when i first read this, i had to stop because back then i was still too green, i can't stand the dark art and the bleak atmosphere. but after maturing, i decide to give this another go, and dang am i regretting this decision. this is so freakishly good, and i'm just setting myself up for disappointment, waiting and waiting for new releases.

sure this gets more and more shounen, but i don't mind much. i just love the whole black vs white theme but in the opposite way. i really really want to find out how will guts take on the most beloved messianic figure in the world.

Is definitely not for anyone who can't handle gore. Anyway it's not just about that we got our main guy Guts, and he just suffers the whole time. I want him to have a happy ending but that's not this type of manga. I get that some things like Basically my point is the author wants Guts to suffer a lot, and I just hate that. I have never ever read a chapter from 1 to 300+. This is a first for me. I'm saying I didn't put this down because it was that good. All the side characters have personalities. Not all the girls get raped. Even some guys in this too. And let me just say the artwork is stunning. I have never seen such details in the faces and backgrounds. It is absolutely breath taking. Well done. Overall this is a wonderful manga series. I definitely recommend this to anyone who can stomach dark adult themes. @hijarian, I think the author did his good job by making you feel that way towards the manga.

Chapters 5 ~ 100: 2/10. really some of the worst, most boring, bland generic crap I've ever read.
Chapters ~100 - onwards: 9/10, pretty niiice.

cumulative: 7/10

...really, I only read past the horrible "first part" (if you can call like 5+ years of serialization that) because I heard some real baaaaad shit was gonna happen to the characters - and at that point hated them so hard I wanted to see that. As compensation for my wasted time.

Then, suddenly, came the ok-ish "fake elves" story line, not bad at all. And after that it picked up entirely. And got good.

If you don' have the patience (it reaaaaaally sucks, anyone not admitting it is just too in love with the later chapters), depending on your tolerance for utter crap, read VOLUME 1, THEN start anywhere from VOLUME 9 (if you want to miss nothing of any importance whatsoever) to VOLUME 14 (if you have no patience).

The volumes 2-8 have no value whatsoever. It basically consists of our hero levelling up. All you really have to know:


BTW, WARNING: somebody's circulating a CENSORED VERSION (!), all cut up for gratuitous sex and religious references (!!!). It's got the same number of chapters, but huge chunks are cut from inside them, including entire sections of plot arcs (the hookers from pagan hunters story line, a whole bunch of the inquisition stuff, etc.). If you see any 14-page chapters, you got stiffed... other hints are missing minor dialog bubbles and oversimplified translation, and characters suddenly appearing without introduction and joining right up. One culprit for circulating it is online reader "Manga Here".

... Last updated on July 27th, 2013, 9:56am

The first chapters are one of the darkest things i've ever read, it keeps the adult content and then it goes for a more popular manga as everyone says.

Not everything is bad in that change as i like the comic duo Isidro/Puck. On the other hand there's some shounen content that diminish the quality, like tha "power ranger/batman" armour, totally shounen rubish, Guts goes down from a mad and complex avenger character to a sugarcoated uncle full of love for his little friends.... the apostles getting friendly with the humans, the lack of sex (adult content), and the excess of childish or weak characters (moes everywhere)

Even so this manga it's still one of a kind, the darknes goes down, but the quality keeps pretty much the same as always and sometimes you got your share of gore.

I always like to point out the things i don't like, so with all that said i still think this is one of the best mangas ever published, and i believe a lot of people don't give a chance to Berserk precisely because the first two arcs are unbearable for them, just keep reading because you probably would like more the manga once you get past the first half, it goes from the darkness of the abbysmal nightmares to be one of the finest pieces of fantastic literature out there.

... Last updated on February 28th, 2013, 2:15pm

You can't blame Miura for introducing "pointless" characters, knowing that Guts already is the strongest human on earth.

It is not the case that he wishes to popularize this manga by ruining it, it would be stupid.
He drew this for 20 yrs, not thinking how long it takes toward the end, with increasing quality like no manga can compete, if he wishes to do things with lesser time, lesser mind, the first symptom is degradation on quality, sorry, i can't find this anywhere, it happens only in the opposite way.
My interpretation is that if he is the kind of person who trades quality for anything, he may rather trade this stupidity for longer release cycle, that is why Berserk is still in the half-way after 20 years of work.

The underlying reason on having characters who are more stpuid than Guts, is that not everyone is Guts. Still, it would be more boring if Guts fights as a lone wolf all the time.
I cant say i like the current plot development or defend anything, i just think that if you think about "what's for" all the time, you are not reading the manga.

... Last updated on January 21st, 2013, 11:56pm

First of all, I totally admit this work is very well drawn and the author definitely knows his art, he kinda draws this stuff the same amount of time that I live.

But apart from that, Berserk is absolute abomination, both literature-wise and art-wise. I completely don't understand why this manga is being compared to Bastard, there's *nothing* related between them except for the longevity.
It's clear from the very first chapters that author wants and loves to draw gore. Berserk is filled with completely unnecessary gore from start to the very last chapters and there's no end to it. To be honest, I would ban from existence any manga which has mutilated women in it, and this particular manga is all about such a things. I don't care whether the author is a sadist IRL, but please do not feed the juvenile audience (rest assured it is) with such a shit. Just ask yourself: why do we ever need to look at all this horrible sights? And more than that, it's not just rape, it's gang-rape or homosexual rape, it's not just murder, it's tortures and murder or mutilation. And all of this is drawn in such a details that I'm sure that author just wants his audience to be like him: a heartless monster accustomed to atrocities.

