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hmm, wasnt a huge fan of the art in this chapter. felt very stiff and the paneling was... weird? even compared to the previous chapters
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Oct 14, 2022 04:19
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Rody One Half posted:Yeah fr, although the first thing that happens after the takeover being Casca getting instantly kidnapped is uh, UNFORTUNATE I'm withholding judgment until we see what they're actually going to do with that arc, but it better be really, really good.
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Oct 14, 2022 04:21
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Yeah ngl the art was kind of weird in this one. In particular there were a ton of panels where characters had their eyes closed and feels like they shouldn't have? Just felt kinda odd to follow flow-wise. That said the emotional beat of Guts releasing the Dragonslayer and it falling to the floor uselessly hit just right. Goddamn, this really is Guts' lowest low since the Eclipse. Hell this might even be worse than the Eclipse in a way: at least there he was left with some small if misguided purpose to cling to in the form of revenge. Here Guts has absolutely nothing: no Casca, and no hope of opposing Griffith.
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Oct 14, 2022 04:46
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I’m just glad my favorite babe Morda is safe.
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Oct 14, 2022 06:34
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LordMune posted:The speed scanlation kind of makes some poo poo up in the translation, so be aware of that. EG release when YA drops in Japan in eight hours. Thanks as always for your work. I don't know what the etiquette is in the scanlation community but it seems a bit rude for that other group to butt in at this stage.
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Oct 14, 2022 13:00
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The final moments of this chapter are a classic example of where taking out redundant dialogue would make a dramatic moment significantly more impactful.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:01
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mind the walrus posted:The final moments of this chapter are a classic example of where taking out redundant dialogue would make a dramatic moment significantly more impactful. Actually Annoyed IRL with the speed-scanlators' extremely verbose handling of it (mercifully not the release linked earlier in the thread). Guts is a broken, barely monosyllabic husk of a man. Sometimes you have to surface subtext, make assumptions, or fill in blanks to make fragmented Japanese work in English, but having Guts wax poetic is taking it more than one step too far— at that point you're altering the narrative. Chas McGill posted:Thanks as always for your work. It's more or less expected, readers have no loyalty and few can tell good work apart from bad. I'm speculating, but I'm guessing this group might be in it for the ad revenue? They're all about driving traffic to their site. Which is gross but it is what it is. What's more frustrating is that it's rare to have competition that has a decent command of even basic English grammar and it grates that they choose not to be responsible with it, instead inventing stuff out of whole cloth. LordMune fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 00:34
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Go on Isidro give Guts a little pep talk that'll cheer him up
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Oct 15, 2022 04:08
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mabels big day posted:Go on Isidro give Guts a little pep talk that'll cheer him up It's actually going to be pretty interesting to see how he reacts once the initial shock wears off a bit. Because it looks like, on the outset, it might be setting him up to become a little Guts Jr. but I really don't think that's how it'd play out at all.
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Oct 15, 2022 08:40
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I recently watched Lady Emily's video on the many adaptations of Berserk and she did a great job of selling it, so I decided to give the manga a try. After hearing that it handled the more explicit themes well, I was very surprised for that to...not be the case. Boy is there a lot of child nudity in this and boy there sure is a looot of unnecessary rape drawn in an absurdly explicit way. Thanks Miura, for lovingly rendering the demon cum/blood/other bodily fluid mixture pouring from Casca after she was raped for many pages by demons and then Femto. Why is there a scene in which a child that was transformed into a wasp/fairy hybrid rapes another wasp/fairy/child hybrid to death with its stinger? When does it stop, if ever? I got to about volume 15ish or so and just could not continue. The art IS good, sometimes great but is it just me, or is the story, even discounting the stuff mentioned above embarrasingly bad? It's the same "gruff guy learns that there is value in friendship etc. and overcomes the odds" poo poo that's been done a million times, only artificially balooned over thousands of pages and with a bunch of violence and rape mixed in. It feels like the author has nothing to say pretty soon. Am I missing something? Should I keep reading?
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Oct 16, 2022 16:34
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Guts *tries* to overcome being gruff and learning to soften up and rely on his friends. Emphasis on try. I ain't gonna defend the sexual violence because I'm with you on that being tasteless. But I read Guts's journey in Berserk as a long struggle of people trying to heal from trauma and failing because more and more is heaped upon them.
