After more than 300 chapters written and drawn over three decades, the legendary manga Berserk sadly came to an abrupt end when creator Kentaro Miura passed away in 2021. While the manga's continuation is currently up in the air, its legacy is not.
In the years since its beginning, Berserk changed in more ways than anyone could count, both in terms of Guts' seemingly endless struggle and one of the most renowned manga ever created. The one constant was that Berserk impacted many lives around the world.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
10 Berserk Became One Of The Most Influential & Successful Manga In History
When it started in 1989, Berserk could have easily been lost in the sea of equally bloody and brooding seinen manga. As the decades passed, Guts dominated the fantasy and seinen market, becoming the poster child of both. Currently, Berserk's 41 volumes sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, and it only skyrocketed in light of Miura's passing.
Besides becoming a media juggernaut in Japan, Berserk also accomplished the difficult task of reaching a global audience. Berserk has been credited by creators and fans from all over the world as their favorite manga, even crediting it with positively influencing their own art like in the case of the bleak Dark Souls games (which actually have happy endings) and their personal lives.
9 Griffith Finally Got His Kingdom
Ever since he was a child, Griffith dreamt of ruling his own kingdom. Griffith was willing to do everything to make his fantasy become a reality, including sacrificing his loyal Band of the Hawk during the Eclipse to be reborn as the fifth God Hand, Femto. With his new powers and a second rebirth, Griffith created the kingdom of Falconia.
Falconia is a utopia where people from different nations and cultures live in peace, knowing that the Falcon of Light will protect them. That said, there's something ominous about Falconia. The city was founded on the remains of Emperor Ganishka, a once-powerful Apostle, and it's been hinted that Griffith has dark grand designs for its populace.
8 Kentaro Miura's Art Somehow Got Even Better
To say that Miura was a talented mangaka would be putting it lightly. Miura is widely recognized as one of the best artists to ever grace the medium, and his skills were evident even in Berserk's very first chapter. While Berserk's first chapter is certainly well-made, it's almost amateurish when compared and contrasted to Chapter 364.
As the years passed, Miura's already amazing and unique art got even more detailed and lifelike than before. This was actually one of the reasons behind Berserk's numerous delays, as Miura admitted that he was such a perfectionist that he would spend hours painstakingly fixing the crosshatching and linework of a piece of armor that no one would notice at first glance.
7 Griffith Formed A New Band Of The Hawk
During The Eclipse, Griffith sacrificed his soldiers to be reborn as a god. This, however, was not the end of the Band of the Hawk. Griffith may be a member of the God Hand, but even he needed an army of skilled warriors and loyalists. To this end, Griffith revived the Band of the Hawk by recruiting monstrous Apostles, including Nosferatu Zodd.
The Apostles were some of the vilest, if not the vilest, antagonists of Berserk, which made their allegiance and servitude to Griffith even more jarring. Even stranger, it was the clearest sign that the world changed. Now that the human and astral realms were one, seeing humans working alongside Apostles was far from the strangest sight anyone laid eyes upon.
6 The Breaks In Between Chapters Kept Getting Longer & Longer
Given the level of artistry put into one page, Berserk's chapters unsurprisingly took a long time to finish. At its peak, Young Animal published Berserk monthly and had enough material to print at least two manga volumes per year. By the 2000s, though, Berserk slowed down and had some of the longest hiatuses in manga history.
This was a side-effect of Miuras' ailing health, which only got worse as the years went by. Miura occasionally took long breaks to maintain his physical and mental health, which fans understood. Berserk's hiatuses lasted for months, with some stretching to almost two years. One of the worst instances was in 2013 when only one chapter was published.
5 The Moonlight Boy's Identity Was Finally Revealed
One of Berserk's most enduring mysteries was the identity and purpose of the Moonlight Boy. All that was known was that the boy would show up during a full moon, and he would either hang out with Guts and Casca or save them from otherworldly evils through powerful magic. As it turns out, the Moonglight Boy was someone more familiar than expected.
In Chapter 364, the Moonlight Boy showed up on Elfhelm and followed Guts around. Much to his and everybody's shock, the Moonlight Boy turned out to be Griffith. According to Griffith, he would turn into the Moonlight Boy whenever the moon was full and he would instinctively seek out Guts and Casca, the people who were closest to him in life.
4 Berserk Transformed From A Lightheartened Shonen Manga To A Brutal Dark Fantasy
Berserk may be one of the bloodiest dark fantasies ever conceived, but it didn't always start out that way. In 1988, Miura created what's now been called Berserk: The Prototype which is, as its title implies, a very rough version of what Guts' story would become. The one-shot had the basics down, but there were a lot of key differences.
The biggest one was that an eyepatch-wearing Guts was a wisecracking badass, and his adventures felt more like an action-packed shonen fantasy than a brutal seinen tale. The Prototype was also the basis of Guts' fight with the Baron of Koka Castle, only it had Vlad the Impaler instead of the Snake Apostle and the townspeople were saved.
3 Casca's Mind & Dignity Were Restored After 22 Years
The Eclipse isn't just Berserk's darkest point, but in all of manga as well. Of the horrors that transpired during the sacrifice, Casca's fate was the worst. Not only was she violated by Griffith, but her trauma was so great that she regressed to a childlike state. This happened back in 1996, meaning Casca was trapped in this state for almost 20 years.
In 2018, Schierke and Farnese did the impossible and brought Casca back to her former glory. Unfortunately, the horrors cut too deep and Casca fell into a panicked state whenever Guts was nearby. Despite this tragic trade-off, the fanbase celebrated Casca's return and regards Chapter 354 as one of Berserk's best and most beloved episodes.
2 The Idea Of Evil Was Introduced Then Quickly Retconned
Though they may be the most visible antagonists, the God Hand are not the overall villains of Berserk. That would be the Idea Of Evil, the metaphysical manifestation of man's desire to blame their suffering and sins on something other than themselves. As big as a revelation as the Idea's existence may be, it's technically not canon.
The Idea debuted in Chapter 82, but Miura rescinded it. For him, revealing the Idea during The Eclipse spoiled too much. Volume 13's reprints left the chapter out but added it in Berserk's supplementary material. The anime followed suit, only hinting that the God Hand served a higher power rather than showing the Idea.
1 Guts Found A New Family
After Guts spent the Golden Age Arc loving Judeau, Pippin, Corkus, and everyone in the Band of the Hawk, he watched them die horribly. For the longest time, Guts was wracked with survivor's guilt and hatred, and he disavowed all human contact. It got so bad that Guts almost lost his humanity to the sentient Berserk Armor, which turned him into a monster who did more harm than good.
However, Guts' self-isolation slowly crumbled as he let new people into his life. By the manga's halfway point, Guts had formed a new family of lost souls like himself. From the plucky Puck and Isidro to former enemies like Farnese and Serpico, Guts' new friends could never replace the Band of the Hawk, but they helped him accept the past and move on.