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YMMV / Berserk

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  • Adorkable:
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • The interpretation of Griffith's personality and actions are so contentious that bickering on the forums is virtually continuous. Is Griffith an evil sociopath who crossed the Moral Event Horizon by sacrificing the Hawks and raping Casca, or was there some kind of justification for what he did? Was he in love with Guts, did he see him as a friend, or did he just view him as a possession? Did he really care about the Band of the Hawk, or were they just tools to him? Are Griffith and Femto like a split personality, or are they the same person, and is Griffith responsible for Femto's actions? Did Griffith's actions lead to a better situation for humanity by freeing them from the Kushans and creating Falconia, or did he mess up the world and only give safety to people who are willing to worship him? Will he be content to rule like a king, or does he have something more sinister in store? Were his downward spiral and more questionable pre-Eclipse thoughts and actions his own fault, or was the crimson Behelit exerting a malign influence on him? And is he secretly plotting to destroy the Godhand because he's so full of himself? You could read through these questions all day.
    • Guts himself is debated a fair amount. Is he a troubled Anti-Hero who nevertheless remains a sympathetic protagonist because of his redeeming qualities, or is he an Ax-Crazy psychopath who's just as bad as the monsters he fights? Is the Beast of Darkness an artistic metaphor for the dark side of his personality, a hallucination caused by mental illness, or a tulpa created by his exposure to the interstice? Was Guts' attempted rape of Casca in volume 23 an unforgivable crime that he was fully responsible for, or did the Beast of Darkness possess him to do it against his will? Is he a danger to himself and others who shouldn't be allowed near Casca, or can he control himself with the help of Schierke and his companions? And was he ever only trying to get back at Apostlekind not because removing the Apostles would do many innocents a service, but to get back at Griffith's betrayal?
    • Had Casca already gone insane when Femto was raping her? It would explain why she appeared so exhausted and in no control of her body during the ordeal, and could barely gather the strength to tell Guts to "Don't watch...". Indeed, was it so hard for her to speak because she had already lost a majority of her sanity at that moment, and Femto's rape was not the main contributor, just the final straw? And in addition to this the traumatic events caused a premature birth of a hybrid child. Seeing Guts attempt to kill the creature and her protecting it lead to a distrust between the two.
    • Slan is intrigued by Guts on a very primal level, frequently compliments his relentless onslaught, and even encourages him to take the Sacrifice. Fans are divided on whether she's lying through her teeth and trying to bait him into making a fatal mistake, genuinely enamoured with his astounding capacity for violence and chaos and quite honest in her desire to see him reborn as a monster, or playing her own game entirely.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees:
    • Miura uses Rule of Cool to sprinkle his fantasy world with weapons, armors, costumes, architecture, and technology from various real life cultures and eras, to the point where it's hard for the layperson to distinguish between what he made up and what he borrowed from history.
    • An unintentional example happened right from the beginning, when he made the main character Guts a Handicapped Badass with a pretty sophisticated prosthetic iron hand, and only later found out that—by astonishing coincidence—there was a real German knight and mercenary named Götz von Berlichingen (1480–1562): not only did he have a very similar name, but he was also known as Götz of the Iron Hand because he had a prosthetic that looked remarkably similar to the one Guts uses.
    • Miura loves to draw elaborate and fantastical armors with animal-shaped parts and other decoration, many of which did not exist but are inspired by almost equally wild parade and costume armors that survive in museums; he even directly copies some museum pieces, such as the armor worn by lord Gennon in the Battle of Doldrey which is shaped to simulate puffed-and-slashed clothing of the early 16th century. For the Kushans, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of India with some "Arabian Nights" Days thrown in, he depicts real weapons and armor that most Western readers have never even heard of: examples include Silat's urumi swords, with multiple flexible whip-like blades, and the maduvu used by the monstrous Daka soldiers, which consist of two blackbuck antelope horns pointing in opposite directions and connected by two crossbars which serve as grips.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Although Puck is well-liked in Japan, many American fans absolutely loathe and despise him, especially the ones that have no patience for his particular brand of humor. The most likely and obvious reason being that he's a cute, androgynous, Plucky Comic Relief fairy creature that comes across as hugely out of place in a series that prides itself on brutality and darkness. In Japan, a force of over-the-top cuteness like Puck is nothing strange or surprising, but to many Americans, he's a bafflingly childish character whose inclusion clashes horribly with the grim, graphic tone of the story.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Luca, despite the horrors she experienced, never loses her upbeat attitude. Her plucky attitude even impresses the Skull Knight.
  • Arc Fatigue:
    • Myth Stall. Even though this is another example of Miura's infamous schedule slippage, it took eight whole years for Guts and his party to get to Elfhelm after setting sail. Guts "being stuck on the boat" has reached memetic levels similar to the Dragon Ball Z cast being on Namek.
    • The series itself is starting to get hit with this by longtime fans, as it's been running for 30 years and Guts doesn't seem any closer to finally settling things with Griffith.
  • Archive Panic: 41 volumes and still no ending in sight. It'll still feel too short if you find yourself getting into it.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: Pick an arc other than the Golden Age, chances are some subset of fans has declared it to be the weakest part of the story. A number of the most stubborn "fans" consider Berserk's story to consist of the Golden Age Arcnote  and absolutely nothing else, completely dismissing the rest of the story. As of volume 39, the Golden Age Arc now makes up less than a third of the story's total length.
  • Awesome Art:
    • Miura took his time during his tenure in the series. And holy shit, it shows!
    • The new work by Miura's assistants also counts, as they do an outstanding job capturing the essence and the staggering level of detail that defined Miura's stunning artwork.
  • Awesome Ego:
  • Awesome Music: Here.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • You guessed it – Griffith. Although almost no one believes he's a bad character, people are quite divided on how evil he really is. On one side, you have the fans that admire him because of all of the outstanding things that he has done over the course of the story. They see him as a three-dimensional and complex character who can't quite be called "evil", making the argument that his Lack of Empathy actually makes him Above Good and Evil (and come on - he's gorgeous looking!). But on the flip side, you have the fans that despise him (or at least, appreciate him as a villain) because his actions are ones only the truly evil would commit. And then there's the third option, where he's condemned for his actions, but it's argued there's a complex, psychological backstory for Griffith's actions (at least leading up to the Eclipse), that explains them, if not absolves Griffith of them.
    • Puck is subject to a good deal of this; many fans (particularly in the West) who have no patience for his antics despise him with a fiery passion for being an annoyance whose childlike appearance and goofy attitude, not to mention a fair deal of fourth-wall breaking comedy moments, clash horrendously with the grim, gritty action and deep gazes into the darkness of the human heart that Berserk is so acclaimed for. On the other hand, there are just as many fans who are happy to have him around due to Puck's moral goodness and role as Guts' Morality Pet keeping our hero from sliding into complete insanity, and bringing some welcome relief to a story whose unrelenting darkness would otherwise be unbearable. Then there are those who believe that Puck isn't necessarily a bad character, but his status as occasional comic relief overtook his status as Gut's moral anchor, especially since Schierke essentially claimed that role herself.
    • Schierke. Although she's well enough liked by fans, there are some complaints that she's been receiving too much spotlight in detriment of other characters of the party. However, others are fine with it because they see it as necessary for her and Guts's character arcs.
