Guts and Berserk — A character study on human will and perseverance
“At first I envisioned Guts as a hero who can get angry. Like Max in Mad Max or Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star. I focused on how to make him angry, how to make him get revenge, and how to effectively display his appearance and gimmicks, and what resulted after that struggle was the original Black Swordsman.”
That was Kentaro Miura’s answer when asked by an interviewer how he came up with the motivations and mindsets of Guts, the main character from his legendary work, Berserk.
Now if you’ve not heard of Berserk, it is not what you call light reading, the imagery is gross and perverse and it doesn’t shy away from showing both the horrors of humanity and also the monsters Miura created on its pages.
Before we get started I want to make this an interactive experience. So grab your headphones and click start on the video before and listen along to ‘4 Gatsu’ or ‘Guts’ Theme’ from the 1997 series while you read.
Even if you have not read Berserk, you will have seen its influence. From Software’s Dark Souls games take heavy cues from the famous manga and Final Fantasy, with Cloud Strife’s sword in 7 taking influence from Gut’s own ‘Dragon Slayer’.
Miura, unfortunately, passed away last year at the age of 54, but his work will live on, either in its uncompleted state or it may even be continued by his assistants. We are nearly at the first anniversary of his death and I thought I’d take the time to reflect on what is my favourite piece of fiction.
And part of the reason it holds such a high place is due to the aforementioned main character of Guts.
Now I won’t go into details as I feel that if you’re a fan of dark fantasy, Berserk is a must-read, but let’s just say Guts goes through a lot and whatever image of hardship that conjures in your mind probably times it by a hundred.
When you see the man on the page, however, your first thought is probably, ‘my god, he looks so cool.’ He is an imposing man with a sword that the manga describes as just ‘a hunk of iron’. He is missing his left hand which has been replaced by a prosthetic that can double as a cannon.
As stated in the intro quote, the vibe and demeanour of Guts was heavily influenced by Max Rockatansky. The titular character of the Mad Max series was known for being morally ambiguous and a perpetual loner with a haunted past and influenced many characters after his introduction in 1979 (Berserk began publication 10 years later in 1989)
In terms of the design he looks very similar to Mordred from Arthurian legend with his distinctive black armour, though this is just speculation on my part and Miura seems to maintain he wanted a distinctive medival swordsman with no clear influence in most of his interviews.
In regards to his personality Miura stated he used a composite of both himself and people he knew. He said in an interview once:
“If it’s about Guts’ personality or his belief… I guess some of it comes from myself. And sometimes I use my close friends as examples. So Guts’ personality isn’t always based on one person, but it’s more abstract. His actions and state of mind depend on the situation. So Guts doesn’t have a specific model.”
From just this image he is the definition of ‘a badass anti-hero’ and Miura probably could have created a successful manga just off the back of that, but despite his simple beginnings, what he created was a much much deeper character that was made to feel human.
The Cosmic Movement detailed best the contrast back in 2021, saying in their article about the character of Guts:
For a lot of first-time readers, and even upon retrieval, his [Guts] portrayal is jarringly “edgy” — easily mistaken as a two-dimensional trope, rather than masterful character building. It’s not until the Black Swordsman Arc that the readers are exposed to a simmering glimpse of Guts’s deep-seated pain and trauma.
A wordless pane evokes a thousand feelings. The reader sees a downtrodden swordsman, a quivering brow, and eyes stinging with tears. The contrast from the Guts we knew prior is devastating. At last, we have evidence that there is something more to this man than meets the eye.
After the initial prologue (the Black Swordsman Arc) that takes place at some point in Guts' future, the first chunk of the series is dedicated to the Golden Age arc in his past. Here we see a man completely in contrast to the completely cold and cruel individual who greeted us in the initial pages.
He still has the qualities that constitute a badass, for example, at one point he holds off a hundred soldiers on his own but we see a character that is working through the trauma he suffered in his earlier days and opening up to the people around him, establishing relationships with the likes of Casca and the other members of the Band of the Hawk. There is clear growth.
And then we see another major development. He decides that he needs a goal and is no longer content with his life of being a footnote in someone else's history, that being the secondary main character of Griffin.
