Don't go berserk now!

Last week I told you about a few comics that are based on popular tv shows. This week I chose a manga, actually my favorite manga Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, to give you a small introduction into this Japanese art form. In Japan the manga has a much higher significance than comics have in our culture. They are read by every age and social group and are extremely popular. A broad range of topics are covered reigning from action to comic to romance and many more. Thus it does not have the “nerdy” image that western comic books have and plays a big role in Japanese culture.

Berserk tells the story of the fighter Guts, who as a baby is found by a mercenary gang, brought up by them and trained in the art of the sword. The mercenary group is however not composed by the most moral beings and Guts is treated like a slave and at the age of 9 he is even molested by his godfather. Ultimately he kills the leader of the gang in an attempt to defend himself and has to leave them. He travels from battle to battle. His fighting is so impressive that he is noticed by Griffith, the leader of the Hawks (a very strong mercenary group), and after a confrontation with him, Guts is proposed to join them. Here he finds friends for the first time in his life and faces atrocious battles and incredible evil with them. Later on the world seems to go crazy and everything that Guts believes in falls apart. His love interest for Casca (one of the female mercenaries) and his close friendship to Griffith clash and end in a “monstrous” tragedy.

I don’t want to spoil the read by telling you what exactly happened between Guts and Griffith. In 1997, the studio Oriental Light and Magic released a 25 episode anime of the series, which roughly covers the first 13 books. As of November 2007, 32 volumes of the manga have been released.

For those of you who have been intrigued, let me just put up a small warning sign: Berserk is not for the faint of heart. The Manga and the Anime are both graphically explicit and contain extreme violence, gore and sexual material. Still the storyline of the series is by far one of the best I have ever read.

The images used in this post are all courtesy of Berserk Chronicles