Berserk, Vol. 1

I don't get the hype. Perhaps it gets better after the author matures out of his teens? Berserk is yet another boring manga about a boring invincible tough-guy protagonist alternately killing things or brooding about killing things. Everything in the world exists to highlight how "cool" Guts is, with enemies in the middle of a fight pausing to converse with one another about the size of his sword, and onlookers standing around to gossip about how strong he is. Similarly, the antagonists exist to spout off Saturday-morning cartoon monologues about how weak humans are and then get stabbed in the face by an edgy Mary Sue. There's basically nothing else to it.

Finally Berserk came to kindle. Maybe Amazon/Kentaro got tired of me clicking the kindle request button :) The image quality is decent, not much difference from the old hardcopies I have seen. I was hoping that these ones would come with the intro colour pages like the digital copies in Japan come with but beggers can't be choosers. Normally I wouldn't buy 38 volumes for over 300 bucks but this was the exception.... because it's Berserk :) Hopefully the digital copies sell well to convince the other digital holdouts in Japan to change their minds and stop leaving money on the table.

Ever Since I saw the anime, I began reading the manga online, and then I thought to myself, where I spend my money, there goes what I support. This is the reason why I bought this book. I have seen many Anime in my life, but none come close to the sheer darkness of Berserk. Berserk is what got me started into sword training, to train stronger like never before, to be the kind of man that can wield weapons bigger than myself. Berserk taught me to become stronger, and in becoming stronger, I developed a strength I didn't know I had. The strength to become BERSERK. I bought this book because I believe in Kentaro Miura, and his work for Berserk. I want him to continue and I support him by buying this book. I will forever keep this book as a memento of this discovery, someday, my children will be presented to Berserk, and when they do, I will become the Skull-knight of bed time stories. Long live, BERSERK!

Recommended for dark fantasy fans, dark soul fans, and individuals who enjoy a story with complex characters. Not Recommended for children unless you really want nightmares when you go to bed every night, not for the light-hearted, and definitely not for the light-hearted seriously. Overall Berserk's main plot device is simple, but what makes the Berserk go above and beyond the simple plot device is the character building. Characters will tug at your emotions, they will grow on you, you will begin to care about them, and you will want to see how the curtain closes for each person.

This manga is unrivaled. Kentaro Miura could have written The Tao of Dark Fantasy, and in essence, that's just what this series is. It inspired me to take a whole new path in life, in the hope of sharing in the same electrifying energies that make this series so encapsulating. It's not just a manga. It's a deeply fleshed out world. It's got Pantheons of Good and Evil, and Eldritch abominations. It's got fully sympathetic character motivations and twisting and writhing arcs that make you question the line between Good and Evil. The amount of references that pay homage to this series is staggering, and if you want a reason to read this series, Kentaro's passing should suffice. You won't be sorry. Now that I'm done, I have to find something that grips me the way this story did.