Berserk got me through some tough years in college. At the time I watched the anime there were certain people I noticed in the world who seemed to be so much more accomplished, brilliant and put together than I was, and it struck me all at once that I had always been kind of a shiftless, drifting weirdo with mental problems and no real ambition, no discipline or self-confidence. In those enviable people, self-projected supermen who had such impressive willpower and ego, people who proclaimed to fight back against the world for their own uncompromising individuality and remold it in their image, there was something that awed yet also unsettled me; a kind of dishonesty in their aggressive projection of Greatness with which they won followers and clout. A commitment to themselves that encapsulated a willingness to lie and manipulate others to get ahead in life. A profound and unique loneliness that came from the belief that they were truly superior, that only they, or special people like them, were truly “worth it”. I’ve felt looked down on for much of my life, and it is the worst feeling; to be looked down on by someone “better” than me was unconscionable. I could not bear to be less than anyone’s equal, yet rarely felt like I was; so few people in the world felt fully realized, to me, in their assertion of willpower and individuality. I wanted kinship with such people, as an equal, but I was perversely drawn to people I knew would never - could never - see me like that.
I compared everything about myself to them, destructively, obsessively; and yet I knew I never truly wanted to be them. Observing those enviable, arrogant people, I felt like, even if I could be like them, even if they were “true” to themselves and their dreams beyond ordinary societal restrictions, there was something disgusting and dishonest about the way in which they did it which I never wanted to be true of myself, and never wanted it to be true of the world that a person like that is truly better than others.
It was a major existential crisis that haunted me for years, and in a way still does… I guess what I’m saying is, the dynamic between Guts and Griffith spoke to me in a very personal and specific way that I needed at the exact moment I encountered it. I needed to be told that Guts’s way, of following his heart and his desire for dignity over grand ambition and social climbing and dominance over others, was another way to be a man. That there is dignity in an outcast fighting forever against a universe that’s indifferent, even hostile to your existence, if you remain true to your principles.
I admit I may have liberally interpreted the series’ themes to fit my own outlook (and I never quite liked Guts’ callous attitude towards human life) but that was what it meant to me. I appreciate, at times, the undisciplined way the series just lets it all hang out: terror, glory, trauma, pride, blood and guts, violation and desire. It’s a hell of a thing. This guy Miura really poured everything he loved, feared and believed in life into his endless comic about a dude with a really big sword.
I put off catching up on the manga because I figured it would end someday.
I guess nothing “ends”, really. It just is, in all its good and bad, until it isn’t. Lives, art, love, and comic books.
It may not be “complete”, but I’m glad Berserk is.