    • Sonia. Despite her youth and relative innocence she gained a large amount of infamy by preventing the Midland army from experiencing a collective realization that Griffith might not be the virtuous hero he claims to be. However, many people do share a lot of love for her, whether it be in a "love to hate" sense akin to Griffith, because they enjoy her genuinely wholesome friendship with Schierke, or they believe that she would've been an otherwise good person had she not fallen victim to Griffith's aura of charisma.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: While this panel◊ is a nice homage to Hieronymus Bosch, it's extremely strange to see Ubik surrounded by creatures who don't look like regular apostles.
  • Broken Base:
    • Everything surrounding Griffith breaks like fine china. Also, there seems to be skirmishes of who's the biggest and most hideously vile villain in this series: Femto or Emperor Ganishka, which, understandably, was strongest during the arc in which they were directly opposed to one another. And there are other debates, like the "does the recent Lighter and Softer shift in the series mean that Berserk is going downhill?" debate.
    • Berserk's adaptations always bring debate. Which one is better, the 1997 anime, the 2012-2013 movies, or the 2016 anime? Some feel each of them have their good points and others feel none do the manga justice. It varies from fan to fan.
      • Berserk (1997) has been praised for its tone, and having enough room to slowly build the story up and flesh out the themes and characters. It's also been criticized for its extremely limited animation and the story just ending on a cliff-hanger never to be resolved.
      • Berserk: The Golden Age Arc films are praised for their better animation, still capturing the important points of the main story, and having an ending that resolves what happened even while leaving the future open-ended. As noted below in It's the Same, Now It Sucks!, the films are criticized for abridging and condensing the story too much, and the CG really clashing with the animation around it.
      • Berserk (2016) has some fans for being a decent Pragmatic Adaptation and finally adapting the manga past the Golden Age Arc. Others think its plot is a poorly paced mess that drops too many elements. Much like the previous films there's the debate over the CGI and hand-drawn animation; it's either a medium blend that does work from time to time, or it's just hideous.
    • Is all of the depiction of sexual assault and rape part of Berserk's unflinchingly honest perspective on the worst aspects of the human condition, or is it gratuitously offensive and the result of lazy writing? There's fans who argue the former, others who argue the latter, and still others who sit somewhere in the middle. Similarly the adaptations' differing approaches to these scenes feeds to the Broken Base over which handled the material better. It's worth pointing out that in a later interview, Miura himself responded to a question about the sexual violence earlier in the series, apologizing for those scenes and wondering if it was really necessary for him to go that far.
    • What is Casca's race supposed to be, and does it matter that they made her lighter in the adaptations? Supposedly she's from a Midland border town, but it's never specified which border she's nearby. If it's the Kushan border then it would explain things, but for all we know she could be living beside Tudor.
    • There is some contention over the Art Evolution since the party reached Skellig. While most still consider the art to be very good on the whole, there's also some feeling that it's not as good as Miura's best work, that the linework has gotten simpler compared to how detailed the panels looked during the Millenium Falcon arc (some suspected that he switched from traditional illustration techniques to digital painting), and that the character designs are getting a little off, such as Guts no longer having◊ a Lantern Jaw of Justice and an exaggeratedly thick, sometimes anatomically incorrect neck. Some have gone so far as to parody it◊ as being overly cutesy and feminine. Other people don't mind the changes as much and feel like the newer art fits with the current events in the story.
    • While Berserk universe as a whole explicitly operates on the You Can't Fight Fate principle, how much any given individual character decision or plot twist is down to destiny is a large point of contention among fans. That free will doesn't exist at all is a common position taken by fans of the villains, as it turns them as well as the heroes into victims of fate's capriciousness... and this in turn has touched off a sister debate about whether these fans actually believe this or are just using it to rationalize their preexisting Draco in Leather Pants inclinations.
  • Cargo Ship: Guts and his sword. In the Band of the Hawk scanlations, at one point Casca even tells him to "go fuck your sword!"
  • Catharsis Factor:
  • The Chris Carter Effect: Many fans expressed concern that the readers would give up on the series out of frustration if Guts and the gang didn't get off the damn boat soon and get Casca's insanity plotline resolved after a seven- to eight-year wait. Upon the party finally arriving at Elfheim, and Casca waking up, finally restored after Schierke and Farnese's efforts, there was much rejoicing, with people considering it long overdue.
  • Complete Monster: See here.
  • Crack Ship: Pairing Guts with Donovan, the creepy pedophile who raped him as a child, is a recurring joke in the fandom simply because of how completely wrong it is.
  • Creepy Awesome: Even as a normal human, Griffith is a narcissist willing to go to any means to achieve his dream. His stoicism and ruthlessness make him a force to be reckoned with. He successfully manages to wipe out countless foes, achieve nigh-impossible military victories, somehow managing to combine his child-like demenour with a bone-chilling, eery aura whenever he sets his eyes on a target. He gets outright nightmarish when he reincarnates.
  • Creepy Cute: The moonlight boy. He's a Creepy Child through and through, what with his quiet demeanor and unsettling stare that indicates he knows more than a kid his age should. But he still displays normal childish behavior, being both a notorious climber and Staring Kid, which makes him oddly endearing. And of course, he's a toddler who simply yearns to be with his parents and who uses his powers to help them, making him Creepy Good.
  • Cry for the Devil: Pre-Eclipse Griffith was already morally ambiguous, but it's pretty easy to feel sorry for him when he gets tortured nonstop for a year over a very petty issue. This being said, he lost his sympathy post-Eclipse when he lost any redeeming qualities he may have previously had and became a horrific demon.
  • Damsel Scrappy:
    • Farnese seems to be aware this trope exists and tries as hard as she can not to fall into it. She succeeds more and more as time goes by.
    • Post-Eclipse Casca avoids this status with some due to being a massive woobie, but others are just annoyed that the character that they liked before because she was an Action Girl got downgraded to a mental incompetent who needs protecting all the time.
    • Princess Charlotte is pretty much the classic Damsel in Distress, and not everybody is a fan of her character.
  • Discredited Meme: Most variants of the "Kentaro Miura is lazy/won't work on Berserk/is busy playing The Idolmaster" jokes became this after his passing, mainly due to it becoming more well-known that he was an extreme workaholic to the point that it's often speculated it contributed to his death.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Griffith is given this treatment by some Berserk fans who like to separate Griffith and Femto in order to account for his Moral Event Horizon during the Eclipse. Some fans go further by claiming that Casca enjoyed being raped by Femto as to discredit Casca's experience as actual rape. Even fans who acknowledge Griffith's misdeeds still defend him, using the argument that since Because Destiny Says So is at play in this universe, Griffith (and indeed everyone) is in the end an innocent pawn of fate.
    • To a lesser extent, the Count gets this from a few fans, mainly due to his few sympathetic moments and his care for his daughter, even allowing himself to burn in Hell for all eternity than to sacrifice her for more power. Despite this however, he never felt remorse for any of the other things he did and gleefully killed and ate several people without hesitation, including many members of the Band of the Hawk.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Luca, the Hooker with a Heart of Gold, who took care of Casca after she was separated from Guts. Despite her limited role, she is still vividly remembered and liked by most fans who often wish she would have joined Guts in his quest. The fandom was overjoyed when the Fantasia arc revealed that she survived the World Transformation, found a steady job in Falconia, and has her play a key role in helping Rickert, Erica, and the sympathetic Kushan characters escape from Griffith's henchmen.
