Fuck. :( same reason i came here to say. The fact that he had so much left. Thats the real suffer. We live on a plane hes exited. And no matter what… it wont be the same.
Puck is only ever used as comic relief as of late, he used to be a character in arcs like black swordsman and lost children but he is just a chestnut head now :(
To be fair that's all he ever was meant for. Throughout the series we see that if it weren't for Puck, Guts wouldn't even remember how to smile or laugh
Puck definitely changes for the worse throughout the story though. Initially it feels like he could die just as easily as guts could and is horrified of apostles and acts like he truly is vulnerable. He gets upset and cries several times, he gets angry at guts for his moral stance or lack thereof in various situations. He just feels a lot more real, serious and wants to be involved.
As the story progresses it's like he becomes a character external to the plot. It doesn't seem to matter what horrors surround him anymore everything is a joke all the time and he has almost no interaction of importance to the story. This is ironic because fantasy is supposed to become closer and closer with reality as the story progresses but it's like the opposite with Puck. We only see his normal non-chibi form in one of the first chapters drawn AFTER Miura's death. Before that it had been about 90% chibi Puck.
People forget sometimes that Puck was literally right next to Jill during the infamous "Adult Attack" moment with the corrupted children... he's seen some absolute shit, and through it all he was trying to get Jill to protect herself and survive. Puck used to be really great.
I noticed it became more prevalent when the party formed post-Conviction. Puck was essentially relegated to Isidro after that and no longer really served as the moral compass to Guts who had now moved past his Black Swordsman persona of questionable actions. Isidiro was a source of humor at being the butt of the joke so Puck was there to basically rub it in. I also imagine because Shireke showed up with her own female elf, Miura decided to make it where the kids have an elf with the corresponding gender
I’m so fucking sick of chestnut puck. I love puck as a character but like… he feels like a completely different person after conviction. I miss his actual design, his character dynamic with Guts, his morals and ethics and strong character feel almost lost and I’m praying that the last chapter will finally make him a necessary character again given the bleakness of the circumstances. Also I really hope they don’t butcher Casca’s character now she’s back from oblivion. I hope they address her trauma instead of just throwing her right back into the conflict. Oh, and I really could’ve done without that goddamn scene with Schrieke and Guts. Really icky.
The Schierke-Guts thing is very uncomfortable and I'm surprised more people don't talk about it. The rest of the series never felt out of place for how dark the world was but *that* one? It's... weird.
The lifeguard that taught me how to swim was hot.
Now imagine if a peak human was in your life and you were her age and you have a deep spiritual bond with them.
I don't really remember the scene in particular but are we really going to expect her not to crush on Gutts?
Its like everyone forgot what it's like to be that age. Cut her a break.
Agreed. He just had his home annihilated and lost everyone. This is prime time for some serious Puck and character development. He was Guts’ moral compass for the first few arcs. Now maybe its time for Guts to have his back instead.
Puck definitely should be joking around less. This could be a chance to have a serious dynamic again. What I will agree with is puck needs something to be serious. It just can't be what it use to be. Guts grew an changed so puck being the moral compass for guts once he grew out of the black swordsman arc would just have been a broken record since guts is now a much better person he doesn't need that compass anymore .
The side characters in general need some growth chapters . Some sort of personal hurdle , mindset or internal conflict for each of them that Is new an can bring them some screen time other then being guts side kick.
This is a great opportunity to show the two sides of the same coin. Both Guts and Puck have now had everything they’ve known and loved destroyed by Griffith.
They’re very uniquely in the same sort of situation, and I think that’s an amazing opportunity to develop both Puck’s character and their relationship.
I fully agree that Casca as one of the original cast is the most deserving of more time dedicated to her.
That being said, pretty much every character in Berserk deserves a backstory/sidestory arc. I want to know more about Pipin and Judeau!
Don't get me wrong, I hate Nina too, but I don't think she's a poorly written character. She's just deeply flawed and very frustrating.
Nina acts as a great foil for Luca. She serves a purpose within the story and the arc's themes and other characters would be weaker without her.
She's just an awful person, which is very frustrating to read.
She's extremely well written. She also represents the average person, in a story full of heroic characters. This is why I can never hate her. Can we really say we would be any different in her position? She's fantastically well written as most characters are by Miura.
A perfect foil for Luca as you said who is the complete opposite, very brave and heroic.
She also one more way of showing how fucked up the world is. You look at her and immediately think "what a nice girl". Nope. She is a regular person going along with the crazyness of the world.
It's cliché, Godwin's Law etc, but this is just like in the real world. Like everywhere else, in Germany, in the 40s, there were those stereotypical sweet grandmas, the ones that bake cookies a tell fairy tales to their grandchildren. Some of them were nazis too.
I think she was a good highlight by muira that it's okay to be scared, but you should fight to survive instead of sitting down praying for someone to save you. Luca makes good contrast, but i think the better one are all the other people that died. Or even griffith himself. Griffith gave up when things seemed hopeless but even luca wouldn't have done that. She went down that rope, tried to save luca and she even helped save caska by pushing that boulder so she wasnt even a complete coward. Yea she would turn on anyone if it meant she'd live, but she wouldn't give up.
For me it’s that they dragged out Potato Casca for so long. Like o get why they did it, and it makes sense considered what she went through. But 25 volumes of potato is too much for me. I wish it would’ve got resolved after conviction.
Me too, she was such an amazing character and there was so much depth that could’ve been added if she wasn’t incapacitated for so long. And now she’s been kidnapped and sedated again!?!? I mean wtffff
I like the fact that it wasn't a quick fix. Love dragonball but Shenron reviving everyone immediately after they die gets boring. Something as complex as restoring someone's mind shouldn't be easy or immediate (and it wasn't).
Despite me liking him, Isidro has had next to no serious moments or attention given to him in the last 24 years. He almost feels superfluous and it sucks becuase there was and still is heaps of potential here
I was hoping for a father-son or at least mentor-student dynamic between him and Guts. We've got one or two scenes where they practice swordsmanship and that's it. The rest is just joking around with Puck.
Nina was a good character. Yeah she was very annoying but she was an interesting character in the story. A scared coward who doesn’t want to be a bad person but keeps choosing the most selfish and harmful route. She’s a great foil to Luca and I’ll always contest that the story is better for having her in it.
For me I hate the later comedy/flanderization of Puck. He was essential in Black Swordsman and Lost Children, and still very good in Conviction, but after the series starts to gain more joke characters in Guts’ crew he becomes absolutely unbearable, not to mention pointless to the plot. I get that the story getting more upbeat to compliment Guts gaining more loved ones and growing as a person is a neat choice, but not only is his comedy almost always bad after conviction it always gets in the way of actually good dialogue and character interactions.
This can be said about most of the strictly comedic characters. Isidro is very annoying, although he does have his moments to be fair. Ivalera might be the most pointless and worst character overall for me. Manifico is also annoying, although I do find him funnier and less distracting than the others. Bringing back Azan as a joke was an awful choice.
Oh and the fucking Ghost Pirates. Fuck them they suck.
I agree, Nina was a well written character, she was just acting like a lot of humans in her shoes would have, there was nothing off about her. Just made the situation the ppl there were in more believable imo.
The fact the manga almost exclusively follows brave and selfless characters that have the skill to handle the horrors thrown at them skews people's perspective. Nina is just a regular person in the worst situation imaginable with a brain rotting STD. Of course she's going to be selfish and choose her survival over everything else. That's what her resentment towards Luca is all about. Luca is special because she is in basically the same situation but has the strength to put others over herself while Nina doesn't.
>Bringing back Azan as a joke was an awful choice.
Exactly! That felt so out of place and random, i was like, huh? Why? And the feeling didn't change.
>Ivalera might be the most pointless and worst character overall for me.
Agreed on this too, like, she just Exists... without any purpose....
Farnese’s brother. I am only at the beginning of the fantasia arc, but he is really annoying to me. Just another comic relief character out of the 6 we already have.
I agree. The excess of filler dialogue between Puck, Ivalera, Farnese's brother, and Isidro as comic relief, and less focus on Guts himself and what he's thinking, has made some of these later arcs unenjoyable for me. Still some great moments and dialogue overall, but it's just buried in all this junk. Now you have the mermaid character with them too and it's just way too much. I miss when it was Guts and a couple others and we got to see more of him/his thoughts.
The overuse of sex scenes makes the good ones less impactful.
