THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This series already gets plenty of praise, so I will mostly focus on criticism for this review, despite the fact that I do have plenty of positive things to say about Berserk. I want to make a review that will be legitimately helpful to people, rather than simply echoing the beliefs of every other reviewer on here. Look at the myriad "10" reviews for raving about how amazing it is, there is plenty of that already. This series does not get nearly enough proper criticism. Please read the whole thing before marking the review "helpful" or "not helpful." Because if you don't finish it then you don't really know, do you?

The first flaw that is quickly apparent is in the first three volumes, or is simply the first three volumes in their entirety. They are a tad cliché and they follow our beloved lone wolf anti-hero and his elf buddy (comic relief sidekick who also heals out of convenience to the plot) on a couple adventures. The villains are cliché, everything is kind of cliché, the art is nothing special (yet), and it seems sort of generic. Not the best exposition to any series. This would have been best moved into chronological order.

The true glaring issue here is that, after this, there is a lengthy flashback/reverse-time-skip that lasts around 11 volumes and is called the "Golden Age" arc. This arc will now be called the "GA" arc because typing on my iPhone is inconvenient. It is easily and widely acknowledged as the best part of the series, to the point where people dub berserk the greatest manga of all time simply because of this one arc, but it is still seriously held back by the first three volumes.

The conclusion of the astounding GA arc is one of the most intense and emotionally impactful scenes in manga and it would have been, additionally, one of the most unexpected, but we already knew it would happen, due to the first three volumes, which greatly lessened the impact. It was a great scene, but it could have been even better and had an even greater effect on me as a reader. I would not have seen it coming if not for the first three volumes, despite some masterful foreshadowing within the GA arc itself. There was a marked lack of foresight shown in the first three volumes. It seems like Miura was trying to show how everything built up to the situation in the first three volumes, but by the time I finished the GA arc, I really didn't care about the first three volumes anymore. I could nitpick some elements of the GA arc, but it's so superior to the rest of the series that I won't even bother.

The art slowly became some of the best and most detailed art in manga, but it was also often used as a crutch after the GA arc. The misty valley arc is the earliest example of this. The image of the “elves” slaughtering each other and “playing human” was one of the most brutal in the series, and it may fit in thematically, but the arc lacks overall significance and character development, especially considering its length. It would have established Guts's personality after the GA arc and how he had changed, but we already knew from the first three volumes. It was also the perfect opportunity to turn Puck into something more than a pointless comic relief character that we've seen a million times before, but that potential was quickly squandered as well, and Puck's character never really develops beyond a comic relieving plot device.

Guts's showdown with the evil apostle fairy chick foreshadowed a descent into fights that are shounenesque in both verbosity and length, a serious depart from the gritty fantasy realism that the series is so often praised for. The realism further deteriorated as it went on, proportionally to the increase of clear shounen elements. Guts gathered a crew à la one piece, an inexplicable depart from his character, including an uninteresting masochist, a loli witch, and a motherfucking veritable shounen protagonist. The loli witch was one of the worst things to happen to the series. The thief kid/shounen protagonist was another one of the worst. I have no idea what Miura was thinking there.

The masochist chick was actually quite an interesting character before she fell in love with Guts and started rolling with his crew. She was a powerful reflection of the pervading theme of masochism that usually manifests itself in the oft depicted self-destructive nature of humanity. Now she's the epitome of cliché. She shows some promise of recovery, but at the pace the plot is moving that will likely be in the distant future. The women are all in love with Guts by the way. No shounen is complete without a harem of women who exist to make the protagonist look cooler.

The Skull Knight was another promising character, but it's been a while since we've seen him, he appears infrequently anyway, and having next to nothing known about him, after all this time, is simply bad writing. There has been some fairly obvious clues regarding his identity and origin, but there has been no true follow up on that, and we still know very little about him as a character. He's only existed to make a couple of convenient actions and philosophize about Guts's fate. Therefore, he too, has been reduced to more of a plot device than an actual character. There is also a possible major contradiction in his backstory, but I can't get into it without spoilers and I suppose it could still be explained somewhere down the road.

Magic was introduced along with the witch and the crew gained shounenesque (I'm using this word a lot) power ups and thus realism went entirely out the window. Guts got a power-up that was reminiscent of Sasuke's curse mark early in the Naruto series. The theme of camaraderie is more omnipresent and becomes more about the “power of friendship,” harem elements develop, the ruthlessness is reduced, there is a moe loli witch, there is now campy abilities and gimmicks, there is shitty power-ups, there is in-battle commentary by secondary characters, battles are often increasingly drawn out, yesterday's enemies are today's friends, characters announce special moves when they are preformed, the general purpose becomes a noble fight against the very idea of evil, there is a general saturation of overused clichés and tropes, and there was even a slapstick comedy fanservice shower scene. Yup, berserk is undeniably in an increasingly noticeable downward spiral into battle shounen territory. Many fans deny this, but they are, well, in denial. This is sort of funny seeing as so many Berserk fans are pseudo-elitists who hate on popular battle shounens. It may be more explicit than a typical shounen series, but that superficial aspect of it does not grant it any sort of inherent maturity.

