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hi, I know nobody is going to read this but I just want to shout my controversial feelings about Berserk into the void so here I go.

More than anything else, I find that Berserk is horrifically overrated. People act like Kentaro Miura is the second coming of Jesus, but to me his work doesn't live up to the hype, and here's why:

I was initially drawn in by the admittedly very good art style in the first few chapters, especially considering they're from the late 1980's. The unusually dark themes and haunting medieval setting made it an interesting and enticing read. Because of those first few ... chapters, I thought that Berserk was brimming with potential, Unfortunately, I quickly came to the conclusion that Miura completely failed to utilize it.

It begins with the characters. As much as I want to like Guts, he's barely more than a two-dimensional trope of the "strong and silent type who ends up unwillingly collecting a rag-tag group of people who follow him". While I'm usually a big fan of these types of characters, he becomes stale very fast. He has likeable attributes, and his backstory and the Golden Age Arc make him at least somewhat interesting, but it doesn't cancel out the fact that he has next to no character development or meaningful dialogue.

The antagonist Griffith..... annoys me very much, to put it politely. He is ugly and a bad character. Griffith is given absolutely no reason for doing any of the horrible deeds that he does over the course of the story, except that ""he wants to rule his own country"". But why? I guess it doesn't really matter to Miura. He's a bad and boring antagonist and I want to punch him in the face.

In addition to being flat like Griffith, every female is barely more than a glorified sex toy, which leads me to my next point: Miura's apparent rape fetish.

Initially, the series' gore and rape was striking, because it actually seemed to serve a purpose, e.g. to show how gritty and cruel the reality of Guts' world and life is, and to illustrate how horrible the people (and monsters) inhabiting this horrific world really are, even if they hide under a pleasant facade. But as the series progresses, it becomes apparent that Miura simply likes drawing dicks very much, and enjoys seeing every female character he creates being sexually assaulted in increasingly perverse and weird scenarios (horse). As the saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing, which is the case here. Miura completely desensitizes the readers to the violence and gore and makes it lose its impact.

The action scenes also lose their appeal as the series progresses; in fact, they become downright ridiculous. Guts' sword alone is so comically large and heavy that it makes every feat he performs with it seem hilarious. The battles themselves are very rinse and repeat: Guts encounters incredibly OP enemy, Guts gets beaten within an inch of his life and injured so horrifically that it's almost funny he never seems to carry any lasting consequences, and somehow recovers to near perfect health every time. The gore and battles become boring in their predictability. Add to this the fact that some arcs are badly paced and drag painfully at times, and one has the perfect formula for underwhelming.

In conclusion, Berserk had potential, but decided to waste it on essentially becoming the boring embodiment of Kentaro Miura's rape fetish. I can't understand why it is as highly regarded as it is.