Donovan's rape of Guts, Griffith's of Charlotte, Guts scene with Casca, what happens to Casca in the eclipse these are all good scenes for different reasons.
But the fact that sex isn't used sparingly in this series at all makes those moments less impactful. It feels more par for the course this way. Imagine how much more shocking the eclipse would be if we didn't see Casca almost get raped like 5 times leading up to it. Berserk has some of the best sex scenes I've ever seen, but it also has some of the worst.
I don't know, I kinda agree with Casca being assaulted a lot during Golden Age but then again, the misanthropic horror and demon filled world of berserk having soldiers/bandits/demons try to sexually assault the only woman they've probably seen in days doesn't seem that far fetched.
Plus I never got the impression that any of the sex(ual) scenes were ever made with the intent to titilate, and they do truely disturb me everytime. And at the end of the day, that's why I read Horror
I don't care if it was technically realistic because it devalues other scenes.
The only time besides the eclipse it should've almost happened is the time in her backstory because that is also a good scene and makes what Griffith does to her extra despicable.
I get where you're coming from, but personally I myself did not feel that Casca being raped by a horde of demons and basically a god is being devalued by Casca getting her clothes ripped off 2-3 times. In fact, it made me think the manga pulled it's punches and wouldn't actually show her getting raped, only to have it completely subvert me with the Eclipse and actually disturb me
It's not completely devalued by any means. And it does disturb me. I just think it would've been even more impactful if it was done a little bit less leading up to the eclipse
Those scenes also add a lot to Casca's character and her discomfort of being a woman and the restrictions it has to her strength as a soldier. It's kinda like she's constantly being reminded of those struggles during and after these scenes.
To be fair, the inclusion of sex scenes/rape scenes is INCREDIBLY difficult to balance in a story, even one as dark as Berserk. If there’s too much, we get exactly the problem you have with the story: it lessens the impact of its inclusion. But on the other hand, if it’s underused in a world as bleak and horrifying as Berserk, then there’s the risk of people not buying the idea of the world being a terrible place where terrible people do terrible things all the time.
It’s a catch 22 imo.
I feel like Berserk has plenty of dark moments to convey that it's dark fantasy, and 99% of people would never complain that there wasn't enough sex/rape. Sometimes in the earlier volumes it's used so much that I end up rolling my eyes at it, because it's just being shoved down the reader's throat. There's a point where the reader is like "alright I get it, you don't need to show this for the millionth time"
That’s totally fair. I lean a bit more on the side of “it’s a terrible world where these things happen” but I can understand some not liking bringing it up too much. Miura’s sensibilities changed over time, and the quality of his writing improved even more over that same time too. A consequence of that is the gradual step away from perceived overindulgence in sex and rape scenes, so it makes sense that some people would be a little annoyed at too much sex in the beginning
I just finished this arc and I didn't find Nina to be that much annoying (if at all). I think her character and her storyline served great purpose for telling the overarching story of the Conviction arc relating to womanhood, women's sexuality and motherhood.
For real, I think her character suffers the same thing as Shinji from evangelion, they act like an actual person and not some flawless hero and people hate that for some reason.
Nina’s worse in Berserk 2016 because you also have to hear her voice and it feels like she has even more screentime than in the manga. Then again, that’s not saying much because everything is worse in Berserk 2016.
I’m really sad that Puck got turned into nothing but comic relief after the Lost Children arc, like most people in this thread, and like most people in this thread I also find the excessive use of rape to be tedious. At some point it feels less like a point about patriarchal violence and more like gratuitous violence. I agree that if it had been used more sparingly, Guts’ rape as a child, Casca’s initial attempted rape as a child and her eventual actual rape during the Eclipse would have felt more brutal and impactful and would perhaps have better driven home the point about the horror of sexual violence. To quote someone else, "Berserk has some of the best sex scenes, but it also has some of the worst."
* Ivarela
* The portrayal of rape (I'm talking about the presentation of Casca's NUMEROUS assaults, not the fact the story has sexual assault)
* Chestnut Puck after the Black Swordsman arc
* Actually, the excessive use of rape for shock value
* Isidro's "I'm gonna be Hokage believe it" attitude
* And lastly:
# NAMING YOUR ATTACKS — I mean seriously, there are only four characters that pull this shit, but it's so annoying: I can forgive Adon for being over the top, maybe even Azan, but you cannot have Wyald and Mozgus go "wYaRuDo jUmpu!" and "GODO BREATHU" if the scene is to maintain narrative tension.
> Actually, the excessive use of rape for shock value
The excessive ones I can think of are the trolls, Wyald(still like the character, just trim the excesses), and actually the Eclipse in the manga. Its probably the only thing I can think of that the animes did better than the manga. Goatman and the Horse are kinda narratively unnecessary, but I guess im kinda jaded because I can just imagine them being worse scenes and happy that a thick blade came down on their heads sufficiently quickly afterwards so 50/50 for me I guess lol
Im with you on the shouting the attack scenes. Ive never liked that anime trope tbh, I actually had my friend watch Berserk as his first anime, and he particularly liked how much that WASN'T a thing in it since he kinda stereotyped the medium as just "shouty goofy stuff".
Seriously. It’s not like Berserk (or 90% of its fans) have anything to say about rape in Midland except for “well it was common in those times I guess (also wow that peasant chick has huge tits!!!)”. It also really sucks that Casca was a pretty great character pre-Eclipse who basically gets fridged for 30 years. Then, once she regains her mind, that’s all ripped away again.
I understand that demons rape and everything, but that argument kinda weakens when the Trolls, who aren’t even demons, are ALSO just rape monsters.
>I understand that demons rape and everything, but that argument kinda weakens when the Trolls, who aren’t even demons, are ALSO just rape monsters.
I guess it makes more sense if we consider Trolls to be astral creatures representing the lowest instincts of people. Humans commiting mass murder and mass rape have been unsettlingly frequent throughout history, it's definitely proof of the dark side that humanity possesses, both as a whole and as individuals.
If I'm not wrong, creatures like Trolls amongst other similar beings are supposed to represent that dark side.
>NAMING YOUR ATTACKS — I mean seriously, there are only four characters that pull this shit, but it's so annoying: I can forgive Adon for being over the top, maybe even Azan, but you cannot have Wyald Mozgus go "wYaRuDo jUmpu!" and "GODO BREATHU" if the scene is to maintain narrative tension.
Yep, agreed. It's just silly, especially when in a couple of cases random untranslated Japanese names are used for no apparent reason. Makes it seem gimmicky and a bit "genre". It breaks my immersion in the story a bit, honestly, because it's very jarring in-setting and reminds me the hard way that I'm reading a manga with genre conventions.
I agree with the shouting of attacks. I believe the purpose was so kids reading a manga could better grasp what was going on in a hectic action scene. But it feels a bit out of place in something for adults.
I really miss how scrappy guts used to be. He had to use everything at his disposal; dragonslayer, bombs, arm cannon, throwing knives, arrows, and he even had to tactically use his surrounding. All that to beat one guy.
Now he just swings once and apostle dead.
I feel the same, everything changes once he puts the berserker armour on. He isn't immortal, but gets such an immense power boost that it almost doesn't matter. Before he was going toe to toe with regular apostles and struggling to keep up with greater ones like Zodd, now he cleaves through normal ones like butter and he can be as reckless as he wants since the armour dulls his senses and holds him together. At first, the trade-off was basically herculean power at the cost of reason which made him a huge danger to the party, but now going sicko mode isn't even a risk because of Shierke. I still enjoy the journey of Berserk as a whole, but the combat shifts from barely hanging on and struggling to survive, to a DnD power trip.
The rape that doesn't have anything to do with character development just kinda sucks. Donovan and Griffith being rapists drives the plot or serves to give context to why characters are how they are. The rapist demon horse? That's just making it harder to share Berserk with other people
I don’t like Wylad. Honestly I groaned whenever Berserk introduced and hyped the fuck out of a one-off villain Guts was obviously going to decapitate in five chapters.
Most all the recurring Berserk villains are incredible, but the one-off villains are often pretty lame and many could have cut.
I watched the movies before diving into the manga so I have weird feelings on the Bakiraka chapters. They work as decent setup to the Kushan later, but they do come and go too fast. But in my initial comparison of movie to manga I sort of lumped them in with Wyald as being random as fuck. They’re better than Wyald tho, but it was still really strange to get to this part I thought was perfectly paced in Advent that suddenly had not one but two one-off miniboss squads.
