Berserk is a story with very clear religious allusions and inspirations.
From the factions of organized worship touched on throughout the plot to the ironic religious
imagery portrayed through both Guts and Griffith, this is a piece of work absolutely rich with
symbolism about the topic.
And while there are tons of little messages about this sprinkled throughout the series,
both subtle and otherwise, that would be a topic more suited for someone with an expertise
in religious lore and culture to unpack than me.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to parse out what the narrative’s primary
broad messages about this are.
For a series so dense with themes about all manner of topics, it would seem foolish to
suggest that Berserk has no underlying messages about religion when it tackles the subject
so substantially throughout.
So it begs the question - what is Berserk actually trying to say about religion as a
concept?
To put it in extremely blunt terms - is Berserk anti-religion, pro-religion, or something
in between?
From a superficial level, this message seems pretty clear cut and obvious.
The vast majority of characters associated with religion in the story are portrayed in
a decidedly negative light, so this would seem to indicate the story’s thoughts on
the topic.
Along with being the primary faction concerned with worshipping by far the most hated character
in the series, The Holy See are immorally dogmatic when it comes to their doctrine.
They label anyone who doesn’t 100% align with their beliefs as heretics and brutally
torture and maim who they see as deviants under the pretense of this being the will
of God, to cleanse and remove these people from evil.
Additionally, religious rituals of note throughout the plot usually lead to mass violence and
are rarely shown in any classically positive light.
The main entity resembling a true deity in the series, The idea of evil, is a god of
misfortune and suffering, not good.
Concurrently, the pseudo demi-gods in the series are..
well.. the God Hand.
And then there’s just the simple fact that this world is unbelievably cruel and holds
very little hope for the common citizen.
As the old argument goes, if there is a benevolent deity in this world, why are they not doing
anything while their people suffer so needlessly?
The truth is that it is because there very likely isn’t one.
Simply put, Berserk does not inspire much confidence in religion from the outset.
At it’s worst, it’s a story that could be semi-understandably construed as Anti-religion.
But that’s only from a shallow observation, and the messages run much deeper than this.
In fact, there is much more at play when it comes to the thematic relevance of religion
in Berserk, and it has much to do with the mechanics of the universe, the nature of humanity,
learned helplessness, and the aforementioned Idea of Evil.
As touched on before, the setting of Berserk is brutal.
Rife with unjust societal hierarchies, war, famine, violence and all manner of sadistic
supernatural entities, it is about as gritty as dark fantasy worlds can get.
The people in this world are in a constant cycle of agony and it takes the vast majority
all they have to just find it in themselves to continue living.
Justifiably, few harbour any semblance of hope for the future.
However, despite the fact that fate and causality play huge roles in Berserk, this horrible
world is portrayed throughout the series to be a result of the darkness of mankind rather
than the will of some universe defining entity.
Behelits, structured power, oppression, and most notable for this topic, religion - these
are not plot devices used to carry the story to it’s intended destination using the concept
of fatalism as a crutch.
Rather, they are methods and outlets used to display two very important themes.
The first theme that religion contributes to is very bluntly communicated within the
story - it’s about the potential within mankind for pure brutality.
Humans are capable of unspeakable evil and many times they cover these actions using
fronts and deceptions.
Mozgus and his followers are a clear example of this with regards to religion - a group
of despicable people carrying out despicable acts using religion and worship as an excuse.
But this is not a negative message about religion itself at all.
If anything, the damning indictment here is on people, and how they can use something
like religion to try to justify cruelty.
It’s a much more nuanced message, more characteristic of Miura’s writing and more consistent with
the ideas of the series.
The second idea communicated through suffering via religion is just as prevalent - the necessity
of purpose.
In a setting like this where purpose is so difficult to hope for and even more difficult
to find, it is human nature to cling onto things with reckless abandon just to have
some self-worth and a reason for living.
Religion is one of those things.
And it is easy to imagine how desperate one dimensionality combined with lust for power
can spiral something like organized religion out of control into something that is pathological
and dangerous - the fact is, a good number of evil radicalists in Berserk are doing wrong
because they are clinging onto some warped, shallow ideal that represents their worth
in
the world.
The setting has people totally dependent on anything that represents purpose, and many
become narrow-minded ideologues striving for SOMETHING to live for in this world that gives
them nothing.
Characters completely disassociated with religion like the Count or even Griffith go through
similar extremes in order to cling onto significance in existence.
It’s more of a message about the necessity of purpose, touched on through Guts’ existential
pondering early on in the series, than anything about the nature of religion.
So we can see that due to the darkness of mankind and how we yearn for purpose, Religion
is not a cause of this cruelty, it is an excuse and a means to an end.
Religion itself is not the problem here; PEOPLE are.
Now, there is a flip side to this and it has to do with passivity.
At times throughout the series, characters have been shown to choose not to act and to
instead lean on religious worship to deliver them from suffering.
There is an instance where a small town is attacked by trolls, and the priest in power
decides to combat this by .. praying.
But once again, instances like this are not a criticism of religion itself - just how
people use it.