    • Judeau is probably the most popular member of the Hawks besides the main three because he's remembered as a loyal friend to both Guts and Casca, who helped nudge them together while putting aside his own feelings for Casca, and who supported her to the bitter end.
    • Roderick joined the party relatively late, but he's appreciated for being a capable and trusty wingman for Guts, as well as for wanting Farnese to be happy even if the one she chooses isn't him. The fact that he's a badass sea captain doesn't hurt either.
    • Slan is the most popular member of the Godhand because of her Fanservice-y design.
    • People still remember Theresia and expect her to make a return, even to this day. She hasn't been seen or even mentioned in over 20 years. That she's one of only a tiny handful of characters outside the core cast who is aware that Griffith and Femto are the same person is often pointed to as having Chekhov's Gun potential.
    • Serpico, thanks to being a noble, sarcastic gentleman who's both badass and intelligent enough to take on Guts himself in combat.
    • Silat is a popular character, being a redeemable Kushan who forswore allegiance to Ganishka and aligned himself against Griffith due to nothing more than his own moral compass. And, of course, let's not forget his cool character design and fighting style. Quite a few fans over the years expressed hope that he was fated to become one of Guts' True Companions.
    • The infamous demon dubbed "Rape Horse" by the fans appears only for one scene before being offed, but is the source of Memetic Mutation due to the comically over-the-top darkness present in his short tenure. Even people who were generally unhappy with the 2016 anime had a fit of rapture over his scene being included, since many were worried it would be cut for explicit content.
    • Chitch. She is present for only one episode of the manga, but her sheer cuteness, the heartwarming friendship Guts struck with her, and her subsequent tear-jerking death left an impact on many readers.
    • The chimimoryo, the small fat creature with the huge nose that appears briefly when Guts's crew enters the qliphoth, has become much loved in the fanbase for its Ugly Cute design and seemingly coming out of nowhere in a sequence featuring a lot of disturbing supernatural imagery. It is universally referred to as "Schnoz."
  • Estrogen Brigade: So there is definitely some factor that draws female readers to this ultra-violent Seinen series and part of it probably has something to do with the two male leads that get naked or shirtless a lot.
  • Evil Is Cool:
  • Fair for Its Day: Casca's character arc has been criticized in contemporary times for having her Stuffed in the Fridge by being violently raped and not returning for over 21 years in order to facilitate the traumas and development of the male main character. However, at the time, having a strong-willed gender non-confirming Amazonian Beauty with a nuanced personality serve as one of the main protagonists of a series and be able to rival the two male main characters in competence was unprecedented in most Seinen manga, which often exclusively relegated women to the role of victims or walking Fanservice vehicles.
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
    • IT'S NOT "GATSU/GATTS"! IT'S "GUTS"! Since the official releases (both manga and anime) are widely considered to have good translations, fans who came into the series through shoddy scanslations are typically looked down upon for using incorrect character names. Nowadays though, the phonetic spellings ("GATTSU"/"GURIFFISU") have instead become a meme.
    • Don't call Berserk a Shōnen. It's a Seinen, and fans will shred you if you say otherwise.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • The main franchise non grata of Berserk fans is Sword Art Online. Do NOT bring up the words "The Black Swordsman" if both members of these fandoms are present unless you want to start a fight.
    • Some Berserk fan circles don't have a high opinion of Attack on Titan and dislike when others draw parallels or comparisons between them. This is not a universal opinion, though, since others enjoy both on their own respective merits.
    • Longtime Berserk fans haven't appreciated being turned into strawmen by the Goblin Slayer fandom just so the latter could defend their series from criticism.
  • Fandom VIP: Walter Bennet is one of the most prominent figures in the English-speaking Berserk fan community. He's been in charge of SkullKnight.net since 2000.
  • Fanfic Fuel: Well, Miura might have taken his sweet time getting the group to Elfhelm, but by the time he did, some fans had already made it there—and beyond.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Guts and Casca's child isn't yet named in the story and is usually called simply "The Child" or "The Moonchild" since he only appears in human form when the moon is full. Others call him "Gusca" since he looks like a perfect cross between them.
    • The Beast of Darkness is also called the "Hellhound" for its appearance.
    • "Skully" and "Skull Bro" are popular nicknames for the Skull Knight.
    • Farnese is known as "Farnie" to some fans. This is also what Puck usually calls her.
    • Serpico is also affectionately known as "Serp" or "Serpie".
    • "Rape Horse" for the demonically possessed horse that tries to rape Farnese. It's often used as a symbol for how over-the-top the depictions of rape and depravity can get, and he is the unofficial mascot of r/berserklejerk.
    • "Schnoz" is the nickname fans have bestowed upon a certain creature from Qliphoth that looks like a Waddling Head with a Gag Nose.
    • Roderick is called "Broderick" for being a "bro", i.e. a chill and selfless wingman for Guts.
    • Judeau is "Jubro" for the same reason.
    • For better or for worse, Guts' post-Golden Age adventuring group has been labelled the "J/RPG Party".
    • Guts is usually called "Gustavo" by the fans.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • A few fans glance over Guts' grand debut on the first page of the story where he is having sex with a she-apostle, saying that it clashed with his later development in the Golden Age arc, particularly Guts' troubled backstory concerning intimacy issues and his fidelity toward Casca. That, and some fans wonder why Guts would even have needed to have sex with the apostle in the first place.
    • Some fans disregard Wyald's presence in the story, saying that he was just an unnecessary sexist and violent addition to a storyline that would have made just as much sense - if not more - without him raping up a storm. This is encouraged by the fact that he's completely absent from both of the animated adaptations of the Golden Age.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite being little Ship Tease between Serpico and Farnese and the fact that they're half-siblings, Serpico/Farnese is still a popular pairing within the Berserk fandom. Even though she's arranged to marry Roderick, there's not much approval for that pairing in the Berserk fandom (although it's important to note that this lack of approval does not extend to Roderick himself).
  • Faux Symbolism:
    • Well, it's never been officially conveyed, but you can get a buttload of Judeo-Christian symbolism out of Berserk depending on how you look at it, starting with the part where both Guts and Griffith can be interpreted as messiah-like figures.
    • As mentioned in chapter 287 of the manga, Guts always seems to be saving Casca whenever she is near water. Whether this is supposed to mean something or just a Running Gag has yet to be explained.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • The Berserk fandom has a lot of overlap with the fandom of FromSoftware's family of "Soulsborne" games (which includes Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne) due to their similar Dark Fantasy settings. It helps that Miyazaki is a fan of Berserk himself and includes all manner of Shout Outs to it in each of those titles (just check the "Greatsword" entry and the character stances with it on Dark Souls II).
    • Many fans also find enjoyment in Dragon's Dogma, another RPG with a dark fantasy vibe and lots of Berserk references, where you can, in fact, build a character like Casca and have a companion that is pretty much a Guts cover, not to mention the whole Griffith's armor is in-game. Lastly, there are a handful of characters who are so similar that the only thing more satisfying than that is seeing Kentarou Miura's copyright of Berserk scroll past in the game's end credits.
