How to Watch the Berserk Anime in Order

The Berserk anime, or rather, the manga is one of those legendary works in the medium, and a must-watch for those that like darker stories. However, watching the Berserk anime in this day and age has gotten complicated.

Berserk as an anime isn’t actually as complicated as the many different series and movies make it seem. The thing that really complicates it is that studios have committed themselves to remaking the Golden Age arc, the first major arc of the series and its strongest story, over and over in anime form. To date, you can watch three versions of that same arc in anime form.

This means that you actually have less Berserk to watch then you may think if you know nothing about it. You only need to watch the Golden Age arc once, after all.

How to Watch Berserk in Order

What is the Best Berserk Golden Age Arc Adaptation to Watch?

The first step to watching the Berserk anime is choosing your starting point. There are three versions of the starting point of Berserk, all with different merits. These include:

Berserk (1997)
Berserk: The Golden Age Arc (3 Movies)
Berserk: Memorial Edition

The Original: Berserk (1997)

This is the original Berserk anime and the one that well-aged Berserk fans likely fell in love with.

While Berserk (1997) is still a good watch, it is an older anime at this point. Furthermore, the production of it suffered from budget issues, which led to increased use of still shots and occasionally low quality animation.

One final consideration is that unless you sail the seven seas, Berserk (1997) can be occasionally difficult to find.

The Most Time-Efficient: Berserk: The Golden Age Arc Movie Trilogy

As Berserk (1997) had budget issues, they remade the Golden Age arc that it told in movie form almost a decade later. Fans were less than pleased over the decision to heavily use CGI in it, but after seeing Berserk (2016) and its CGI fumblings, the movies don’t look all too bad by comparison.

The major benefit of watching the movies as your choice of Golden Age arc adaptation is that they are compact. They keep a good pace, and you can consume them all easily in a day. However, you do miss out on finer details, but they would only have an impact if you wanted to read the Berserk manga afterwards.

The Most Detailed: Berserk: Memorial Edition

The Berserk author, Kentaro Miura, died in 2021 suddenly with his manga unfinished. While a colleague has set to work finishing it, the Berserk community mourned. This led to a renewed effort to, once again, re-adapted the Golden Age arc with this Memorial Edition.

The Berserk: Memorial Edition is a 13-episode TV adaptation of the movies by the same studio. To their credit, their ability to use CGI has improved greatly, as did the quality of their adaptation with a number of new scenes included.

If you want the Golden Age arc told to you with modern animation and also having the most amount of story details included, the Berserk: Memorial Edition is really the way to go.

Recommended Berserk Watch Order

If you are just looking for a quick and easy answer as to the correct order to watch Berserk, I’ve got it for you. With this Berserk watch order, you get the most comprehensive version of the Berserk story in anime form.

Berserk: Memorial Edition
Berserk (2016)
Berserk Second Season (2017)

That’s it. Not so complicated now, is it?

Since the Berserk (1997) anime and the Berserk (2016) continuation of the story share the same title, it trips people up, compounded even more by the second season it received.

Full Berserk Watch Order

As I mentioned above, you are going to be watching the Golden Age arc three times if you watch every Berserk anime adaptation ever created. However, if you want to watch everything, this is everything and the order to watch it in.