This review contains spoilers.

When one thinks of the most famous manga of all time Kentaro Miura’s “Berserk” should not be far off from their mind. So much has been said and written. So many adaptations have come and gone. It’s a manga people are likely to continue thinking about and discussing within the community for countless years. And that is due to the fact that ultimately “Berserk” is a work that means different things to different people. We as readers have our own unique perspective on it, we find new meaning within it. What I aim to do within this review is go through various aspects of “Berserk” and offer my own impressions. I wish to share my own interpretations and my reasons for what I think makes “Berserk” the masterpiece that it is. The best place to start is with the stars themselves.

There are popular characters and then there are icons. Guts is a character who has permeated throughout the anime community to the point where people who have not read or viewed any adaptation of “Berserk” are aware of who he is. When he is first presented to the viewer he makes a very powerful impression. A somber faced force of nature clad in black carrying a massive sword with a barely concealed darkness boiling within. On first glance he could pass for a villain. Large and intimidating with the strength to mow down enemies effortlessly. And then we start to actually get to know him. Guts is not just a rage fueled powerhouse, he is something the audience likely did not anticipate. He is a victim, a man trying to hide away from his own trauma by hurling himself into a life of violence and chaos. This matters a great deal to me as I find many male protagonists don’t endure this level of trauma or if they do it is never explored in this level of detail. During the events of the Golden Age arc we see Guts struggle with finding a purpose to his life. This is something that I feel plays a massive role in what makes Guts who he is, he spent so much of his life searching for something to live for and once everything comes crumbling down he would appear to have found it. And that is revenge. His anger reached a breaking point and vowing to destroy Griffith and the apostles gave him a sense of what to do with the remaining pieces of his life. As I said earlier though he does not handle his trauma in a healthy fashion, this is something that will become a greater issue than ever before with his darkness manifesting into a force he must actively fight against. His decision to go off and face his enemies by himself has other consequences as well. Choosing revenge and violence was one thing when it was just Guts alone, but he still has Casca. I feel it would have been so easy on Miura’s part to just write it so that Guts’s revenge is top priority and the people affected by it are irrelevant. It is more emotionally challenging and interesting to show those consequences and give those people a voice. This also circles back to Guts searching for purpose. I feel that it isn’t revenge that gives him meaning, once Guts faced the possibility of losing Casca I felt he started evolving and finding a new path. He realized he had a light still burning in him from those old days and should he lose that flame he would truly become dust. This is what makes Guts feel rich and this is what keeps him from being just another macho man in a dark seinen manga. Guts is somebody that people consider to be the quintessential badass antihero. While in some respects this is a fair assessment I do think that there’s so much more to find within him. I see Guts and see a tortured soul that managed to retain who he was through all the hardship. He is a compelling character and I just can’t get enough.

I think that one of the most pleasing aspects of “Berserk” is despite a romance existing within it I was never left with the feeling our leading lady existed purely to drive that romance. Casca is established right out the gate as a woman with her own goals in life, her own reasons for being there. She doesn’t just exist so that Guts can have a woman to bed and undress. What she wants is to be the sword that leads Griffith to victory. She leads men, she fights men. Casca is very aware of how her gender effects the way she is perceived and how it holds things back for her. Through her we are shown that even if a woman is in a leadership position it does not mean the odds are stacked in her favor and her frustrations with that become our frustrations. I felt her anger and sense of longing. I really have to praise the series for treating her emotions so seriously and giving her such depth of personality. I feel like there have been many female warriors in fiction that come across as stoic or lack an identity outside of being a woman with a sword, but Casca comes at the viewer carrying a complete persona. She enters a scene and radiates an almost indescribable energy. Casca would eventually experience one of the most notorious and agonizing scenes in all of “Berserk”, an event so horrifying she would break away from reality. This suffering that she bears is something that matters though. While Guts would spend the Lost Children chapter of the Conviction arc with just Puck in tow, her pain is not forgotten. She is not left behind in the basement only to be touched upon once or twice to show Guts feeling sad. I find that far too many writers fall victim to pushing a female character off screen once she has served a specific role they designated for her, but I don’t see that in Miura’s writing. After Guts makes the promise to never abandon her again, he keeps it and we follow her as we follow Guts. Her experiences matter not because it makes Guts’s life more difficult or to show us Griffith has reached a point of no return, it matters because we care about her. Casca’s pain belongs to her above all else. She is not a prop for Guts, she is not some object Griffith broke. She is a character occupying a role in the story that exists for her.

When it comes to Griffith I find that he is a character that evokes so many different reactions out of people that I cannot really tell somebody how they should view him. I think this is Miura’s intention, I think he wanted to create a character that the reader needs to reach their own conclusions about. All I can do is explain what I see when I look at him. I look at Griffith and I see someone who could have been a better person. He could have even been a good king with Guts and Casca at his side. I do feel there is a tragedy of sorts with his character as I walked away thinking of all the lost potential to be a better man. The time for Griffith to be that has left us long ago though. The very first time we encounter him within the story is in the Black Swordsman arc wherein he has already reached his new form as Femto. We see that there is a clear difference between a person like Guts and a person like him. Griffith is then shown to us next within the Golden Age arc where we see the person he once was. While Guts on a visual level passes for a villain, Griffith at this point passes for a classic hero. Beguiling and beautiful with his long white hair and a refined nature that seems more befitting to someone above his station. There is also something questionable to him as we follow through these chapters. One can’t help but wonder if he means the things he says, in my opinion I think he’s someone that puts on a front for others. I think he needs control over how he is perceived by others. Once in a situation where he loses all control things just built upon themselves and he was brought to the lowest he could have ever been. This would then lead to him reaching a point of no return. By rejecting humanity Griffith would undergo a metamorphosis that twists him into the monster we previously encountered. Eventually he is reborn into a body that makes him within Guts’s reach. This leads to him looking more like the Griffith we once knew and yet there is a chill he sends down one’s spine that was not there previously. He’s emotionless and cold with a stare that masks a hidden terror. Griffith says nothing has changed, I find this to be posturing on his end. The Griffith we came to know through the Golden Age arc is nothing more than a memory, a shadow on the wall at best. At this current stage in the story he’s bewitching and he’s frightening. He’s a beast wearing the skin of a prince.