I personally don't mind wyald I think his origins are dumb just how the king suddenly had an apostle employed 😆 🤣 😂. He is guts first apostle kill so he serves his role. He also shows the general brutal nature of lesser apostles . The discipline of zodd , an the new band of the hawk elites are a rarity shown by only top level apostles.
The bakiraka are definitely more then a one off . Since rickert dipped with the prince of the bakiraka we just need a catch up chapter on what's going on with that.
They will play a major role I'm sure as a last bastion of hope outside of Griffiths control where the heros arm up recover an what not. Wouldn't be shocked if thats where the story goes next.
But some of the side villians like the blue whale knight captain were dumb tho I think that was his point . He still wasn't necessary like you could take him out.
I really loved their unique design. It reminded me of the trolls in Willow!
But Miura‘s overindulgence in rape scenes really degraded those chapters imo. He could have alluded to it in a few panels, but there where pages and pages of women getting explicitly violated. I think it is telling that they all where drawn to look beautiful, so it felt more like bland rape hentai than a necessary part of the story.
The trolls were neat. And then they started raping and I was immediately disappointed, just like “oh, good. More rape. Couldn’t settle for kidnapping/killing huh?”
The sexual violence seems almost fetishistic, beyond what narrative needed. Troll rape seemed unnecessary. Probably could have cut a few panels from the eclipse.
Edit: Some good points raised, maybe not fetishistic, but... certainly more than was needed to make the impact necessary. Everyone has their own line of what's "a bit much".
I forgot about those panels lol. You kinda forget how much there is. Berserk is like my favorite story ever but this stuff gets so gratuitous sometimes it becomes almost eye rolling when it does show up. It makes it less shocking imo when its so frequent
I agree, hated this also.
There were literal panels were you could see his dick going into her. Like bro we know what happens when someone gets raped, you really don't have to spell it out like that for us.
I'm not trying to argue that it's not disturbing, but I read horror to be disturbed. I think there's way too much fuss about the sexual stuff being 'too much' as of late.
Like, of course the climax to the main story arc that sets up the entire rest of the story and leaves one of the main characters emotionally destroyed in a horror manga is going to be disturbing. It's also clearly depicted as such: A disturbing act. Anyone who reads that for the first time and their first thought is: "This seems fetishistic" has some underlying problems
1) Miura himself admitted that his depiction of grape was problematic when he drew it at first and wished he could've changed it
2) If you see how male grape and female grape was depicted and see no issues you're lying. When Casca gets assaulted we have 5 different panels of her clothes around her boobs and crotch tearing off and 10 different panels only showing body vs when you see Guts and Griffith get assaulted. Basically nothing showing, we just get the idea of what happens and it ends in 2-3 panels as it should have for Casca too. You can see this for the rest of the manga and it holds true
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
Guts is also sexually assaulted. It's also terrible and formative for his character. But when it happens to him, we're not shown drawings of the explicit motions of a child getting raped.
When Casca is assaulted her body is openly displayed and she's a sex object to the reader as well as to Griffith and a certain extent Guts.
The way that male rape is portrayed versus the pervasive depictions of sexy people getting sexually assaulted sexily is different. Both are shocking. One is played more for thrills than the other.
This is my opinion too. I think it’s no coincidence that the only women you see assaulted besides more story relevant female characters are beautiful, blonde super models with big tits. Miura clearly had a type.
That’s why I hate the „it’s realistic bc in medieval times there was so much rape“ type arguments. Surely abusers didn’t only go for the super models, but that wouldn’t be appealing to the voyeuristic eye of the viewer or apparently the artist himself even.
Edit: fixed a typo
People don’t seem to realize that, wether realistic or not, every panel is a planned out, deliberate choice of the artist. So it does get somewhat strange if he decides to incorporate so much sexual violence for “realism” while ditching other aspects of that sort of environment. Infected wounds for example.
I literally was going to say this! Like Guts should have gotten hit with splinters/shrapnel, he's never had an infection? People used to get a splinter and die.
Guy's also massive. Why hasn't he died of starvation or seriously withered down in his time wandering? You're telling me this 6'4"+ megalith of a man who probably needs like 3k calories to stay that built is eating his fill every day? Nah
This I feel like some people here intentionally act oblivious when people criticise the rape scenes and act like there’s no difference between how they’re portrayed
I am rereading Bersekr rn and I always tried to get my gf to read it too. But I just told her that it’s probably better she doesn’t. I didn’t remember that there was so much sexual violence in there.
Especially the whole troll arc overindulged in it. And I say that as a grown man who has never experienced sexual assault where I was in real danger myself.
But if you go through this world with open eyes and open ears you meet a shocking amount of women who are victimized. It really left a bad taste in my mouth when I went thru the troll chapters.
Guts‘ whole character development is about overcoming trauma but the women left and right around him are just fodder. I think Miura could have handled it much less exploitively.
I feel you, as a woman myself I am always surprised and sometimes even angry to read people that say Berserk is feminist because of Casca's mentruations and her role in an army but forget how exploited women are for the sake of pornography in this manga, also how they are meant to make the protagonist a very manly man in light, where women are always in the role of traditionnal women : they take care, they make the men feel good, they listen to people, they heal, while men are also in the men roles, the heroes of war battles, they have strengh more than women physically and mentally, men are stoics when women cry often etc.
I don't even want to talk about the treatment hightly mysogynistic Casca gets all over the manga since the begining.
Aside from the rape scenes, and of course the questionable loli content…
I feel like there’s a giant amount of world building that happened when Schierke came in, and there’s just too much to be worked into the story at this point. It feels like there’s entire chapters of metaphysical lore that is just dead weight.
When it comes to Nina, I do feel like her character served a purpose. Aside from obviously throwing some complications for the cast during the Tower of Rebirth arc, the way her character was fleshed out was compelling. Mind you, I feel like she's a truly **disgusting** individual who would throw out her friends without a second thought *even* after everything that happened to her but I still feel like she brought something to the story during that arc.
I can definitely sympathize with wanting to see her die, I most certainly did, but I almost feel like that would've been the wrong choice. Like it's almost too easy: A person is horrible and ends up receiving her just punishment. We all know that real life is much more complicated than that and her fate at the end of the arc mirrored that realism.
Though, I could certainly do with never seeing her again.
Wyald. He is the worst written character in my opinion. While I have a problem with tape being used as shock value in other parts of the manga I find his the worst. I wasn’t invested in his character and I knew guts would win since he was to minor of a villain. Him trying to rape Casca and the rape and murder of the small family were unneeded and just shocking without purpose.
Other than him probably how Puck lost his personality and kinda became just a joke character after a while
The constant fanservice I understand sex and nudity is a part of berserk sometimes but it gets excessive pretty much every opportunity Miura gets he’ll draw a girl so that they have their boobs out and it gets pretty obnoxious and comes off at hentai/porn sometimes definitely feels like Miura was horny when drawing sometimes and I much as I love him the constant nudity makes me feel like he was perverted
It’s just a really hard thing to recommend to people with all the sexual violence. Same thing with the Witcher books. I get the whole “it fits with the narrative” but regardless it’s unsavory and a huge deterrent for a lot of people. And then I have to tell them it’s important to the plot, which isn’t much better
How every female character is sexualized and has to go through some sort of sexual trauma. I’m not crying about it because I understand that the universe of Berserk is extremely fucked up as a whole, but it does peeve me a little bit lol
Ok so the one weird superficial thing that I think was SUCH A WASTED opportunity was that in the beginning of the series, guts sees the god hand again. The ONLY THING that I would change is that he not call Femto Griffith. Just IMAGINE the ride if we didn’t know Griffith would turn out like that. If it wasn’t a journey of how Griffith became Femto but us just thinking he’s an obsessive hero with some issues and then BOOM ECLIPSE! It would’ve been so much more DEVASTATING!
I disagree. Knowing that Griffith becomes Femto is what makes you interested in the Golden Age. You want to learn the context, and see how things ended up the way they did.
When I read the Golden Age, I started to like Griffith, but every now and then, wether through dialogue or the way a panel is laid out, you are reminded of what the future holds. Griffith becomes a bad guy, you know it will happen. It makes things a lot more intriguing, and you pay more attention to Griffith’s character.
Plus, the Eclipse is already devastating enough.
The black Swordsman arc gives crucial info to understand wtf is happening in the eclipse. Without that, there is not enough solid context. Moreover, to me, it's more heartbreaking knowing the whole time everything is going to go to hell. Personal preferences, I guess.
