Complete Monster/Berserk



""This is my chosen path. If I let myself feel regret or remorse, it could all slip away. And then I would never reach my destined throne." - Griffith/Femto"

The archenemies of Guts in Berserk perform horrible deeds for their own amusement, and it's not exactly helped by the fact that every demon was once a human who sacrificed something or someone dear to them to the Godhand, the primary Big Bads of the series in general, to become that way. Due to the Grimdark nature of the setting, though, only a very few actually deserve to be on this list.


 * Wyald is the second Apostle encountered and one of the nastiest pieces of work that Guts and company meet before the Eclipse goes down. He leads a band of mercenaries made up of the worst murderers, rapists, and all around scum that Midland has to offer. When they come across a young family, including a mother and several children, that have aided the Band of the Hawk that they have been hired to track down, they proceed to rape and murder everyone, including the children -- and if this wasn't bad enough, they then proceed to dismember their bodies and carry them naked on poles into battle with the Hawks, who are all horrified at the sight. Even his own men, the aforementioned worst scum of the kingdom, follow him mainly because they are utterly terrified of him.
 * The Beast of Darkness is Guts' Super-Powered Evil Side, manifested as a terrifying wild Hell Hound monster, which craves murder and cruelty. It acted in concert with Guts back in his Black Swordsman days, but once Guts started to care about something more than Revenge against Griffith and killing Apostles, namely Casca, the Beast took over his body and tried to force him to rape and eat her, while giving him a Hannibal Lecture about how he secretly desires to be as bad as Femto. Guts was almost Forced to Watch the worst thing possible happen to the woman he loves, again by his own hands, unable to do anything, all because the Beast wants him for itself. This also ruined whatever emotional bond was beginning to reform between Guts and Casca.
 * Here, we have our two base breaking Complete Monsters. "Which one is the worst?" indeed...
 * Femto, the fifth member of the Godhand (who, mind some of you fans, is still Griffith; when he first shows up in the manga, he establishes his monster credentials in a big way by ordering the Count, who is dying after having been defeated by Guts, to sacrifice his daughter Theresia -- the only person left who he truly loved -- to be reborn as an Apostle and keep on living or be sent to Hell like all Apostles when they die. Alas, it's only near the end of the Golden Age Arc flashback with the Hawks, when the Eclipse goes down and we find out how Femto was born, that we find out how TRULY heinous this guy is. Griffith sacrifices everyone in the Hawks in order to become the new member of the Godhand in a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon -- a process that not only results in the Cruel And Unusual Deaths of pretty much everyone except Guts and Casca, but condemns their souls to an eternity in Hell. And Griffith's very first act as Femto? He rapes Casca, his former lieutenant and Guts's Love Interest, as well as putting her through supreme agony all the while he's doing this to her because of how her Brand of Sacrifice is reacting to her close proximity to a member of the Godhand, an ordeal that ultimately drives her insane. He does this all right in front of Guts while he's held down by demons mere feet from the act and Forced to Watch. And for what? Because the two of them fell in love and he wanted to spite Guts. To make things even worse, Guts and Casca's baby was corrupted by what Femto did to Casca, and during the Conviction arc, after the kid is spent from summoning ghosts to protect Casca from Mozgus, it is used along with the Behelit-Apostle as a vessel for Femto to be reincarnated as Griffith again on Earth.
 * And Femto has recently topped himself by ; in a Crapsack World like this, this is NOT A GOOD THING.
 * But then there is Ganishka, the Emperor of Kushan. Mass executions, ethnic cleansing, using conquered populations as human shields or cannon fodder for his armies, attempting to rape the captive Charlotte, suspending women over a pool filled with hungry crocodiles, dropping thousands of pregnant women into cauldrons with stitched-together Apostles to turn the unborn babies into half-human demons that rip apart their mothers upon birth...this guy isn't beyond the Moral Event Horizon, he's the black hole causing it, and not even the fact that he's doing it all to "transcend the Apostles" and rebel against the Big Bad Godhand is enough to make him sympathetic.
 * And then you find out about his background, where his mother tried to poison him so his younger brother would become the heir, making him insanely paranoid (both the mother and the brother did not survive, of course) to the point where his own son tries to kill him because he was so afraid his father would see him as a threat. Yeah. We're talking Royally Screwed-Up here.
 * How bad is Ganishka? When Femto went up against him (not because Femto has any standards, mind you, but because, as mentioned, Ganishka was rebelling against the Godhand), the fans rooted for Femto.
 * The Prototype has Vlad Tepes, the Big Bad, a monstrous tyrant who, during a war with a neighboring country, was ruthless enough to capture and impale five hundred prisoners on stakes and leave their corpses to rot on the borders as a warning. After the war, Vlad decided to satiate his bloodlust on his own people by taking young girls as maidservants, only to slaughter them mercilessly. When Guts infiltrates Vlad's castle in order to rescue Fricka, Vlad is revealed to be a grotesque, gluttonous Apostle who offered his humanity in exchange for inhuman powers, and then attempts to kill both Guts and Fricka, bragging about how a "mere human" is no match for him.