There’s this magic when someone discovers the medium of anime for the first time- the magic of watching that one gateway anime that hooks you into the genre, whether it be Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, One Piece, or hentai. During this honeymoon period as an anime fan, we are constantly exposed to newer and more exciting anime, each amazing us in ways different from the last. But slowly this golden period starts to fade away. Then the stagnancy settles in, we start running out of anime of equal caliber to watch. Or maybe it’s not the new anime, maybe it’s us. We’re the ones who are becoming less and less easy to impress the more anime we watch. Soon, anime gradually starts to become this thing we seasonally consume. The routine sets in as we find ourselves watching forgettable anime one after the other, somehow forgetting why we ever started watching to begin with.

Occasionally, however, there comes along an anime that reminds you why you became a fan in the first place. The beauty of it encapsulates your thoughts even when you aren’t watching. For a brief period of time, all other anime that is airing starts to feel irrelevant. It is as if the honeymoon period has returned once more. And although brief that period may be, amidst the sea of seasonal mediocrity, that one anime will stay with you, just like the old ones from when you first started. That’s exactly what happened to me recently last year, when I watched the anime Vinland Saga.

Thorfinn, our protagonist, being a sad boy

Vinland Saga is an ongoing manga by Makoto Yukimura, initially debuting in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine, before moving to the Seinen magazine, Monthly Afternoon. It began in 2005, and in the coming years through over a hundred chapters, and currently 23 volumes, cemented itself as a giant of the manga industry, alongside legendary works such as Berserk, Vagabond and Kingdom. Hearing such praise, it sounds like it should be no surprise that the Vinland Saga anime was received so well. However, looking at the adaptations of Berserk and Kingdom, it wasn’t initially as obvious as it seems now. Many held their breaths hoping for all the wrong things to not happen, and in the end, they didn’t. Wit Studio, also the people behind the immensely popular series, Attack on Titan, did a fantastic job at adapting Yukimura’s sensational manga. They went above and beyond, and what we are left with is a definite lock for one of the best anime the last decade has seen.

Stunning visuals by Wit Studio; let’s see Berserk try this with CG

The Vinland Saga anime began airing in the summer of 2019, going on for a 24-episodes run in its debut season. It introduced many anime watchers to the Viking world of Yukimura’s that had not seen the light of day outside of the black and white pages of manga. Yukimura’s previous work, the hard science fiction manga, Planetes, had received a 26-episodes anime adaptation running from 2003 to 2004, and Vinland would be his second work to grace the screen. But while Planetes was a great manga in its own right, creating huge excitement in the science fiction genre, it was this second work that would push Yukimura to the forefronts as a leading mangaka of the current age.

Vinland Saga is set a thousand years ago in northern Europe, notably Norway, Denmark, Iceland and England. It is during a time of great violence and turmoil when our story starts. Former Viking hero, Thors, abandons the battlefield in order to leave his life of bloodshed behind, and instead live a peaceful life with his family in Iceland. Many years later however, through some unfortunate events, Thors finds himself and his naïve little son, Thorfinn, on a boat to join the Danish Viking raids in England, against his will (minor spoilers ahead). Some things happen, Thors is surrounded by Vikings, he doesn’t want to fight but he has to protect the people who were dragged into this because of him, and then… he dies. Devastated by the death of his father, Thorfinn sets himself on a violent and vengeful path, vowing to kill the man who killed his father, a cunning Viking pirate by the name of Askeladd.

Thors dreaming of escaping into Vinland with his wife

Now, make no mistake, Vinland Saga is NOT a revenge story. Throughout the anime, it is almost sad to witness this once cheerful young boy grow and transforms into this murderous, raging Viking who is out for blood, ironically becoming exactly what his father did not want him to become. The true beauty in Vinland lies in these characterizations and the themes (both moral and philosophical) that is explored through its turbulent characters. Vinland Saga explores the morality of violence, of the meaning of true love, the justification of inequality and slavery, the relationship between a father and a child, and God and his children. But it is through the ambiguity and dilemma of the characters that Vinland truly shines. To understand this, let’s look at the aforementioned character of Askeladd (who is a brilliant motherfucker by the way).

Askeladd is a Machiavellian character that uses whatever means possible to achieve his goals. He is snarky, an asshole, and one of the most well-written characters in anime. Askeladd is cold and calculating. When Thorfinn refuses to kill Askeladd in his sleep, instead challenging him to a duel to get his revenge by honorable means, Askeladd promises Thorfinn to give him his duel if, and only if, he performed some tasks dutifully for him. In the following episodes, we witness the next few years of Thorfinn’s life wasted as he mindlessly kills Askeladd’s enemies, and does the bidding of his father’s killer just to get a chance at losing a duel over and over again. But there is more to Askeladd than just that. Beneath the layer of a heartless Viking who uses whoever he can is an actual semblance of a human that cares, who hates himself and what he does, but does it anyways because of his dedication to his end goals.

