The first episode of Berserk's 2016 anime adaptation was received very coldly by fans of the long-running franchise. Skipping two arcs and employing a rather distracting mix of CGI and traditional hand-drawn animation, this year's Berserk seems to have fallen in no man's land among the franchise's avid fans.

As much as the first episode was nothing short of a disaster, however, the second episode, which aired Friday last week, was actually a lot better. If any, the story seemed to pace itself out a bit, and the episode utilized far less CGI than the previous chapter. That is not to say, however, that it does not have any faults.

One of the things that usually become problems with anime adaptations is pacing. When manga chapters get adapted on screen, production studios usually struggle in keeping the pace of the story in check while driving the plot significantly forward with each episode. Some anime excel in this, some don't.

Berserk's universe is very expansive. Since the manga started back in 1989, Kentaro Miura, the man who created Berserk, was able to create a world with a very intricate system and a very deep lore. Indeed, it takes quite a lot to understand the entire world of Berserk, making anime adaptations such as this year's series very tricky to adapt on screen.

Such challenges appeared on the second episode of Berserk, where the pacing of the episode seemed a bit off and rushed at times. Throughout the episode, there were moments, such as Guts' brief skirmish with Azan, arguably the strongest soldier in the Holy Iron Chain Knights, that seemed very rushed. With Guts weakened due to fatigue from previous battles, his battle with Azan could have been very interesting. Instead, it was rushed a lot, leaving viewers feeling short-changed.

Then again, the episode did manage to tell a far more coherent story than the first. Considering that Berserk 2016 picks up after the events of the 1997 classic anime series, such problems could be expected. After all, adapting 19 years' worth of material does pose its challenges.

As for the CGI use, the use of the distracting 3D renders has been decreased significantly. Hopefully, the studios creating the anime are listening to fans, and over the course of the anime, they would begin to use more and more traditional 2D animation.

Overall, Berserk 2016 seems to be picking up, with Episode 2 being a notable improvement from Episode 1. Hopefully, the next episodes will only get better. 

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