Anime August - How You Should Read Berserk
Or why you don’t have to skip the Black Swordsman Arc.
Welcome to Anime August, where I will dedicate this month to three pieces of anime and manga. This week, I am going to discuss Berserk and have tried to keep plot details to a minimum, because this will be a recommendation for you, not only to read it, but the order of doing so. If you think any detail is a spoiler, come back to this piece, once you’ve seen enough of it.
Manga is a relentless art form in that the creator ultimately becomes a character in his work. It’s not uncommon to hear that in building their worlds, the attention to detail that’s being applied is a significant factor in not just the comic’s execution and presenting it well enough that the coatings of its context can be fully realized. A single stencil could speak to the quality of life its author has invested in the manga, whether it’s the inhuman number of hours worked to make it possible or the artistic influences it wears on its sleeves.
Kentaro Muira is no exception to this norm and as the author of Berserk, manga is his life. In his childhood, he grew up drawing manga and helped assisted authors like Buronson of Fist of the North Star fame and Hajime No Ippo’s George Morikawa, the latter of whom let him go because he was too good at his job. In interviews publicising Berserk, he says he has a specific, yet intense schedule working on the artwork while maintaining what’s left of his overall life. Once you know any of this, almost every choice in Berserk makes a lot of sense.
Berserk is a work of art. That’s one reason why you should get into Kentaro Muira’s dark fantasy manga, in which its world is cruel, its people - from monsters to humans - are crueller and its hero is a victim of it. It centres around a black-clad swordsman named Guts, whose left eye is missing, with a cannon blaster for an arm and carries a gigantic sword that is disproportionate to any human-sized weaponry. He has one motivation; kill the Falcon of Light, Griffith, who was once his closest ally during the Wars of Midlands.
Berserk has been immensely influential in the world of anime and manga. Without Berserk, the genre of Japanese dark fantasy, with titles like Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga and Bleach would not have existed. Teenage boys with colossal swords would not be a thing. Even video games like Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XII and Elden Ring have owed a lot to Berserk, as it served as an artistic inspiration to its design.
You may wonder. How do you actually get started with reading Berserk, even when it’s at 34 volumes and is still active without its original author? The answer lies in its first chapter. The manga is, obviously, the purest distillation of Muira’s vision and, given the quantitative limitations of any of the adaptations, you’ll learn a lot more about the world of Guts in a manner that is complicated, yet subtle about how we survive in terrible places.
When you start at the first volume, Berserk does not start with the Golden Age arc; instead, it’s the Black Swordsman arc, which comes right after. We see Guts walk around and fight the apostles (demonic beings from the Astral realm that combine human and monstrous traits), one of which occurs in the first panel (to put it discreetly, let’s just say he once had… physical relations with one of them). In the midst of the journey, he saves an elf named Puck, whose role is to push back at every horrible choice he makes and be ignored at every turn. This includes Guts tormenting a child, after he kills her parents, one of them being an evil count, before murdering her as well. The arc ends, as soon as Femto the Godhand appears, filling Guts with much rage, because he has once known him as Griffith when they were part of the Band of the Hawk.
Berserk does not start off quite well. Our hero is introduced as an invincible, but destructive man consumed with hate, so even when he expresses some amount of sorrow, he is hard to like. Meanwhile, the fairy’s position as the comic relief with the moral compass doesn’t meld smoothly with the manga’s bleak tone. Fans have argued that The Black Swordsman arc remains the worst part of Berserk, but upon first impression, isolated from the manga, it remains gripping and slowly reveals that depth, as well as the consequences of Guts’ malevolence, especially when it’s internal.
The Black Swordsman arc elicits the reader to a lot of enquiries about Guts. Why is his sword so massive? Why is it that, in a sea of people that he enjoyed murdering, killing a child makes him cry? How did Guts and Griffith’s friendship fall apart? What is the weird necklace that he bought from the merchant? These questions are only evoked through re-reads after you experience the emotional weight of the Golden Age and Conviction arcs that elaborates a lot of pointers in the Black Swordsman. Then you’ll understand why Guts is the way he is; an emotionally wounded warrior who has lost everything, living in a world that has never treated him better.
This is just the beginning for Muira, as his nightmarish and cathartic artwork is one of, if not, Berserk’s greatest strengths. He is not just inspired by Fist of the North Star, but also the religious aspects of human civilisation and fanatical paintings from Western artists. When Guts first confronts Griffith, the place has suddenly transformed into a series of complicated staircases, reminiscent of Reminscent from MC Escher. The manga owes a lot to Hieronymous Bosch, to whom Muira paid homage in one of his panels with The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Garden of Earthly Delights represents the Garden of Eden and Hell, with Earthly Delights being a connecting bridge to both worlds. Almost all of Berserk’s characters are trapped in the liminal state between the Astral and Physical realms, especially when they are opened up by Griffith and his ilk. The apostles come from the Astral realm, a frightening and evil universe whose adherents torture those living in the Physical realm, marking them for sacrifice.
Guts is derived from Mad Max and Rutger Hauer’s performance as Roy in Blade Runner. Like him, both characters felt the struggle, after losing their loved ones and being oppressed by the civilisations that raised them. Hence, there’s no better option than to bring payback and eventually closure. When it comes to Guts, there’s always this sense of perseverance lurking in his journeys and much of it depends on how much humanity he has left in him. He doesn’t always believe that the toughest triumph over the weak, as long as he experiences a genuine sense of comradery, like his days in the Band of the Hawk. During this, there’s at least one person who understands Guts’s mental state and accepts not just for who he is, but what he can be.
Berserk is Sissiphilian in regaining hope in the most nihilistic events imaginable. It’s not simply about a warrior who is exceptional at welding a sword, even if it’s one that only makes the most sense to him. It’s about being confronted by a civilisation that doesn’t make sense while maintaining your dignity. As you become exposed to the war, murder, and sexual assault, it becomes something you’ll get used to because it’s inevitable in the manga, but in real life as well. Nevertheless, it’s populated by characters who are quite complex in their beliefs and philosophy. There’s a reason why Griffith inspires endless discussion about whether or not he’s a morally corrupt character (he is), but that’s what makes Berserk so seductive. It’s not in black and white, despite being physically drawn and printed that way.
Even after Muira’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2021, people still look forward to Berserk’s new chapters, despite the fact that it would never have an original ending. Others will move on if it means that Muira’s hands are not felt again. But what a lot of us, including myself, have got in return is one of the greatest tales that we could ever witness, and its value will not stop until future generations ignore it. That’s the most optimistic side of the manga and it bears repeating again. Don’t skip the Black Swordsman arc, not because it’s on par with its high standards, but because it has layers of meanings that carefully understand the human condition better, compared to any film, book or art I’ve come across.
Extra Supplements: The Many Adaptations of Berserk by Lady Emily
I like to get one thing out of the way. I have not watched any of the anime adaptations of Kentaro Muira’s Berserk in full. I’ve only seen three episodes of the 1997 adaptation, which covers the Golden Age arc, the most recognizable story in full. While it’s Anime August, I like to recommend a video essay from Lady Emily about Berserk’s adaptations. It’s highly detailed and persuasive, allowing fans who have only read the manga, a chance to check any of them out (except for one, which looks past the Golden Age arc and looks pretty bad). Lady Emily also highlights The Black Swordsman arc in a different segment and makes a lot of arguments that are quite different to mine, but come to the same conclusion.
Next (and finally) on Anime August: Why Naoki Urasawa’s Monster is a brilliant meditation on totalitarianism.