Berserk Watch Order: 1997, the Films, or 2016?

Berserk has been animated three times, by three studios, and the three versions do not form one continuous story. The 1997 series stands alone. The Golden Age Arc films retell the same years and are the actual prologue to the 2016 series. So the watch order is really a decision about how many times to watch the Band of the Hawk rise and fall. The short answer: watch the 1997 series first, all 25 episodes; then the Golden Age Arc Memorial Edition rather than the three films it was cut from; then the 2016 and 2017 seasons, with expectations set low; then the manga, which is where the story actually lives.

Why the 1997 series first

The original series was animated by OLM and broadcast on Nippon TV from October 1997 to April 1998, 25 episodes covering the Black Swordsman opening and the whole of the Golden Age. It is the version this site's Berserk quotes are drawn from, and it is the best-written of the three adaptations by a distance: the dub script gives Griffith his speeches in full, spends a whole episode on the hillside conversation the fans call the bonfire of dreams, and lets Guts and Casca talk to each other like adults. It also has the strongest structure, opening at the end with a lone swordsman and then spending two dozen episodes explaining him.

Its faults are real and worth knowing in advance. The 1997 series cut characters wholesale, Puck and the Skull Knight among them, and the Skull Knight's absence leaves the ending with a hole where the explanation should be: the last episode shows the aftermath of the Eclipse and never says how anyone survived it. The animation is a television budget from 1997, and the series was hard to see legally for years until Discotek's Blu-ray release in 2024. None of that changes the recommendation. A viewer who starts here meets the Hawks at the pace the story needs, and meets them once, in the version that gives them the most to say.

The Golden Age Arc: films or Memorial Edition

Studio 4°C retold the same material as a trilogy: The Egg of the King (February 2012, 77 minutes), The Battle for Doldrey (June 2012, 98 minutes) and The Advent (February 2013, 113 minutes). Three films is under five hours for a story the 1997 series gave nearly ten, and the compression shows: the films keep the battles and the Eclipse and lose most of the conversations, which in Berserk is where the meaning is. They also restore what the series cut, including the Skull Knight, so the ending makes sense, and their version of the Eclipse is the most complete one animated.

In late 2022 the trilogy was recut for television as the Memorial Edition, thirteen episodes broadcast from October to December, with new scenes added, the bonfire of dreams among them. That is the version to watch. It is the same footage as the films with some of the missing conversations put back, it streams on Crunchyroll, and it is the direct lead-in to the 2016 series in a way the 1997 show is not. The honest caveat is the animation: the films mix hand-drawn character work with CG battle scenes that have aged badly, and reviewers at Anime News Network covering the Memorial Edition's premiere said in as many words that they would still steer a newcomer to the 1997 series first. This guide agrees with them. Watch the Memorial Edition second, as the bridge, not as the introduction.

The 2016 and 2017 seasons

The 2016 series, two seasons of twelve episodes broadcast in mid-2016 and spring 2017, is the only adaptation to go past the Golden Age. It covers the Conviction arc and then the Hawk of the Millennium Empire arc, and it introduces the cast that the rest of the manga is built around: Puck, Farnese, Serpico, Isidro, and the others who turn a revenge story back into a story about a group. It continues from the films, not from the 1997 series, so a viewer coming from the original will feel a small jolt in tone and in who is on screen.

It is also, by common consent and in this site's opinion, the weakest thing ever made from the manga. The CG character animation is stiff, the direction cuts the manga's set pieces into fragments, and the Conviction arc, which on the page is the story's darkest and most controlled stretch, comes across as a sequence of loud rooms. The reason to watch it anyway is that there is no other animated version of this material and there may never be. Take it for the plot, keep expectations low, and treat it as an argument for the manga.

Where the anime stops, and what to read next

The 2017 season ends partway through the Hawk of the Millennium Empire arc, which in the manga is followed by the Fantasia arc and everything after. Kentaro Miura died in May 2021 with the series unfinished; it resumed in June 2022 under the supervision of his friend Kouji Mori, working from what Miura had told him, with art by Studio Gaga, and it is still ongoing. So the manga is not a supplement to the anime. It is the work, and every adaptation is a partial view of it.

The right place to start reading is the beginning, and the edition to buy is Dark Horse's Deluxe Edition, whose first volume collects the original volumes 1 to 3 in one oversized hardcover; our manga box set guide has the listing. A reader who has watched everything above will recognize the Golden Age material and can move through it quickly, but should not skip it, because the manga's version carries scenes and characters none of the adaptations kept.

The order, stated plainly

Berserk (1997), 25 episodes. Then the Golden Age Arc Memorial Edition, 13 episodes, or the three films if the recut is unavailable. Then Berserk (2016) and its 2017 season, 24 episodes. Then the manga from volume one. Anyone who wants a single continuity and does not mind the CG can skip the 1997 series and begin with the Memorial Edition, and will lose nothing in plot; they will lose the best-written Griffith, the best Casca, and the bonfire of dreams as it was meant to be heard, which is a good deal to give up for tidiness.