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Oct 16, 2022 16:43
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Majkol posted:I recently watched Lady Emily's video on the many adaptations of Berserk and she did a great job of selling it, so I decided to give the manga a try. After hearing that it handled the more explicit themes well, I was very surprised for that to...not be the case. Boy is there a lot of child nudity in this and boy there sure is a looot of unnecessary rape drawn in an absurdly explicit way. Thanks Miura, for lovingly rendering the demon cum/blood/other bodily fluid mixture pouring from Casca after she was raped for many pages by demons and then Femto. Why is there a scene in which a child that was transformed into a wasp/fairy hybrid rapes another wasp/fairy/child hybrid to death with its stinger? When does it stop, if ever? I got to about volume 15ish or so and just could not continue. You're not wrong, and anyone who wants to claim that the sexual violence is always handled well or with class is being a bit delusional, and you're far enough in (e.g: past the Eclipse) that the story likely isn't about to start speaking to you if it hasn't already. I'd genuinely say it just isn't for you. That said there's a reason I still bothered with it even though there are loads of scenes that made me  at Miura's more puerile mangaka tendencies-- the utter pointlessness of the Trolls' sexual violence, the Pregnancy Chamber being purely there for shock value, the way Guts gathers a borderline Power Rangers-style Sentai crew after his first one gets mulched, etc.The way Berserk externally visualizes and addresses issues of class mobility, betrayal, cPTSD recovery and aftereffects (particularly from sexual violence), cycles of abandonment/rejection and the perpetuation of abuse, cosmic horror (not in the "oh there's a big monster and it's breaking my brain" sense, the abstract "oh the universe is not what I thought it was it's so much worse than I ever imagined and it's breaking my brain" sense), traditional gender roles, and so on-- it's genuinely better than a lot of "real" books and movies on similar subjects, and being able to follow the publication in real time got a lot of fans to identify with The Struggle TM in wanting to see just where Guts would go in dealing with Griffith. It became a communal journey for individual healing. And yeah if you just don't.... have firsthand experience with some of that stuff it probably won't hit your frequency, and with Miura dead and his apprentices/proteges doing a tribute finish it's not the same. That's all completely fair and a good reason to not bother with it. It's the same reason I understand and even pick nits about say, Jane Austen, but I also fully get that the things she talks about are just not my experience and don't hit the same harmonic frequency it does with other people. It doesn't have to be for me.
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Oct 16, 2022 16:52
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mind the walrus posted:You're not wrong, and anyone who wants to claim that the sexual violence is always handled well or with class is being a bit delusional, and you're far enough in (e.g: past the Eclipse) that the story likely isn't about to start speaking to you if it hasn't already. I'd genuinely say it just isn't for you. The reason I thought I would give it a try was because I do have firsthand experience with stuff that is central to the story, unfortunately and so does my partner which is why I thought it would speak to me somehow. Gut's and Casca's scenes together are definitely the some of the best parts of this but it all just feels somehow hollow, like a justification after the fact. It reminds me of how Kojima tried to justify Quiet's outfit in MGSV. hosed up things happen and gently caress people up. Yeah they sure do, except you wrote the story my guy, you are literally making these choices for these things to happen to these characters and all in service of drawing badass fights and over the top elaborate rape scenes. I didn't catch much stuff regarding class issues, I mean sure - Griffith wants to transcend being a commoner and is despised by the nobles, but if he didn't gently caress up, he might have gotten what he wanted all along. If anything his story reinforces the liberal idea of meritocracy foiled by tradition and Griffith was not an emancipatory force by any means, he just used people and sort of sold it as a virtue. Maybe it was a bad translation but I caught at least two references to the people being crushed by heavy taxation to pay for the luxury of the Midland royals or whatever and if you want to transport that reference from the medieval context to modern times, it doesn't track well. Similarly, the gender dynamics seem to be very surface level, sometimes almost embarrassingly, like sure, PMS fever does in fact exist so Casca is going to faint in the middle of a battle and then we are going to strip her because "reasons". Every time there is some pseudocommentary on gender dynamics, it is immediately undercut by some childish dipshittery. I do like the "God exists and he hates you and wants you to suffer, or is at best indifferent" take. That is a genuinely terrifying idea to me, when executed well. Btw, I want to emphasize that I am not judging anyone for liking Berserk, art is subjective, extreme art extremely so and if it works for you and makes you feel something that does good to you, more power to you. I was just disappointed is all. Majkol fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 17:10
