Berserk

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Synonyms: Berserk: The Prototype

Japanese: ベルセルク

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: Unknown

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Publishing

Published: Aug 25, 1989 to ?

Genres: Action, Adventure, Award Winning, Drama, Fantasy, Horror

Themes: Gore, Military, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Animal

Authors: Miura, Kentarou (Story & Art), Studio Gaga (Art)

Statistics

Score: 9.47¹ (scored by 388,563 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1

Members: 776,993

Favorites: 136,161

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9.47

Ranked #1Popularity #1Members 776,993

MangaYoung AnimalMiura, Kentarou (Story & Art), Studio Gaga (Art)

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Synopsis

Guts, a former mercenary now known as the Black Swordsman, is out for revenge. After a tumultuous childhood, he finally finds someone he respects and believes he can trust, only to have everything fall apart when this person takes away everything important to Guts for the purpose of fulfilling his own desires. Now marked for death, Guts becomes condemned to a fate in which he is relentlessly pursued by demonic beings.

Setting out on a dreadful quest riddled with misfortune, Guts, armed with a massive sword and monstrous strength, will let nothing stop him, not even death itself, until he is finally able to take the head of the one who stripped him—and his loved one—of their humanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Included one-shot:
Volume 14: Berserk: The Prototype

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Background

Berserk won the Excellence Award at the sixth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2002. As of August 2025, over 70 million copies of the manga are in circulation.

The series has been published in English by Dark Horse Comics since November 4, 2003. It has also been released in Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, México, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey.

In May 2021, the author Kentaro Miura suddenly died at the age of 54. Chapter 364 of Berserk was published posthumously on September 10, 2021. Miura would often share details about the series' story with his childhood friend and fellow mangaka Kouji Mori. The series resumed on June 24, 2022, with Studio Gaga handling the art and Kouji Mori's supervision.

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Characters

Guts

Main

Griffith

Main

Casca

Main

Puck

Main

Schierke

Main

de Vandimion, Farnese

Main

Serpico

Main

Isidro

Main

The Skull Knight

Supporting

Judeau

Supporting

Reviews

Nov 28, 2025

LUTHFI0306

Recommended

Preliminary (376/? eps)

In my opinion, "Berserk" stands as one of the most powerful and deeply affecting manga ever created not merely because of its breathtakingly detailed artwork or its intense brutality, but because of the emotional and philosophical weight carried within its story. What makes "Berserk" unforgettable to me is the way it portrays a world drenched in violence, trauma, and despair, yet still manages to reveal a profound message about resilience, identity, and the human will to survive. At its core, "Berserk" is the story of Guts, a man who has every reason to fall apart but refuses to surrender, moving forward even when the world ...

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Apr 28, 2025

DrPatriot

Mixed Feelings

Funny

Preliminary (380/? eps)

The manga has very good art. On that alone, it would rate much higher than 6. For readers who like to sit and admire the art of each page, this manga might be a treasure trove. But for those with a quicker reading style who only glance at the art, don't expect to read the greatest manga of all time.

This manga is held back by its repetitive depictions of sexual abuse (SA). Opening a dark fantasy, a reader is prepared for terrible things like murder, torture, and SA. This manga has all three, but depicts SA eye-rollingly repetitively. When villains are introduced, they're shown ...

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Nov 12, 2025

tabbycatcircus

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (367/? eps)

I get why Berserk is at the top of MAL's manga section, but it's really only 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 legendary.

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 ugly and different from one another and aren't meant to be sexy like she is. And of course, 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, another pimps himself out and all we focus on is his trauma and regret and feeling of being dirty, but the rapes of women go on for way too long and are heavily angled to emphasize certain areas; the women are all perfect looking with no saggy tits or anything. You can argue that "b-but it portrays the brutality of the world!!" ok so why aren't all the male soldiers bishonen? Not to mention how, you know, men DO get off to the rape of women. You can't honestly argue it's meant to horrify you.
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 written, 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 man (whose character is primarily influenced by that other man). That's not a bad thing in a vacuum, but the narrative seems to paint her romance with the latter man as "true love" when in reality they're both acting as replacements for someone else (if you really analyze the scenes they're in, scenes that would remind them both of that male character they idolize, it's clear why they would think that way about each other). 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.

I also can't wrap my head around how fantasy creatures only ever seem to want to rape women and incorporeal beings also want to do the same. But this concept is as old as Genesis where male angels apparently find human women desirable enough to rape and impregnate, so you know these concepts are so clearly written by men who can't conceive of a perspective outside of their own sexuality.

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, is almost raped by an animal and also sexualized, 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.

Due to all of this, 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 for the viewer (and often also the male characters).

Guts is a well written protagonist, as likeable as someone who follows the same tired formula of "man regards other man as the most important thing in his life more than his female romance interest who regards him/both of them as her most important people." He becomes more stable as a person later on but he's really just a trauma magnet. Nothing ends up changing about his situation and he continues blindly on his clearly pointless and meaningless goal of defeating villain man. 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. I do not find value in works that regard women as lesser creatures.

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Kentarou Miura's Assistants Resume 'Berserk' Serialization, 'Holyland' Creator Kouji Mori to Supervise

The editorial department of Young Animal announced on Tuesday that the late Kentarou Miura's Berserk manga will resume serialization in the 13th issue on June ...read more

Jun 7, 2022 12:33 AM by Vindstot | Discuss (69 comments)

'Berserk' Creator Kentarou Miura Dies at 54

Prolific manga author Kentarou Miura, best known for creating Berserk, died on May 6 at 2:48 p.m. due to an acute aortic dissection. He was 54 years old. "We w...read more

May 19, 2021 9:39 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (437 comments)

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Recent Forum Discussion

Poll: Berserk Chapter 8 Discussion ( 1 2 ) KitaTsuki - Mar 5, 2011	50 replies	by sreeteja »» Dec 7, 7:25 AM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 69 Discussion KitaTsuki - Nov 4, 2011	25 replies	by iyraspusjfzifzoc »» Dec 6, 9:04 PM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 383 Discussion MegamiRem - Sep 11	32 replies	by CrimsonCW »» Dec 4, 10:13 PM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 226 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Nov 12, 2011	22 replies	by Tacitus_1 »» Dec 2, 1:44 AM
Poll: Berserk Chapter 224 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Nov 12, 2011	21 replies	by Tacitus_1 »» Dec 1, 8:57 PM

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