    • There are also fans who enjoy Claymore, another dark fantasy manga with a similar premise which was heavily inspired by Berserk.
    • Berserk fans have been shown to enjoy Castlevania (2017), what with it being a Dark Fantasy animated series with good production values. It's to the point where several Berserk fans have expressed their desire for the people who worked on Castlevania to give their series the proper adaptation it deserves (with even Adi Shankar, the producer of Castlevania, expressing interest in adapting Berserk if given the chance).
    • Many Berserk fans are also notably huge fans of Doom, especially the 2016 reboot. It's easy to see why, as both are about a gruff, macho badass armed with huge weaponry as they grind The Legions of Hell to a fine paste in vengeance of being robbed of what they love. As this glorious Anime Music Video illustrates in its comment section:
    KingThrillgore: two great tastes that taste great together
    • There's been a growing fandom overlap between Berserk and The Boys (2019), despite the latter series not being a Dark Fantasy series, due to some shared plot elements (fans frequently draw comparisons between Billy Butcher and Guts, and Homelander and Femto), a similarly violent and dark tone, and the latter series' simple massive popularity.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Schierke's Meaningful Name requires you to know about an obscure German village and witchcraft legends to get the reference.
    • The author's sheer attention to detail rewards you for having some background in the history of arms and armor, architecture, costume design, ship construction, pre-Enlightenment science and magic, philosophy, religion, fantastic creatures, Western painting, or 20th century Japanese pop culture.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Holy shit. Berserk is considered one of the iconic manga already in its home country... and Western audiences love it even more. It is of no wonder, as Berserk has elements that would be surefire hits in the Western audience: A Dark Fantasy based on the Western setting which is bleak and full of suffering, adult hardcore protagonist instead of young pretty boy/cutesy moe thing that the Japanese are more known for, said adult hardcore protagonist is basically hacking through hordes of men and demons with his giant-ass sword, usually alone. It's as if Kentaro Miura tailored this to be a hit in the West moreso than his home country. Sure enough, when Discotek Media announced the license for the series and opened pre-orders for the blu-ray, it immediately became the #1 best-selling blu-ray on Amazon, to the point that it beat Oppenheimer.
  • Growing the Beard: After the first two chapters which come across as rather simple and lurid self-contained plots at first glance, and with the art being decent but not great, the story gets more nuanced with the first continuous story, the Guardians of Desire, and then takes a MASSIVE leap in quality at the start of the Golden Age Arc, particularly when Guts meets Griffith and the Band of the Hawk. By Sword Wind, the first episode published in Young Animal, the art has gotten excellent and the characters/plot have perfectly hit their stride. Fans have debated about which parts of the story after the Golden Age were good or not, but almost everybody acknowledges that the art quality only got more amazing with every passing year.
  • Hard-to-Adapt Work:
    • This is a very long series that gets much of its atmosphere from a combination of decompressed storytelling and highly-detailed art. It's hard to cut out content because it has a lot of sensitive topics and Broken Bird characters, which without the original context risk becoming pointlessly dark and nonsensical. Most adaptations tend to follow the Golden Age arc, since it's a Flash Back that's largely self-contained.
    • It's also hard to adapt for content reasons as well; The 90s anime and Golden Age film trilogy, despite being extremely violent (particularly the latter), still censor a lot of the more explicit violence and rape scenes, either toning them down or omitting them outright to make the series suitable for broadcast, especially the former. A completely faithful adaptation of Berserk would likely demand an NC-17 rating (The third film in the Golden Age trilogy even has an unrated version shown during midnight screenings). The manga itself actually runs in a seinen magazine in Japan, which is likely why it has less restrictions in terms of its content and subject matter.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Earlier in the Golden Age Arc, Casca is seen wrapping her shirt sleeve around a wound on Guts' arm. Though this was done purely out of first aid, this can actually be interpreted as a medieval gesture of Courtly Love, when a woman would give a piece of cloth that belonged to her, often a scarf, to a knight of her choosing; she would then bestow a favor upon it that the knight would keep in order to return it to her. While the trope was played straight between Griffith and Princess Charlotte, the audience can take this as Heartwarming in Hindsight between Guts and Casca as it foreshadows their Relationship Upgrade. However, this gesture is particularly painful to glance at after you watch the Eclipse. Why? Because the the arm that Casca wraps is Guts' left arm, the arm that Guts would eventually hack off in his last attempt to save Casca from being raped by Femto, which ultimately failed, meaning that Guts had failed his lady's favor.
    • Casca first met Griffith when he saved her from being raped, which makes the fact that he eventually does the same to her a bitter irony.
    • Before Casca and Guts resume their lovemaking session, the former tells the latter that she wants a wound from him, just as she gave him one. This line becomes far less romantic and much more horrifying when a rage-fuelled Guts forces himself on top of a braindead Casca and leaves a bite mark around her right areola over 100 chapters later.
    • Volume 13 happened to be the same volume where the entire Eclipse took place.
    • In chapter 351, Schierke and Farnese are traversing through Casca's mind when they come across their next adversary! ... Giant black penis monsters! This would generate so many obvious dick jokes - and does so at one point - but then you remember that these are all internalized projections of Casca's deep, terrible trauma of being sexually violated during the eclipse. Perhaps going even deeper is that this is a projection of EVERY cumulative memory of her being sexually assaulted, and her deep seated fear and shame of sex as a result. As soon as your remember that, it becomes decidedly less funny.
    • All of the jokes about Berserk never ending become this after Kentaro Miura's death in May of 2021. For a whole year it seemed possible that nobody was going to take over and finish it, and even after publication resumed some fans disagree about whether it "counts" if Miura's not the person making it.
    • Fans often joked that Casca would never regain her sanity while Miura lived, owing to her status as Guts main reason for going after Griffith. When Miura finally brought Casca back, he died almost immediately afterward.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
    • The sheer amount of influence Berserk had on works of fiction, especially the status Guts has as a standard character archetype is utterly sweet after Miura's passing, with many Dark Knight players (The class being heavily Guts-influenced) in Final Fantasy XIV even holding vigils after his passing to celebrate his life and work and to mourn his passing.
    • The panel of Guts saying "He died doing what he wanted, no matter what, right? I bet he was happy." While initially just a one-off panel, it became a panel used to mourn Miura's passing.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • As crazy as it may sound, there actually was a real-life giant sword-wielding, heavily armored mercenary who lost his lower left arm, built a fully-functioning iron replacement, and fought in several battles against both the Catholic Church and the Ottoman Empire. His name: Götz Von Berlichingen . Otherwise known as "Götz of the Iron Hand". The hilarity of this comes from the fact that author Kentaro Miura had no idea that this man existed, and he simply chose the name "Guts" because it sounded Germanic.
    • The huge, quiet, frontline-fighting, armored and hammer-wielding guy is named Pippin.
    • In May 2015, Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge had a daughter. Her name? Princess Charlotte.
    • Femto's character design was always a little odd, bearing a passing resemblance to Batman. He now has a closer lookalike in Birdman.
