Where to even begin with Berserk... This thing is a multi-decade sprawling monster of a manga, and it's intimidating to crack open even in an electronic format. I will say that I enjoyed the Golden Age sub-arcs, even if they had the tendency to get a tad repetitive (HERE'S THE NEW SUPER TOUGH UBER NEON GREEN TIGERSAURUS DEATH SQUADRON, oh wait Guts killed all of them), and really did find myself invested in the Band, to the point where the (you know what) had appropriate emotional impact even if I was already spoiled. It all develops slowly, but Miura really does tend to have a point as he goes along. I particularly enjoyed the sort of background scheming between Griffith and the one hooded councilor dude whose name I forget, and the other lengths to which Miura goes to establish the brutality of the feudal world he's creating. The political machinations are just as cruel as the battlefield in Berserk. It's really a cruel, cruel world, not to repeat myself but of a general lack of other words with which to describe it. Despite my previous praise for characters, however, I really do think Miura has lost his way in that regard. Puck is now a walking meme rather than an actual character, and between him and Isidro it really does get to be quite tiring. "Meme Puck" can also bite it, too. That little onion piece of shit has no place in the gritty, brutal world, dammit. Besides this though, the overall arc of Guts becoming a heavily armored babysitter is, in my opinion, a mishandling of the character, but I would need to write a book to explain this. The art of Berserk is absolutely astounding. Miura makes some incredible locales, like when the Godhand first appear in like... a fucking M.C. Escher stairs dimension???? How dope is that shit? His intricately detailed horseback battleground scenes are beautiful and honestly worthy of minutes of scrutiny at a time, making the reading experience all that longer (not that I'm complaining). We all also know the iconic, heavily-lined panels where Guts breaks out into full rage. There are some minor nitpicks to be had, like the previously mentioned Meme Puck, and how sometimes Miura sort of forgets what Guts looks like. There are these hilarious panels after Guts kills the first apostle you see him face off with where he just looks beefy as all shit, and these got a hearty chuckle out of me. Miura's creature design is amazing and unsettling, inspiring Dark Souls bosses among other things. These also degrade with time, but some of the early apostles are so elaborately hideous that you can't help but ogle them. But yeah. I would recommend anybody to take the plunge and grow up with Guts, then have your heart broken just like his. But Miura really has let this ENDLESS HIATUS dilute the product, with no real direction in sight, which has definitely degraded the whole thing to some degree. But Berserk has some of the highest highs of any media I've ever consumed.