Story-wise, this is just a tale of revenge. Basically we have this for the freaking (almost) 25 years: a noname outcast gets into bad company and now he seeks his revenge by any means. Ones who've read the Berserk already can (probably) see that this spoiler does not even reveal anything useful! Story did not become anymore deep!

And the whole 332 chapters so far ALL we have is just Guts spilling the guts out of everything that comes for it. And yeah, while he does this, there's a bunch of people appeared which happened to stick to him by unknown reasons.

Honestly, just think about it a bit: this manga can be called a "masterpiece" only by the immoral people who loves to see a lot of gore and brutality, because nothing else is here!

In "Elfen Lied" we at least had the story of the horrors of xenophobia which lie in humans. Here we don't have even such a small amount of moral, there's just a absolutely disgusting world filled with disgusting deeds which author relentlessly throws at his audience. Bleh.

... Last updated on August 28th, 2019, 3:17pm

I have been reading Berserk since 2006 and deem it to be the best long-form comic of all time even if i consider URASAWA Naoki to be the better overall mangaka due to his wider reach and his vast amount of separate works.
Grant Morrison´s somewhat comparable seminal run on Batman is my 2nd favorite and i am stone cold serious when i say that Miura´s wildly influential bestselling masterpiece can only be rivaled by the works of William Shakespeare or Dante Alighieri as not even master Tezuka´s equally ambitious Hi no Tori (10/10) can managed to reach this epic.
The "Golden Age" arc for example featured parallels to Hamlet and the series constantly recreates European paintings to boot. My favorite part is still the "Hawk of the Millennium Empire Arc" that began in Vol.22 and the overall historical research is top notch. A lot of the characters/events featured have real life counterparts so look em up.
The whole epic further needs to be read multiple times to be fully understood due to the highly layered structure and the meticulous foreshadowing that began after the admittedly uneven "Black Swordsman" prologue. Miura began to solely focus on Berserk right thereafter which lead to an explosion in the fidelity of art and writing and the often discussed art in the post flashback volumes is lastly only inferior to Frank Quality´s much slower output in the history of the comic book medium. In the Tezuka winning Miura i trust and i can´t be the only one as Berserk´s ANN entry managed to become the highest rated series on that site! I will give one last warning that i am incapable of recommending the series to just anyone due to the unflinching focus on gore, sex and rape. These aspects are handled with meretricious care and the series inverts expectations by having a strong focus on emancipation but my warning still stand.
Even Guts himself ended up being a conflicted and not always sympathetic loner who deserves some of the suffering the chain of causality throws at him.
Miura´s output slowed down during the last decade but he is still fast if compared to A-level international artists and the stellar work speaks for itself. Berserk´s popularity only continues to grow too. Some may complain about a "lighter" tone in the later volumes but i am not sure if they read the same manga i did and i like all the later introduced teens as much as i liked the original Band of Haws. Guts himself is only in his 20s too and the Griffith focused chapter are further some of the best the manga has to offer and prove that a strong narrative doesn´t need a "hero" who always takes the center stage or constantly wins. I could have lived with a chapter or two less about the ultimately goofy pirates and one could complain that the manga could use more nudity from less appealing women to "even the scales" but these minor issues or only pebbles on the road. I have lastly written a review for all of the manga that were fully authored by the master and i can recommend the somewhat rushed first anime, which even features a better pilot than the manga, and the 2 games that were also written by Miura. The success-less later anime movie trilogy though wasn´t overseen by him and is an insult to any fan so stay way. Now pick up your sword and face destiny True Believers!
I even got a Brand of Sacrifice tattoo to prove my intelligence to Miura´s timeless masterpiece and thus look forward to the next decade of industry leading quality as the series is planned to run for about 50 volumes.

... Last updated on January 30th, 2016, 6:29am

Earlier I decided not to read it further after reading first 3 volume as they were terrible, but I am glad that I didnt followed my decession. The true interesting story starts after first 5-6 volumes.
Its one of the best seinen I have ever read. The story is well framed,characters are really well characterised except for few and the art is really well drawn (not including the starting).
So dont give up on it for it slow starting because you will surely regret that you missed such a masterpiece work.

There are a handful of mangas that are so good they provide inspiration for other mangakas to up their game and raise the quality of mangas as a whole. This is one of those mangas.

I would have given this a ten if some of the characters weren't missing some fundamental, human character traits. Of course, most mangakas make the same mistake, but I am more greatly dissapointed to see it here.

... Last updated on August 28th, 2012, 9:36pm

This manga so well rounded:
We're shown struggle, strife
And some awesome fights
Then we see tender love:
Big Damn Kisses and hugs.
There are scenes of blood and gore
Yet still we chant: more,more more
Then glimpses of a young hearts' fight
There and then my soft heart takes flight

See this manga is so awesome it makes me want to write poetry