Guts swinging that sword sounds like something breaking inside him, again and again. The 2016 anime finally shows what comes after the Golden Age, the parts nobody dared animate until now, and it earns every moment of brutality by refusing to flinch when the manga doesn't. The CGI looks cheap sometimes, but it never saves you from what you're actually watching: a man too broken to stop fighting, even as revenge becomes its own curse.

Guts, the Black Swordsman, carries a brand that marks him for death and draws demons to him without end. Wielding the enormous blade Dragonslayer, he hunts the man he once admired and called a friend, the one to blame for his fate. Outlaws, deluded evil spirits and a devout child of god stand in his way, and his foes wield grotesque, inhuman power while he has only his body and his sword. The fighting wears away at his life, yet he keeps going. Along the road he gains unlikely companions, including a small elf named Puck and Isidro, a young thief who wants the former mercenary to teach him the sword. Together this mismatched band faces dangers beyond anything they have known in a grim, violent dark fantasy steeped in horror and the supernatural.