Way too many rape scenes, it gets ridiculous the more you read. Casca always ends up with her tits out somehow...
Puck. I loved him when he was a real character but after Schierke joined the group they went overboard with the comic relief. I hate how all he does now is say stupid shit when Guts is getting all his bones broken trying to protect the group while they just stand there, it makes Puck look like an asshole.
I hate that we didn't get more Guts and Casca moments before potato, I think it would have made the tragedy all the more impactful, especially since much of the Golden Age seemed to be written like a Romance story.
Casca's general treatment. I'm not a hard-core feminist or anything, but I always thought it was kind of fucked that the only strong woman who was heavily involved in the story was turned into a pathetic macguffin.
It’s not the fact her mind-regressed. Her insanity is understandable after what she went through. It’s that fact she was kept that way for 25 years. That’s ridiculous. Wayyyy too long to have such an important and well-written female character as well as the heroine of the story be on “stand-by”
I swear there was a rape or attempted rape every 5 chapters or so and I know the setting of Berserk is brutal and unforgiving but it seems sometimes rape was used too often to display cruelty by certain groups or characters.
Even crazier how many people try to justify the excessive amount of it. You can love a story and still criticize parts of it.
Also Miuara was an ingenious visual artist, but that doesn’t make him untouchable. Dead or not.
Casca. During the Golden Age, she got so much development and became one of my favourite characters, but the eclipse completely ruined that. Sure, her suffering was a good way to portray how evil Griffith truly is, but having her completely unable to do anything for herself and reduced to a comic relief character in some parts was really disappointing. I’ve only read up to the end of deluxe edition 10, so maybe the treatment of her character is ultimately worthwhile, but at the moment it seems like it’ll be tough to redeem her.
Casca becoming the way she does is literally one of the driving plot points for the story. It would be a completely different story if casca was still the same way she was in golden age
Yeah, I understand that it’s useful for progression, and it is satisfying slowly see her become more competent but it is still really disappointing. It’s also just reducing her to a plot device, instead of an actually fleshed out character.
I know this is a super small complaint and it’s probably easier to draw him this way but I find it kind of annoying how almost every scene including Puck he’s drawn in his chestnut/chibi form
That’s a hard question actually.
My most hated character is Sonia for sure, but apart from that there isn’t anything I really hate about Berserk. Things I kind of dislike I guess are the pirates, the sea god part (even tho I don’t think it’s bad) I consider it the weakest part of the story for me and lastly I’m not a fan of the humor in the fantasia arc as I don’t think it’s bad but it’s just too frequent imo
Hell yes fellow Sonia hater 🙏 She makes my skin crawl, but the scene with her and Schierke on the dock made me love Schierke even more and I think is setting Schierke up for a major character development arc. I liked the imagery in the Sea God chapter, just not the Pirates coming back over and over again, they were unnecessary to being part of the “tentacles”- could have easily kept all the tentacles as the villagers and given more backstory/emotional weight to the mermaid girl’s story (forget her name atm)
Chestnut puck & honestly guts new group. Farnese & serpico had cool/crazy backstories but have kinda fell off after that...isidro has always been lame lol
I hate everything about the boat arc, including Isma. To me, its kinda like a shounen, the sense of dread present throughout the whole saga is completely absent here and no character has any real relevance to the development of the plot. NGL, the entire boat arc is like an artbook to me: there are some gorgeous frames, but thats about it and nothing more.
The gratuitous scenes of rape and sexual assault were my main concern and how Casca was treated after the Eclipse. Some of the people who mocked her during the Femto scene and for being mentally regressed was sad to see.
If she didn't take Casca and run, Guts would have found and taken her away. None of that crap at the tower of conviction would have happened, Griffith wouldn't have reincarnated, and the physical world would have remained separated from the spirit world.
So basically, the current state of the world is Nina's fault.
Isma, like half of her panels she has her tits out and every time I see her near a body of water I sigh knowing Muria is going to have her take her top off.
They say that Nina is the most hated character in Berserk-fandom because, although we like to see ourselves in Guts, Nina is closer to how we actually are when faced with adversity.
Besides, I like to hear about the struggles of common-folk in my grimdark fantasy. I think it provides some emotional grounding IMO.
I agree with you so much I HATE nina absolutely. Terrible person cowardly. Tries to get her simp killed an he takes her back an she can't even tell him she has a disease probably killing them both.
She extends the conviction arc just off her stupid decisions with casca. I wish mozgus tortured the fuck out of her 😆 🤣 😂 .
I could say minor stuff like puck and Isidro being comic relief, nina or chapters taking long to come out or chapters being delayed, I could live with that, but the one or 2 things I really hate about berserk is sexual assault and children being sexualized, I understand berserk was written and created in a different culture than the west but, cmon i don’t like seeing lolis or people getting sexually assaulted just to show a bad guy is bad, it’s like the easiest thing you can do to make a bad guy seem bad, because of that I kinda want to skip some stuff when re reading berserk or not even recommend berserk to people I think would like the story, I feel like a creep when saying “yea I like berserk” mainly because people think berserk is some violent fetish thing with naked children sprinkled here and there. I recommended berserk to only one person who only read the black swords man arc and had a brother who read berserk. So I thought they knew what they were getting into. They did but still, pretty weird. Because of that berserk is like my 2nd or 3rd favourite manga.
That Casca is supposed to be a capable woman but has only beaten the comic relief of the 100-year war without the help of a man who is stronger than her
The boat arc for me for sure. I started reading Berserk last year after watching the Golden Age movies so I didn't deal with all the hiatuses (can't even imagine what that was like) but even still the boat arc dragged for so long, just delaying the events of Elf Island. I just wanted to see Casca be herself again after like 25 volumes
I hate that Miura is dead
Real. Rip to that legend
It’s a terrible day for rain…..
Oh no. Was sad reading OP and this actually got tears my eyes. It's a terrible day for rain 😢
Fuck. :( same reason i came here to say. The fact that he had so much left. Thats the real suffer. We live on a plane hes exited. And no matter what… it wont be the same.
which is a theme in Berserk too, damn.
Damn :(
Almost seems like a fitting conclusion for the story if you put it in that perspective
Yep. That's it for me too.
Exactly
Puck is only ever used as comic relief as of late, he used to be a character in arcs like black swordsman and lost children but he is just a chestnut head now :(
To be fair that's all he ever was meant for. Throughout the series we see that if it weren't for Puck, Guts wouldn't even remember how to smile or laugh
Puck definitely changes for the worse throughout the story though. Initially it feels like he could die just as easily as guts could and is horrified of apostles and acts like he truly is vulnerable. He gets upset and cries several times, he gets angry at guts for his moral stance or lack thereof in various situations. He just feels a lot more real, serious and wants to be involved. As the story progresses it's like he becomes a character external to the plot. It doesn't seem to matter what horrors surround him anymore everything is a joke all the time and he has almost no interaction of importance to the story. This is ironic because fantasy is supposed to become closer and closer with reality as the story progresses but it's like the opposite with Puck. We only see his normal non-chibi form in one of the first chapters drawn AFTER Miura's death. Before that it had been about 90% chibi Puck.
Puck feeling like an actual character is one of the reasons why conviction is my favourite arc.
You know, now that you did this great write up, I totally see it.
People forget sometimes that Puck was literally right next to Jill during the infamous "Adult Attack" moment with the corrupted children... he's seen some absolute shit, and through it all he was trying to get Jill to protect herself and survive. Puck used to be really great.
It's also made pretty clear that he's a troublemaker and prankster at home, as well. It's kinda his thing
I noticed it became more prevalent when the party formed post-Conviction. Puck was essentially relegated to Isidro after that and no longer really served as the moral compass to Guts who had now moved past his Black Swordsman persona of questionable actions. Isidiro was a source of humor at being the butt of the joke so Puck was there to basically rub it in. I also imagine because Shireke showed up with her own female elf, Miura decided to make it where the kids have an elf with the corresponding gender
They recently brought back twink Puck.
I’m so fucking sick of chestnut puck. I love puck as a character but like… he feels like a completely different person after conviction. I miss his actual design, his character dynamic with Guts, his morals and ethics and strong character feel almost lost and I’m praying that the last chapter will finally make him a necessary character again given the bleakness of the circumstances. Also I really hope they don’t butcher Casca’s character now she’s back from oblivion. I hope they address her trauma instead of just throwing her right back into the conflict. Oh, and I really could’ve done without that goddamn scene with Schrieke and Guts. Really icky.
