Berserk

Guts, a former mercenary now known as the "Black Swordsman," is out for revenge. After a tumultuous childhood, he finally finds someone he respects and believes he can trust, only to have everything fall apart when this person takes away everything important to Guts for the purpose of fulfilling his own desires. Now marked for death, Guts becomes condemned to a fate in which he is relentlessly pursued by demonic beings.

Setting out on a dreadful quest riddled with misfortune, Guts, armed with a massive sword and monstrous strength, will let nothing stop him, not even death itself, until he is finally able to take the head of the one who stripped him—and his loved one—of their humanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Included one-shot:
Volume 14: Berserk: The Prototype

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Background

Berserk won the Award for Excellence at the sixth installment of Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2002.

The series has over 50 million copies in print worldwide and has been published in English by Dark Horse since November 4, 2003. It is also published in Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Brazil, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Poland, México and Turkey.

In May 2021, the author Kentaro Miura suddenly died at the age of 54. Chapter 364 of Berserk was published posthumously on September 10, 2021. Miura would often share details about the series' story with his childhood friend and fellow mangaka Kouji Mori. Berserk resumed on June 24, 2022, with Studio Gaga handling the art and Kouji Mori's supervision.

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Related Manga

Other:	Berserk: Shinen no Kami 2
Spin-off:	Shousetsu Berserk: Enryuu no Kishi
Adaptation:	Berserk, Berserk 2nd Season, Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen I - Haou no Tamago, Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen II - Doldrey Kouryaku, Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin, Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen - Memorial Edition, Kenpuu Denki Berserk

More characters
Characters

Guts

Main

Griffith

Main

Casca

Main

Puck

Main

Schierke

Main

de Vandimion, Farnese

Main

Serpico

Main

Isidro

Main

The Skull Knight

Supporting

Judeau

Supporting

Reviews

Sep 24, 2023

Kzzz

Recommended

Preliminary (320/? eps)

1. Story 10/10
Lets talk about story, a brutal and unforgiving medieval world filled with supernatural forces, political intrigue, and moral ambiguity. It delves into themes of ambition, betrayal, trauma, and the relentless struggle for survival and identity.
The Golden Age Arc is the most important arc. It serves as an extended flashback that explores the past of the main characters, particularly Guts, Griffith, and Casca. This arc delves deep into their relationships, motivations, and the events that ultimately shape their destinies.
In the following arcs (Conviction Arc, Millennium Falcon Arc, Fantasia Arc), we gain a much deeper understanding of the character Guts and the pain ... he goes through. Without going into specific details about the arcs, in each one, friendly and hostile characters emerge who will significantly impact the story. Personally, all these arcs have been like a "roller coaster", full of emotions, itwas incredible to see what certain characters are capable for ""guts cause"
2.Art style 10/10
The art style in Berserk is nothing short of breathtaking and is often regarded as one of its defining features.Personally, Im the kind of reader who greatly admires the art style. (If I didn't care about that, Id probably be reading light novels, right?) I was completely amazed by what Miura achieved, and it fully justifies why this is such a long-running manga and still ongoing. Miura strived for perfection in every aspect, even the pages that "don't receive as much attention look exemplary." When Miura put pen to paper, he delivered illustrations that made you wonder if a human had drawn them—everything was REMARKABLE. Being a fantasy universe, it stands out even more due to the "monsters and world building." There were moments when I was astonished cuz in the same chapter, Miura would give even 5 absolutely magnificent panels. I know there are other talented authors out there, but Miura hits differently..
3. Characters 10/10
complexity and depth!! From the main protagonist, Guts and the enigmatic Griffith, each character is meticulously crafted with layers of personality, and motivations. This complexity makes them feel like real individuals with relatable struggles and dilemmas.
The characters in Berserk undergo significant growth and transformation throughout the series. Guts, in particular, evolves from a hardened mercenary to a reluctant hero, grappling with his inner demons and traumatic past. This development adds layers to the characters and keeps the narrative engaging but Griffith has different ideals and would sacrifice everything for them, and everything changes radically, making it seem like "Who are you??? You're not Griffith"
Personally, I was delighted to have chance to enjoy other characters. Many characters are introduced who might initially make you dislike them, but over time, you witness their character development, which will amaze you. Miura knew how to work on characters, and I can say that each one is unique in their own way. We have characters with well-crafted character development, starting from individuals who are seemingly insignificant in the world of Berserk to those with high ranks. Berserk earns bonus points for its characters because in the series, you don't see the cliché "Im a basic character, but thanks to you, I've unlocked hidden power, ew... You'll see how each character tries to upgrade themselves and become useful
4. Enjoyment 10/10
I enjoyed this manga very much, All of Guts' adventures have been great, "they are repetitive", but what can you expect? IN ANY ANIME, THERE ARE REPETITIVE ELEMENTS. There were moments when I even laughed, especially thanks to the character Isidro, who brings a more "troll" atmosphere,

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Aug 21, 2023

pinkrosedeer

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (367/? eps)

I get why Berserk is at the top of MAL's manga section, and it's because of the Golden Age arc. It's in the character development and outstanding writing. We get to see how the characters react to different developments in their lives (especially Griffith) and how their relationships and motivations change. Characters like Griffith are detestable, but they are completely understandable and even relatable. All the events that come to pass to culminate in the Eclipse make sense. It's like watching an epic Greek tragedy.

