manga review: Berserk

Medieval kingdoms, big swords, frenzied warriors, gore, nude, sex, intrigue, betrayal, demons, a quest for vengeance. Berserk is the encapsulation of the best parts of dark fantasy. You know how nowadays everything gets compared to Dark Souls? Even Dark Souls took heavy inspiration from it, if that is any indication for how well executed it is.

And why wouldn’t it be? If pretty images are all you care about, then you will never be disappointed as the artwork is amongst the best you can find in any manga. And despite changing slightly as years go by, it never becomes lazy and dull, as is the case with any other long-running title. Almost every frame is a painting of fine art, extremely detailed and graphical, taking hours to be drawn with attention to facial expressions, clothing and sceneries. Especially the panoramic views showing huge armies clashing are breath taking.

Obviously a big part of the charm is also the graphic depictions of people getting slaughtered in all sorts of disgusting ways, women getting raped, and demons looking like the stuff of feverish nightmares. I grew indifferent to all that over the years, since to the most part they come off as shock factor instead of maturity. It’s time to stop thinking the more fucked up something looks the more deep and thought provoking it is. All that stuff look cool, but they are B grade aesthetics for the less demanding audience.

What sets Berserk above a typical gorefest is its focus on the mentality of its characters. The world affects the characters and is affected back by them, becoming a double battlefield, one of external enemies and one of internal fears. The demons are not generic creatures of evil as they are mortals who were taken over by their desires and gave up on humanity in the name of lust and ambition. They were not born evil, they became monsters as a result of living in a cruel world where the strong can do anything they want and the weak are expendable cannon fodder. This is not something your average edgelord schlock can show properly, since over there everyone is born psychotic and acts like a maniac over first world problems.

Despite that, it still goes overboard in many cases, since anyone who is positive, cheerful, and believes in the kindness of people always ends up getting raped and murdered in the most humiliating ways. There is no counterforce to all the selfish cynicism and good-hearted people are treated as idiots who deserve to be kicked around for not wanting to be ruthless serial killers. The medieval setting sort of excuses it, but half the times it still comes off as petty for the sake of torture porn.

But you know what? This is a minor issue compared to how it’s being made for three decades and there is no ending in sight. Since the Eclipse event, the only thing I wanted to see is Guts getting his final showdown with Griffith, but chances are I am never going to get it because Miura is busy playing Idolmaster and keeps throwing more shit between them to make sure they will never meet. At this rate the creator will die of old age before completing it. I mean, the pacing was always slow and not focused on plot progression as it was on getting to know the characters or getting prolonged random battles in between. But just like it happens with everything that overstays its welcome, it eventually becomes tiresome.

I used to love seeing Guts butchering people with progressively bigger swords, but, falling victim to power creep, the stronger creatures he is facing the less dramatization there is behind the action. The typical soldiers in the early arcs were making it far easier to feel the devastation of war. When they got replaced with beasts and eventually with monsters, there’s nothing there anymore. Guts is killing abominations that have nothing humane and thus nothing relatable about them.

The story is also expanding beyond its initial premise to something much greater and multilayered. What began as a simple revenge story of one guy versus another guy, it moves away from Guts’ objective and slowly gets enriched with all sorts of extra themes, such as the intrigue of politics, the concept of faith, the origin of magic, and different dimensions overlapping each other.

Which is also an issue, since Guts is still the one defeating most of the enemies while everyone else is low level support. Despite the story expanding to include a dozen other characters and themes, it still has the same one guy doing all the work. While Guts was butchering to pieces anyone standing in his way, it was excused because he was getting the spotlight. Now a dozen other characters get some spotlight and are close to worthless in battle. How can you care about all the extra stuff thrown in there when none of them can stand on their own without Guts constantly jumping it to save them?

Not to mention the comic relief; it’s so annoying and only increases in volume as time goes on. When the story began, there were no gag characters in Guts’ team, while now half of the team is there just for making silly jokes. Despite the world getting overrun with horrible monsters, most of the depressing atmosphere of the earlier arcs is gone. Now it’s like a mindless hack and slash Dynasty Warriors videogame, where one guy is cynically killing thousands of faceless monsters before throwing in a few cheesy one-liners.

This is why the Eclipse was the peak of the story and everything after it keeps feeling less and less interesting. I didn’t give a shit about Griffith fighting that Hindu king, and the whole thing with the pirates and the mermaids was a seven year filler arc. Why do you think everyone makes fun of everything happening after the Eclipse? Because the anime adaptation was cancer CGI? No, because it didn’t have the same interest as before.

I will go as far as say the 90s anime adaptation is the best version of them all. Sure, the budget wasn’t the best, but for the material it covered, it was even better than the manga.
-It took out the unnecessary battles with filler monsters
-It kept the meaningful character interactions
-It removed Skull Knight and his plot armor
-It removed Puck and his horrible comic relief
-It stopped at the Eclipse, the best part of the whole story
-The hand-drawn still images were doing a much better job than the cancer CGI of later adaptations

Just watch that one and consider the rest mostly a waste of time and a huge disappointment consisting of terrible CGI and clang sounds.