When Askeladd outnumbers and kills Thors, only to later find out that none of his men received any life-threatening wounds from fighting him, we see him sitting alone on his ship grimacing. Perhaps mad at himself for killing the sort of man that he would earnestly admire, the sort of man that would reject the madness of violence and cruelty. We don’t know if it is out of guilt or genuine liking for Thorfinn that Askeladd takes him in and lets him grow up amongst the ranks of his own soldiers, but there’s definitely much more to him than the simple selfish Viking we first see.

When you’re a scheming Viking and everything goes your way

Of course, that’s not all to Askeladd’s character, there’s much more, such as his goals, his backstory, and his morality. But what I’m really trying to show here is the level of depth given to just one single character. Vinland Saga is brimming with characters with rich and diverse personalities, both main and supporting. In the beginning some may confuse it for a typical Shonen action anime, but do not make that mistake. The story in Vinland Saga is heavily grounded, and very mature. It takes it’s time to build its characters and moments, and when the pay-off finally comes, boy is it worth it. None of the characters in Vinland are just badass or cool, there is always a level of depth underneath the surface-level shine. But the thing that lies underneath is what truly makes Vinland a series worth watching. To explore this further, let’s take a look at the character of Canute.

(Major season 1 spoilers ahead. If you haven’t watched Vinland Saga yet, please do because it’s only your gain to be honest.)

Canute literally hiding behind Ragnar

Canute is initially shown to be a timid, young man. The son of the king of Denmark, Prince Canute does not appear to be the kind of person one would expect to be an heir. He is often confused for a woman by his own subjects. And he hides behind his guardian, Ragnar, letting him do all the public speaking on his behalf. Canute is also seen to be deeply religious, for example in one scene, being shown sitting in his tent praying while his men get killed outside in an enemy ambush. However, behind this shy exterior is a boy fearful that if he stood out too much, he would be killed by his own kin in a battle for the crown, just like he witnessed his father do when he was a child. That’s the cruel world he was born in. But while Ragnar genuinely cares for Canute and does everything he can for the prince’s own good, his overprotectiveness harms Canute far more than it helps in the long run.

In one of the later episodes, when a character questions the love of God for His children, Canute has an angry outburst, yelling how one could ever question the “love of the Father”. At first glance, it seemed like Canute, as a devout Christian, was being angry at the questioning of his faith. But on a closer inspection one can see his anger actually stems from his deep-seated denial of his father’s disdain for him. It is revealed later that King Sweyn had purposely sent his son on a losing battle, hoping that he would die and therefore not be a nuisance for the inheritance of the crown. Eventually Canute’s only actual father-figure, Ragnar, is killed by Askeladd (this guy has a knack for killing fathers for some reason). With the loss of the only person that cared for him, Canute realizes he needs to take charge instead of cowering away from the cruelty of the world. In a powerful moment, we see Canute reject heaven and God’s tests, instead declaring he would create a paradise here on earth. Gone was the boy that was afraid to stand out, Prince Canute ends up becoming exactly the kind of man his father feared.

He’s pissed, he’s royally pissed… at the world

These are the moments, the character developments, and the moral and philosophical questionings that make Vinland such an amazing series. Yukimura often employs morally grey characters to help create the situations needed to explore his ideas, none seen more prominently than in the characters of Thorfinn, Askeladd and Thorkell in respect to Thors. While Thors was a pacifist who said things like “no one is your enemy”, the rest of them are quite different, with Thorkell being the perfect example of chaotic neutral, a Viking who only fights because of the fun of it. All three of the men are morally grey and does not hesitate to kill, but their interactions with Thors leaves a lasting impression on them, with each of them in their own ways wondering what Thors meant when he said that- “a true warrior does not need a sword”.

Thorkell punching a charging horse

In an interview, Yukimura said that he chose Viking Age Europe for his story because he thought it was one of the ripest periods in history in terms of violence and death. He uses this historical setting to masterfully craft an epic tale that questions the morals and values of the time, that still in different ways persevere to this day. There’s much more to Vinland Saga than what we’ve talked about here, such as the alcoholic priest’s quest to find out what divine love really means, or the idea of slavery, inequality, and freedom from war and exploitation. In fact, we didn’t even touch on the titular place of Vinland, and what it symbolizes for the series. But as an ongoing manga, there’s more Vinland has to offer as the story progresses than that revealed through only season 1.

With Yukimura announcing that Vinland’s end is nearing, with the manga entering its final arc, the chances of a season 2 being greenlit may very likely happen. Vinland Saga season 2 is undoubtedly going to be one of the most anticipated seasons entering into the new decade. And with how good the first season was, I have no doubt that the next season will once again be able to remind us why we watch anime.