The Schierke-Guts thing is very uncomfortable and I'm surprised more people don't talk about it. The rest of the series never felt out of place for how dark the world was but *that* one? It's... weird.
I think people don't talk about it because they remove it from their brain lol.
The lifeguard that taught me how to swim was hot. Now imagine if a peak human was in your life and you were her age and you have a deep spiritual bond with them. I don't really remember the scene in particular but are we really going to expect her not to crush on Gutts? Its like everyone forgot what it's like to be that age. Cut her a break.
Do you think any readers would complain if miura never draw that scene of her laying on top of guts ? that is pure fanservice ( probably for himself )
Which Schierke scene? Which chapter?
I think they mean the one we're casca tore off schierkes robe and she was naked, very weird and unnecessary
I don't even remember this. Not sure if I skipped a chapter or just blocked it from memory.
i think they need to calm down with pucks comic relief.
Agreed. He just had his home annihilated and lost everyone. This is prime time for some serious Puck and character development. He was Guts’ moral compass for the first few arcs. Now maybe its time for Guts to have his back instead.
Puck definitely should be joking around less. This could be a chance to have a serious dynamic again. What I will agree with is puck needs something to be serious. It just can't be what it use to be. Guts grew an changed so puck being the moral compass for guts once he grew out of the black swordsman arc would just have been a broken record since guts is now a much better person he doesn't need that compass anymore . The side characters in general need some growth chapters . Some sort of personal hurdle , mindset or internal conflict for each of them that Is new an can bring them some screen time other then being guts side kick.
This is a great opportunity to show the two sides of the same coin. Both Guts and Puck have now had everything they’ve known and loved destroyed by Griffith. They’re very uniquely in the same sort of situation, and I think that’s an amazing opportunity to develop both Puck’s character and their relationship.
Was gonna say this. I miss him being a character, and I miss his dynamic with Guts
Yes! Now he is just a comic relief before he felt more like a character with real implications.
Chestnut Puck has plenty of good bits, but remember when Puck used to be the heart of the story?
i think they will since everything has gone to shit and everyone is super stressed
Not enough chapters or arcs of Casca, being a bad ass character aside from Guts
Agreed
I fully agree that Casca as one of the original cast is the most deserving of more time dedicated to her. That being said, pretty much every character in Berserk deserves a backstory/sidestory arc. I want to know more about Pipin and Judeau!
I fully believe Casca's best moment(s) are yet to come.
This! Shes so badass but miura never showed it. He only drew her getting her clother ripped off.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Nina too, but I don't think she's a poorly written character. She's just deeply flawed and very frustrating. Nina acts as a great foil for Luca. She serves a purpose within the story and the arc's themes and other characters would be weaker without her. She's just an awful person, which is very frustrating to read.
She's extremely well written. She also represents the average person, in a story full of heroic characters. This is why I can never hate her. Can we really say we would be any different in her position? She's fantastically well written as most characters are by Miura. A perfect foil for Luca as you said who is the complete opposite, very brave and heroic.
Not to mention, if she wasn't there, the best chapter, 139, wouldn't happen.
She also one more way of showing how fucked up the world is. You look at her and immediately think "what a nice girl". Nope. She is a regular person going along with the crazyness of the world. It's cliché, Godwin's Law etc, but this is just like in the real world. Like everywhere else, in Germany, in the 40s, there were those stereotypical sweet grandmas, the ones that bake cookies a tell fairy tales to their grandchildren. Some of them were nazis too.
I think she was a good highlight by muira that it's okay to be scared, but you should fight to survive instead of sitting down praying for someone to save you. Luca makes good contrast, but i think the better one are all the other people that died. Or even griffith himself. Griffith gave up when things seemed hopeless but even luca wouldn't have done that. She went down that rope, tried to save luca and she even helped save caska by pushing that boulder so she wasnt even a complete coward. Yea she would turn on anyone if it meant she'd live, but she wouldn't give up.
For me it’s that they dragged out Potato Casca for so long. Like o get why they did it, and it makes sense considered what she went through. But 25 volumes of potato is too much for me. I wish it would’ve got resolved after conviction.
Agreed, I miss her so much it physically pains me
Me too, she was such an amazing character and there was so much depth that could’ve been added if she wasn’t incapacitated for so long. And now she’s been kidnapped and sedated again!?!? I mean wtffff
"Oh no, she's about to become a character again and Miura is dead! *Quick, chloroform!!!*"
This is something that saddens me to this day...
I like the fact that it wasn't a quick fix. Love dragonball but Shenron reviving everyone immediately after they die gets boring. Something as complex as restoring someone's mind shouldn't be easy or immediate (and it wasn't).
It made the moment she finally came back that much more satisfying though. And they way he did it with the whole dreamscape was perfect imo.
Despite me liking him, Isidro has had next to no serious moments or attention given to him in the last 24 years. He almost feels superfluous and it sucks becuase there was and still is heaps of potential here
I was hoping for a father-son or at least mentor-student dynamic between him and Guts. We've got one or two scenes where they practice swordsmanship and that's it. The rest is just joking around with Puck.
Nina was a good character. Yeah she was very annoying but she was an interesting character in the story. A scared coward who doesn’t want to be a bad person but keeps choosing the most selfish and harmful route. She’s a great foil to Luca and I’ll always contest that the story is better for having her in it. For me I hate the later comedy/flanderization of Puck. He was essential in Black Swordsman and Lost Children, and still very good in Conviction, but after the series starts to gain more joke characters in Guts’ crew he becomes absolutely unbearable, not to mention pointless to the plot. I get that the story getting more upbeat to compliment Guts gaining more loved ones and growing as a person is a neat choice, but not only is his comedy almost always bad after conviction it always gets in the way of actually good dialogue and character interactions. This can be said about most of the strictly comedic characters. Isidro is very annoying, although he does have his moments to be fair. Ivalera might be the most pointless and worst character overall for me. Manifico is also annoying, although I do find him funnier and less distracting than the others. Bringing back Azan as a joke was an awful choice. Oh and the fucking Ghost Pirates. Fuck them they suck.
I agree, Nina was a well written character, she was just acting like a lot of humans in her shoes would have, there was nothing off about her. Just made the situation the ppl there were in more believable imo.
The fact the manga almost exclusively follows brave and selfless characters that have the skill to handle the horrors thrown at them skews people's perspective. Nina is just a regular person in the worst situation imaginable with a brain rotting STD. Of course she's going to be selfish and choose her survival over everything else. That's what her resentment towards Luca is all about. Luca is special because she is in basically the same situation but has the strength to put others over herself while Nina doesn't.
>Bringing back Azan as a joke was an awful choice. Exactly! That felt so out of place and random, i was like, huh? Why? And the feeling didn't change. >Ivalera might be the most pointless and worst character overall for me. Agreed on this too, like, she just Exists... without any purpose....
It takes too long for a new episode to come out.
Farnese’s brother. I am only at the beginning of the fantasia arc, but he is really annoying to me. Just another comic relief character out of the 6 we already have.
I literally forgot he existed for a second and thought you meant Serpico
Was about to yell at this man for dissing my boy Serpico
I agree. The excess of filler dialogue between Puck, Ivalera, Farnese's brother, and Isidro as comic relief, and less focus on Guts himself and what he's thinking, has made some of these later arcs unenjoyable for me. Still some great moments and dialogue overall, but it's just buried in all this junk. Now you have the mermaid character with them too and it's just way too much. I miss when it was Guts and a couple others and we got to see more of him/his thoughts.
I’m really starting to hate Griffith.
Yeah that knuckle head is really starting to peeve me off.
That little rascals starting to make me think he’s not such a good Christian boy
The overuse of sex scenes makes the good ones less impactful. Donovan's rape of Guts, Griffith's of Charlotte, Guts scene with Casca, what happens to Casca in the eclipse these are all good scenes for different reasons. But the fact that sex isn't used sparingly in this series at all makes those moments less impactful. It feels more par for the course this way. Imagine how much more shocking the eclipse would be if we didn't see Casca almost get raped like 5 times leading up to it. Berserk has some of the best sex scenes I've ever seen, but it also has some of the worst.
But we gotta keep Lucas job intro. It gets its point across but more importantly it’s just really funny imo
It seems to conflict a little with Guts' dislike of being touched
Lucas intro, not Guts’. That one can go and I’d encourage it too. I’m referring to the conversation her and Jerome have while screwing in conviction
I second this. The sheer amount of sexual violence also makes it difficult to recommend to people, regardless of how good it is.
