Berserk
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"Things you have now, things you've lost. People who're near by, people who've gone far away. No matter what you choose, truth is, both regret and reluctance are going to follow you around. You just have to make sure you don't make excuses to yourself down the road."
- – Kentaro Miura, Berserk, Vol. 38
Berserk is (probably) the most Grimdark of all manga, written and illustrated by Miura Kentaro. It has seen two anime adaptations of the same name. (Three if you count the absolute shitshow which was the 2017 edition, earning Berserk the title of best manga but worst anime)
The series follows the adventures of the protagonist Guts, who does battle against the forces of darkness with a really, REALLY big hunk of iron sword. In fact, it's probably the only anime/manga in existence where the other characters actually notice that someone's sword is unrealistically large, often pointing out "Fuck me, that's a big swoOH GOD IT CUT ME IN HALF BLARGH". It is, in fact, so large that it cannot actually be used while mounted because swinging it makes the horse fall over. Guts himself can only use it by virtue of training with man-sized swords since he was a small child and scaling upwards as he grew, in combination with his titanic (and possibly supernatural) strength.
Chronologically, the story's beginnings are simple gritty medieval violence, following the exploits of a band of mercenaries as they make a name for themselves in the world and acquire power and glory. It swiftly descends into Oh-God-What-the-Fuck-Horror when Eldritch Abominations from Hell and their monstrous "apostles" get in on the action, and via a roundabout series of events Guts ends up hunting down his old companion now ascended to godhood, determined to get revenge for his betrayal.
Just to add to the grimdarkness he has a waifu that got raped by his best friend who'd turned into a demon. His waifu then had a miscarriage from all the trauma and his kid's fetus comes back to haunt him every day. Later in the series his kid comes back looking about the age of 3-8 years old and saves him and his friends by using terrifyingly effective abilities on par with lofn. Then said kid disappears again leaving a puzzled Guts and a slightly distressed but still insane waifu.
The series has a massive following both in Japan and in the west and has been running for almost two decades. The author, Miura, is well known for taking extended breaks from production, and given his advancing age and his recent statement that he considers the series about two-thirds complete, has led to fears by many that he will kick the bucket long before he actually finishes the series. A fear, that, as of May 6th, 2021, has come to pass. Miura passed away due to acute aortic dissection, leaving his work unfinished. Thankfully it turns out that he'd told his plans for the story to his best friend Kouji Mori, and he will help Miura's team complete the story.
According to some fa/tg/uys if he were in 40k Guts would be one of the lost Primarchs. Some actually speculate that Guts would be Angron's son. Or even Angron himself back in the day or some shit. Others say that aesthetically he resembles an iron hand because of his mechanical arm and use of dark heavy armor.
/tg/ greatly enjoys it because it's essentially a fucked-up mix of Warhammer Fantasy, WARMACHINE, D&D 3.5 and Exalted. Furthermore, Guts does display some vestige of humanity, despite all the traumatizing shit that's happened to him he still displays empathy for other people. Where thugs, corrupt guards, and thieves all get chopped to bits in seconds, Guts at least attempts to avoid killing innocents. Insofar as it wont hurt him. For the most part he is an amoral badass/cuntbag, yet there's still a bit of a caring dude in there. Somewhere.
CHARACTERS[edit]
Guts[edit]
Our favorite protagonist. Fights with a FUCKHUGE sword, eat your heart out Cloud (Sephiroth's is still Bigger Longer?). He is as badass as Eliphas and as manly as Kenshiro. Has an impossibly depressing past that began before his birth;
Wow... that's dark, even for us. Moving on, when Guts first encounters Griffith, he loses to him in a sword battle ((and his fuckhuge sword manages to lose to a rapier. What?) Happens Because Griffith is the first enemy to use actual tactics beyond "throw yourself against the FUCKHUGE sword-wielding sociopath and hope you win" also, it was a SABER) and then goes on to fight with Griffith's band of mercenaries. Things happen, he gets the hots for Casca, then all his life went to shit with the Eclipse, where his waifu got raped by his former best friend while he was forced to watch and lost his left forearm and right eye. Then he gets new companions and things become a bit less grimdark.
Griffith GRIFFITH!!!!!!![edit]
Token pretty boy. Very, very gay for Guts. Still a sword-fighting badass and a Creed-level general. Leads the Band of the Hawk, a mercenary group. His goal is ambition but he manages to fuck it up (literally) by boning his king's daughter because Guts left him. The king (who also wants to fuck his daughter) goes to torture him horrifically and he is broken. After that he goes to sacrifice the whole Band of the Hawk (except some kid, and Guts/Casca who manage to survive) to the local equivalent of the Chaos Gods and he becomes a god and then rapes Casca. While making Guts watch. And it is shown in detail, YAY. Then he goes all mary-sue by going to lead Midland, still under the appearance of Griffith and the local inhabitants fail to get anything. He then transforms the world into a Daemon world save for the FUCKHUGE city of bling he built himself, in which all of humanity (those who survived at least) are hidden away from the Daemons that roam the land; as any good inquisitor would say, this is highly fucking suspicious: could he be gathering victims for another more massive sacrifice? More like he is trying to become the God Emperor of mankind as everyone there is worshiping him as their god. Also, the guy who did nothing wrong (where have I heard that before...).