Now, the mangaka clearly has no idea of what to do with the story. It's been ongoing for over twenty years and the story isn't close to being done; it is moving at a snail's pace, both on the rate at which it's released and the actual speed of plot development. It has been a half a year since the last chapter came out. Recently there was an arc where the motley crew nobly fights off a sea god/kraken thingy and mermaids are somehow involved. And they actually teamed up with comic relief pirates. My one piece comparisons are getting more accurate. Now, exactly what was the point of this arc? No one knows, but it sure as fuck isn't the fucking elf island that they've been trying to get to for over 10 fucking volumes. Fuck... He's clearly stalling because he's out of ideas. The dude does have serious myopia and a strange method of storytelling. He once decided that a published chapter of Berserk didn’t count because it gave too much information and insisted that it never be printed again. Seriously. If you’re putting that little thought into what you publish and how it will affect future chapters, that’s a problem. These 18 pages introduced a huge concept (although they didn’t go into great depth about it) that has yet to be seen again, even over 200 chapters later. Ummm, maybe you should have just kept the chapter after all?

Despite my criticisms, the GA arc is a tragedy of epic proportions and it is a must read for any manga fan. There is a reason that this is the highest ranked manga on MAL. It has extraordinarily wide appeal and some very good qualities, despite it often falling into the "sex and violence=depth" trap.

Make no mistake, I may compare it to shounens, but it is still far superior to shit like Naruto; you won't hear the word nakama being tossed around, although similar themes of companionship are increasingly echoed in a more subtle manner, and, unlike the worthlessly lazy Tite Kubo, Kentaro Miura puts an incredible amount of effort in his artwork. Although he made many mistakes in the plot, his artwork is indisputably among the best in later volumes. I've seen maybe one or two mangaka that come close or are on the same level.

Guts is a powerful and tragic character and Griffith and Casca are compelling, until something happens to Casca, which kills her value as a character, and reduces her to a plot device for the majority of the series. One of the early themes of Berserk was how every man had his own dreams and motivations and, at least during the GA arc, it showed. All of the characters were detailed and had their own emotions. You could make an argument that, at that point, not a single character was a one dimensional plot device.

Later on we get Guts's aforementioned posse, plus at least three or four comic relief characters with no depth to speak of, or higher purpose to serve in the storyline. I'd say that Guts and Femto are the only true quality characters, as it stands right now.. The fact that I still have sympathy for Femto after all that he did, really drives in what a great and multi-faceted character he is, his character is full of symbolism, and his rivalry with Guts is incredible.

The antagonists have become less convincing over time. Despite interesting theories about and the philosophical nature of Void, and despite the fact that they all have awesome character designs, only one of the God Hand members is truly developed and compelling. One of them has only really existed for fanservice. Did I mention that berserk is actually pretty big on fanservice? Shit, Conrad isn't even good for fanservice, the Majin Buddha lookin fat fuck. Conrad's "personality" section in the Berserk Wikia is blank for a reason. He just kinda floats there while everybody else does all the hard work.

And don't even get me started on Ubik. There's a reason his Berserk Wikia page doesn't even have a personality section. And at least Conrad made that big rock hand thing during the eclipse, this tentacle-ass motherfucker does absolutely nothing at all. What does Ubik even bring to the table? They oughta fire him or something..... Femto is an incredible and complex character that is the perfect foil to Guts while paralleling him in many ways. I don't expect all of the God Hand to be that, but at least give us something.

I rate highly on conclusions as well as expositions, and from the looks of it, this series will have a very bad conclusion, or not have one at all. The climaxes of the series were often vastly epic, although the arguable biggest climax was pretty early on and the story never reached that height again in terms of intensity or quality, but the exposition was sub-par to say the least, and we'll have to see about the conclusion, but I'm not too hopeful. The GA arc is kind of rendered pointless if the overall series fails to deliver on its promise and delivers a lackluster conclusion. That's just speculation though. He may pull it off yet. But, at the pace he’s going, I seriously doubt it.

Art: 9.5/10 (it wasn't as incredible in early volumes and there were some minor mistakes and inconsistencies throughout, so minus .5)
Characters: GA arc 10/10, post GA 5.5/10
Story: GA 10/10, otherwise 6/10
Enjoyment: 9/10 Easily, it's only recently that my enjoyment of it has significantly waned, but enjoyment is the least important category by far and I don't usually count it, except when I'm deciding whether to round up or down.

Overall: 7/10
Actually a very good rating, considering this was a mostly critical review. I just felt like the series wasn't getting properly called out on its flaws, although I like it. The fact is that it's far from perfect and I believe my "7" rating is a somewhat generous one, inflated due to nostalgia and other similar biases.

In addition, the GA arc is simply too amazing for me to give the series anything below "good." That arc will stay with me forever and I've read it around 7 times. Too bad the mindless fanboys will not consider any of this and will simply click "not helpful" without reading the review, despite the fact that "7" is a positive score. On the other hand, haters may deem "7" to be too high a score and they will be butthurt as well. Well, I said what I had to say and I stand by it.