This becomes a driving plot for the point in the early stages of the manga as Guts says to his companions:
“People bring the small flames of their wishes together… since they don’t want to extinguish the small flame… they’ll bring that small flame to a bigger fire. A big flame named Griffith. But you know… I didn’t bring a flame with me. I think I just stopped by to warm myself by the bonfire.”
He doesn’t want to put his desire, passion and effort towards someone else's goals, something that I feel everyone can relate to and it’s in these moments where you can see what Miura meant when he said the character was based on himself.
He is a character that constantly has turmoil inside himself. In the anime, and this is the one that came out in the 1990s not in 2016 because we do not talk about the 2016 Berserk, showed this best with a beautifully written musical theme that played in the character’s more pensive moments.
Now if you followed my instructions at the start of the article you will have been listening to this music as you’ve been reading.
The theme has been said to have aquatic themes alongside anguished screaming which could show that inside despite his calm and cool exterior, Guts is drowning.
Due to circumstances within the story, Guts ends up alone and the story eventually merges with the prologue and this character is much changed.
He is driven by hatred and revenge, plagued every night by demons who come to claim his soul and consistently needs to fight to survive. He doesn’t open up to any character for fear of what might happen if he gets close to them.
The goal that he once dreamed to have for himself, has been twisted and replaced instead by again becoming wrapped up in the history of another. It is the classic masculine tale you’d expect from an action movie from the 80s or 90s but it is approached with a sensitivity that you wouldn’t expect.
I’ve always taken Guts' story of one of perseverance and healing. At one point in the manga he says:
“You’re going to be all right. You just stumbled over a stone in the road. It means nothing. Your goal lies far beyond this. Doesn’t it? I’m sure you’ll overcome this. You’ll walk again… soon.”
It’s not quite the Rocky Balboa quote of ‘It’s ain’t about how hard you hit, but about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward…’ but it has the same meaning.
Guts is a mentally broken character affected by the isolation and loneliness that he has both been cursed with and brought on himself. Despite this, he always finds a way to keep on going throughout the manga. He is not only surviving, but living his life by his terms and this is what gives him grounding in what is a wild fantasy setting and also is what sets the storywriting apart from just a simple fantasy manga.
I think Jackson P Brown puts it best in their article on the manga from 2018, saying:
“Every now and then, a redditor will share a harrowing story of how they were suicidal, or on the brink of a serious mental breakdown, but after reading Berserk, they learned to cope and persist. Guts is an admirable protagonist. He doesn’t possess the innocent tenacity of most shonen protagonists, nor does he possess the grimdark, stoic and sullen demeanour of other “deep” seinen characters. He’s unusually strong, blunt, crass, nihilistic, emotional and at times villainous.
“Akin to the pirates’ philosophy in One Piece, Guts doesn’t set out to be anyone’s hero. He’s had a rough life and he lives for his own convictions, and yet somehow, people are drawn to him. Guts, regardless of what happens to him, keeps pushing forward. He had reason to give up numerous times each arc, but he never does. Instead, he uses his conviction and personal principles — initially a revenge quest but transforming into a means to restore his beloved — to propel himself through the story, and it’s beautiful to read.”
Miura always claimed that it was his art that was his strength but that does a discredit to his world-building and also the arcs that he writes for his characters.
I read Berserk for the first time over the pandemic lockdown at a time when many people can probably say that their mental state was not in a good place, but I experienced a similarly uplifting experience to the one mentioned above.
Guts is probably my favourite character in literature and it’s not just because he has epic adventures and cleaves through demons with a swing at his sword, but it’s because he has complexity and depth and at his core, he displays emotions that despite the setting of high, dark fantasy we can apply to our every day lives.
If you haven’t read Berserk, I highly recommend it. It’s not for the faint of heart and it pulls no punches when it comes to its horrific depictions of highly mature themes so I will warn you of that. But in the end, you may come out of it with a renewed perspective on life and for any piece of media to be able to achieve that it has to be truly special.
(And hopefully one day someone will be able to give it the anime adaptation it deserves).