    • Wyald telling Casca to "get ready to feel like a virgin again" thanks to his enormous demon-penis turns from horrifying to hilarious when compared with the opening monologue from Reservoir Dogs.
    • Adon Coborlwitz is fond of boasting that his fighting techniques have been passed down through his family for hundreds of years.
    • When Casca comes down with her period-induced fever, Guts thinks to himself "I guess sometimes it's hard to be a woman".
    • The Count bears a striking resemblance to Stellan Skarsgard's portrayal of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two.
    • Casting Takahiro Sakurai as Griffith comes off as this, taking into consideration his subsequent role as McGillis "Montag" Fareed. Same goes for Steve Staley, who also coincidentally voiced McGillis.
    • During Guts' childhood flashback in the manga, Gambino is derided as "childish".
  • Ho Yay: It has a whole page to itself here.
  • The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: The manga is an incredibly bleak and serious work, set in a Crapsack World with themes such as trauma, betrayal, mass slaughter and rape, all depicted in a very graphic way. On the other hand, this doesn't stop the community from making lots of jokes and memes.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A major criticism of Berserk: The Golden Age Arc is that it adapts again the same manga plot arc as Berserk (1997), but in roughly half the running time, meaning that several subplots and minor characters had to be cut or massively condensed. So "It's the Same, And Less of It, Now It Sucks", and fans who have been waiting for decades to see post-Eclipse content animated get to keep on waiting. It doesn't help that the animation isn't much better than it was fifteen years ago, just uneven in a different way (with stiff, low-poly CG models replacing copious amounts of still frames).
  • I Knew It!: Chapter 362 introduces a particularly insane one of these, all but explicitly stating that the central characters of the legend of Emperor Gaiseric (Gaiseric himself, his nemesis the Wizard of the Tower of Conviction, and the "four angels" summoned by the wizard to destroy the Emperor) are, respectively, Skull Knight, Void, and a previous generation of the Godhand. Said identities have been the most commonly speculated ones since the legend was introduced, twenty real-time years prior.
  • Iron Woobie: Guts' life has been a constant ride of trauma, death and pain, with whatever brief moments of respite he is granted being cruelly ripped away from him, yet he continues struggling for existence and a place in the ruthless world he lives in. He's nowhere near being a good person, but his life has been so painful even in comparison to his wrongful actions that he doesn't even qualify as a Jerkass Woobie.
  • It Was His Sled: Everyone knows that Griffith turns evil, everyone dies except Guts and Casca, although to be fair it's supposed to be a Foregone Conclusion if you start from volume 1 of the manga.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Farnese during the Tower of Conviction arc and prior events. She's a vicious Knight Templar with a tendency to lash out at her subordinates, to abuse her servant Serpico, killed small animals and viciously whipped a restrained and helpless Guts. All of this is the result of deep insecurities around her father not caring about her and never being there for her, being unable to stand up to anyone who holds authority over her, the knowledge that her position as the head of the Holy Iron Chain Knights is a largely ceremonial one with her being a Faux Action Girl and a repressed and screwed up sexuality that she is deeply ashamed of. After her Character Development kicks in and she drops her more unpleasant attributes can becomes more selfless though, she drops the Jerkass part and becomes a plain old Woobie.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: So, the other portion of the fanbase who aren't here for the story are mainly in it for the gratuitous violence and rape, character development be damned. So disgruntled some of these fans are for the shift in mood that the story has recently taken up that they actually go so far as to say that the lack of 1-2 rapes scenes every other volume is killing the story. Yup you heard right.
  • Love to Hate: Griffith of course, at least whenever he's not getting the Draco in Leather Pants treatment. He's a horrific Complete Monster, however he's so charismatic and cunning that it's hard not to watch him almost flawlessly put his plans into action.
  • Magnificent Bastard: See here.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • GUTS!!! The Berserker (his love is like a truck), The Black Swordsman (not that skinny teen from Sword Art Online), The 100 Man-Slayer manga protagonist with a BFS who makes Doomslayer look like Princess Peach in comparsion, etc. Fans consider Guts no less than a giga-chad who is simultaneously The Woobie to the greatest degree. There's also his purse for when Guts wears it, the purse "BECOMES A MANLY BAG◊".
    • Rickert became this among much of the fanbase after he slapped Griffith in the face. Many fans promptly began joking about how Guts would never surpass Rickert, the fact Rickert has officially done more damage to Femto than Guts, how Rickert would singlehandedly solve the conflict of the story, and in general ascribing epic deeds to Rickert.
  • Memetic Molester:
    • Rape Horse, the demonically possessed horse that tries to rape Farnese before Guts kills it, who has become a minor symbol of how excessively dark Berserk is.
    • Donovan, from much earlier in the series, has become an unofficial mascot of r/Berserklejerk due to his rather infamous rape of a young Guts.
  • Memetic Mutation: See the Memes page here.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Crosses over with Just Here for Godzilla. Some fans heavily dislike the much lighter tone the series has taken on after the Eclipse (there's especially some resentment with Guts' new True Companions), wishing that the extremely dark tone of the earlier volumes would return and that Guts would return to being the massive kill dozer he was at the very beginning. What these fans don't seem to understand is that the series absolutely does not condone Guts' behavior as the Black Swordsman, and that Guts' growing empathy for his new allies is actively being pushed by the story as a good thing.
  • Moe:
    • Puck is a youthful little pixie with a big mischievous streak, but also a deep sense of morality and empathy. The Black Swordsman Arc would have been way too dark if he wasn't around to lighten the mood and restore your faith in the goodness of people. His Berserk (2016) seiyuu Kaoru Mizuhara says she's trying to make all of her character's lines sound cute and lovable.
    • Rickert is the Band of the Hawk's Cheerful Child, whose sunny personality is just adorable. You can understand why the Midland noblewomen at the victory ball were lining up to pinch his cheeks.
    • Jill is a timid, gentle, vulnerable peasant girl who makes you want to rescue her from her shitty life, because it's so heartwarming when she feels even a little happiness or confidence.
    • Erika, Godo's adoptive daughter whom he found as a war orphan, is cute as a button with her Genki Girl antics.
    • Charlotte is a beautiful, shy, and sensitive princess who hates violence and blushes whenever Griffith compliments her. She also doesn't look down on commoners or hold herself above anyone, which is uncommon for a royal. In fact, she's such a Nice Girl that you just want to warn her that her fiancee is the devil incarnate.
    • Collette, despite being a rather minor character, has traits of this. She is timid, kind, and caring, and is also very cute.
    • Anna, Charlotte's maidservant, is a lovable scaredy-cat who makes you want to soothe her nerves whenever she's getting the heebie-jeebies.
    • Schierke is Wise Beyond Her Years, being an extremely powerful witch despite probably being 12 or 13 at most, yet she's still just a kid in many ways, with her lack of social skills, attachment to her mentor, and inexperience with the human world. Her Precocious Crush on Guts is especially precious.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Where do we start?
