Berserk is one of the most celebrated manga and anime series out there. Here’s everything you need to know about it. Berserk has long reigned as one of the top dark fantasy mangas of all time. Kentaro Miura’s masterpiece has spawned several adaptations, including two anime series, a movie trilogy, and several video games. With over 2 million copies of the manga sold, Berserk is beloved by fans everywhere. Miura paints such a vast world in Berserk that the little details become lost under the grandiose.ย
Here are the top 5 interesting facts about the Berserk franchise that you might not have known.
1. Berserk’s English Dub Voice Cast Returned For The Movie Trilogy
The 1997 anime series brought the story of Berserk to the television screen, spanning part of the Black Swordsman arc and covering the Golden Age arc. The cast of the English dub worked together well, so well that they all came back for the Berserk movie trilogy to voice their original animated counterparts. “For anime, Berserk was a series I did eleven years ago, and now there are a series of three films that I was very fortunate to be asked to direct,” said voice director Michael Sinterniklaas in an interview he gave at the 2012 Otakon. “Iโm super excited about the Berserk movies, those are epic and we got the original cast back.”
2. Prototype Vs. Final Story
Berserk didn’t start out as what it is today.ย Berserk: The Prototype serves as the basis for the current Berserk but is wildly different from its successor. Guts differs from his current self as he is seen wearing an eye patch and bears the symbol that later becomes the Brand of Sacrifice upon his chest instead of the back of his neck, similar to where Casca’s mark is. The Prototype Guts also has a different reason for revenge: he witnessed apostles brutally kill his own mother. Prototype Guts saves a girl named Frikka, who bears a striking resemblance to Griffith, from meeting a terrible fate by the evil apostle Vlad Tepes, who has been terrorizing Frikka’s nearby village. Many details have been altered for Berserk to become what it is today but it is interesting to see the series’ original roots.
3. Berserk Has A Wide-Reaching Influence
Berserk has influenced a wide variety of media: making the loner with a big sword trope extremely popular. It is seen over and over again in mangas/animes like Bleach, Naruto, Ruroni Kenshin, Fairy Tail, Inuyasha, Shaman King, and many more. Games from the Dark Souls series were also heavily inspired by Berserk, with the primary example being Knight Artorias from Dark Souls.
Everything from the pose, to the wolfish armor, to the mangled arm, to the large sword, to the ability to inhabit both the real and astral worlds are shout-outs to Berserk and to Guts himself. In fact, Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki has stated in multiple interviews that he is a longtime fan of Berserk.
4. The Hawks Were Based Off Miura’s College Friends
With the exception of Griffith, Guts, and Casca, the Band of the Hawk was based on Miura’s college friends. Miura stated in a 2000 interview with writer/professor of gender studies and shojo manga Yukari Fujimoto, “As I remember it now, all I’d really decided at the time was that there’d be about five characters, and I’d make them similar to five of my friends.”ย Miura also said he had one friend who embodied Rickert, one for Judeau, one for Corkus, and one friend who acted as a leader, with qualities of both Guts and Griffith. Miura revealed that he was most like Pippin.
5. There Are More Than 100 Instances Of Eye Popping
Reddit user u/berserk_prime took note of an interesting yet gruesome factoid: there are approximately 114 instances of eye-popping throughout Berserk from chapter 1 to chapter 347.ย Volume 30 had the most instances, clocking in at a whopping 14. Another awesome tidbit from this post is that someone created a full roster of all The Black Swordsman’s kills including humans, trolls, ghosts, and even quasi-apostles.
So, there were 5 fascinating facts about Berserk that you may not know. And if you now all of these truths, then congratulations, you are definitely hardcore fan of the Anime.ย
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