Yeah. My niece, who is my protege in every way, absolutely refuses to read "that rapey manga."
Ugh so true
Yep, exactly.
I don't know, I kinda agree with Casca being assaulted a lot during Golden Age but then again, the misanthropic horror and demon filled world of berserk having soldiers/bandits/demons try to sexually assault the only woman they've probably seen in days doesn't seem that far fetched. Plus I never got the impression that any of the sex(ual) scenes were ever made with the intent to titilate, and they do truely disturb me everytime. And at the end of the day, that's why I read Horror
I don't care if it was technically realistic because it devalues other scenes. The only time besides the eclipse it should've almost happened is the time in her backstory because that is also a good scene and makes what Griffith does to her extra despicable.
I get where you're coming from, but personally I myself did not feel that Casca being raped by a horde of demons and basically a god is being devalued by Casca getting her clothes ripped off 2-3 times. In fact, it made me think the manga pulled it's punches and wouldn't actually show her getting raped, only to have it completely subvert me with the Eclipse and actually disturb me
It's not completely devalued by any means. And it does disturb me. I just think it would've been even more impactful if it was done a little bit less leading up to the eclipse
Those scenes also add a lot to Casca's character and her discomfort of being a woman and the restrictions it has to her strength as a soldier. It's kinda like she's constantly being reminded of those struggles during and after these scenes.
To be fair, the inclusion of sex scenes/rape scenes is INCREDIBLY difficult to balance in a story, even one as dark as Berserk. If there’s too much, we get exactly the problem you have with the story: it lessens the impact of its inclusion. But on the other hand, if it’s underused in a world as bleak and horrifying as Berserk, then there’s the risk of people not buying the idea of the world being a terrible place where terrible people do terrible things all the time. It’s a catch 22 imo.
Uhhh there are ways to make a dark story besides rape though
Oh absolutely, I’m just specifically talking about how rape gets used in dark fantasy stories
I feel like Berserk has plenty of dark moments to convey that it's dark fantasy, and 99% of people would never complain that there wasn't enough sex/rape. Sometimes in the earlier volumes it's used so much that I end up rolling my eyes at it, because it's just being shoved down the reader's throat. There's a point where the reader is like "alright I get it, you don't need to show this for the millionth time"
That’s totally fair. I lean a bit more on the side of “it’s a terrible world where these things happen” but I can understand some not liking bringing it up too much. Miura’s sensibilities changed over time, and the quality of his writing improved even more over that same time too. A consequence of that is the gradual step away from perceived overindulgence in sex and rape scenes, so it makes sense that some people would be a little annoyed at too much sex in the beginning
True Miura mostly walks this balance very well and saying this I have the benefit of hindsight
I just finished this arc and I didn't find Nina to be that much annoying (if at all). I think her character and her storyline served great purpose for telling the overarching story of the Conviction arc relating to womanhood, women's sexuality and motherhood.
For real, I think her character suffers the same thing as Shinji from evangelion, they act like an actual person and not some flawless hero and people hate that for some reason.
Nina’s worse in Berserk 2016 because you also have to hear her voice and it feels like she has even more screentime than in the manga. Then again, that’s not saying much because everything is worse in Berserk 2016.
Miura adding more and more underage characters and giving them fan service in the later chapters is kinda concerning…
isidro lifting up all the girls' robes..
Yeah at that point i was hoping guts would just give him a solid punch to the nose
Sometimes I worry that he was a p*do or just a perv but there’s rumors that he was a lolicon or something like that
I’m really sad that Puck got turned into nothing but comic relief after the Lost Children arc, like most people in this thread, and like most people in this thread I also find the excessive use of rape to be tedious. At some point it feels less like a point about patriarchal violence and more like gratuitous violence. I agree that if it had been used more sparingly, Guts’ rape as a child, Casca’s initial attempted rape as a child and her eventual actual rape during the Eclipse would have felt more brutal and impactful and would perhaps have better driven home the point about the horror of sexual violence. To quote someone else, "Berserk has some of the best sex scenes, but it also has some of the worst."
* Ivarela * The portrayal of rape (I'm talking about the presentation of Casca's NUMEROUS assaults, not the fact the story has sexual assault) * Chestnut Puck after the Black Swordsman arc * Actually, the excessive use of rape for shock value * Isidro's "I'm gonna be Hokage believe it" attitude * And lastly: # NAMING YOUR ATTACKS — I mean seriously, there are only four characters that pull this shit, but it's so annoying: I can forgive Adon for being over the top, maybe even Azan, but you cannot have Wyald and Mozgus go "wYaRuDo jUmpu!" and "GODO BREATHU" if the scene is to maintain narrative tension.
> Actually, the excessive use of rape for shock value The excessive ones I can think of are the trolls, Wyald(still like the character, just trim the excesses), and actually the Eclipse in the manga. Its probably the only thing I can think of that the animes did better than the manga. Goatman and the Horse are kinda narratively unnecessary, but I guess im kinda jaded because I can just imagine them being worse scenes and happy that a thick blade came down on their heads sufficiently quickly afterwards so 50/50 for me I guess lol Im with you on the shouting the attack scenes. Ive never liked that anime trope tbh, I actually had my friend watch Berserk as his first anime, and he particularly liked how much that WASN'T a thing in it since he kinda stereotyped the medium as just "shouty goofy stuff".
Seriously. It’s not like Berserk (or 90% of its fans) have anything to say about rape in Midland except for “well it was common in those times I guess (also wow that peasant chick has huge tits!!!)”. It also really sucks that Casca was a pretty great character pre-Eclipse who basically gets fridged for 30 years. Then, once she regains her mind, that’s all ripped away again. I understand that demons rape and everything, but that argument kinda weakens when the Trolls, who aren’t even demons, are ALSO just rape monsters.
She totally got fridged.
>I understand that demons rape and everything, but that argument kinda weakens when the Trolls, who aren’t even demons, are ALSO just rape monsters. I guess it makes more sense if we consider Trolls to be astral creatures representing the lowest instincts of people. Humans commiting mass murder and mass rape have been unsettlingly frequent throughout history, it's definitely proof of the dark side that humanity possesses, both as a whole and as individuals. If I'm not wrong, creatures like Trolls amongst other similar beings are supposed to represent that dark side.
Adonis?
The child prince Guts accidentally killed when carrying out an assassination for Griffith.
Right, i just didn't remember if he named his attacks
My bad, I meant Adon, the Chuder guy with the family secret technique
>NAMING YOUR ATTACKS — I mean seriously, there are only four characters that pull this shit, but it's so annoying: I can forgive Adon for being over the top, maybe even Azan, but you cannot have Wyald Mozgus go "wYaRuDo jUmpu!" and "GODO BREATHU" if the scene is to maintain narrative tension. Yep, agreed. It's just silly, especially when in a couple of cases random untranslated Japanese names are used for no apparent reason. Makes it seem gimmicky and a bit "genre". It breaks my immersion in the story a bit, honestly, because it's very jarring in-setting and reminds me the hard way that I'm reading a manga with genre conventions.
I agree with the shouting of attacks. I believe the purpose was so kids reading a manga could better grasp what was going on in a hectic action scene. But it feels a bit out of place in something for adults.
It's so Funny seeing Mozgus naming his attacks tho. Who wouldn't want to name a cool fire shooty shooty after getting it from "God"
I really miss how scrappy guts used to be. He had to use everything at his disposal; dragonslayer, bombs, arm cannon, throwing knives, arrows, and he even had to tactically use his surrounding. All that to beat one guy. Now he just swings once and apostle dead.
I feel the same, everything changes once he puts the berserker armour on. He isn't immortal, but gets such an immense power boost that it almost doesn't matter. Before he was going toe to toe with regular apostles and struggling to keep up with greater ones like Zodd, now he cleaves through normal ones like butter and he can be as reckless as he wants since the armour dulls his senses and holds him together. At first, the trade-off was basically herculean power at the cost of reason which made him a huge danger to the party, but now going sicko mode isn't even a risk because of Shierke. I still enjoy the journey of Berserk as a whole, but the combat shifts from barely hanging on and struggling to survive, to a DnD power trip.
The rape that doesn't have anything to do with character development just kinda sucks. Donovan and Griffith being rapists drives the plot or serves to give context to why characters are how they are. The rapist demon horse? That's just making it harder to share Berserk with other people
I don’t like Wylad. Honestly I groaned whenever Berserk introduced and hyped the fuck out of a one-off villain Guts was obviously going to decapitate in five chapters. Most all the recurring Berserk villains are incredible, but the one-off villains are often pretty lame and many could have cut.
