A wise friend once told me about a little bitty manga series that's been ongoing since the late 80's. Something about a a guy with a giant sword chopping up demons in a fictional medival Europe...and I thought "meh."

Soon, sure enough i ate those very words.
After my last out of town visit [seeing my "Kingston Krew"], I instinctively tracked down some wonderful scanlations of this so called "Berserk" and I've been hooked on it ever since. [Almost caught up to the most recent volume.]
Now, as some of you know there was also an anime based off of the first dozen or so volumes [i thought of it like a commercial to entice you to read the manga] and I've seen a couple of episodes but nothing really to keep me interested. Starting from the manga's early volumes I began to understand how on earth this would have translated into "anime" form and decided to watch the entire series of 25 episodes in a span of 5 days.
The following friday was the worst day of my life.

That last scene, no, the last episode and a half was the most depressing thing i've ever witnessed. I mean everyone grew on me for the past week and all of a sudden things come to a crumbling end. I mean everyone from the Band of the Hawk slaughtered like animals - Caska defiled - Griffith taking "revenge" in a sense - and Gutts...poor guy. I just wanted to reach into the TV and give this man a big hug...then again the landscape of demons put me off of that idea. The bloopers were some of the funniest dubs i've ever heard but nothing could get me over the downer of an ending [so abrupt too] that the anime had. *sighs*

Then i rented the first few volumes of Excel Saga and suddenly the weekend didn't seem so glum ^ _ ^