Anime Lectio: Berserk (1997)

                                                           1. Why do Anime Lectio? 

Anime Lectio is a time for us to stop and take a breath. Between work, activities, family life, and social media, our minds are always moving. We rarely take time to contemplate and ask, why am I watching this anime? What’s the point of all this? And, how is this making me feel? 

2. Put away all distractions 

(phones, work, etc.)

We are so enslaved to things that stimulate our minds. Let this be a moment for us to free our minds, look inside of ourselves, and be at peace. The only device you need is the one you use for this blog.

3. Deep Breathing - Open yourself to God’s Presence

Take several deep breaths. Let your mind relax. If you’ve had any questions, desires, or struggles that

you’ve been hiding or stuffing away, let them rise up to the surface. Remember God places all our

thoughts and desires inside of us, and He uses them to draw us closer to Himself. God gives us a

community to help us understand who we are and what He is calling us to do. The faces of people you

know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence. 

4. Think About What’s on Your Mind in Relation to the Anime

Think about what’s been on your mind in relation to the anime.  The following is an example of such thoughts written by me. 

Do you take the time to reflect on what you do, as well as why you do it?  I know I start these reflections with questions like this, but even after you do that, or after anything else, like after any other step in these reflections besides the first one, it is important to do that in order to understand what you're doing, which should be a constant process.  The answer to this question, as well as a lot of other things, can be seen in the series Berserk (only reflecting on the 1997 version here).

5. Brief and written explanation of the anime

Pay attention to how the brief and written explanation of the anime seen on this blog, as well as seeing the anime for yourself since I think that's better than any explanation, might “speak” to you or shed light on the things that have been on your minds.

A mercenary who was raised to fight ends up joining a group of fighters after they see him in action.  The leader of the group actually challenges this mercenary to a fight and since this mercenary loses, he has to join them and help them.  The leader of this group and this mercenary become friends and there are times when the mercenary is asked to do things for the leader of the group that involves this leader getting more power for himself.  The only other member of this group that gets about as much attention as them is the only female member, who has a one-sided crush on the group's leader and doesn't like the mercenary who joined them recently at first because he doesn't seem to care about what they are doing.  However, it's more like he doesn't really know what to do for himself, which leads him to leave this group after beating the leader of it in a fight and think about his purpose more.  After taking the time to do that, he goes back to the group he left, but the leader of it is in jail now due to trying to get more power in his own way that doesn't work out for him and the only female member of this group tries to lead it, but is tired of doing that.  With the help of this returned mercenary, the group rescues their imprisoned leader, but this leader betrays them for the sake of getting more power for himself, which results in most of the group being killed, the female member being tortured, and this mercenary on a journey to figure out what to do about this.

6.  Reflect on the anime

Has this brief and written explanation of the anime shed any light on what's been on your minds?  The following is an example of a reflection on the anime from me.

I had a student in my anime classes do a presentation on the series Berserk. I didn't know much, if anything, about the series at the time, but I figured I could learn about it, as well as others, from these presentations. Unfortunately, that didn't happen with most, if not, all of them since most focused on the scenes that only involved fighting and not so much why it was happening. To make things worse, this presentation also focused on that betrayal scene mentioned at the end of the description given here without really going into detail about everything that happened in the series, which happened in a lot of the presentations and prompted me to see most of the anime presented myself.

That's how I found out that Berserk is a lot more complicated than I thought based on the presentation of it given by the student. Besides the fact that there's more to it than the '97 part, which is the only part I've intentionally seen (what made the betrayal in that presentation worse is that it was the terrible CGI remake of the '97 anime that came out almost 20 years later), there's also the fact that the main character is one of the most interesting protagonists I've seen in anime. While this character is a brutal warrior, he also reflects on what he does. For example, the presentation also had a scene where the brutal warrior defeats one hundred men by himself, but the presentation said nothing about the scene in the next episode when the brutal warrior reflects on why he did this to the only female member of the group he joined while she listens to him and treats his injuries. What's also interesting about this brutal warrior is that his theme music focuses on his reflective nature and not his fighting, which is music that I use for things like meditating and writing (I'm listening to it as I write this for example). Taking time to reflect on what you do, as well as why, is important for everyone, whether you a brutal warrior who describes himself as someone "who fights because [he] knows nothing else" between battles or someone who happens to be reading these reflections (reflect during them too).

7. Final Prayer

Please voice any prayer intentions for friends, family, or people around the world that relate to this anime.  The following is an example written by me.

Let us pray that we can take the time to reflect on what we do, as well as why, instead of just doing it.