Where to even begin talking about a show like this man.

4 years ago I remember being visited by my middle brother during summer. I was living in the northern part of my country, really far away from the capital and as such far from most of my family members. But everyone got together for holidays, christmas, you know the stuff. And I remember that we watched some shows, I mainly vividly remember a lot about both the first season of Dr Stone as well as the first season of Vinland Saga.
I remember knowing absolutely nothing about Vinland at all; the only thing I knew was that a guy named “Thors” was my brother’s favorite character, since he told me as much.

We began watching, and it was so beautifully animated and directed. Something about the landscapes, the peace that the village from the beginning conveyed and the warmth that was shown in the form of our protagonist’s family; and the little interactions between them, just hit a chord in me. It made me think back to my childhood and times living in what was pretty much the country-side where we grew up.
Even from the very beginning it felt so emotionally charged, and also so different from most media I’ve consumed through anime up until that point.
Vinland is, to my mind, the kind of anime that you can pretty much recommend to anyone, even to people who aren’t really into anime. Shows like Monster, Death Note, Attack on titan, you know the stuff.
And nowadays the availability of Vinland through mainstream streaming services makes it even easier to watch for people outside the anime sphere.

Something about the way in which it portrays its characters, setting and how it sets the tone feels very different to the kind of treatment that most anime get. I think the best direction I can point to so that I can get my point across is in how women are represented and written here. There is an awful tendency in anime and media in general to make female characters the “female characters”; ones that only serve to be pinkish, cutesy, dumb and overly emotional, most of the time getting in the way of others and serving as a distractor of sorts that gets in the middle of narrative developments or serves as a plot device.
But here, women are actually written like actual human beings instead of being walking fantasies of the author’s desires like it is in many shows, and I want to make it clear that I don’t just mean in anime, but in media in general.

Now, I also need to be really careful here, since we are talking about a show based on the viking age and you can probably tell by logic alone that this wasn’t exactly the most exciting period of time in human history to be anything but a bulky, big bearded man with an axe. And even then, it was still pretty awful.
This show does a great job at portraying most of what we know about that time and age (and most of it is either really interpretative or straight up interpretative, since even to this day we still have plenty of questions and theories about what happened at the time. It isn’t really an era we know enough about and that is still being studied to this day), and as we know it was a time full of unfairness, wars, bloodshed, pillages, slavery, etc. And I firmly believe that the show does a pretty tasteful representation of how all of this went down and what it could’ve meant/been like for the people living in that era. There is no romantization or fetishization around any of these topics, and there is a great deal of respect put into making sure that, for example, the whole deal with pillages, abuses, rapes and slavery gets represented exactly as it should; as something disgusting, awful and absolutely detestable.
But I do feel like maybe they went a bit overboard with some of the battle scenes in the first season. Which to be fair, I’m not really sure if it’s really a valid criticism since from another point of view, I feel like the first season might have purposely overly done its violence so that we could later reflect on all that bloodshed and come to terms with what it might have meant, during the second season; as Thorfinn learns to accept and faces up to all of the harm that he caused to others during his time with the vikings, and how lost he was in his own revenge and emotions to the point that he didn’t even think much of it at the time.
Also, at that time we were following a Thorfinn which was an edgy teenager deeply traumatized by war and everyone around him. So maybe the scenes were also done in a way in which we could see, visually represented and through a bit of dramatization so that it would be entertaining, how he saw all of the killings and massacres. He might have thought it was cool and awesome at the time, or straight up have fun while doing it; and some scenes where he fights soldiers before Thorkell in season one certainly got that feeling across for me.

One of my favorite characters of the whole show is one of the more tragic ones, which is Arnheid. Something about how her voice actress Mayumi Saco delivered her lines made me realize that; “oh wait, I’m watching a female character that feels like an actual woman and not just another moe moe kyun kyun anime girl”. And hey, I’m not saying I hate the moe approach or that I don’t like those kinds of anime, I’m a love live fan after all; but I think there is a moment and place for everything. And it does get on my nerves every time I’m watching an anime with a plot that is trying its hardest for me to take it really seriously and out of nowhere comes a character talking as if she was, for example, a cat. Which was an actual thing that would happen pretty often in Steins;Gate 0 with the character of Faris.
So I really loved the fact that we got a proper treatment and respect for these characters, and I think that Arnheid is one of the very best written female characters we have gotten in recent years due to how she feels like an actual human being. It hurt so, so damn much to see her go through such a heartbreaking and tragic development and arc. And I wouldn’t have felt this way if it wasn’t for the incredible writing and the outstanding performance of Mayumi Saco in every single scene.