My biggest problem is with the portrayal of the female characters. To start off, there's an evil group called the ... "God Hand," consisting of 5 members. And the only woman just happens to also be the weird sexual sexy one while all the males look very different from one another and don't get spicy angles. It gets worse: how this series handles depictions of rape. In one character's backstory we see that his childhood rape gets handled tastefully with no unsavory camera angling, but in the rapes of women they go on for way too long and are heavily angled to emphasize certain areas. Now before you say "but what about all the depictions of men brutally killed" are they all conventionally attractive and hardly look different from one another? There's this depravity that's too commonly found in men where they seem to really like drawing conventionally attractive women getting brutally raped. And I didn't even get to how the female characters are actually handled. If you look at them without their contexts they do seem very decently handled, with carefully thought out motivations and dialogue, but in the context of the story as a whole they are sidelined and used as plot devices. For example, the main female character's motivations center around one man, and later another/both men. That's not a bad thing, but the narrative seems to paint her romance with the other man as "true love" when in reality they're replacements for someone else. None of these issues are resolved or addressed, especially since that female character is "absent" for a large portion of the narrative so we never get to see her thoughts on anything until a small portion where afterwards she is rendered a damsel in distress again. And the female side characters are handled no different (female children aren't spared and are also given strange naked camera angles). A prominent female side character's story is overly sexual, and her "character arc" turns her from the weird sexual one in a leadership position to the meek, demure one following the team. I get that there's nuance in the other bits of that narrative but in the wider context of the story it's just so coincidental that she has to have those traits, especially when a certain male character's attitudes towards sexuality are handled with much more taste. And because of that, this work feels homoerotic, not in the sense that it's yaoi, but that there is a clear love for and preference towards men and the deep, transcendent relationships they form; women are simply middlemen or vessels of lust.

Guts is better than many protagonists I've seen and he does go through a character arc so I'll give him that. I've seen people complain about the battle shounen-eque parts of the later story but I actually think it serves his character well, except when nothing ends up changing and he continues blindly on his clearly pointless and meaningless goal. But that's not his fault, that's the fault of the writers for padding out the main conflict; Guts wants revenge on the main antagonist, who the writers have no idea what to do with. He's way too powerful and every arc ends in some kind of horrorfest where everything keeps going wrong, so they move to another area, and villain man keeps getting powerup after powerup while the few powerups Guts gets are killing him whenever he uses them. It gets tiring after a while, seeing this predictable parade pan out, because you cant tell there's no clear goal. There's never going to be an end to this godforsaken story.

But when themes are handled excellently, they do hit hard, especially coupled with lovely, unparalled art, which was what allowed me to read 300+ chapters. But I'm not keeping up with this manga any longer.

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Sep 19, 2023

moodynaif

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (382/? eps)

[I saw many "not-recommended" reviews as dismissive and short. It prompted me to write one myself as I revisited the series to condense my perception of it. The review has major spoilers so reader's discretion and all that.]

Let's get straight to the bone with the negatives as the positives have already been done to death. I don't like at all how mangaka Kentaro Miura handles female characters which is only a complain to some if you make it one. However, there's much more to that. There are major problems with Casca. She — like most female characters of Berserk — has been heavily sexualized (for ... reference, Wyald chapters, post-Eclipse Casca under waterfall) and sexually assaulted and then chucked aside. What should have propelled development of her character makes her a human cabbage. And I do mean the Eclipse. A Band of Hawking Readers go: "One can't imagine what Casca must have gone through and anyone with such trauma will be rendered insane" et cetera. Well, neither can you or Miura. And yet, he chose to put Casca through the Eclipse and was not willing to follow through with her character. It may be so that Eclipse was written during pre-internet era and Miura was out of ways to research the nuances regarding such topics. Yet again — I stress — he chose to depict the act. If all he came up with was sidelining Casca's character agency for almost entirety of the remaining narrative scaling twentysomething volumes, it's not very good writing, is it? Especially when the central concerns revolve around her. You call it bold and visceral and transgressive. I say thoughtless and obtuse and a missed opportunity. Even Schierke wasn't spared in the fetish department and she's thirteen. Tell me we can't use modern lenses for something authored thirty years ago. Except we can. Except dated artistic decisions are to be acknowledged in all kinds of art for us to appreciate the rest of it.

