I recently caught up with Berserk in about 2 months in total, but I really had to restrain myself from just reading it 24/7, I didn't want to be caught up too fast because I didn't want to be done reading it, but with a new chapter in sight and my friend passing me by in reading it, eventually I coulnd't restrain myself anymore and caught up with the manga.
Even though I really enjoyed it from start to finish I do have to state that I prefer the first 100 chapters over rest of the series, in my eyes it doesn't really get any better than that. While the art does improve after those chapters to levels of the insane, in my eyes the story slows down a lot in pacing and kinda loses it's edge. What I liked so much about the first arcs in Berserk was the very adult way of presenting the world, the themes of loss, hate, revenge, love, ambition, friendship. They were all represented in a way that felt so real and unlike anything I had experienced before in fiction. And while this does continue in some way, overtime it feels like it becomes more generic battle like manga in certain ways, and the arcs felt like they were losing what made in particulair the Black Swordsman and Golden Age arcs so good.
I understand that Miura probably wanted to try new things in his later arcs, and I think he succeeds in a lot of aspects with really good fights and scenes unlike anything before and some really interesting characters that get introduced throughout the way while also developing Guts' character more. I enjoy a lot of these new aspects of Berserk, but I also really miss the more harsh, depressing, cruel and seemingly more human aspects from the earlier arcs, especially the Golden Age arc had such a good balance between more sad and horror like elements of a story and the happier ones and making for such an unforgetable conclusion where this all comes together.
In the most recent arc of Berserk, the Fantasia arc, this feels especially lacking for me, while I also like a lot of the things this arc does, it doesn't really feel like the Berserk I knew to me in a lot of ways, for example the more light comedy aspects seem to be taking a bigger role here and a new setting that doesn't really sit right with me. It feels like Berserk went from a very special dark fantasy manga to a more general and light one.
But despite me not liking the last few volumes from Berserk, I still believe that it can get better. I want to believe that Miura is using these more light moments of Berserk before dragging it down into an epic final conclusion that with all the setup it has had could even be more impactful than the eclipse from the Golden Age. A lot of signs are pointing in that direction, and that is what is keeping me hyped and why I still enjoy Berserk so much. If Miura is doing what I think he is then all of these minor complaints I have here will be swat away and I will become a Berserk stan once more and praise it as one of the best manga ever made. So yea even though I feel like Berserk has slowed down a lot over time I do believe we are now at the start of a conclusion to the story that has all the ingredients to be worthy of a story as great as Berserk, and it's keeping me hopeful for the future of this manga.