Berserk

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Berserk – Spoiler Free – Recommended

TLDR
Story – 10/10
Art – 10/10
Characters – 10/10
Enjoyment – 10/10

Story - 10/10
Berserk's story is just incredible. From the very first arcs - including, of course, the Golden Age Arc, the second and most famous arc in the entire manga - Berserk's story never lets up, showing and consolidating why it will always be an inescapable classic for any otaku. From a depressing plot with elements of comedy, dense but very easy to read, and coherent but with multiple strands, Berserk unites in itself the plurality and quality of an almost unique story. The biggest pity is that it was never finished, ... but it's a 10 for the elements available, which doesn't mean it can't get worse (although I highly doubt it).

Art - 10/10
The Master's art is exceptional from start to finish. From the incredible panels - truly mouth-watering - to the great character design, or the details of a setting that vibrates and resonates in the hands of those who appreciate it, Berserk has it all. Once again, Berserk shows why it has the rating it has.

Characters - 10/10
Perhaps even better than the story are the characters. It's impossible not to talk more carefully about Guts: by far one of the greatest masterpieces in the entire history of manga and a true labour of decades. The entire construction of his personality and all the changes he has undergone over time are proof of the delicacy, detail, ingenuity and agility of Kentauro Miura, who has crafted a character as dense and complex as he is. Of course, the quality of the characters doesn't stop at the main character: Puck, Isidro, Schierke, Farnese, Serpico, Rickert, Judeau, Griffith, Casca, Ganishka and Zodd are all memorable and add positively to the plot being woven.

Enjoyment - 10/10
Berserk is a journey. More than just a manga or a well-told story, it's a life experience. There are no words to describe the quality of the journey you embark on from the first arc to the last moments of Miura's work. The plot thickens, the characters become more complex, and the whole edifice's moral ambiguity grows stronger. All this is combined with unique artwork and some seriously incredible moments – which happen throughout the whole manga. On a more personal note, Berserk was my first manga, and will forever be a primus inter pares - along with others, of course. So thank you, Master, for everything: may the earth be light to you and your work live on in our memory. As long as there is Berserk, there will be Miura, and as long as there is memory, there will be Berserk.

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.

Can't believe this community gaslighted people into thinking that this is the best manga.

It's often praised for it's storytelling. What storytelling?

The story is just the MC vs your average goofy villain.
You can skip so many villains and the story wouldn't even change. They don't even interact with the main cast.
When they are defeated they are not relevant anymore.

The MC has more fights than most battle shonen MC's and they are so boring, generic and unnecessary.

... It's funny how people trashtalk manga like fairy tail because of their power of friendship plot armor while this "masterpiece" has it also.

The Storytelling is so good that the mangaka constantly needs this "plot" character who appears once in a while so that the story can go to the next stage.

You can also skip the first three volumes. The writing style in those volumes is reminiscent of a teenager attempting to write a dark fantasy story. Nice storytelling btw.

99% of Main cast exist only for the MC. They are just there for him to evolve. That's it.

There are so many other issues like the female character, how he draws rape & gore scene and how he uses them, non existent side characters, characters losing their brain cells because plot must go into a specific Route etc.

It's one of the biggest waste of time you can get there in manga history.
If you are a truly lonely alpha sigma male, then this manga is perfect for you.