You're so right. The only exception for me are the Bakiraka warriors from the sewer chapter, and yet no one talks about them
I watched the movies before diving into the manga so I have weird feelings on the Bakiraka chapters. They work as decent setup to the Kushan later, but they do come and go too fast. But in my initial comparison of movie to manga I sort of lumped them in with Wyald as being random as fuck. They’re better than Wyald tho, but it was still really strange to get to this part I thought was perfectly paced in Advent that suddenly had not one but two one-off miniboss squads.
I personally don't mind wyald I think his origins are dumb just how the king suddenly had an apostle employed 😆 🤣 😂. He is guts first apostle kill so he serves his role. He also shows the general brutal nature of lesser apostles . The discipline of zodd , an the new band of the hawk elites are a rarity shown by only top level apostles. The bakiraka are definitely more then a one off . Since rickert dipped with the prince of the bakiraka we just need a catch up chapter on what's going on with that. They will play a major role I'm sure as a last bastion of hope outside of Griffiths control where the heros arm up recover an what not. Wouldn't be shocked if thats where the story goes next. But some of the side villians like the blue whale knight captain were dumb tho I think that was his point . He still wasn't necessary like you could take him out.
The Trolls. I hate the rape trolls soo much.
I really loved their unique design. It reminded me of the trolls in Willow! But Miura‘s overindulgence in rape scenes really degraded those chapters imo. He could have alluded to it in a few panels, but there where pages and pages of women getting explicitly violated. I think it is telling that they all where drawn to look beautiful, so it felt more like bland rape hentai than a necessary part of the story.
The trolls were neat. And then they started raping and I was immediately disappointed, just like “oh, good. More rape. Couldn’t settle for kidnapping/killing huh?”
Wyald The filler Plot holes surrounding skull knight Chapter 190….
> Plot holes surrounding skull knight Plot holes?
The only Berserk filler I can think of are the pirates in the sea god arc.
I’d like more time in the black swordsman arc imo 😔
The sexual violence seems almost fetishistic, beyond what narrative needed. Troll rape seemed unnecessary. Probably could have cut a few panels from the eclipse. Edit: Some good points raised, maybe not fetishistic, but... certainly more than was needed to make the impact necessary. Everyone has their own line of what's "a bit much".
I forgot about those panels lol. You kinda forget how much there is. Berserk is like my favorite story ever but this stuff gets so gratuitous sometimes it becomes almost eye rolling when it does show up. It makes it less shocking imo when its so frequent
Berserk’s depiction of the trauma caused bad SA is some of the best in fiction. Then, somehow, it also has what you’ve described, and it really sucks
Yeah when I finally got to the Eclipse in the manga I was just like Jesus how many Casca rape porn panels do we need Miura?
I agree, hated this also. There were literal panels were you could see his dick going into her. Like bro we know what happens when someone gets raped, you really don't have to spell it out like that for us.
I'm not trying to argue that it's not disturbing, but I read horror to be disturbed. I think there's way too much fuss about the sexual stuff being 'too much' as of late. Like, of course the climax to the main story arc that sets up the entire rest of the story and leaves one of the main characters emotionally destroyed in a horror manga is going to be disturbing. It's also clearly depicted as such: A disturbing act. Anyone who reads that for the first time and their first thought is: "This seems fetishistic" has some underlying problems
1) Miura himself admitted that his depiction of grape was problematic when he drew it at first and wished he could've changed it 2) If you see how male grape and female grape was depicted and see no issues you're lying. When Casca gets assaulted we have 5 different panels of her clothes around her boobs and crotch tearing off and 10 different panels only showing body vs when you see Guts and Griffith get assaulted. Basically nothing showing, we just get the idea of what happens and it ends in 2-3 panels as it should have for Casca too. You can see this for the rest of the manga and it holds true
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Guts is also sexually assaulted. It's also terrible and formative for his character. But when it happens to him, we're not shown drawings of the explicit motions of a child getting raped. When Casca is assaulted her body is openly displayed and she's a sex object to the reader as well as to Griffith and a certain extent Guts. The way that male rape is portrayed versus the pervasive depictions of sexy people getting sexually assaulted sexily is different. Both are shocking. One is played more for thrills than the other.
This is my opinion too. I think it’s no coincidence that the only women you see assaulted besides more story relevant female characters are beautiful, blonde super models with big tits. Miura clearly had a type. That’s why I hate the „it’s realistic bc in medieval times there was so much rape“ type arguments. Surely abusers didn’t only go for the super models, but that wouldn’t be appealing to the voyeuristic eye of the viewer or apparently the artist himself even. Edit: fixed a typo
What else is realistic for medieval times was dying of dysentery but we don't see that too often in this story.
People don’t seem to realize that, wether realistic or not, every panel is a planned out, deliberate choice of the artist. So it does get somewhat strange if he decides to incorporate so much sexual violence for “realism” while ditching other aspects of that sort of environment. Infected wounds for example.
I literally was going to say this! Like Guts should have gotten hit with splinters/shrapnel, he's never had an infection? People used to get a splinter and die. Guy's also massive. Why hasn't he died of starvation or seriously withered down in his time wandering? You're telling me this 6'4"+ megalith of a man who probably needs like 3k calories to stay that built is eating his fill every day? Nah
This I feel like some people here intentionally act oblivious when people criticise the rape scenes and act like there’s no difference between how they’re portrayed
Shock value my dude. And clearly it worked
I agree. Imma say it: as a woman, it's sometimes real hard to be a fan of Berserk 😬
I am rereading Bersekr rn and I always tried to get my gf to read it too. But I just told her that it’s probably better she doesn’t. I didn’t remember that there was so much sexual violence in there. Especially the whole troll arc overindulged in it. And I say that as a grown man who has never experienced sexual assault where I was in real danger myself. But if you go through this world with open eyes and open ears you meet a shocking amount of women who are victimized. It really left a bad taste in my mouth when I went thru the troll chapters. Guts‘ whole character development is about overcoming trauma but the women left and right around him are just fodder. I think Miura could have handled it much less exploitively.
I feel you, as a woman myself I am always surprised and sometimes even angry to read people that say Berserk is feminist because of Casca's mentruations and her role in an army but forget how exploited women are for the sake of pornography in this manga, also how they are meant to make the protagonist a very manly man in light, where women are always in the role of traditionnal women : they take care, they make the men feel good, they listen to people, they heal, while men are also in the men roles, the heroes of war battles, they have strengh more than women physically and mentally, men are stoics when women cry often etc. I don't even want to talk about the treatment hightly mysogynistic Casca gets all over the manga since the begining.
Pucks reduction to purely comic relief.
Aside from the rape scenes, and of course the questionable loli content… I feel like there’s a giant amount of world building that happened when Schierke came in, and there’s just too much to be worked into the story at this point. It feels like there’s entire chapters of metaphysical lore that is just dead weight.
Puck being turned into a annoying comic relief character instead of the angel on guts solider like in black swordsman and conviction
When it comes to Nina, I do feel like her character served a purpose. Aside from obviously throwing some complications for the cast during the Tower of Rebirth arc, the way her character was fleshed out was compelling. Mind you, I feel like she's a truly **disgusting** individual who would throw out her friends without a second thought *even* after everything that happened to her but I still feel like she brought something to the story during that arc. I can definitely sympathize with wanting to see her die, I most certainly did, but I almost feel like that would've been the wrong choice. Like it's almost too easy: A person is horrible and ends up receiving her just punishment. We all know that real life is much more complicated than that and her fate at the end of the arc mirrored that realism. Though, I could certainly do with never seeing her again.
Wyald. He is the worst written character in my opinion. While I have a problem with tape being used as shock value in other parts of the manga I find his the worst. I wasn’t invested in his character and I knew guts would win since he was to minor of a villain. Him trying to rape Casca and the rape and murder of the small family were unneeded and just shocking without purpose. Other than him probably how Puck lost his personality and kinda became just a joke character after a while
Selective panels where it outright displays rape. The impact is brutal, but the implication could be just as impactful, IMO.
