Berserk

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Berserk: The Prototype

Japanese: ベルセルク

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: Unknown

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Publishing

Published: Aug 25, 1989 to ?

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

Themes: Gore, Military, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Animal

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

Statistics

Score: 9.47¹ (scored by 372,568 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: 742,138

Favorites: 132,652

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9.47

Ranked #1Popularity #1Members 742,138

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 Excellence Award at the sixth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2002. As of September 2023, over 60 million copies of the manga are in circulation.

The series has been published in English by Dark Horse Comics since November 4, 2003. It has also been released in Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, México, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, 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. The series 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

Mar 11, 2025

LordTrixx

Recommended

Preliminary (380/? eps)

To put it succinctly, Berserk is an absolute masterpiece. It is possible my favorite piece of fiction ever made, and definitely my favorite among all anime and manga. It is perhaps the only piece of fiction which I would award such praise to despite not having an ending. Every last thing (apart from perhaps the inconsistencies between the Black Swordsman Arc and the rest of the story in terms of Guts' character) is perfect and beautiful. The character development of Guts throughout the story, from the Golden Age to the last panel drawn by Miura, is fascinating and so believable. Guts is also my favourite ...

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Aug 21, 2023

tabbycatcircus

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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Feb 3, 2025

Valinor23

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (380/? eps)

Berserk: a masterpiece at creating ever more problems without resolving anything.

Following a 30-year publication run encompassing nearly 400 chapters, this manga exhibits significant inconsistencies in quality. It seems that the author occasionally included plot points without fully considering their impact on the narrative, resulting in some forced extensions. That's quite disappointing for a manga with a monthly release schedule.

I guess you often hear that Guts, the main character, is one of the best manga characters of all time, but the truth is that he is mid. His trauma writing is mid. It is as if he is afraid of fire and only has his moments ... when he sees fire. From such a broken mind, I expect more than just reacting to things. Give me a scene where he is alone and gets a panic attack, or he suddenly bursts into tears because he cannot do this anymore, resulting in suicidal thoughts...
He is the same idiot as all these battle shonen main characters that charge into the battle without thinking.
Furthermore, he remains unconcerned with his objective, assuming his protagonist status will ensure a self-resolving outcome.
He has some good concepts, but most have fallen short because the next fight is more important.

The main cast is underwhelming. They receive their "sad" backstory, and afterward, they feel like they are just there. No interesting dialogue, nothing interesting that they do.
Also funny that they travel through a land like Mordor (Lord of the Rings), and it's like they are playing Mario Party. They don't even get into any verbal arguments. They are like NPCs forced by a game master to travel together.
How can a high fantasy like lotr portray a dangerous adventure better than this "dark" fantasy...?

Villains are not even worth talking about. It is the same thing all over again. When the main character struggles to defeat a villain, he is either saved by a specific character or, in the middle of the fight, the villain forgets the main character exists and then he is randomly one-shotted.
After that, they are no longer relevant to the story. Amazing.

The drawings are godly detailed but often result in losing impact in fight scenes because you can't see anything. The paneling is also random. Over the course of 30 years, the paneling doesn't improve, and when it does, it is stolen from other manga like "Devilman." Most of the time, it's just artwork assembled together instead of creating a good reading flow.

The worldbuilding is a mixed bag. The locations are quite well done, but their history is nonexistent. For example, there are two countries at war, and you know nothing about one of them despite its presence in the main story. The world is basic Norse mythology, and the magic system is reminiscent of a 1960s fantasy book.

It is beyond glazing that this manga has a rating of 9.4.
If you only want to read this manga because it is number one, then don't.
Just read what you want to read.

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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 380 Discussion MegamiRem - Feb 27	25 replies	by Z3abolos »» Mar 23, 1:32 PM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 365 Discussion Bellace - Jun 21, 2022	42 replies	by INoLuv »» Mar 20, 11:25 AM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 364 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Zimmm - Sep 8, 2021	227 replies	by INoLuv »» Mar 20, 11:24 AM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 379 Discussion MegamiRem - Feb 13	30 replies	by TarikKabir »» Mar 12, 2:02 PM
Did anyone else realize this AcbSnakeDemon - Mar 6	4 replies	by DayRivia »» Mar 7, 8:00 PM

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