Adding on, violence seems to go hand-in-hand with such assaults on many fronts. Wyald was thoroughly unnecessary, especially after the Bakiraka chase. We had been already introduced to an apostle, and him coming right before the Eclipse as a clunky foreboding lessens the impact. We get it. Apostles are evil, rapey, and hideous. The point was made in prologue. What's that, you say? It was to show Guts is now more powerful and can hold his own against an apostle? Well, obviously, he's been splitting logs coming down a waterfall's mouth so I think we would have been okay following that. Let's leave the trolls out of it too. We get it, dammit. Violence desensitized me to the extent that it was no longer shocking and I didn't care for the hack-and-slash, apostle-of-the-week cool factor. To help sum up the paragraph, Japanese composer Susume Hirasawa is willing, quoted by Miura in Tezuka Osamu Prize (2002): "I think Guts' sword represents a penis and the monsters destroyed by it represent women's genitalia." Poetry, my man. Big-dick poetry.

I find myself indifferent following the ensemble of RPG-like cast gathering around Guts while he wanders in search for Griffith — a trope as old as the novel Journey to the West. Need not talk about tonal inconsistencies because it is partly the fault of manga's length. Berserk could use a fat trim which I doubt will hurt manga's credibility. It's so repetitively heavy, the entire thing, an almost Sisyphean undertaking — stitching cults, causality, existentialism, divine caprice, dynamic morality, and like. So heavy you get tired reading it, no wonder it struggles to carry itself, for hammered-in complexity doesn't equate to quality. If the meatier themes need the ceaseless bluntness, the structuring and handling needs to be subtle and sure. I don't see it beyond Golden Age arc. Miura even admits to writing the manga as it progresses, and also regrets overdoing the sexual assaults of the manga looking back, a case of inexperience. At least knowing this, it's understandable how things came together to be as they are.

Berserk isn't bad, by any means. It's just so damn uneven, carried by momentary sparks in later two-third of the manga. We know there is an obvious raging passion here. It's a lifetime work hence the collective and eclectic fantasy esthetic — a world populated with spirits, centaurs, elves, dragon, demons, trolls, witches, fauns, goblins, golems, ogres, unicorns, you name it. Miura's guiding vision, however bloated and overstuffed, is there. It takes time but emerges. Birth of Fantasia is one of the most beautiful unfolding in animanga medium. The art style morphs the mythopoeic sections with awe and you want the panels framed and tucked away. At the same time, there are more volumes on the other end of the spectrum as well where the art seems to be window-dressing, drudgery, indulgence. Not a unifying element.

It's a mess, maybe at times a beautiful one. This isn't to say only polished and structured works are worth it because we know manga, by very nature of the industry, is a spontaneous medium, living and dying by its ad-libbed frenzy. I'm actually a hardcore believer in Steve Erickson's "I don't find perfection especially interesting. Art is not all about refinement and formal accomplishment. It is about passion and imagination and courage and these things that I didn't understand when I was kid being taught the rules. I realized that . . . art could be . . . what I wanted to make it if I could pull it off.” So while I see what people value in Berserk and where the strugglers come from, it isn't pulled off well.

It remains what it is. Manga community doesn't openly talk about the issues enough. Berserk's praised to heavens and back here. It is being read by underage people and I hope to put out there what's absolutely not cool. Think through your favorites. That's enough from me.

(Gave it a six. Regardless I wouldn't recommend it to anybody therefore the "not recommended."

Edit, copied from my reply elsewhere: People got confused when I mentioned the rape and sexualization in the same sentence. I don't have problems with use of rape in a work. I have problems with Casca's character being ultimately denied any impacting action further in the story just after the assault in Eclipse. Users here think I have problems with rape but really actually I have problems with how the aftermath is handled. We have seen Guts dealing with his trauma but we hardly see Casca have the same arc for so, so long. It's like Miura was out of ideas what to do with her.

I don't care for political correctness. Write/draw whatever and take responsibility. It's a free world. When Casca gets portrayed in a sexualized light and tossed aside with little agency, just after what she went through in Eclipse, I can't really take it seriously anymore.

Conclusion, no, I don't think rape = sexualization. However, sexualization is a problem. Not fan of the loli shit.)

Another edit, tired now, very much hoping the last one to come. Berserk is a fantasy, y'all. It's not an accurate account of Mediaeval Ages, and it has no intention of being one. Pure artistic expression. I don't see it putting rape in any meaningful context other than just for the sake of being edgy. Add to that the above edit's text, you know where I stand.

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Jun 7, 2022 12:33 AM by Vindstot | Discuss (70 comments)

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Prolific manga author Kentarou Miura, best known for creating Berserk, died on May 6 at 2:48 p.m. due to an acute aortic dissection. He was 54 years old. "We w...read more

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