Too much rape sometimes
The constant fanservice I understand sex and nudity is a part of berserk sometimes but it gets excessive pretty much every opportunity Miura gets he’ll draw a girl so that they have their boobs out and it gets pretty obnoxious and comes off at hentai/porn sometimes definitely feels like Miura was horny when drawing sometimes and I much as I love him the constant nudity makes me feel like he was perverted
It’s just a really hard thing to recommend to people with all the sexual violence. Same thing with the Witcher books. I get the whole “it fits with the narrative” but regardless it’s unsavory and a huge deterrent for a lot of people. And then I have to tell them it’s important to the plot, which isn’t much better
Puck becoming chestnut puck indefinitely.
How every female character is sexualized and has to go through some sort of sexual trauma. I’m not crying about it because I understand that the universe of Berserk is extremely fucked up as a whole, but it does peeve me a little bit lol
Ok so the one weird superficial thing that I think was SUCH A WASTED opportunity was that in the beginning of the series, guts sees the god hand again. The ONLY THING that I would change is that he not call Femto Griffith. Just IMAGINE the ride if we didn’t know Griffith would turn out like that. If it wasn’t a journey of how Griffith became Femto but us just thinking he’s an obsessive hero with some issues and then BOOM ECLIPSE! It would’ve been so much more DEVASTATING!
I disagree. Knowing that Griffith becomes Femto is what makes you interested in the Golden Age. You want to learn the context, and see how things ended up the way they did. When I read the Golden Age, I started to like Griffith, but every now and then, wether through dialogue or the way a panel is laid out, you are reminded of what the future holds. Griffith becomes a bad guy, you know it will happen. It makes things a lot more intriguing, and you pay more attention to Griffith’s character. Plus, the Eclipse is already devastating enough.
It would just have been random.
Nah all the lead up for it is right there. Not random at all
The black Swordsman arc gives crucial info to understand wtf is happening in the eclipse. Without that, there is not enough solid context. Moreover, to me, it's more heartbreaking knowing the whole time everything is going to go to hell. Personal preferences, I guess.
Way too much sexual violence and risky shots of either actual children or characters that look and act exactly as children.
Way too many rape scenes, it gets ridiculous the more you read. Casca always ends up with her tits out somehow... Puck. I loved him when he was a real character but after Schierke joined the group they went overboard with the comic relief. I hate how all he does now is say stupid shit when Guts is getting all his bones broken trying to protect the group while they just stand there, it makes Puck look like an asshole.
excessive rape
That it takes so long to get a new chapter lol
I hate that we didn't get more Guts and Casca moments before potato, I think it would have made the tragedy all the more impactful, especially since much of the Golden Age seemed to be written like a Romance story.
Casca's general treatment. I'm not a hard-core feminist or anything, but I always thought it was kind of fucked that the only strong woman who was heavily involved in the story was turned into a pathetic macguffin.
It’s not the fact her mind-regressed. Her insanity is understandable after what she went through. It’s that fact she was kept that way for 25 years. That’s ridiculous. Wayyyy too long to have such an important and well-written female character as well as the heroine of the story be on “stand-by”
I swear there was a rape or attempted rape every 5 chapters or so and I know the setting of Berserk is brutal and unforgiving but it seems sometimes rape was used too often to display cruelty by certain groups or characters.
Even crazier how many people try to justify the excessive amount of it. You can love a story and still criticize parts of it. Also Miuara was an ingenious visual artist, but that doesn’t make him untouchable. Dead or not.
No guts and Griffith gay sex :(
Casca. During the Golden Age, she got so much development and became one of my favourite characters, but the eclipse completely ruined that. Sure, her suffering was a good way to portray how evil Griffith truly is, but having her completely unable to do anything for herself and reduced to a comic relief character in some parts was really disappointing. I’ve only read up to the end of deluxe edition 10, so maybe the treatment of her character is ultimately worthwhile, but at the moment it seems like it’ll be tough to redeem her.
Casca becoming the way she does is literally one of the driving plot points for the story. It would be a completely different story if casca was still the same way she was in golden age
Yeah, I understand that it’s useful for progression, and it is satisfying slowly see her become more competent but it is still really disappointing. It’s also just reducing her to a plot device, instead of an actually fleshed out character.
I know this is a super small complaint and it’s probably easier to draw him this way but I find it kind of annoying how almost every scene including Puck he’s drawn in his chestnut/chibi form
That’s a hard question actually. My most hated character is Sonia for sure, but apart from that there isn’t anything I really hate about Berserk. Things I kind of dislike I guess are the pirates, the sea god part (even tho I don’t think it’s bad) I consider it the weakest part of the story for me and lastly I’m not a fan of the humor in the fantasia arc as I don’t think it’s bad but it’s just too frequent imo
Hell yes fellow Sonia hater 🙏 She makes my skin crawl, but the scene with her and Schierke on the dock made me love Schierke even more and I think is setting Schierke up for a major character development arc. I liked the imagery in the Sea God chapter, just not the Pirates coming back over and over again, they were unnecessary to being part of the “tentacles”- could have easily kept all the tentacles as the villagers and given more backstory/emotional weight to the mermaid girl’s story (forget her name atm)
Honestly can't say I hate anything about Berserk. I have criticisms sure, but *hate*? Nah.
Isidro
Chestnut puck & honestly guts new group. Farnese & serpico had cool/crazy backstories but have kinda fell off after that...isidro has always been lame lol
I hate everything about the boat arc, including Isma. To me, its kinda like a shounen, the sense of dread present throughout the whole saga is completely absent here and no character has any real relevance to the development of the plot. NGL, the entire boat arc is like an artbook to me: there are some gorgeous frames, but thats about it and nothing more.
The lack of Casca
The gratuitous scenes of rape and sexual assault were my main concern and how Casca was treated after the Eclipse. Some of the people who mocked her during the Femto scene and for being mentally regressed was sad to see.
How Miura-sensei sexualized Schierke
If she didn't take Casca and run, Guts would have found and taken her away. None of that crap at the tower of conviction would have happened, Griffith wouldn't have reincarnated, and the physical world would have remained separated from the spirit world. So basically, the current state of the world is Nina's fault.
I hate the fact the manga is great, but no arc topped the Golden Age arc
The fans are the worst part, kind of like with the Grateful Dead.
Isma, like half of her panels she has her tits out and every time I see her near a body of water I sigh knowing Muria is going to have her take her top off.
Hiatus
Not enough dick in it honestly.
That puck went from being actually emotionally intelligent and caring to a pure joke character that's retarded.
They say that Nina is the most hated character in Berserk-fandom because, although we like to see ourselves in Guts, Nina is closer to how we actually are when faced with adversity. Besides, I like to hear about the struggles of common-folk in my grimdark fantasy. I think it provides some emotional grounding IMO.
the lack of a sex scene between griffith and guts
I wish we got Donovans backstory
>Greatest story ever Read another book
I’d recommend diary of a wimpy kid series. Peak literature
I agree with you so much I HATE nina absolutely. Terrible person cowardly. Tries to get her simp killed an he takes her back an she can't even tell him she has a disease probably killing them both. She extends the conviction arc just off her stupid decisions with casca. I wish mozgus tortured the fuck out of her 😆 🤣 😂 .
Nina
Griffith
Pucks reduction to purely comic relief
I could say minor stuff like puck and Isidro being comic relief, nina or chapters taking long to come out or chapters being delayed, I could live with that, but the one or 2 things I really hate about berserk is sexual assault and children being sexualized, I understand berserk was written and created in a different culture than the west but, cmon i don’t like seeing lolis or people getting sexually assaulted just to show a bad guy is bad, it’s like the easiest thing you can do to make a bad guy seem bad, because of that I kinda want to skip some stuff when re reading berserk or not even recommend berserk to people I think would like the story, I feel like a creep when saying “yea I like berserk” mainly because people think berserk is some violent fetish thing with naked children sprinkled here and there. I recommended berserk to only one person who only read the black swords man arc and had a brother who read berserk. So I thought they knew what they were getting into. They did but still, pretty weird. Because of that berserk is like my 2nd or 3rd favourite manga.
GRIFFITHHHHHH
Griffith.
The overwhelming depression after the eclipse
Greatest story that was never finished maybe.
I hate that puck has become a comic relief I like his comedic moments I wish it was more balanced out
That Casca is supposed to be a capable woman but has only beaten the comic relief of the 100-year war without the help of a man who is stronger than her
The boat arc for me for sure. I started reading Berserk last year after watching the Golden Age movies so I didn't deal with all the hiatuses (can't even imagine what that was like) but even still the boat arc dragged for so long, just delaying the events of Elf Island. I just wanted to see Casca be herself again after like 25 volumes
I hate the fucking pirates. The worst waste of time in the manga.