Berserk

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Synonyms: Berserk: The Prototype

Japanese: ベルセルク

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Type: Manga

Volumes: Unknown

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Publishing

Published: Aug 25, 1989 to ?

Genres: Action, Adventure, Award Winning, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Supernatural

Themes: Gore, Military, Mythology, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Animal

Authors: Miura, Kentarou (Story & Art), Studio Gaga (Art)

Statistics

Score: 9.47¹ (scored by 353,831 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1

Members: 706,563

Favorites: 128,516

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9.47

Ranked #1Popularity #1Members 706,563

MangaYoung AnimalMiura, Kentarou (Story & Art), Studio Gaga (Art)

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Synopsis

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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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

Jul 8, 2024

Lecus01

Recommended

Preliminary (364/? eps)

Berserk, created by Kentaro Miura, is widely celebrated as a dark fantasy masterpiece, deserving of a perfect score despite some initial hurdles.

Story:

Berserk starts off slow, and the initial artwork might not meet today’s lofty standards. However, once the Golden Age arc begins, the series hooks readers with its compelling blend of action, drama, character development, and unexpected twists. The narrative defies simple classification, evolving from a tale of revenge into an epic exploration of human nature and ambition.

The Golden Age arc is particularly noteworthy, highlighting the complexities of Guts, Casca, and Griffith. Readers form deep connections with these characters, resulting in a rollercoaster of ... emotions. The story excels in creating conflicting feelings, making one both loathe and admire Griffith, which speaks volumes about the depth of character development.

Berserk’s strength lies in its rich side-stories, giving major supporting characters substantial page space. Each subplot, such as Farnese and Serpico's, adds layers to the narrative, making the world of Berserk feel real and lived in. The only minor drawback is the introduction of magic around volume 24, which can feel out of place in the dark, gritty atmosphere, occasionally leaning towards a shounen-esque style. Nonetheless, the overall storytelling remains engaging and unforgettable.

Art:

Berserk’s early volumes were impressive for their time. Miura’s initial artwork features unique character designs and detailed fight scenes. However, as the series progresses, the evolution of Miura’s artistry is evident. The transition from simple shading to intricate hand shading techniques enhances the series’ gritty and surreal feel.

By volume 20 and beyond, Miura’s artwork reaches new heights. The character designs become sharper, and facial expressions more vivid, conveying emotions powerfully. The detail in the later volumes cements Berserk as not just a story but a visual masterpiece. Few manga can match its artistic prowess, making Berserk’s artwork a standout feature.

Characters:

Guts, the Black Swordsman, is initially a typical character but quickly reveals his depth. His journey through despair and fleeting moments of friendship creates a complex, believable protagonist. The evolution of Guts’ character is one of the series’ highlights, making him one of the most human characters in manga.

The supporting cast, from Griffith’s ambition to the God Hand’s malevolence, are well-developed and integral to the plot. Characters like Farnese, Puck, and Isidro enrich the story, each with their own arcs that contribute to the narrative’s depth. The diverse and vividly portrayed characters make Berserk’s world immersive and engaging.

Enjoyment:

Berserk’s ability to captivate readers is unparalleled. The intricate plot, dynamic characters, and breathtaking artwork create a deeply immersive experience. The Golden Age arc stands out as one of the greatest in manga history, drawing readers in with its emotional intensity and compelling storytelling.

Despite the dark themes, violence, and gore, the series maintains a perfect balance, making it a riveting read. Berserk is not for the faint-hearted, but for those who can handle its intensity, it offers an unparalleled reading experience.

Final Thoughts:

Berserk transcends the manga medium, delivering a powerful, unforgettable story through its masterful blend of narrative, character development, and art. Kentaro Miura’s magnum opus was a timeless masterpiece, resonating deeply with readers and continuing to inspire. For fans of mature, intricate narratives and stunning artwork, Berserk is a must-read, deserving of its perfect score.

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Aug 21, 2023

tabbycatfestival

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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Oct 16, 2023

chicthicko

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (382/? eps)

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 censorship of triggering topics. 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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Kentarou Miura's Assistants Resume 'Berserk' Serialization, 'Holyland' Creator Kouji Mori to Supervise

The editorial department of Young Animal announced on Tuesday that the late Kentarou Miura's Berserk manga will resume serialization in the 13th issue on June ...read more

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

'Berserk' Creator Kentarou Miura Dies at 54

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

May 19, 2021 9:39 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (437 comments)

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Recent Forum Discussion

Poll: Berserk Chapter 366 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Bellace - Jun 21, 2022	133 replies	by adios »» Yesterday, 12:41 PM
Do you think Guts vs Griffith final showdown will actually happen one day? alphaoro - Nov 9, 2023	14 replies	by Genesis007AUT »» Jul 25, 5:19 AM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 49 Discussion KitaTsuki - Sep 8, 2011	18 replies	by squiddard »» Jul 23, 2:18 PM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 176 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Nov 9, 2011	26 replies	by Akihito_Kenji »» Jul 20, 11:12 PM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 48 Discussion KitaTsuki - Sep 8, 2011	25 replies	by squiddard »» Jul 20, 2:28 PM

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