Ask John: Could a Slayers Revival Lead to a Berserk Revival?

Question:
I know it’s been quite a while since the first series of Berserk has come out, but how good of chance is there right now for it to make a comeback? The reason I ask this is because Slayers was revived after a long pause, and I know normally older anime like that become something of the past in Japan unless it’s extremely popular. That, and I know the Berserk manga sells very well, so maybe there is a possibility?

Answer:
Certainly, anything is possible, but I think that even the unexpected revival of Slayers probably has little impact on the chances of Berserk being similarly relaunched. Slayers and Berserk are both sword and sorcery anime from the 90s, but the major difference is that Slayers is a mainstream franchise with the ability to appeal to contemporary fans interested in titles like Zero no Tsukaima and Fate/stay night. In other words, Slayers is an accessible comedy program about a cute female magic user. There’s not a very great leap from Slayers to other contemporary comedy anime.

Berserk, on the other hand, is a very dark, masculine, violent, and grotesque series. It’s not a cute, funny, or charming otaku comedy like Suzumiya Haruhi or Lucky Star. It’s not a romance or visual novel game adaptation like Clannad, Kimikiss, or ToHeart. It’s not family friendly and highly marketable like Bleach and Naruto. It doesn’t appeal to female viewers like Pretty Cure or Gintama do.

The fact that Hellsing has been revived as an ongoing OVA series, and the Claymore anime was fairly successful recently, do provide evidence that support for a title like Berserk isn’t entirely absent in Japan. However, recent bloody swordplay anime including Claymore and Stranger haven’t been blockbuster hits, and the Hellsing OVA series is being produced and released in Japan at an almost interminably slow pace. It’s also worth noting that the violent, mature audience oriented Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: Phantom Blood movie flashed in and out of Japanese theaters in a literal blink of an eye, and doesn’t seem slated for a Japanese home video release at all. All of these criteria suggest that interest in an anime title like Berserk, in Japan, isn’t entirely absent, but certainly isn’t very big.

After seeing both Slayers and Hellsing resurrected, I can’t convincingly say that Berserk won’t also rise again. But at the same time I don’t think that the revival of Slayers may be taken as a definite harbinger that Berserk will return in anime form.