UPDATE: He managed to materialize into the world through - brace yourself - the child of Guts and Casca, with his raping of the latter tainting it with demonic powers. He still somewhat exists within him as the Moon Child, which emerges like a werewolf when the moon is out so he can find his parents and chill with them - which Griffith took advantage of to not only sink Elf Island but also kidnap Casca. Why? Because he's a fucking dick like that.
Casca[edit]
Chocolate-skinned short-haired tomboy warrior. What's not to love?
Guts's love interest and the greatest rape-bait in all the manga. Seriously, try to count how many times the girl got rape threats... (Hint: About as many as a woman playing on a public Call of Duty server) Still, a pretty badass fighter before the Eclipse and Griffith's second in command. Pretty tsundere for Guts. Then the Eclipse (and rape) happens, and she becomes insane. After the Eclipse, she becomes Guts's protégé, as he really wants to fu- for her to love him again and Guts seeks a cure for her. UPDATE : He's done it. It only took more than an actual decade, no big deal. Unfortunately she has PTSD from hell (literally!) and the very sight of Guts triggers screaming flashbacks in her... never a fucking joy in Guts's life. And now she's been kidnapped by Griffith, with her child's existence being tied to him.
Because fuck Griffith, amiright?
Zodd[edit]
A Khornate Bloodthirster, except oldschool and honorable. He sought to become an Apostle because he wanted to continue to fight and kill. Still murders lots of people but doesn't have any fun unless they can fight back. He seems to like Guts as an enemy, and even Guts tolerates him more than the other apostles (even though they're trying to kill each other). Also is tsundere for the Skull Knight because they have fought for centuries. Equal of Guts in combat and generally pretty damn bad-ass. Doesn't even need weapons in Bloodthirster-mode, in fact both times he's used against Guts was because the fights broke his sword. Has only outright lost to the Skull Knight and Griffith.
The Skull Knight[edit]
A bad-ass undead knight with a skeleton's head. He is actually a good guy, despite being just as evil looking as the monsters he fights, as he saved Guts and Casca from the Eclipse. Zodd's rival since a few hundred years. Has a pretty impressive sword, two of them in fact, though he is more sensible than Guts as his is not FUCKHUGE and he carries a shield and it is heavily implied throughout the manga that he is King Gaiseric. (Even though a longsword isn't the best weapon on horseback, who cares, he looks awesome anyway.) He is also the undead embodiment of Deus ex Machina, seeing how many times he shows up to save a character and then promptly disappear. Something which Griffith exploited to cause the world to become a shitfest, using the sword he forged from Behelits when he tried to cut him into pieces.
Slan[edit]
One of the God Hand, aka the local Chaos Gods. Not to be associated with the fat frog men from Warhammer Fantasy. A sick fuck who thrives on rape, doesn't her name remind you of something anyways?
/TG/'s RATING[edit]
FIGHTING - 10: Actual varied fighting styles and the main character waving a fuckhuge sword around. HEMA if you're familiar with it does appear in one short arch. Though given Guts wielding a sword that weighs likely more than a ton this one small section of the arch is all you get concerning historically grounded medieval combat. Then you've got the monster fights.
GURO - 9001: As one youtuber put it, "GORE!!! GORE!!! BLOOD, TITS GORE!!! GIANT ASS SWORD!!! YOU SEE THAT DEMON? WELL NO YOU DON'T BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING DEAD!!! AGH BLOOD GORE!!! AAAAUUUGHHH!!!" To be more specific you get to see people and creatures get dismembered and mutilated in all kind of fun ways.
Gayness - 9001: As is mandatory for all animu reviewed by /tg/. You've got gay rapists everywhere; Guts was even raped by one as a child, although he killed him later (charming). And then there's Griffith, who, while he isn't gay himself, appears so effeminate it's impossible not to think this. Also he fucks a rich old guy to fund his mercenary band, not to mention the movies have him thinking of Guts while he fucks a hot woman. So he's most likely bisexual.