“Berserk” is naturally not just the story of Guts, Casca, and Griffith. There are other characters we encounter and get to know that enhance our experience. We meet Puck the elf early on in the Black Swordsman arc and his presence is something I deeply value as his comedic one liners help keep the story from slipping too far down an uncomfortably dark tone. This is even something his character admits himself. We have Farnese who goes from being a disturbed and abusive woman and grows into someone that finds a new strength through protecting Casca. We have Serpico who has an incredibly interesting back story about Farnese, revealed to be his half-sister, and evolves from someone lacking any faith in Guts to a person willing to place his trust in him. We have Isidro, a spirited young boy who wants to learn the ways of the sword from Guts and has an endearing attachment to him. There is Schierke and her elf companion Ivalera. While Ivalera and Puck provide some appreciated humor, we see Schierke start out as distrustful of the human world and begin to take on a role within the party that proves important. Once Guts starts wearing the Berserker armor it is she alone who can bring him back down to reality. She also starts teaching Farnese magic, something that will bring those characters closer and result in some fantastic development. I feel that by having all of these people around him Guts has shown a significant change in himself. To allow others to assist him in protecting Casca it meant admitting he needs others and by building meaningful relationships with them he is proving that he still hasn’t lost himself to his anguish. He is not trying to carry this weight alone anymore and drift further away. If not for those that have entered his life I feel Guts would have likely fallen to darkness long ago.

When people discuss “Berserk” a lot of what gets talked about pertains to the action, the dark elements, the violence. To someone who does not know better it would almost appear as a story in which soft feelings such as love do not exist. However what the reader is given within the manga is one of the most beautiful and emotionally charged romances out there. One of the great strengths to Guts and Casca’s romance is we see it develop naturally. It does not feel forced into the plot or rushed. We see them grow and reach a place of mutual trust and then their love takes shape. Something that makes “Berserk” feel so unique in my eyes is there is a great deal of it that is inspired by famous shojo manga, specifically “Rose of Versailles” and “Kaze to Ki no Uta”. Some have even said that “Berserk” is written like a shojo manga and this is most present within this relationship. I became very invested in their romance and it results in some of the most memorable scenes in the entire manga. Seeing them open up to one another and grow closer felt so organic and when things reach the point where we see them make love for the first time there are so many emotions at play. We see Guts become overwhelmed and reveal a side to him he’d never show anybody else followed by Casca taking him for who he is. It’s a very poignant moment that rocked me to my core. It’s pain and it’s acceptance, it’s eroticism and it’s emotion, it’s warmth and it’s love. This scene of two people who adore each other sharing what would be a fleeting moment of tenderness and intimacy before tragedy strikes was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I feel that a lesser writer would have handled this in a way where Casca’s love directly saves Guts and makes him a happier more adjusted person or that his love for her would have cured her breakdown single handedly. Instead what we get is a situation where Guts is so devoted to Casca that he ends up making the choice to stop being alone stewing in his rage and keep the most important person in his life by his side. When it reaches a point in which he finds he alone cannot save her he chooses to invite others that could help. Rather than force things so that Guts is Casca’s valiant knight Miura shows the extent of Guts’s love through him stating that it no longer matters if he is the one who heals her just as long as she is restored and happy again. This was never about a chivalrous display of a man rescuing a beautiful maiden, but about loving someone so much that you would be willing to step aside and let someone else do what you can’t. It’s one of the most emotionally powerful relationships I have seen in quite some time and it moved me.

“Berserk” naturally has plenty of other complex and interesting themes on display. There is the dichotomy of Guts and Griffith which is present even in their character designs. There are themes of fate that prove highly thought provoking. Was Griffith really destined to become Femto? Does fate want him to succeed or is fate working in Guts’s favor? I find the characters to possess a level of autonomy that makes me view them as more than pawns being pushed around by a cosmic force. There are also themes of holding onto your humanity which I feel are showcased in Guts’s arc as well as the fact that Griffith chose to abandon that side of him. Griffith found a new power by becoming Femto, however I feel Guts found a new strength within himself by consciously keeping that fire inside of him alive. Once more their dichotomy is on display. Miura is a mangaka who is working in so much into his story and I need to applaud him for it as none of it comes across as heavy handed or pretentious. There are some writers who feel as if they are hitting me in the face with their messages, but what Miura does with “Berserk” that makes it such a success is he communicates so much to his audience without having to hold their hand. We all end up reaching our own conclusions as a result of this and it makes for a very interesting conversation to say the least. One of his other great strengths that almost does not need explaining is his artwork. We see it evolve throughout the story and it becomes so highly detailed that it takes your breath away. The proof is in the pudding, all one needs to do is see the art for themselves and they’ll know exactly what I mean. He’s reached a level in his illustrations that is so impressive and rich. In my opinion the anime adaptations of “Berserk” never quite make the characters look the way they should, with a few exceptions, and I suppose that is due to the fact that Miura’s art is on such a high level that to replicate it for an anime would be far too difficult to achieve. To call the man talented would feel like a massive understatement. He is a master of his work, giving the audience a spellbinding story, jaw dropping visuals, and an overall experience you really cannot find elsewhere. “Berserk” is more than just a wildly popular manga, it is one man’s masterpiece.