Just as extreme cruelty in the name of religion is bad, so too is radical pacifism.
On a more narratively personal note, there is also the subject of Farnese’s character
arc - a woman who ultimately decides to give up on religion after realizing that she used
it and her authority as a leader of the Holy Iron Chain Knights as an unhealthy outlet
for sadism and carnal desires.
But once again, this is not a condemnation of religion - it is a demonstration of how
not to use it and of letting go of things in one’s life when it brings about something
undesirable within us.
Religion demonstrates the lengths humanity goes to to exert power and feel good in a
world that promotes the opposite, but it is not inherently negative in nature.
It simply is.
It’s neutral.
It could be useful for some people, and not worth investing in for others.
It just so happens that in this world, people tend to use it in a negative way because..
well.. basically everything is used in a negative way.
Now, while substantial, this is all a very abstract and indirect way to interpret the
story’s take on religion.
However, this can also be prised out in a more cosmic and grand sense, using the closest
thing to an omnipotent deity that the series has - the Idea of Evil.
Essentially, the idea of Evil is a causal, desired God.
It is an entity that was created due to mankind’s need to blame their misery and misfortune
on some sort of transcendental entity.
It was not the original source of pain, but it was created due to the populace’s wishes
for reasons to explain their suffering.
Humanity wants to point the finger at some sort of explanation for their strife other
than the darkness of man and their own weakness because of the harshness of those truths.
As such, the Idea of Evil was created, as a means to blame some sort of thing for the
cruelty of the world.
It self-perpetuates and dictates fate.
It is the root of all of the suffering in the world and it is the catalyst behind the
evil God Hand.
So the obvious question here with regards to religion is that if there is an evil God,
why isn’t there a good one?
Is that not incredibly anti-religious?
Well.. no, it’s not.
Instead, this says much more about learned helplessness and the human condition than
it does about the concept of a benevolent God.
With the Idea of Evil, people are now conditioned to feel helpless and act passively because
there is an ironic comfort there.
It is far easier to blame the horrors of one’s life on some uncontrollable force than try
to find the belief to change it.
Through the collective hope that some evil God had to be the cause, it forms a self-fulfilling
prophecy to make that the truth.
No God existed until humans conceived the idea of Evil.
And this is very significant - in Berserk, belief in a God can create that God.
This means that if enough people had enough faith in one, a good God could be created.
But there is plenty of reason as to why a God of benevolence, the reason behind good
deeds and fortune, has not been created.
Firstly, there is simply such little happiness, hope and success in Midland, which automatically
lowers the possibility.
People have learnt to not hope for anything, so naturally there is little chance of them
believing in some God that is the source of good things.
But more importantly, humans are hypocrites.
In Berserk, they attribute responsibility for their misfortune to something aside from
themselves and blame external things, and this creates the Idea of Evil.
But when they succeed, they want to feel like their success is their own.
They like to take credit.
There is very little chance that anyone in the setting will attribute the cause of their
successes to some benevolent god, especially when there is such little evidence for a god
of that sort in the first place and especially when they want to feel responsible for their
own success.
As such, no “Idea of Good” exists.
Only the Idea of Evil.
But what’s important here is that this means that belief and faith from the masses is the
power behind the sources of both good and evil in Berserk.
There COULD be a God of goodness - There just isn’t one because it is so difficult for
people to strive past their misery and egoism to find belief in one.
Consequently, Berserk could be construed as an advocate of belief in gods and a positive,
healthy adherence to religion.
If humans were different, the mechanics of the universe would be completely altered.
Faith could very well save this setting, but there is just so little of it.
Again, through the concepts of organized worship and theism, Berserk is much more of a condemnation
of human nature than it is a criticism of religion.
Now with regards to Kentaro Miura’s thoughts on God - This would appear to be more cut
and dry if we take what the story says as a 1 to 1 representation of his thoughts.
And note that this is a big assumption to make, but I find the subject interesting to
ponder, especially since I wasn’t able to find any solid information on Miura’s outlook
on religion.
If you have a good source for this that I missed then please feel free to share it in
the comments.
Having said all of that, If Berserk’s take on God parallels Miura’s thoughts on the
subject then he likely believes that the concept of a God is an illusory idea perpetuated by
the masses as a way to make life more bearable.
The fatalism associated with the story reinforces this as well.
This line of thinking would seem to state that the momentum behind deities makes them
extremely substantial and influential in the modern world, but they only exist because
people believe them to exist.
It would seem that Miura does not at all believe that there is a God, while also believing
that being religious and having faith is totally fine as long as it is a healthy influence
in one’s life.
He seems to hate the evil that can spring up from organized religion as a result of
mankind’s deep flaws but does not chastise anyone who is religious because it itself
is not an inherently bad thing, and I think that much is clear when examining the approach
to religion throughout the narrative.
Consistent with the nuanced story we have experienced thus far in Berserk, everything
depends.
Very little is black or white and one must have perspective when examining any controversial
topic, because more likely than not, there is a lot more depth to a situation under the
surface.
Many thanks for watching.