Moraldickotry - 0.00001: Unbelievably Grimdark, and miraculously is not Edgy. Guts is shown almost without any form of moral compass, and it is glorious. Oh, a bunch of innocent little children got turned into monsters through no fault of their own? Don't care, kill 'em all and use their bodily fluids to make myself fireproof. An innocent man being beheaded to get me to come out of hiding? Watch and laugh while he dies. Wound an apostle, fill him full of crossbow bolts... slowly, and then drop a burning building on him and laugh while he burns to death? You bet! However, that's all only on the surface. Guts only acts like an asshole because the last people he cared about all got horribly killed, and most of those things are done out of pure pragmatism rather than maliciousness, since he doesn't murder people with no reason, the fairy children themselves bordered on eldritch abominations. Notably, at one point, after a girl loses her Apostle father thanks to him, he mocks her then gives her a dagger, telling her to one day come and kill him... but when he's walking away, he's shown crying, to the shock of Puck and readers. Later he gets some new friends and lightens up to place the morality more at a 5 or 8.
Lulz - 10: So many innocents die in this series, in truly hilarious manners, from completely unneeded torture by the Inquisition to mass-murder-orgy-fuckfest-massacres done by chaos-worshipping pagans. So do many villains. So do many random background people, as well as inanimate objects and plants. Even main characters aren't safe. This only begs the question: how many people still live in Midland?
Rape - 9999: Oh God, OH GOD with the rape! If there's one thing that Miura has drilled in our heads for damn sure, it's that nobody is safe from rape in this series. In fact, rape is so prevalent that you can even consider it a theme. Hell, Guts' waifu is such rape bait that three out of five guys are going to try to rape her. Most monsters will try to rape you, most people will try to rape you. In general, most things will try to rape most other things. Even Rape Horse? Especially Rape Horse (lovely).
Sickfuckery - 9001: The kingdom has a mercenary band of demonic men who march with impaled nude women as banners. You read that right. Also, remember the Daemonculaba? Guess what, someone in the Berserk Verse had a similar idea. Take a pregnant woman, dunk her inside the womb of a giant womb-demon, cue demon baby clawing its way out of her stomach so it can quickly grow into a shock trooper for the army. Repeat with entire city population.
Grievances[edit]
The author, having realized it's too boring to continue the story with only Guts, his tinkle fairy and his mentally ill waifu, decided to "soften" up the manga a little bit by introducing a loli witch name Schierke and another tinkle fairy from Peter Pan. This causes rage among the fanbase, since they believe Berserk is no longer about a manly, badass mercenary with his vengeance against his former comrade, but instead adding side stories about the loli and the shota, even making Schierke naked in front of Guts for some fan service. But since we have seen mutated children rape each other to death with wasp stingers and countless instances of rape and Casca tentacle porn, we can say the author is also a rule 34 fanboy. Besides, it's not like Guts lost his manliness anyway, since he's still the only one who gets shit done most of the time. And it's not like Schierke isn't a help, given she can stop Guts from losing his mind when using the Berserk armor.
The manga is shifting its tone from low fantasy grim dark to high fantasy Nobledark over time. This is made obvious by the tone shift after Puck reintroduction, Peekaf shit, Tower of Doom and culminating in him acquiring the broken-as-shit Chaos-tainted Power Armor. He slowly opens his heart to his new comrades, possibly ending the story in DBZesque 6-volume fighting scene. Basically Miura is moving up from Riddle of Steel, to oWoD, DnD 3.5 and finally finished in Exalted (presumably so Guts can stand a chance in the penultimate fight against the Godhand). Please remember, of course, that in Berserk, just because things are Nobledark doesn't mean things still aren't screwed for everyone, as now the world is populated by magical monsters like giants who will destroy/rape everything in their path. Mainly humans. (Anyway, remember what happened when we got attached to guts's friends, only to see them being horribly teared apart. Never get attach on berserk, is the first rule.)
It should be noted that Miura is a long time fan of shoujo genre (manga and anime aimed for girls) and his writing and art often uses the shoujo style so this really isn't a surprise to anyone.
Of course, none of these other grievances even compare with the biggest one: The long hiatuses or otherwise long periods of time between chapters. As it turns out, this is because Miura was training an entire studio of artists to take over production for him and compiling the series end notes, as Miura had a rare heart condition so he was making contingency plans in case he didn't live to finish his work.
The death of Miura[edit]
On the 6th of May 2021 (announced on the 20th of May), Miura tragically passed away. Berserk release schedule is going to be slightly slower now.
Miura died of acute aortic dissection, meaning the inner layer of his most important bloodvessel had sheered off, allowing blood to leak inbetween the walls until the artery ruptured. The condition itself is most prevelant in those 60 and older, Miura himself being only 54. With his passing, the studio focused on publishing the last chapters he was working on. About a year later, it was announced the series would resume under Studio Gaga (which was set up initially to help Miura with publishing it) and his close colleague, Kouji Mori.