this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Golden Age/Eclipse certainly is, and is in many ways the best part because of it (though I also like very late Berserk for Miura deciding, as he said in an interview, that he wanted to for Guts to "find a way to live," reflecting his own shifting attitude). The rest of it, though, I'd say is very unfortunately not Yaoi, and not in a romantically tragic way but just in a bad way, as much as I like certain elements of those parts as well.
And then there's very very late Berserk wherein Miura said "it is imperative to the plot that they run into this undead pirate chump three times. Bonebeard will be my magnum opus, I give my life for Bonebeard."
Admittedly I only just finished eclipse
That makes a lot of sense. You have my condolences for the torrent of creepy anime bullshit you're about to encounter.
It has already been uncomfortable enough. A friend of mine enjoys it so I am reading it for him 😔
Some of it is not so good but the story is interesting enough. They think it is far more nuanced than the fandom suggests but a part of me just thinks the author is a creep.
Miura was absolutely a creep, there's no way to credibly argue against that when the Lost Children sub-arc is right there. For what it's worth, while I wouldn't say it ever goes away, I feel it gets toned down late in the series, certainly not reflecting the earlier barbaric depravity even if it's still creepy in ways more common to male-targeted manga.
Some people just want to cope and say that this manga they emotionally resonate with isn't creepy, but cope is all it is in 99% of cases.
One of the most interesting things about the work to me isn't that it's some immaculate masterpiece, but that Miura seemingly poured his whole soul into his work from when he started it at just 23(!) until he died at 54(!) and you can see a lot of change in the series over time that he broadly did not plan for. By this I don't just mean that he worked very hard, though famously he did, and the long-term effects of that overwork were a major factor in him dying so young, but he seems to have put himself in the work for better or worse (and we can plainly see that it several times meant worse), so that makes it like watching him change by proxy in a way that you very rarely really get to see with just about any continuous work of art, with one story and cast of characters and setting.
Yeah the lost children arc has been very uncomfortable. You don't mean to tell me it gets worse right? Guts hasn't fought Rosine yet
I wonder if it is worth it
The Lost Children sub-arc is easily the worst sub-arc in terms of creep shit. There are some individual scenes after Lost Children that are still pretty bad (if I remember the order right, since they are mostly pretty incidental scenes), but in terms of overarching situations I don't think it ever gets close to being that bad, the one exception being that there's a teenage girl who joins the cast right near the end that is repeatedly sexualized, etc. Still creepy and worthy of condemnation but not on the level of the stuff in Lost Children that I feel genuinely uncomfortable with describing.
It's been about a year since I last read berserk, I don't remember some sexualised teen near the end. Who was that?
I mean Isma. I looked it up after making that comment and she's actually introduced slightly earlier than the impression I gave, at 311, but there were still only 364 total chapters so I don't think I was wildly off.
I've kind of memory-holed it, I guess I gotta reread the series to figure out if we just disagree or I'm coping
Id say it's worth it. Miura kind of starts to grow away from being an edgelord creep and over time he looks back on who he was and deals with that too throug Berserk. Also there's some absolutely amazing art coming up
One of the cool things about Berserk in my eyes is seeing Miura grow through the series. He stops being a creepy edgelord, he becomes better - or that's what it seems like in my eyes. And not only does he get better, he starts to deal with how he was. Casca being afraid of Guts and how it's all dealt with...
It gets better. There's about two storyarcs of creepy sexshit left to endure, and the worst has passed - Though lost children is also tough.
The worst is up to the eclipse. After that you only have to deal with the bishop and the fairies which is tough, but the eclipse is the worst. And after that it gets better
Maybe I'm forgetting some garbage in Black Swordsman, but in Golden Age and Eclipse I think the awful stuff from the "being a creep" perspective is the two people Griffith molests, though granted one of those cases is basically the most central element of Eclipse. Obviously there is also Guts's backstory and there are things we can say about it, but I don't think it's really eroticized, though maybe I've forgotten. That said, most of Golden Age is not that, it's toxic yaoi about mercenary dudes being bros, court intrigue, Miura being obsessed with castles and armor, etc. There's that duke or whoever who abuses Griffith, but that one I am more sure is not eroticized (and it's basically all off-panel) even though Griffith is of course depicted pretty sexually in general.
