Berserk

The following review does not contain any spoilers!

At the time of this review, I have read up to volume 40

Story:
Berserk is the forerunner of the "Dark Fantasy" genre and has thus greatly inspired game series such as "Dark Souls", "Demon's Souls" or "Elden Ring", among many others.
It is a dark, brutal story with many epic moments in which our main character Guts travels through a fantasy world and has to face many challenges. There are many tragic moments and many uncomfortable themes such as slavery, rape, war and torture. If you are very sensitive to such topics, I would not recommend the manga to you.
Even though most of the time, especially at the beginning of the manga, you have a rather depressing feeling, there are also many beautiful and indeed many comedy elements later on, in some of which even the fourth wall is broken.
Don't be confused by the first few chapters, it's meant to be thrown into the story like this, if you keep reading it will all make sense later on. Just don't start with any later chapters of the manga like some people recommend!
For many people, Berserk only consists of the Golden Age arc because it's a widely held belief that it's the best arc of a manga ever and has already been adapted into anime (1997) I personally think the arcs after that are at least as good, if not a bit better. It's definitely worth sticking with it after the Golden Age, where the characters and the world are still being introduced and in the later arcs they are further developed and, in my opinion, perfected. It's a great strength of the story that it never gets boring, even if there are quieter phases from time to time, you never know what's going to happen next and that alone keeps it constantly exciting.

Characters:
There are a handful of important characters for the story, besides our protagonist "Guts". They appear in the course of the story and join him. What I like here is that you learn the background story and motivation of each of these characters. They are continuously developed, no character stays the same - they all change in the course of the story. I'd like to emphasize how well written the antagonist "Griffith" is, but unfortunately I can't go into more detail about him for spoiler reasons.
In addition to our main characters, there are also many secondary characters that pop up from time to time in the story and they too go through an organic change, even if you don't see them that often, which is very realistic.

Art:
The drawings in this manga are very good from the beginning, but still go through an incredible evolution over the years. Even when you think the mangaka has reached his absolute drawing peak, he comes around the corner with another superbly drawn chapter and impresses you anew every time. The only tiny point of criticism I would like to make about his drawings is that you can sometimes lose track of things a little in fights or other fast-moving scenes, but if you look at the panels for longer, you can understand them relatively quickly.
The manga is mostly drawn traditionally with pen and paper up to volume 38, but from volume 39 onwards Miura switched completely to digital drawing techniques, which can be seen in the increase in detail. Many people say his assistants had to hold him back from then on, because Miura realized that he could now work on every individual small pixel of the manga. ?
Unfortunately, Kentaro Miura passed away in 2021, which is why Studio Gaga is responsible for the drawings from volume 42 onwards.
To summarize, Berserk is one of the best-drawn, if not the best-drawn manga of all time and perfectly conveys the story to the reader with its epic dark but also sometimes hopeful and funny panels.

Summary:
Berserk is a terrific dark fantasy story that covers all emotions, but still isn't for everyone. The manga is on a very high level both in terms of the story and the drawings right from the start, but still improves greatly in both respects as the number of chapters increases.