I'm putting this here because manga is a form of comic and nobody cares about the anime thread. Suck it.
It's been a few years since I read
Berserk but I've read the first 6 volumes (each equal to about a TPB for American comics ftr) quite a few times over the last decade but could never find the next in the series in physical stores, so now I'm gonna slowly buy the volumes one-by-one from Amazon. I've read pirated, online copies of most of the still continuing series as of a few years ago, but those were fan-translated and at times you could tell not by a native English speaker. Now I get to painstakingly reread
38 GODDAMN VOLUMES of one of the three best things about anime and manga. Awesome.
What is
Berserk? Well I'm glad you asked.
Berserk is a diseased combination of alternate medieval history and Lovecraftian horror where the good things are bad and the bad things can do worse than just eat you.
Berserk is also one of the most graphically violent things you'll ever read in the world of comics, because anything less wouldn't do justice to the hideously crapsack world of this book. If you tried to argue that the level of violence was gratuitous and borderline pornographic then I'd shrug lamely and tell you it works perfectly in the context of
Berserk's nihilistic atmosphere. Deal with it. If you like watching bad things happen to both good and bad people then is this the nerd IP for you. (But if you're underage and your parents catch you reading this then I was never here.)
The series revolves around Guts, a mercenary ultra-badass with a sword that makes Cloud's look like a toothpick.
He's something of a demon hunter but not as a profession or a heroic calling, he just had some bad **** happen to him and wants them all to bleed. He doesn't care about you or your demon problems, he just cares about killing the demon and if you get caught in the middle then that's your own dumbass fault. The kind of guy who'd be a terrible, 90's comic, grim 'n' gritty anti-hero, except that he's in a non-PG-13 series that gets as dark as it needs to be to justify him being such a bad bad man.
However he's fleshed out later in the series and becomes a highly engaging and sympathetic character who you can kind of understand retreating from humanity and all the pain and suffering that that brings. The 10-volume-long flashback that reveals his past from birth to the beginning of the series is harrowing to say the least, and all the more so once you see everything he'd built in his life come crashing down in the most Elder Gods way possible.
None of this would be possible though without the varied cast of demonic villains. In the world of
Berserk your average person sees about as much of the supernatural as you might expect a medieval peasant to: none. It's a harsh, brutal existence for all the same reasons it would have been miserable in the real world. But unbeknownst to the plebes and kings of
Berserk there is an unknowable cabal of demon gods secretly directing humankind to an unknown fate that is presumably hell on earth, beings who seem to have no holy counterparts to intercede on our behalf and so they ravage the Earth with impunity.
There is no hope for a better world, only a hope that you won't be sucked into the machinations of the inhuman powers that be. The demons are simply so invincible and unchallengeable that any caught in the way end up the same as any protagonist in a Lovecraft story: dead or insane.
You'd expect such villains to be two-dimensional cutouts with nothing to recommend them beyond cool designs and righteous action scenes (and there is that), but the mechanism by which they come into being is one of the best ways I've ever seen to create True Evil villains who are also engaging. Kind of can't say anything more on that without spoiling way too much, but I never expected to feel moved by a titanic, nightmare slug who eats people while their loved ones watch. Such is
Berserk. Even the horrors of the world aren't easy to categorize as good or evil, even if they are in fact explicitly Evil with a big "E".
Enter Guts. Again. Guts is a near superhuman fighter, but he's still just a frail human who can't hope to match the fiends he steps to without a second thought. He just doesn't give up. Ever. 90% of any given fight is just him getting every bone in his body broken and holding onto life by his teeth until just the right opening for him to pull some underhanded sickness out of his ass when by all rights he should be dinner already.
It's this that is the only true hope of
Berserk. Life doesn't care about you and will crush you like a bug on a whim, so the only thing you can do is cling to your human tenacity to simply survive from minute-to-minute and day-to-day, and eventually if you're lucky you'll be able to ram all of your anger and despair down the world's throat and smile while you watch the monstrosity burn. So quit bitching, hitch up your britches, and leave 'em in stitches, fa
ggot.
PS: Oh yeah, just a little something I almost forgot to add, but there's a wee bit of a... well, a rape problem with
Berserk starting somewhere around volume 10. Artist/writer Kentaro Miura sure likes to draw women being violated to an extent that can't simply be passed off as being appropriate to the plot. Not by a mile.
The only two defenses I have are that A.)
Berserk is simply not replaceable due to its quality, uniqueness, and sheer scope of the saga, so occasionally feeling quite uncomfortable for a bit is what I see as a price I'm willing to pay for brilliance, and B.) just like how the violence is gratuitous but still fits perfectly with the tone, so does the rape. It's not even bargain basement scenes of some bandits pillaging a village, it's bizarre **** like tiny bee/fairy people raping each other to death with their stingers as a game of hide-and-seek, which I don't even remember being the weirdest instance. So you'll feel uncomfortable for a cornucopia of unpleasant reasons that you might decide actually have artistic merit for all their forced shock value.
Man, I don't know, your mileage with that will absolutely vary but at least it doesn't pop up till later in the series so you'll have plenty of time to build up good will, and if you're the type to like dark, violent fantasy with a Lovecraftian bent then I promise you there will be a lot of good will. Just ****ing read it.