Vinland feels like a really mature and profound story, which doesn’t really show its true array of colors at the beginning by the way. You can trick someone into watching this by selling it as a “simple” viking era based, action anime or something like that and you wouldn’t really be lying and they would fucking love it either way. But, by the time that person reaches the second season they would see a shift in tone and even identity for the show, and they would start reflecting on every single element of the first season together with the protagonist in a really philosophical and stimulating way.
Many came in for the swords and left not wanting to see the protagonist ever pick up one ever again, and for a show to do that you need to be able to pull off some real magic man. What this series has accomplished so far with only 2 seasons is absolutely mind-blowing, and I love how the show manages to develop its characters in ways that make you feel like you are constantly getting really valuable life lessons.

Also, this is a tricky thing but I feel like Vinland Saga does a great job at painting its characters in a gray light for the most part. Most characters feel authentically human and you can most times see through their faults, mistakes and even straight up crimes to find some sense of the person that used to be and their humanity. Such was the case with Gardar, Arnheid’s husband for example. Which you might be terrified and confused by at the beginning or even by the end, but I would be lying if I said that he didn’t get me really emotional by the end. And even if I think he did horrifying things, I was still able to get a sense of the man that he once was and it was such a shame to see that he couldn’t become who he would’ve loved to be in the end. Both for him and his family alike.

Talking about that, you can see how a lot of thought was put into what kind of ideas and values around family the series conveys at all times. And the author of the manga has been really clear about how he feels the most confident writing father-son relationships, and it shows.
Thorfinn himself has plenty of father figures that help him become who he is (in better or worse ways) through the series, even putting Thors aside. Askeladd is one that obviously comes to mind, but there are also characters like old man Sverkell from season 2. And to me, this is really important; since my relationship with my father has been complicated to say the least, and I don’t think he was ever where I needed him to be, or is, even now.
But, I’ve been lucky enough to meet people who have helped me out and have unknowingly acted like father figures of sorts, people from whom I know I’ve learned and taken a lot of traits at a personality level, morals, values, etc.

I bring this up because at its core I genuinely believe that Vinland has a great deal of messages about what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a son, a brother, what it means to care for someone and want to protect them, what it means to want to be better for someone else; a lot of ideas around father-son relationships that, if properly understood, can be quite enriching and meaningful.

I feel like this show staying power on me for the past few years has been incredible, and through it I think I’ve learned to better appreciate others around me, mainly family members.
Not too long ago me and my brother convinced our father to try and watch all of Vinland with us, and I’m honestly hoping that not only him but all of us can come out of it with a better understanding of each other and who we would like to be. 4 episodes of the first season in already, and I’m really excited to get to that second season and see what our father thinks about it all. Ultimately I hope he can understand that despite it all, I’ve always loved the guy and I just want to see him be a better man than the one he can be sometimes.

We can spend hundreds of hours talking about how incredible the main cast is, mainly Thorfinn, Thors and Askeladd are three of the most beautifully written and compelling characters I’ve ever seen in any medium. But instead of talking about them I preferred to talk about how, even if you take them out of the picture, Vinland Saga still has so much to offer in its story, setting, characters and overall world. Even the side characters get their spotlight, development and time to shine. And it's hard enough trying to develop your main cast alone you know, so the fact that the author of the manga could come up with so many compelling elements that allow this story to be so much more than the main characters is just absolutely remarkable.
And for the anime adaptations to be such perfect alternatives to the original work that even manage to elevate the manga in some aspects, this is just one hell of a time to be alive, what can I tell you; I would love for Berserk to get this kind of treatment as well and I’m so glad that at least one of the pillars of modern manga has been getting a proper treatment.

The sound design, the music, the voice actors, animators, directors, everyone came together to make a masterful work of art that goes far beyond anything I could have anticipated when I first started watching this show with my brother so many years ago. The show just doesn’t waste any time in making sure that you will get a premium experience with its fantastic usage of color and skillful ways of setting and maintaining a tone that allows each and every single moment to shine. Because sure, there is a lot of drama, thoughtful and really philosophical moments in here but there is also plenty of fun and even some laughs to be had. And only a master can craft a story that allows me to navigate so many human emotions in such an entertaining and meaningful way.

DISCLAIMER: The final rating isn’t representative of anything, the only reason why i’m even giving it a rating is because anilist won't allow me to post a review without assigning it a number that ranges from 0 to 100. If it were for me, I would post all of my reviews without ratings as I feel that trying to encapsulate a work of art on a numerical scale is completely nonsensical.