There are once in a life time stories, and berserk is one of them the potential behind this simple manga, the suspense, the mystery of it all! The first arc is only the tip of the iceberg of a very complex, dark and violent tragedy. If you find yourself to be not too impressed with the first volume, I highly recommend reading until at least volume 4 before deciding if this series is for you or not. The first three volumes serve as an interlude to help prepare you for the atrocities to come and may seem somewhat underwhelming in terms of plot, but believe me when I say the payoff is highly rewarding and memorable. Medieval kingdoms, big swords, frenzied warriors, gore, nude, sex, intrigue, betrayal, demons, a quest for vengeance. Berserk is the encapsulation of the best parts of dark fantasy. You know how nowadays everything gets compared to Dark Souls? Even Dark Souls took heavy inspiration from it, if that is any indication for how well executed it is. Guts seems like a simplistic, edgy anti-hero at first glance, but he's so much more than that. Guts is one of the greatest characters the fantasy genre has to offer. Sigmund Freud could probably write a novel-length psychological analysis of this severely troubled and broken man. Guts is more complex than he leads people to believe as well. He's not a sociopathic antihero, he's a man that has no choice but to lie to himself to keep his emotions from crushing his spirit and getting innocent people involved with his deadly affairs. He's cruel and harsh for the greater good. It's the only way he can keep himself from going insane and continue to put up a good fight against terrifying creatures that are far stronger than he is. There's a bit of a joke in the Berserk community that says that no matter how bad your life might be, Guts will always have it worse. It's really not that hard to believe after you've read a bit of the series. His life was one big catastrophe literally from the moment he was born. This is not what I expected from a manga. This belongs to the subgenre 'seinen' which is geared for young adults/adults.

That same year, in 1982, Miura enrolled in an artistic curriculum in high school, where he and his classmates started publishing their works in school booklets, as well as having his first dōjinshi published in a fan-produced magazine. In 1985, Miura applied for the entrance examination of an art college in Nihon University. He submitted Futanabi for examination and was granted admission. This project was later nominated Best New Author work in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Another Miura manga Noa was published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine the very same year. Due to a disagreement with one of the editors, the manga was stalled and eventually dropped altogether. This is approximately where Miura's career hit a slump. With the release this summer of the newest Berserk anime, I decided it was time to revisit the Manga. Kentarou Miura ( 三浦建太郎) was born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1966. He is left-handed. In 1976, at the early age of 10, Miura made his first Manga, entitled "Miuranger", that was published for his classmates in a school publication; the manga ended up spanning 40 volumes. In 1977, Miura created his second manga called Ken e no michi (剣への道 The Way to the Sword), using Indian ink for the first time. When he was in middle school in 1979, Miura's drawing techniques improved greatly as he started using professional drawing techniques. His first dōjinshi was published, with the help of friends, in a magazine in 1982. Sheer curiosity and a thrill of joyful expectation is why. Sometimes, one has to decide it is high time to break the workaday routine, the reading of one book at a time at fixed hours, mostly spent in between the hotel, the laundromat and the convenience store. All the more so perhaps when one is about to leave his current night job, putting and end to one year and one month of the same environment, marred by Covid regulations, minimal income, hotel industry rules and night schedules. A breath of fresh air. Griffith is the most interesting of the motley crew as he is very complex and unpredictable. He has a playful side, a merciless side, a charismatic side and a childish yet vulnerable side. He can't be put into any single category. The gallant and elegant master of the sword has more layers than an onion. His brotherly rivalry with Guts is also a lovely and dementedly joyful sight to behold. This is the major turning point of the series and it only gets better and better from here.Mhm, as with most classics it's hard to rate. The art for most part is rather abysmal, compared to newer mangas (most of which were actually heavily influenced by Berserk, so there's that, too). I've seen some later volumes and man, Miura had improved immensely, to absolutely amazing levels of skill. But for now, it's bad, grainy, sketchy and overloaded with tropes. Since that time, the Berserk manga has spanned 34 tankōbon with no end in sight. The series has also spawned a whole host of merchandise, both official and fan-made, ranging from statues, action figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game. In 2002, Kentarou Miura received the second place in the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award of Excellence for Berserk.[1] Themes of isolation, camaraderie, and the question of whether humanity is fundamentally good or evil pervade the story, as it explores both the best and worst of human nature. It’s difficult to review this arc because it was left unfinished after the author’s untimely passing.

