Berserk of Gluttony Review: The Most Useless Skill in the Kingdom Is the One That Eats Souls

When I was a kid, the worst part of being bullied wasn't the bullying. It was the quiet hours after, when I'd decided the people who picked on me were probably right — that whatever was wrong with me was real and permanent and mine. I spent a lot of time believing I was the broken one.

So when I picked up Berserk of Gluttony expecting a generic "weak hero gets cheat power" story, the thing that actually caught me was Fate Graphite standing at a gate nobody respects, holding a skill everybody told him was worthless, and slowly accepting that they were right. He's not waiting for the world to discover his hidden greatness. He's already given up. And then the night comes when he finally kills something — and the skill he hated wakes up, and it turns out it was never useless. It was just starving. That reframe is what kept me reading Daisuke Takino's manga past the first volume, and it's why I'm writing about it here.

Quick Take

• A dark-fantasy power-fantasy that takes the "secretly overpowered skill" premise and bolts a genuine horror engine onto it: Gluttony only grows by killing, and if it goes hungry, it consumes everyone nearby, including the people Fate loves
• Daisuke Takino's art is the standout — the soul-devouring effects, the corrupted "E-domain" state, and the heavier action beats look far better than most light-novel adaptations in this lane
• Ongoing; rated T+ (Older Teen) for combat deaths, dark themes, and a protagonist wrestling with a power that wants him to kill

Story Overview

The kingdom runs on Skills. Your Skill decides your worth, your job, and your entire social ceiling — the holy knights of the five great houses get combat Skills, and everyone else gets whatever they're born with. Fate Graphite is born with Gluttony, a Skill that appears to do nothing at all. He works as a gatekeeper, mocked and stepped on, because his Skill only seems to activate when he kills something — and a gatekeeper almost never kills anything.

The turn comes when intruders break into the castle he guards and he's forced to fight for his life. He kills — and Gluttony finally wakes up. He learns that it devours the soul of whatever he kills and takes its stats and Skills as his own. Around the same time he acquires Greed, a sentient black sword (one of the "Mortal Sin" weapons) that talks to him through a mind-reading link and starts teaching him what he actually is. With Greed's guidance he climbs past holy-knight level fast, and he's taken into service by Roxy Hart, the rare noble who treats commoners and servants with genuine respect.

But the Skill has a price that reframes the whole story. Once Gluttony has awakened, it is always hungry. If Fate goes too long without killing and feeding it, the hunger turns on him and threatens to make the Skill run wild — at which point it stops distinguishing enemies from anyone else and tries to devour everything in reach. The power that lifted him out of the gutter is also a leash that, if it slips, makes him a monster.

The major arc the manga builds toward sends Roxy — through the scheming of rival holy knights — to Gallia, a ruined region so dangerous even holy knights die there. Fate quietly leaves the Hart household and follows to protect her from the shadows, and in Gallia he meets others who carry Mortal Sin Skills like his own: Myne, who holds Wrath, and Eris, who holds Lust. Gallia is where the cost of Gluttony stops being theoretical.

Characters

Fate Graphite — His defining quality isn't the power; it's what the years of being told he was worthless did to him. He starts the story having already internalized that he deserves his place at the bottom, and his arc is the slow, painful process of separating "what my Skill is" from "what I am." The horror of Gluttony forces that question constantly: when the hunger rises and he feels himself wanting to kill, is that him, or is it the Skill? The series keeps making him answer.

Greed — The black sword that becomes Fate's partner and the closest thing he has to a mentor. Greed reads his mind, talks back, mocks him, and steers him toward understanding the Mortal Sin Skills. Pairing a desperately lonely protagonist with a sarcastic talking weapon could have been a gimmick; instead Greed is the one voice that's been honest with Fate from the start.

Roxy Hart — Lady of House Hart, a holy knight who took over as head after her father died on a Gallia campaign, and a leader genuinely loved by the people she governs. She's the person who treats Fate like a human being before anyone knows what his Skill can do, which is exactly why he can't tell her the truth about it — and why protecting her becomes the thing that defines his choices. Her arc carries the emotional weight of the early manga.

Myne — A small, dark-skinned girl who wields the Wrath Mortal Sin Skill and is monstrously strong. Blunt to the point of cruelty, she becomes Fate's reluctant tutor in surviving what he is. She's the one person who treats his "what if I lose control and need to be put down" fear as a flat practical question rather than a tragedy — which is its own kind of mercy.

