They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, “they” being people who wouldn’t know an original idea if it dropped a piano on their head and their jaw flapped open to reveal piano key teeth. Berserk, the legendary long-running dark fantasy manga by Kentaro Miura, still being printed to this day despite the author’s tragic passing, tells the story of the Black Swordsman, a brooding, scarred, deeply traumatized warrior named Guts, who seeks revenge against his former friend and comrade turned god, Griffith.
While universally lauded for its complex themes, detailed artwork, and compelling worldbuilding, it pains me to say that after playing all three Dark Souls games and not looking up the dates they came out, it becomes troublingly clear just how much Miura lifts from the classic FromSoftware series. Themes, motifs, imagery, enemies: the author clearly had his careful eye on all things Dark Souls when penning his magnum opus, which I presume began serialization sometime in the late 2010s. Today, I’ll be looking at 14 things Berserk shamelessly rips off from Dark Souls, if you aggressively ignore the fact of which came first.
#1: Big Sword Guy with A Disability
In 2012, Dark Souls introduced gamers to a tormented legend in its first and only DLC: Artorias of the Abyss, a cursed swordsman with an unwieldy greatsword slung over his back and a bum arm that lends him a uniquely ferocious moveset. Artorias bristles with rage and dark power, his soul in a constant struggle with himself that is nothing short of sublime. Artorias’s legacy is complicated however by a string of unfortunate copycats, and Guts, with his similar oversized weapon, disability, and predisposition for sick forward somersaults of questionable tactical benefit, leads the pack. His iconic Berserker armor, acquired in the Falcon of the Millennium Empire Arc, even goes so far as to ape Artorias’s wolf motif. It’s a loving homage to a game Miura clearly held in high regard, but we’d love to see the mangaka step out of his comfort zone once in a while and try his hand at some original designs.
#2: The Darksign / The Brand of Sacrifice
The Darksign, a curse that marks all of humanity for undeath, and the Brand of Sacrifice, a mark inflicted by the God Hand to human sacrifices, both manifest as immutable fiery emblems on the protagonist’s body, branding the wearer for eventual doom and sparking all events to follow. While the Brand of Sacrifice doesn’t look much like the Darksign design-wise, save for its red glow and unrivaled flash tattoo potential, the inspiration is clear. Temporally-challenged players will have no trouble spotting this obvious mimicry.
#3: Man Serpents / Snake Lord
Good grief, the world does not need more of these poise-maxing pieces of shit. Miura can keep them.
#4: Moonlight Butterfly / Rosine
The Dark Souls community owes Berserk a debt of gratitude for taking an otherwise middling boss like the Moonlight Butterfly and giving it a beautiful, heart-wrenching backstory in the manga’s overlooked Lost Children Arc. Rosine, an abused girl who nurtures a secret belief that she’s an elf and runs away from her village to join her kind, where she succumbs to the transformative, corrupting magic of a Behelit, is the arc’s major antagonist, and her Apostle form will look familiar to fans of FromSoft’s unprompted middle finger to melee builds, the Moonlight Butterfly. When fully transformed as a graceful yet grotesque luna moth hybrid, Rosine is actually a better boss than the Moonlight Butterfly; where the latter spams two attacks fifteen times consecutively and then takes a little nap, Rosine uses her proboscis, stinger, and supersonic speed to thrilling effect in her fight with Guts. Is she thematically ill-suited for Dark Souls? Probably. Is it weird that she’s topless? A little. But these are the tradeoffs we make so we can experience art made by men.
#5: Blacksmith Andre / Godot
It’s a spitting image, unfortunately.
#6: Red Eye Orb / Behelit
The Behelit, or Beherit if you’re going to be annoying about it, is an object of immense spiritual and divine power. It is a key linking a deep layer of the Astral World to the Physical World, a teardrop of causality, an immutable summons from the unholy God born of man, a disarranged visage that screams and cries blood when met with the moment of its owner’s greatest desire. The Red Eye Orb is a multiplayer item with one sentence of lore. It’s amazing how Miura could pull so much from so little.
#7: A Grim-Dark Fantasy Setting With an Ambiguous Medieval European Backdrop Where Four God-Like Beings Have Altered the Trajectory of the World, the Desires of Men Often Distort Them Into Monstrous Forms, and the Struggles and Perseverance of One Warrior Through Continued Hardship Epitomize the Bleak but Ultimately Uplifting Core of the Story
Honestly I’m surprised FromSoft didn’t sue.
#8: Cathedral Evangelists / Mozgus
The concept of religious zealotry has existed for tens if not dozens of years before Dark Souls III gave us one of its more memorable enemies, the Cathedral Evangelists of the Undead Settlement, but that doesn’t make their particular brand of faith—preaching with an iron grip and a scalding embrace—any less shocking. What most Souls players don’t know is that these intimidating figures, Bible thumpers in more ways than one, were actually the basis for another memorable antagonist: Father Mozgus from Berserk’s Conviction Arc. Not only is Mozgus a fearsome inquisitor who terrorizes the city of Albion with torture and fanaticism, he wears the same wide-brimmed hat as the Evangelists and even smashes a villager’s head with his Bible in an attack that is ripped straight from Dark Souls if the order of release for these two properties eludes you as much as it does me.
#9: Twinks
You can’t throw a prism stone in Dark Souls without hitting a blonde twink with long hair, and the same goes for Berserk. Griffith could’ve sold his bucket well water and had the Band of the Hawk eating good for a year.
#10: Darkwraiths / The Skull Knight
The trend of Kentaro Miura turning standard enemies from his favorite game series into legendary characters continues with Dark Souls’ Darkwraiths and the Skull Knight, an enigmatic figure shrouded in mystery who is in no way King Gaiseric. The Darkwraiths and the Skull Knight both wear similarly ribbed armor and have an exposed skull for a face, framed by spikes. Beyond the aesthetic likeness, both characters actually share a few points of lore: namely, a city that was destroyed and a populace sacrificed to stop a great power, now buried beneath an ashamed kingdom. This assumes of course that the Skull Knight is King Gaiseric, a man of similar build with a skull helmet only seen riding a horse who has every reason to oppose the God Hand and was also called the Skull King in his time, but no one can make that call— certainly not the Berserk wiki which has them split into two separate pages.
#11: Graphic Violence Toward Women
Actually this one is all Miura (rest in peace struggler).
#12: The Eclipse / Whatever’s Going On in Dark Souls III’s Skybox
There’s an obvious parallel between Berserk’s infamous Eclipse and whatever the hell was going on in Dark Souls III’s skybox that one time. Did anyone understand that? Don’t get me wrong, it looked awesome and filled me with a feeling of grim finality, but what was the Darksign doing up there? Why was it so big? So the whole world is branded now? It makes thematic sense but does it make logical sense? Cool anyway.
#13: Cool Lore Shit That’s Never Explained
Regardless of which came first, whether the Four Kings inspired the Four Kings of the World or the Abyss inspired The Abyss or vice versa, Dark Souls and Berserk have always shared an approach to lore that transcends simple homage: mentioning some really cool shit once and never bringing it up again. Case in point: What is the Age of Deep Sea? The True Name that belongs to every Astral being? The Furtive Pygmy? The big bad formerly known as the Idea of Evil. And how did Big Hat Logan get his name?
#14: These Assholes
Maybe this one’s a coincidence.
