dub track it follows, its headings carry titles rather than episode numbers, and anonymous editors reworded or added several Eclipse lines in November and December 2024. We quote it sparingly and say so each time.
Matthew Roe's 2022 ANN essay	The final moments, the post-credit scene and the manga volumes the series adapted.	His statement that the anime was never meant to continue is his summary of the accounts he found, not a production record.

What happens in the last two episodes?

The ending is set up one episode earlier. In episode 23, "Eve of the Feast", Gaston and the surviving Hawks beg Guts to let them follow him, and Wikiquote's transcription records Guts thinking: "Why don't I realize what I have until it's lost to me?"

Episode 25 is the massacre. The transcription's stage directions put Guts in "a lake of blood, along with the mangled remains of many of the Band of the Hawk"; Gaston, whom he finds alive, dies in front of him. Void names the newborn fifth member of the God Hand: "You are our prodigy, our newest kinsman, our wing of darkness. Arise, Femto." Roe's essay describes the final moments as the evisceration of the Band of the Hawk and the violation of Casca by the newly transformed Femto.

Wikiquote marks two lines from Godo as the episode's last lines: "You leaving?" and, as Guts walks out of the room, "Don't get yourself killed." Roe describes a post-credit scene that returns to the Black Swordsman arc. Neither the transcription nor the essay records any scene showing how Guts survived the Eclipse.

Why does it end so abruptly?

Roe's answer has two parts. First, the anime ran out of road: by his count it covers volumes 1, 4 through 10, 12 and 13 of the manga, and "considering all of the manga which had been published to that point, Berserk actually covered most of the story as it stood." Second, he writes that, from all the accounts he could find, the anime "was never slated to continue going", serving as an introduction meant to send people to the manga. He is blunt about the result: "the series really doesn't have an actual ending", and it leaves viewers with "no understanding of how Guts escaped and started killing Apostles, or if Casca even survived."

Our reading is that the stopping point is less arbitrary than it can seem. Episode 1, "The Black Swordsman", shows Guts, in Wikiquote's stage direction, "after defeating the Snake Baron", before the series turns back to his years with the Hawks; Roe describes that opening as setting up the narrative's framing device. Twenty-four episodes later, the Eclipse answers the question episode 1 raised: how he became that man. What the series never answers is the next question, how he lived through it. That makes the cut a choice of which question to close. It does not make Roe's complaint wrong. A viewer gets the wound without any account of the survival.

What the ending means

The ending turns on two lines spoken two episodes apart. In episode 23 Guts realizes, in the transcription's words, that "everything I ever wanted back is right here before me." In episode 24 Griffith offers the same people up. The Eclipse is the moment the two men value the Hawks in opposite directions, and the series gives the realization to the one who cannot act on it.

Griffith's "only you" line is the hinge of that reading. He does not name ambition or the castle as what stands between him and his dream; he names Guts, the comrade who walked away from the Hawks, the departure Casca recalls in episode 21 as "That day you left". One reading, and it is only one, is that the sacrifice is his answer to being left: the thing Guts walked away from becomes the price Griffith pays. Episode 21's line from Guts, "I'll never draw my sword for another man again, or be dangled by someone else's dream", reads very differently once the Eclipse has happened. His break from Griffith's dream was real, and it came too late to save anyone who stayed inside it.

What do the Golden Age films add?

Studio 4°C's page lists the Golden Age Arc as three films from 2012 and 2013, directed by Toshiyuki Kubooka; the third, The Advent, runs 113 minutes. Wikiquote's transcription of The Advent goes past where the 1997 series stops: a stage direction records the Skull Knight escaping "with the unconscious Guts and Casca", Guts wakes to Rickert, and Rickert tells him of Casca, "She doesn't remember. She doesn't remember you or me." The Skull Knight then warns him that "The Brand of Sacrifice attracts creatures of darkness". The films therefore answer the survival question the anime leaves open. Roe still prefers the 1997 version of the Eclipse itself, judging that "most of the Eclipse is handled better in this version than the Golden Age films".

Studio 4°C's Memorial Edition page describes the 2022 television version of the trilogy as 13 episodes with added scenes, including the "Bonfire of Dreams". Our Berserk watch order sets out how the 1997 series, the films and the Memorial Edition relate.

Where does the story continue?

A later television series went further. ANN's news report says it premiered in Japan in July 2016, with the second half premiering in April 2017, and VIZ's overview describes it as "covering Berserk further". Wikiquote's section for it includes episodes titled "The Holy Iron Chain Knights" and "The Rent World".

The fuller continuation is Kentaro Miura's manga. On Roe's count, the 1997 anime adapted material up to volume 13, and his list leaves out volumes 2, 3 and 11, so we recommend starting the manga at volume 1 rather than jumping in after the Eclipse. Miura died in 2021. ANN reported in June 2022 that the manga would continue from that June 24 under his assistants at Studio Gaga, supervised by Kouji Mori, who said he had discussed the ending with Miura since the "Eclipse" event 30 years earlier. The Berserk manga buying guide compares the paperback and Deluxe editions, and the Berserk manga page lists the volumes.

Sources and reading limits

The episode events above come from Wikiquote's Berserk transcription and Roe's essay, both re-read on October 7, 2026, not from our own viewing of any identified licensed release. Episode numbers follow ANN's list and the order of Wikiquote's 1997 headings. Other lines from Wikiquote's transcription, each with its source note, are on the Berserk quote page, including Griffith's and Guts'.