ベルセルク (Berserk)

Isayama has named Berserk among the manga that shaped him, and the debt is tonal before it is visual: a dark fantasy where the protagonists are outmatched by design, named characters die without ceremony or arc, and the horror comes from enormous bodies doing something obscene to small ones. The Eclipse and the fall of Shiganshina are staged the same way, as a massacre the reader watches a survivor fail to prevent, and both series are about what somebody becomes afterwards.

Miura has talked about the sword and sorcery paperbacks and their cover art as part of what he was drawing toward, and Guts is built from that shelf: a wandering mercenary with no allegiance, oversized muscle rendered as anatomy rather than as style, sorcery as an enemy power, and a world of ruined kingdoms. The Frazetta lineage is visible in the posing of almost every full-page panel. Filed MEDIUM. Miura's most cited influences are Japanese, and this is the Western half of a mixture rather than the whole of it.