Taking place in a peculiarly Japanese vision of Medieval Europe, Berserk is a relic of the Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy boom of the 1980's. It always manages to make me nostalgic for something I never knew, in the same way the film Akira makes me nostalgic for 80's science fiction and cell animation. Berserk attracted a huge fan following immediately, and has since become an international multi-media hit, thanks to the anime and the Dark Horse translation of the manga. Guts is a severely traumatized vagabond that wanders the world, throwing himself into one battle after another in hopes of finding a meaning in the tremendous suffering he's endured. His sword is his only trusted companion and he's consumed by a lust for vengeance. Griffith is a charismatic mercenary with dreams of ending a hundred year war in hopes of attaining his own kingdom. Little do his comrades and enemies know, he's not the flawless hero many believe him to be. When the paths of these two men clash, the entire world drastically evolves around the earth-shattering conflict between their indomitable wills. It also shows that Guts still has a human side. Despite how broken and full of hate and bloodlust he is, he still cares for Jill and throws himself in harm's way multiple times to protect her. Considering how tragic and terrifying Guts's childhood was, it's not too surprising that he would have a soft spot for kids that also happen to be suffering from abuse. A grimdark epic with compelling protagonists, stomach-churning horror, heartbreaking drama and a lovecraftian sense of metaphysical worldbuilding that's as fascinating as it is terrifying. Berserk has been my favorite manga, fantasy story and perhaps favorite story ever made for over a decade now and I was really sad to hear that the man behind the masterpiece passed away earlier this year. There's something special in this weird little medieval-fairy-tale-Europe-as-imagined-by-20th-century-Japanese that kept me reading. A whiff of Nietzsche and Sartre and Kierkegaard, a promise of complexity and depth hiding behind the simplistic tale of an unlikeable protagonist's journey of revenge, despair and brutality toward self-knowledge. It's cringy, stereotypical and very much rooted in the '90s but there's earnestness and some emotional truth in this ugly, depressing tale that makes me read on.Miura's love for graphic brutality that still looks like something conceived by a bloodthirsty child (those people cut in half!) is more offputting than endearing, and the only remotely likeable character is that of a naked, sexless elf that looks like an offspring of Tinkerbell and a shop mannequin. Blood, guts (in more ways than one), and huge swords (not even in the phallic symbol kinda way...okay it probably is). I haven't read a lot of manga, but this was great stuff.

The Fantasia arc marked another major turning point of the series. If Lost Children and Conviction were the age of darkness, this was the beginning of the age of misguided light. Griffith changed the world in truly remarkable ways, both fascinating and terrible. This is the arc that has the most in common with Game of Thrones, focusing on personal character dramas rather than constant brutal battles, action and lovecraftian horror being thrown at you left and right. While the battles and action sequences in Berserk are amazing, where it truly shines are its quiet moments of vulnerability where we get to see the most raw, heart-wrenching and introspective emotions of the severely damaged cast of protagonists. Not to mention his rival Griffith who is equally complex and incredibly rich with psychological depth, but there will be more on that as you delve further in. I would strongly recommend this series for hardcore fans of fantasy and horror, so long as you're prepared to be traumatized for life by the disgustingly harsh nature of its content.Created by Kenturo Miura, Berserk is manga mayhem to the extreme - violent, horrifying, and mercilessly funny - and the wellspring for the internationally popular anime series. Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Berserk asks for no quarter - and offers none! This volume has 3 chapters, and they don't really give much information regarding Guts's motivations. We can see that he's on some form of vendetta, and his vigilante-like behaviour must be coming from a much deeply seated wound. Despite his brutality, we do see that he is the protagonist of the story, after having murdered a group of thugs in a tavern and saved his new fairy friend, even though that little encounter led to The Snake Lord feeling threatened over his domain and unleashing hell (quite literally) in town as a response to Guts's transgression. We can see that Guts is some form of grimdark antihero character. I will never draw my sword for another man again, or be dangled by another mans dream. From now on, I will fight my own battles." Overall an explosive arc that’s equally horrifying and beautiful. It has one of the most satisfying reunions and redemption plots of all time. Hellraiser + Conan the Barbarian + Game of Thrones + Ash vs Evil Dead + Elric of Melnibone + Macbeth = Berserk.