This Berserk Quote Made Me Fall in Love With the Series (And It’s Tragically Underrated)

Berserk’s Golden Age Arc is one of the best manga arcs ever written, is what I was told when I finally got around to reading Kentaro Miura’s iconic and mammoth seinen series. I had heard a lot of good things about the arc, from word-of-mouth reviews to the beloved 1997 anime. But, much like any story, manga, or anime that receives those levels of insane hype, I was skeptical going into it. The early chapters of Berserk had engrossed me, and I was enjoying Guts’ dedicated, if not one-dimensional, quest for revenge against The God Hand, but it was soon time to descend into the Golden Age of Berserk.

My trepidation and anxiety about the arc’s “overhyped” quality faded away upon the very first panel. The now iconic image of the hanging tree, with soldiers riding past, and a newborn baby lying beneath the corpses is, to many, the embodiment of Berserk’s grimdark aesthetic. But, just a few page turns later, Berserk hit me with one of its best and most underrated quotes.

Guts’ Birth Defined Berserk as a Series

The Golden Age Arc recounts the birth and growth of Guts as a character. Having been born by a hanged mother and found by a bunch of mercenaries, it’s safe to say that Guts wasn’t going to have the most stable of childhoods. But the way Miura illustrated and wrote the moment set the series on a new and improved path, and instantly made me fall in love with the series.

As the ill slave Cis picks up the infant, who is, at this point, the unnamed Guts, Miura’s narration delivers one of the most beautiful pieces of prose in the entire series. It reads:

“Under the dead body of its mother, the baby made its birthing cries… cradled in a mire of blood and afterbirth.”

Before diving into the quote, let’s quickly give that writing a *chef’s kiss*. Guts is one of the most iconic and complex manga characters ever written, and this quote is what sets the character towards that mantle. Up until that point, the opening arcs of Berserk had established Guts as a brooding and mostly unlikable anti-hero on a personal mission for vengeance. It was action-packed and engaging, but it lacked any true depth.

Kentaro Miura then added more dimensions to his character in a few panels and a single quote than some manga can achieve in an entire arc. The scene marked a sudden upshift in the story’s quality, especially through its dialogue and writing. That single line also set the tone and narrative promise for the emotionally turbulent arc to come. This wasn’t a short flashback. We were going to dive deep into Guts’ past, and how he became such a tortured (literally) soul.

How The Golden Age Arc Changed Everything

The Golden Age Arc is often cited as the reason why most people fell in love with Berserk. When the manga began publication in August 1989 in Hakusensha’s Monthly Animal House before the magazine’s semi-monthly transition to Young Animal, it wasn’t as successful as contemporary readers would expect. It was the Golden Age Arc that cemented Berserk’s cult status. In this, I hate to admit, I am a cliche, as the Golden Age Arc gave me my own proverbial Brand of Sacrifice as a Berserk fan.

Shamefully, considering my line of work, this is my first read-through of Berserk. But, I didn’t need multiple read-throughs to realize just how impactful that quote and the arc it was establishing would be. That line was the series’ first poetic piece of prose that would lead to an endless symphony of beautiful writing and artwork.

The Golden Age Arc is cited as the story that altered Berserk‘s trajectory, both narratively and in terms of the manga’s popularity, for good reason. In between the iconic moments, like Guts’ first encounter with Griffith and his explicit assault and betrayal by Donavan and Gambino, the Golden Age Arc is filled with tons of underappreciated moments.

Another of my personal favorites, which also defines what made Berserk such a unique and hard-hitting story, was Guts’ first kill. Any other seinen series, like Vinland Saga, for example, honed in on Thorfinn’s emotional reaction to killing his first man. But Berserk doesn’t blink twice at Guts’ first kill, which was an unnamed and helmeted soldier. The anonymity of the victim highlights Guts’ penchant for killing and how he creates his entire vengeful identity around it.

On your next read-through of Berserk, because let’s admit it, every fan is going to repeatedly read the series, try to look beyond the overt moments, and pick apart the small details and lines that subtly pack out Guts’ three-dimensional character arc.

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