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The initial plot of Berserk comes from Kentaro Miura's insecurities with his childhood friends

Kentaro Miura saw himself as lagging behind all his friends, so he pushed himself to become one of the greatest manga artists of all time.

Berserk Guts And Griffith Image — Image credit: Dark Horse

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Thu Aug 13 2026

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One of the most interesting things about Kentaro Miura is how candid he seemed to be about his insecurities. Despite becoming one of the most celebrated comic book artists of all time, Miura constantly felt like he had to catch up to his friends growing up. In fact, that sense of needing to prove himself as an artist eventually bled into the initial plot of Berserk and the relationship between Guts and Griffith.

During an interview that came out shortly before the release of Berserk Volume 20, Kentaro Miura was very candid about how his insecurities helped push him to become a better manga artist. “[In high school,] I was in a group full of people saying they wanted to be manga artists, but were actually busy getting girlfriends and getting into fights, so they weren’t really all that otaku. So I was basically the biggest manga nerd out of the bunch. It was a group of five, and I was pretty much the yellow ranger of the group; lagging behind in terms of emotional growth, but way ahead of the others in terms of drawing ability. I wasn’t capable of making a story that would make anyone feel much of anything, though.”

“So that information coming from outside – the other group members’ love troubles and fights – was really new to me. Also, there’s the fact that people who go into fine arts tend to be people with big egos who all have something that they’re particularly good at, and so with these other guys showing off what they’re good at, I wanted to find what I could do. Drawing, I decided, was my only option. The only way I could keep on equal footing with these guys was to make my mark as a manga artist. It became a strange obsession for me.”

If that attitude sounds familiar, it is probably because you’ve read at least some Berserk manga in the past. Guts’ obsession with being Griffith’s equal rather than his subordinate is a major turning point in the plot. In the same interview, Miura confirmed that this wasn’t an accident and that the friendship – and eventual fallout – between Guts and Griffith stemmed from his friendships growing up. “Yes, it is. Quite a bit. I don’t know what relationships between boys these days are like, but back in the eighties, boys were really obsessed with stuff like how good their friends were at things, how highly they “ranked” in comparison to their friends, etc. For boys, friendship isn’t about consoling each other. Sometimes you even try to take the other guy down a peg or two. But to break away from those friends would feel like admitting defeat, and you do help each other when you find some sort of goal. That’s where the Band of the Hawk comes from.”

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included...