What I Love About It

The single best idea in Berserk of Gluttony is that the power and the curse are the same mechanic. Most "scorned weakling gets cheat Skill" stories give the hero a downside that's cosmetic — he's secretly the strongest, and the drawback is just flavor. Here, the drawback is the engine. Gluttony makes Fate stronger only by killing, and the strength it grants comes packaged with a hunger that, left unfed, turns him into an indiscriminate consumer of everyone around him. So getting stronger and becoming a monster are not two paths he chooses between. They're the same act, viewed from two angles.

What I love is how Takino's manga makes that an interior problem instead of just a combat gimmick. The most gripping pages aren't the flashy power-ups — they're the ones where Fate is in a half-starved state, feeling the Skill push at the edges of his self-control, and the real fight is whether he's still the one driving. The series keeps quietly asking the question I spent my whole childhood asking: if everyone tells you the thing inside you is dangerous and wrong, and part of you starts to agree, how do you decide you're still a person? Fate has to answer that with a sword in his hand and a Skill whispering that it would be so much easier to just eat.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The scene that floored me comes in the Gallia climax. Fighting to protect Roxy, Fate goes up against Northern Allestar, a holy knight wielding the Envy Mortal Sin weapon, who turns the disaster-class heavenly dragon loose against him. To survive it, Fate pushes Gluttony deeper than he ever has and reaches the corrupted "E-domain" — and the Skill nearly swallows him whole. Feeling himself slipping, terrified of what he'll do if he loses control, he turns to Myne and asks her to kill him before he goes berserk.

And then Roxy reaches him with one line: "Whatever power you have, Fate is still Fate." That sentence is what pulls him back from the edge — he holds on, and he doesn't get devoured by his own Skill.

I'm not going to pretend it's subtle. But it's the exact emotional beat the whole series has been loading, fired at the right moment. The boy who spent his life being told the thing inside him was worthless and broken finally believes, for once, that he's more than the worst thing he carries — and he believes it because someone he respects says it out loud, in the moment it matters most. For a story that started with a kid resigned to being garbage at a gate nobody cares about, "you are still you, no matter what's in your hands" is the whole arc compressed into a sentence. It stuck with me.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• The power-as-curse premise gives every fight real interior stakes — winning can cost Fate his self
• Daisuke Takino's art renders the soul-devouring and E-domain corruption better than most series in this genre
• Greed is a genuinely good sidekick, not just comic relief
• Roxy and the early Gallia arc give the dark fantasy an emotional spine

Cons

• It's still a light-novel adaptation at heart — the power escalation and "even stronger enemy appears" rhythm gets familiar in later volumes
• Ongoing, so there's no complete ending yet
• The self-loathing and "kill me before I lose control" beats are heavy, and the redemption hits some predictable notes — that earnestness will land for some readers and feel on-the-nose for others.

Is Berserk of Gluttony Worth Reading?

Yes, if you want dark fantasy where the cheat power is also the curse and the art actually delivers on the genre's darkness. Fate's struggle to stay himself while a soul-eating Skill pulls at him gives the action real weight, and Takino draws it beautifully. Skip it if you're tired of light-novel power escalation or want a story that's already finished — this one is ongoing and follows some familiar beats on its way to the good ones.

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How Berserk of Gluttony Differs
The Rising of the Shield Hero	Scorned, betrayed hero claws his way up through resentment	Berserk of Gluttony's "punishment" is internal — the power itself is what threatens to consume him
Goblin Slayer	Bleak, grimy dark fantasy where killing is grim work	Berserk of Gluttony makes killing literally feed the protagonist's strength and his curse
Made in Abyss	Beautiful art over a setting that charges a terrible cost to advance	Berserk of Gluttony's cost is moral and personal rather than environmental

Official English Translation Status

Seven Seas Entertainment publishes the English edition of the manga, with the first volume released in February 2021. The series is ongoing in English (eleven volumes out as of late 2024), tracking behind the Japanese run, which is up to fifteen volumes. Note there are two separate Seven Seas lines under this title — the manga by Daisuke Takino (the one this review covers) and the original light novel by Ichika Isshiki. Make sure you grab the manga edition if it's the comic you want.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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