Beserk: The Most Humanistic Anime Ever

What could a Japanese medieval Fantasy comic known for it's insane nihilism and ultra-violence POSSIBLY have to do with secular humanism? Quite...a lot actually.


The Meat:
Written and illustrated by Kentarō Miura, Beserk is a fairly long ongoing manga epic. It is fairly popular and is known for both it's fairly blatant, unsubtle sexual and violent content. The series spun off a video game for the now defunked sega Dreamcast, and a short lived, but highly received Anime.

Prepare for gore chunks

Berserk follows the exploits of anti-hero Gutts, a swordsman fueled by endless rage and animalistic savagery, as he cuts his way across a craptacular dark-ages setting seeking revenge. The story contains elements of both fantasy and horror, as it explores both the best and worst of human nature.

...damn O~o

The Anime actually details the backstory behind Gutts , an orphaned mercenary warrior, and Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the Band of the Hawk whose mentoring helps Gutts grow from a solitary boy into a man who realizes the value of camaraderie. I highly recommend watching it before diving into the Manga. Be warned though it's...dark. Dear lord is it dark.

Not at all compensating for anything

So yeah, without giving too much away what we appear to have on the surface is your typical Japanese pornographic gore fest with a nasty tough as nails Chuck-Noris esq badass killing everything in his path with an absurdly over sized Freudian Phallic Sword.

~the ambiguously gay duo!~

So, why do I bring it up? Despite the immature first impression some may take of it, there is a surprising amount of complexity to Beserk and the setting. Most of the Anime actually focuses on character interaction and motivation. The characters and plots explore the spectrum of morality, psychological motivations, humanity's inhumanity, sexual motivations, and existentialism. However, it's the backstory to Beserk that draws my attention to it's over all Secular Humanism message.

I've avoided spoilers so far, but from now on I'm going to talk about recent revelations in the Manga, just FYI

we can't stop here this is bat country!

Recently, the Manga has revealed the origin of why every thing sucks so much in Berserk World. To summarize, the world was always a nasty brutish place. People were assholes to each other. However, to explain the suffering primitive humanity went through they imagined up a God. The explanation became that they suffered because it was God's Will. This belief gave birth to that god, known as The Idea of Evil. The Idea of Evil's purpose was to make Berserk-World a living hell....and damn if the fucker isn't good at his job. The Idea's MO has typically been to offer humans in moments of great despair the chance to become his acolyte demons, and thus use them to spread more chaos and misery. Gutt's surrogate family was sacrificed in such a ritual. Against the odds Gutts survived despite being marked for death by GOD himself. In berserk-world the pessimism about the world became a self fulfilling prophecy. Gutts is the hero because despite his flaws, he doesn't whine and bitch when things go wrong for him (and believe me...they do. The whole universe loves to take dumps on the guy), he goes out and tries to fix the problem. Typically through breaking things.

The moral of the story: Don't be pessimistic because you're negative vibes will give birth to a monstrous deity who'll spend the rest of eternity collectively sodomizing all that is good and decent.

What we can take from this:
Theism and God leads to misery. The fatalism makes people accept their lot in life and creates more suffering through The Idea of Evil. Instead of sacrificing your free will and lamenting your lot, you should go out and fix the problem. Evil doesn't only triumph because good men do nothing...it is spawned from just that. Beserk at it's core is a Heavy Metal-esq exploration of the nature of morality and the savagery of the "divine". Despite it's bleakness there is an ultimate message of hope that is derived not from any divine authority, but from humanity's own determination.


Final Reason Why You Should Watch/Read Beserk?:

Hydra Feasting on Unicorns....




...awesome

~Ing


The footage was taken from you tubers S73w1th and barrettppage. Berserk manga and Anime are available from Amazon.com and Borders. You can also find scans of the manga here. Everyone should also check out hbi2k's wonderful Berserk Abridged.