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Those 5 are pretty drastically different. Bleach is a really long shounen fighting show. Dragon Ball is mostly comedy (assuming you're talking about Dragon Ball and not DBZ - DBZ is similar to Bleach but not as good). FMA is another shounen show, but it's far more focused and less stretched out. Well, at least the first timeline is. I haven't seen Brotherhood. Death Note is more about head games and sneaky tricks between two characters. Berserk is well, intense. It has a lot of violence and some even more disturbing things like rape and demons eating people. It's aimed for a much older audience than the others you've listed.
As far as manga vs anime: It usually depends on which came first. The first one is typically better. The worst situation is when the anime starts while the manga is still ongoing, and then the anime has to make up stuff when it runs out of manga material to animate. Quality usually declines around then. Of those you've listed, the Berserk manga is vastly better than the show.
I really don't recommend Berserk as a first anime or manga. It's a great story with a bunch of totally psychopathic characters and a hero/villain who is really charismatic and pretty much amoral. It pulls no punches.
As far as the dub vs sub debate - depends on the show. The typical sub is better than the typical dub, but sometimes there are exceptional dubs, like in Cowboy Bebop. If you aren't used to reading subtitles yet, there's definitely some value in being able to focus on watching the show rather than the words. On the other hand, once you become used to subtitles, you probably won't even realize what language they're speaking unless you stop to think about it. I mentally hear stuff in English even when the characters are speaking Japanese because I have my reading/listening wires crossed from watching a lot of dubs.
I'd say FMA is a good first anime. I haven't read its manga or seen FMA Brotherhood (alternate timeline), but the first FMA anime to come out was good.
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