Also, "the fairies" are a whole sub-arc of pedo shit along with the scene with the most extreme sexual violence in the series, Eclipse included (though they spend much longer on it in Eclipse, so I guess it's a matter of criteria). My main objection though is the pedo shit, which is way more extensive in Lost Children than anywhere else. Beyond LC, the other scenes that I was thinking of were things like the horse and the trolls and so on, which in my hazy memory are in the Conviction arc.
I don't think picturing abuse is inherently creepy. The things both guts and Griffith go through don't seem like creep-things to me, but more an attempt at giving some psychological depth to his characters. Comparing how those scenes are depicted and treated by the characters to how the Wyalds scenes are, kind of shows the difference in the acts in my eyes.
The other stuff though definitely has inherent creep shit in it. I've completely memory-holed lost children, I just remember them killing each other, but I know it's bad.
R*pe horse and the trolls are all pre lost children. That arc is, as far as I recall, the end of it. After that Miura seems to mature - but then I don't remember the teenage girl being sexualised.
I think there is room for stories with sexual violence in them without them being inherently damning of the author, but Miura is really walking on the edge - and that's being charitable.
There's some stuff where I feel like it makes sense, but then that's right next to stuff that just seems like kink shit (the lady who self-flagellates and all the bishop torture porn) and it being there taints the other stuff. It's weird, I don't know if it's cope or if there is a good argument about it. I should reread berserk to figure out my feelings
I hate when people say this. Yes, obviously that's true, and I gave two examples with the abuse of Guts as a kid and Griffith by that Duke. They are both clearly depicted from a standpoint of the abuse not appealing to the viewer, as far as I remember. I would prefer if you not require me to explain how the staging and what is shown and what isn't distinguishes these things, besides of course that almost none of what Griffith suffered was actually shown.
I think the molestations committed by Griffith are both depicted very differently, and Casca's r*** is especially pornified. The fact that it has negative emotional salience narratively does not change it anymore than it does for the trolls.
It is. That doesn't make you a bad person or whatever, it just is cope. It's very understandable, since Berserk has many interesting and emotionally compelling elements, so there can easily be an intense desire to have an [over]charitable reading, but we should try to be critical about these things.
Let us use this as an opportunity to establish you've got some real holes in your memory then (just as I had chronology mixed up). Just skim 311 and the next couple of chapters. It's not ambiguous or borderline in any way.
Yes, I was just trying to continue the conversation and give my point of view. I hate how communication on this site is so all-or-nothing. If I hadn't written that, then it would be incredibly likely that the assumption was that I did think that. I write it and then the assumption is I meant you meant something else. I get so tired of this.
Or maybe it isn't. As I said, I will have to reread it to figure it out.
We could also use it as an opportunity to look at the four other times I wrote about not remembering it super well. Seriously this whole response of yours is incredibly condescending, fuck off with that attitude.
On the first point, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me considering so many people do awful apologetics saying exactly the same things, including on this fucking site full of "communists" who want to get defensive over eroticized sexual violence because they happen to like it (and/or just because they are extremely media illiterate). I apologize for communicating poorly, I just find it upsetting how people do that all the time and overgeneralized to you.
Thank you, I'm sorry for assuming you were being mean rather than just reacting basically like I just did to you.
Yeah it sucks.
It's something about Berserk I've always found hard to figure out or square or whatever. I'm used to media that sexualises assault to do it with every instance it shows, but then that doesn't happen in Berserk - Or at least it doesn't feel like it to me (the situations you brought up). It's really weird to me that the author is able to understand how it can be depicted and what it means and so on, but then in the very next page just make some goonermaterial. I'm used to creeps being creepy whenever they can, not just some of the time.
What do you make of it?
I had to look up the r*pe horse because genuinely wtf did you mean by that. Haven't got there yet.