Berserk is a fantastic manga, perhaps one of the best ever written. However, you'll find plenty of praise here, and I'd like to say that normally, I'd give Berserk a 9/10, or even a 10/10. However, I'd like to focus on something in Berserk that may cause some people to not enjoy it.

Berserk is dark. Like, seriously dark. Dark enough to make you wince and cry and hate the characters themselves. Most of the time, the darkness is very justifiable. One of the main villains is an extremely Machiavellian person, and will do whatever to succeed in life, whether it be selling his own body, letting someone die, or even worse things that I won't say to not spoil the plot. There is one incident at the end of the Golden Arc that I believe is entirely well done, and establishes a villain extremely well; but at the same time, it sets the stage for what I would consider an unnecessary amount of dark. Something in particular happens that has absolutely no purpose to the plot or characters. It is used as a cheap way to tug at your emotions and make you hate a certain antagonist much more than you otherwise would.

From the end of the Golden Arc, there are several more instances of this. Whether it involves a character almost getting raped (this is actually the main tool, this happens far too often for absolutely no reason), or a merciless slaughter of a town (don't forget, one of the women is getting raped too), it just seems so pointless. I dare to say that Miura puts these instances in the Manga as an attempt to keep people interested, or even as a selling point for the manga. Berserk: The Darkest Manga Around.

If you are someone who doesn't like this sort of pointless atrocity, you'll probably find yourself not enjoying several sections of the manga. I for one, enjoy these sections anyways for the most part, but I have enough insight to know that they are ultimately either a plot device, a tool to make me hate a character, or an easy way to say "this guy is a villain."

Recently, Miura has actually gotten better at this sort of thing. There hasn't been a rape/almost rape sequence in a number of volumes. In fact he introduced a whole league of villains without using the rape/slaughter tactic to make me hate them.

Overall, Berserk is still easily one of the best Manga ever written, especially the Golden Arc, the Millennium Falcon arc, and whatever arc Guts gets a certain set of armor in.