    • The choice to Sacrifice in general is a crossing of one's personal Moral Event Horizon. It entails taking the person or people you most love and killing them in the most nightmarish fashion imaginable, consigning them to a Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of some of the most horrifying monsters ever to grace the pages of manga. This acts to cut you off from humanity and open yourself up to evil, facilitating your transformation into a demonic monster yourself. And as if this wasn't bad enough, it's also mentioned that those who get sacrificed in the creation of a demon not only die horribly, but their souls are condemned to an eternity in Hell. (Then again, considering the lack of mention of a heaven, it would appear that hell is the regular destination of everyone.)
      • The most notable example of this occurs during the Eclipse after Griffith crosses the Despair Event Horizon near the end of the Golden Age arc (which is about the point where the anime ends as well) and activates his Crimson Behelit. Griffith, Guts and everyone in the Band of the Hawk gets transported to the Nexus, a place that to mortal eyes looks downright Hellish, where the Godhand and every demon in the Berserk universe has gathered. Griffith, distraught over the destruction of his dream and wanting more than anything to have a second chance, does a truly malignant Face–Heel Turn, choosing to sacrifice the entire Band of the Hawk and betraying everyone he has ever led in order to become the fifth member of the Godhand, Femto. And as if all this wasn't bad enough, Griffith then goes the extra mile across the Horizon with his very first act upon being incarnated as Femto, which is to brutally rape Casca to insanity right in front of Guts, who is being pinned down mere feet away from the act after he had just made the dire decision to chisel off his left arm in a last attempt to save her. And it's made even MORE heinous in that Femto is raping her in a way that is mirroring Guts' childhood rape experience. This is the king of moral event horizons in this series, if not in all of anime. After this, Griffith acting like a hero when he is reincarnated on Earth tends to be just a little bit ironic.
      • Just look at the whole thing from Casca's POV. You have a man whom she idolizes and dedicates her life to end up sacrificing the very people she considers the closest she ever had to a family. Him raping her while she's unable to defend herself was the nightmare fueled cherry on top that destroyed whatever ounce of sanity she had left.
      • Particularly because the vessel that Griffith used for his reincarnation on Earth was Guts and Casca's child, which was conceived just before the Eclipse, but which was corrupted by what Griffith did to Casca as Femto. A kid that, had all of this not happened, would possibly have been Griffith's godson. Yeah.
    • Gambino, Guts's gruff mentor/father figure, loses all our sympathy after he sells Guts, who was just eight years old at the time, to a paedophile soldier named Donovan for three silver coins, resulting in a traumatic rape that still affects Guts even after he is all grown up. Particularly when we learn Gambino's reason for it immediately before Guts kills him in self-defense — he called Guts "disgusting" and felt that he "can't be raised to be loyal like a dog," since Gambino blamed the kid for the death of his lover Shisu from the plague.
    • The King of Midland, who after ordering Griffith thrown in the dungeons and put to the torture for having sex with his daughter Princess Charlotte, tries to force himself on her out of madness. Charlotte just barely manages to fight him off, and the experience alienates her from her father, to the point where she won't even acknowledge him on his deathbed.
    • Inquisitor "Bloody Scripture" Mozgus is just as horrible as you'd expect a fanatical religious nutjob with too much power and not a shred of objectivity can get. While it's pretty obvious from the start that he's Bad News, when a band of starving refugees attempts to steal some of the ample foodstuffs sent to Mozgus and his retinue, he spots among them a woman with a starving infant. When she begs him to feed her child, he gently takes her along to his residence, lauding her courage and dedication. He sends away the child to be fed and cared for, then escorts her to a room while extolling the fact that while her intentions were good, she still has to expiate her sins... Then he opens the door, where we see the other refugees being horribly tortured, and the poor woman is dragged, stripped, and tied to another torture device over her increasingly frantic pleas... Then the door closes. It's as nightmarish as it sounds, if not more so.
      • When see that woman later on, she is tortured to insanity, and is still holding her infant, who is clearly long dead.
    • As bad as those are, the worst has to be Emperor Ganishka. If you name it, he has done it: ethnic cleansing, putting POWs on the front lines, wide spread torture, attempted rape (of Charlotte, again) to more horrifying examples like turning the Midland capitol into a city of death, using black magic to conjure evil spirits to fight for him forcing pregnant women into pits of chained apostles to produce demon soldiers who tear their way out of their still living mothers and finally using an artificial means to becoming an even more powerful demon that would destroy everything. All the while bragging about making the world into hell. This guy was so evil that when Griffith faced off with him following his reincarnation, the fans rooted for Griffith.
    • Everything that each Apostle does. Every last one of them (except Zodd) took part in the Eclipse, massacring the Band of the Hawk and helping Griffith rape Casca. To make things even worse, the Eclipse takes place every 216 years, so some of the older ones could have very easily have done this more than once. And this is without getting into what most Apostles get up to on their own time, be it Wyald raping and murdering civilians, and the Count executing and torturing people on trumped up charges.
    • Subverted with Rosine. While she does some terrible things, namely kidnapping children and turning them into Apostle Spawn, she genuinely doesn't understand she's doing anything wrong. The Godhand has the nerve to hand out behelits to little girls like Rosine who cannot possibly be expected to fully comprehend what they are doing.
    • For that matter, the Godhand made almost every one of the aforementioned Moral Event Horizon crossings possible: that's gotta count for something.
  • Narm:
    • Conrad is the odd one out of the Godhand in that he really isn't scary. Not only does he have the least threatening name, but his design invokes none of the Body Horror that the others do: he just looks like a really fat dude who keeps his eyes shut and his mouth pouting (a mouth shape some fans in more recent times liken to Twitch's memetic "Pogchamp" emote), and his voice in the movies sounds like a high-pitched guy who's out of breath. It's probably for the best that he's the least important of the five.
    • Serpico's Eyes Always Shut stick out like a sore thumb in a manga series in which most character designs are too realistic for that kind of cartoonish visual resources. It only makes him look like he has his eyes literally closed, as if he was blind.
    • Isidro's name is hard to take seriously in a high-fantasy work by a Spanish viewer, as "Isidro" is actually a real name in Spain, but one commonly associated with country bumpkins (to put in perspective, think of a character named Cletus in the Middle Earth). Some translations get away with it by rendering it as Isidoro, which is somewhat more serious, but this option has its own problems (namely, that "Isidoro" is strongly associated in Spanish pop culture to Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats, whose main character was renamed that way in the translation).
    • Many Apostles from the Eclipse and afterwards look like straight out of a Tokusatsu producer brainstorming session, when not downright silly. The main example of the latter is the Chicken Apostle◊ who chases Casca and Judeau in the Eclipse; it's not surprising that the 1997 anime obscures him between other Apostles and the Golden Age Arc movies replace it altogether by a more monstruous one.
      • A contender for the Chicken Apostle's title could easily be the already memetic Snail Apostle.
    • The infamous "Rape Horse" scene would've been terrifying like all of the other nightmarish rape scenes in Berserk if not for the goofy facial expressions that the demon makes. Many cite the scene as being unintentionally (if darkly) hilarious even in-context, due to the darkness in the scene being over-the-top even by Berserk's standards.
    • Also, in universe, an example in the eyes of Isidro. Flora's golems are flat out stupid to him, but he knows they're dangerous... and yet he can't stop laughing.
