Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
One year has passed since Guts left the Band of the Hawk and Griffith was imprisoned by the Kingdom of Midland for treason. In the dead of night, at a camping site where they hide, the Band of the Hawk is attacked by Bakiraka assassins led by Silat. When all seems lost, Guts returns from his journey. "You destroyed everything." Crying that Griffith is nothing without Guts, Casca and Guts are joined together body and soul. Griffith is imprisoned in the oldest building in Wyndham Catle, the Tower of Rebirth.
The Advent concludes the Golden Age Arc with one of the most harrowing and legendary sequences in anime history — the Eclipse. The plot delivers on years of buildup with devastating emotional payoff, subverting heroic fantasy tropes in a way that feels genuinely earned and brutal. Novelty is exceptionally high: Berserk's dark, nihilistic vision of medieval fantasy with Shakespearean tragedy and cosmic horror is singular, and this film crystallizes that vision at its most extreme. The ending — the Eclipse's conclusion and Guts' survival — is one of the most memorable and traumatic finales in the medium. Cinematography is serviceable but the film's CG integration is a recurring criticism, preventing a higher score there. Voice acting carries appropriate weight. Not without technical flaws, but as a narrative achievement in dark fantasy animation, it stands apart.