Berserk’s Most Twisted Cult Leader is Being Reborn in Shonen Jump

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Undead Unluck chapter 103!

The cultist zealot Mozgus from Berserk who passionately delivered God’s vengeance on heretics and even himself has been reborn as an UMA – or Unidentified Mysterious Animal – in Shonen Jump’s Undead Unluck.

Among Berserk‘s monstrous apostles, none strike such an unsettling chord as the Holy See’s chief inquisitor, Mozgus. The first hint that suggested just how violent his views made him came when a rebel vowed that God would enact divine punishment on Mozgus. Such a blasphemous remark caused Berserk‘s dark cult leader to lose composure, culminating in him crushing the heretic’s skull with his bible. This is just one of many times in which sacrilegious acts prompted Mozgus to react so over the top, like how he and his followers tortured supposed witches with a plethora of devices and techniques. And these are only instances of him as a normal human before he became an apostle.

In Undead Unluck, that world’s God sends the Seal UMA to Earth in order to, as their name implies, seal one of the series’ main characters Undead Andy to begin rectifying the mess that he had unleashed on their plans. As the UMA was created by God to fulfill an important function, they profess great reverence for the sadistic deity and don’t tolerate impiety in any form. In chapter 103, Undead Andy claims that Seal is no different from other UMAs, and it’s not the fact that Seal believes they will become the King of UMAs that causes them to fall into a rage, it’s that when God favors anything, this undoubtedly means that the favored one is not only different but better than the rest. Rejecting this belief means that God’s favor holds no weight and doesn’t automatically change the object of their approval for the better to achieve their wishes. Seal can’t accept this, so the fury they unleash upon Andy evokes the same terror that Berserk‘s Mozgus instilled through his retributions.

What’s so promising about this exchange in Undead Unluck isn’t just the ties to Berserk‘s Mozgus but the indirectness of Undead Andy’s blasphemous remark and how that was enough to cause the Seal UMA to lose control. It would have been expected if a dig right at Undead Unluck‘s God elicited such a drastically violent response. But since this lesser offense caused such an intense response, it promises that when Undead Andy inevitably takes that next step, Seal will be thrown into a far darker rage. The fact that it’s difficult to imagine a spectacle more brutal than the last only serves to increase anticipation more. And in similar fashion, Mozgus’ desire to enact God’s vengeance in Berserk also reaches new heights that make the aforementioned reckonings seem relatively minor and actually even-handed.

In all, characters driven by any form of ideology are compelling just based on how much convictions, dogmas, and ideals impact humanity in real life, especially when an extremist cult is involved. It isn’t difficult to imagine more radical believers like Mozgus or Seal falling into such a blind rage just because of how much the concept of being part of something greater than oneself or being guided by a higher power can lead to fanatics acting in ways that go beyond their normal capabilities. Once an unstable character is capable of reaching such a selfless state as to completely devote everything they do for something not of this world, their actions will assuredly fall out of the realm of human understanding, as Berserk and Shonen Jump’s Undead Unluck so perfectly demonstrates.

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