    • The art takes a bit of a nosedive around the time the party makes it to Elfheim. While the background art looks as beautiful as ever, characters go Off-Model, with Guts in particular appearing oddly feminine at times, such as in 347 when he's been informed that the Elf King can cure Casca's mental illnesses. Some theorize that this was either Miura switching to digital art (and thus coming to grips with how to use it) or simply accentuating the incredibly happy and joyous atmosphere of the island. By the time of around chapter 350 the character designs are back to normal.
    • In the 1997 anime, when Guts accidentally kills Adonis. It happens because Guts is sneaking around in a room and has to kill whoever's opening the door as they enter in order to maintain his cover. Guts assumed it was a guard, but reacted faster than he could realize that it was a kid. In the anime, however, there's a slow enough delay between Adonis entering the room and Guts attacking him for Guts to stop before he could hurt him.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • Adding all the instances of Gorn, Fan Disservice and Squick, you make the whole series a Nausea Fuel oil refinery...
    • Volume 13.
    • This probably doesn't cross our minds much, since we're too busy being horrified at what he does, but has anyone ever processed that Femto is so evil that he's made of evil? Even his friggin' semen. It not only compels a developing zygote to go to the dark side, but it also makes said zygote rapidly develop into a six week old embryo straight into an eighteen week old fetus all in under about four days, adding the fact that the semen is a mutagen. If Femto's semen can do all that, just think of what his spit is capable of doing. It'd probably change the whole course of evolution. And that's kinda scary. He seems to have an infinite supply of the stuff. There was a sick, almost voyeuristic aspect to Griffith forcing Guts to watch as he raped Casca, as if he wanted Guts to watch him (Griffith) having sex, albeit very violent and vile.
  • Nightmare Fuel: More than enough to warrant its own page.
  • No Yay:
    • For as much Ho Yay (male or female) and Foe Romance Subtext present in the series, expect there to be just as much No Yay in the same sentiments from many fans. Need a reminder?
    • Griffith's Yandere thoughts and actions toward Guts.
    • Rosine's relationship with her best friend Jill.
    • The King of Midland's unhealthy relationship with his daughter Princess Charlotte.
  • Only the Author Can Save Them Now: Guts and his party will eventually have to fight Griffith, his army, The Beast, the four God Hands, and possibly The Idea of Evil. With Miura's passing, a lot of work is going to have to be done to level the playing field. Then again, that may not happen…
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • Everyone, everything, and every entity is out to get you in this world, so you really can't trust anybody but yourself to be extra safe. And even THAT'S stretching it!
    • One particular horrifying source of paranoia fuel is how some people who have already become apostles, and therefore have already sacrificed at least one person, might be keeping other people around them as "spares"... In the event that they need to renew their life again. What makes this so disturbing from the get go is that those chosen by the behelits don't sacrifice you because they hate you, but because they love and care about you. How screwed up is that?!
  • Periphery Demographic: While statistics aren't clear, Berserk does have a female minority fandom that isn't completely composed of girls who are in it for the guys (to see the flip side, see above). It's probably because Berserk is one of the more "female friendly" Seinen series (considering what you call "friendly" in this world), with the series having a good romantic focus, but also a lot of realistic Character Development, cynical realism, non-flat female characters who aren't there only for Fanservice purposes and an ever-evolving story that you just can't get from a lot of Shoujo.
  • Realism-Induced Horror: One of the most horrific things about Griffith is that he is a realistic and believable villain. He is not without any feeling whatsoever, yet he is able to handle himself with such dignity and intellect that you'd never presume that he's a ruthless, murderous rapist, much like many real people of his ilk.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Farnese. Her initial appearances see her doing little else besides getting in Guts' way and acting like a hypocrite, and after she joins Guts, she tends to be The Load. She gradually starts getting better as she has to help protect Casca and gets to know Schierke better, but she really proves herself to have changed when they reach Vritannis. She essentially allows herself to be married off so that the rest of the group can get a ship, and shortly after she attempts to fend off a demonic tiger with nothing but a silver candelabra, demonstrating clearly that she's finally taking initiative for herself. By casting the protection spell during the battle with the sea God, and learning how to heal Guts' wounds afterwards, she's getting more heroic all the time.
    • Nina is easy to hate for most of the Chapter of the Birth Ceremony because of her cowardice and tendency to throw her friends under the bus when she panics, but the fact that she hates herself for being that way and tries a couple of times (unsuccessfully) to put others before herself makes it possible to hold off on condemning her entirely if you're inclined to give her a second chance. At the end of the chapter she acts like she's really learned to appreciate Luca's unconditional love and wants to make it up to her somehow, and when she decides to go away with Joachim so that she can learn to be a better person it feels like a redeeming step for her.
  • Rooting for the Empire: While an absolutely irredeemably evil bastard, some fans are actually still rooting for Griffith to accomplish his goals and set forth his new "utopia", mainly because it will be awesome to watch. This reached its peak in the Falcon of the Millennium Empire Arc, where people were actively cheering for him in his battle against Emperor Ganishka.
  • Sacred Cow: Never, ever say anything bad about Berserk (its media adaptations are fair game, however), lest you be accused of being an oversensitive puritan with no taste. This also extends to the creator Kentaro Miura, who painstakingly drew every inch of the series' trademark Awesome Art. Following his death, fans worldwide came together to mourn him.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Wyald seems to be this for some (see Fanon Discontinuity) for having little to no characterization besides being a monstrous rapist and mass murderer (while the series before and after his arc has no shortage of villains with the same traits, they were at least more interesting or plot-important), and having little actual role or purpose in the overall storyline besides trying to stop Griffith and his crew from escaping, and not even doing a very good job at it. Although this is also the intended reaction, scenes involving Wyald are often complained about for being excessively violent, even considering the overall tone of the series, and his arc is criticized for unnecessarily slowing down the story during an already somewhat padded section. Notably, both the major animated adaptations of the Golden Age cut him out entirely.
    • Good luck finding any fans of Zepek, Jill's father from the Lost Children storyline. Not only is he a lazy, good for nothing abuser, but he tags along with the Holy Iron Chain Knights to provide obnoxious comic relief, does nothing but get in the way, and endangers his own daughter. To top it off, he actually lives through the whole arc.
    • Nina from the Birth Ceremony Chapter. Being a spineless, indecisive, hysterical and painfully weak-willed character who partakes in the worshipping of Slan, some readers hate her even more for making it out of the arc alive.
    • Captain Bonebeard and the Pirates are widely considered annoying, mostly for being overused in place of more satisfying opponents and because they're heavily associated with the long stretch of real-world time when Guts and co. were "stuck on the boat".
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Though they tend to be small and localized, the Berserk fandom nevertheless falls victim to the occasional Shipping War, the biggest armadas being the U.S.S. Gutsca (Guts/Casca) and the H.M.S. G×G (Guts/Griffith). Some skirmishes go as followed:
    • Against Gutsca: "Guts and Casca don't really love each other! They're just compensating for not having Griffith to themselves!"; "Guts only keeps Casca around to remind him of Griffith!" "Casca is only a reward for Guts to satisfy his ego!"
    • Against G x G: "Griffith only saw Guts as a tool!"; "How can you possibly ship them after the Eclipse?!" "Guts isn't gay!!"
    • Die for Our Ship: And then there is the minority ship that ships Griffith and Casca together, though it's really weird and kind of twisted depending on how you look at it. Before that, Casca as a character often gets a lot of flack from a minority of fans (possibly from the same fans mentioned above); reasons vary from the fact that she's with Guts - which means that she isn't being a dutiful action girl anymore - or that she's with Guts - and not with Griffith - or that Guts is with her - and not with Griffith. That's where you get a lot of bashing, ranging from downright mean to illogical, like the "Casca only had sex with Guts to cope with not being with Griffith" argument or the "Casca had sex with Griffith in the wagon (despite his severe, physically crippling injuries)" scenario or the " Casca enjoyed being raped by Griffith" claim... After all of that, sentiments range from fans wanting Casca to return to Griffith after she is cured to Casca dying after she is cured if she can't quite fit in the paradigm. If you were never in the Griffith x Casca ship and were shipping for G x G to begin with, Casca's existence is but an anomally in the story and is brushed off altogether.
  • Shocking Moments:
    • Every time Guts swings his sword. Every single time.
    • Volume 34 is probably sixty percent double-page spreads depicting events of unbelievable scale and badassery. Two-mile-tall Physical God crushing battalions under its foot? Check. The most powerful Apostles in the world ripping through untold thousands of Eldritch Abominations, backed up by troops from various countries? Check. Griffith surfing Zodd onto the head of the aforementioned god in an attempt to kill it? Check. Add the Skull Knight showing up from nowhere and taking care of the problem (with a stroke meant for Griffith) and a massive magical shockwave that consumes the planet and releases mythological creatures all across its surface, and you have a book that might just kill an unprepared reader.
  • Signature Series Arc: The Golden Age arc up to the Eclipse, to the point that 2 out of the 3 animated adaptions covered it, the 1997 version and the films, probably due to the fact that it is oddly placed, being basically an extended How We Got Here for Guts after him taking out a few Apostles.
  • So Bad, It's Good: Tell Me Why by Penpals, the opening theme song of the 1997 adaptation, to the point of Memetic Mutation. The off-tune guitars, loudly mixed drums, and unintelligible Gratuitous English vocals do nothing to stop the song from being beloved by fans, and an unintentionally very entertaining song.
    "Put your grasses on, and nothing will be wong"
  • Squick:
    • Void, one of the Godhand, has a grotesque face. It's a skull with a brain protruding out of it.
    • The Baron of Koka Castle's One Winged Angel form. His mouth looks like a vagina.
    • Wyald's Gag Penis.
    • The Rape Horse scene. Full stop.
    • The King of Midland's obsession with his daughter Charlotte.
    • How Slan manifests herself in the real world.
    • Rosine's Apostle-spawn elf-children sodomize one another to death with hornet stingers while crying "Adult attack!"
  • Strawman Has a Point: In Lost Children, when the townsfolk call Guts heartless for using little Thomas as live bait to trap Rosine's pseudo-elves, he shuts them up by pointedly asking if any of them were brave enough to unlock their door to shelter him. If you think about it, Guts is kind of a hypocrite for saying so. The people who "made him laugh" had absolutely zero chance of saving Thomas because of their own powerlessness, so "unlocking their doors" would have led to nothing more than them dying together with the child. However, Guts had a choice, and CHOSE to use Thomas in the trap. So the anger the villagers feel towards Guts is perfectly reasonable.
  • Tear Jerker: Has its own page for good reason.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Some fans view Casca's status in the story as such, seeing her as an interesting and complex character in her own right that had a lot of potential for character growth plot wise, but that was suddenly brought to a halt when she was driven insane by the Eclipse; some fans take it a bit further by saying how it was unfair for Casca to be fridged for the sake of Guts' character arc. Fans eagerly await the day that Casca will be cured so that maybe she'll get some more development in.
    • Fans of Puck and Isidro often claim that they got pigeonholed as nothing but comic relief at some point, lamenting that their more interesting personality facets are being neglected.
  • Toy Ship:
    • Schierke, the Child Mage, is sometimes shipped with Isidro, the child swordsman of Guts' True Companions.
    • Other times Isidro is shipped with Isma, the half-merrow girl.
  • Ugly Cute:
    • The Child in his demon form. Yes, he's squeamish, malformed, and was created under the most horrible circumstances, but you gotta remember that he is still a baby. So you notice that he still retains the infant-like chubbyness, puckered lips, and he even crawls like a five month old (in one panel, he crawls up to Casca's chest and laps up the blood from her brand as a twisted parallel to breastfeeding)! Call him a "freak" if you must, but he is an adorable one.
    • The unnamed bulldog-like Apostle who is Guts' first kill on his quest of vengeance. Much like an actual bulldog, both his human and Apostle forms are drawn rather endearingly goofy-looking, and he's also rather simple-minded, just wanting food rather than being outright sadistic like many Apostles are.
    • The little creature from Qliphoth, nick-named "Schnoz" by the fans because he's basically a head on legs with a giant nose. He's odd-looking to say the least, but the fact that he's pretty much harmless and is a Gag Nose personified makes him rather endearing.
    • Within Casca's mindscape is a hound that symbolizes Guts. It's horribly maimed, missing both a forelimb and an eye, and when it's first seen, it's gored by numerous spears as it drags a coffin containing what remains of Casca's ego. It also looks positively rabid whenever it gets violent. But when Schierke and Farnese approach, it acts like a normal dog, going so far as to gratefully lick Schierke's hand when she pulls out the spears. The dog is less of a fearsome beast and more of an Iron Woobie.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Pre Relationship Upgrade Casca being a bit of the Chew Toy, given that before she got together with Guts she apparently spent every waking moment either chewing out and throwing a Death Glare at Guts, to blaming Guts for every little thing that (in her mind) went wrong due to her blind belief that Griffith can do no wrong, despite half the time it is Griffith telling Guts to do these things, after she and Guts do get together however, everything that happens afterwards is very undeserved.
    • Nina also gets hit with this, yes, she is an ill girl and her inner thoughts show how much she hates being a coward, but, the fact still remains that even at a hint of trouble, she will automatically throw someone under the bus to spare herself, even Mozgus' Disciples point out they didn't even do anything to her and she threw Casca under the bus calling her a witch, this was after the Eclipse, so Casca had the mind of a toddler, and Mozgus goes straight to the Kill It with Fire approach to even Nina's clearly self serving false confession, she also almost got her boyfriend killed because he wasn't into joining a cannibal orgy cult.
  • The Woobie:
    • It'd be easier to list named characters that don't qualify. Essentially, if your name isn't Wyald, Griffith (and even he qualified before crossing the Moral Event Horizon a thousand times over), Ganishka, the rest of the Godhand, Donovan or Gambino, you deserve a major hug.
    • The Egg of the Perfect World. He was a deformed outcast who was abused by the residents of St. Albion and forced to live in a hole full of dead bodies to protect himself. After he obtained his Behelit and became an Apostle, he wanted to create the perfect world. To do so, he sacrifices his life to give birth to Griffith.
    • The Baby. It's one thing to be born into the Berserkverse, it's a more horrifying thing to be born into it under the worst circumstances imaginable. If the Eclipse never happened, he would have been a normal little kid growing up with his parents - and they probably would not have made bad parents either. This whole family is just one. Big. Woobie.

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