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Majkol posted:The reason I thought I would give it a try was because I do have firsthand experience with stuff that is central to the story, unfortunately and so does my partner which is why I thought it would speak to me somehow. Gut's and Casca's scenes together are definitely the some of the best parts of this but it all just feels somehow hollow, like a justification after the fact. quote:It reminds me of how Kojima tried to justify Quiet's outfit in MGSV. hosed up things happen and gently caress people up. Yeah they sure do, except you wrote the story my guy, you are literally making these choices for these things to happen to these characters and all in service of drawing badass fights and over the top elaborate rape scenes. quote:I didn't catch much stuff regarding class issues, I mean sure - Griffith wants to transcend being a commoner and is despised by the nobles, but if he didn't gently caress up, he might have gotten what he wanted all along. If anything his story reinforces the liberal idea of meritocracy foiled by tradition and Griffith was not an emancipatory force by any means, he just used people and sort of sold it as a virtue. Maybe it was a bad translation but I caught at least two references to the people being crushed by heavy taxation to pay for the luxury of the Midland royals or whatever and if you want to transport that reference from the medieval context to modern times, it doesn't track well. Also very weird that you thought the working class guy who sold out all his friends to become a Demon Lord after his initial plans to become a hoity toity aristocrat didn't work out was somehow meant to be the guy we were sympathetic with, and not the pragmatic working class guy whose dream involves a life of independent pastoralism. Like, Miura even does the regrettable retrograde coding of "feminine = duplicitous" and "macho = integrity" thing with Griffith and Guts. Have you ever read any boys' fiction? Super common trope. Frieza/Goku, Leonidas/Xerxes, Joker/Batman, Everyone who ever fought James Bond/James Bond. This isn't new. And Berserk never shies away from showing that manmade institutions like Aristocrats and the Church literally eat their poor. Again it's not a subtle metaphor that when an Apostle is born they sacrifice their loved ones through demonic vore and subsequently develop a taste for human flesh. What Berserk does well regarding class is that it gets at the emotionality behind mindset and mentality. That's why it has the Dark Fairy Tale trappings. Griffith's entire point is to show the mythical bootstrapper and the limits of how far that mentality can actually get you. Griffith truly believes in his own hype and is competent enough to seem almost Messianic, creating incredible inspiration from within his class, but the instant he graduates to the next level all the demands of being a good aristocrat reveal the limits of his ability and it breaks his confidence, prompting the spiral downward-- it's not a coincidence that the Band of the Hawk has to literally descend a massive pit in the earth with a spiral staircase to get to the dungeon where Griffith was sent. quote:Similarly, the gender dynamics seem to be very surface level, sometimes almost embarrassingly, like sure, PMS fever does in fact exist so Casca is going to faint in the middle of a battle and then we are going to strip her because "reasons". Every time there is some pseudocommentary on gender dynamics, it is immediately undercut by some childish dipshittery. quote:I do like the "God exists and he hates you and wants you to suffer, or is at best indifferent" take. That is a genuinely terrifying idea to me, when executed well. quote:Btw, I want to emphasize that I am not judging anyone for liking Berserk, art is subjective, extreme art extremely so and if it works for you and makes you feel something that does good to you, more power to you. I was just disappointed is all. I do think that your disappointment does come in part from missing a few things, but at most 30%. Most of your disapproval is from really valid reasons why Berserk just isn't palatable to many people, and I do really dislike a lot of the YT backwash like Lady Emily and Super EyepatchWolf who did make great sales pitch videos, but ultimately massage way too hard over the flaws which are pretty loving significant given the weight of the topics wrestled with.
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Oct 16, 2022 17:48
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I'm in the same boat as Majkol. Berserk is a super mixed bag to me for all the aforementioned reasons. Sometimes you get these genuinely insightful monologues and breathtaking artwork. Other times you get excessive rape fantasies depicted in a way to try and be simultaneously titillating. Sometimes you get political intrigue and at least somewhat realistic / relatable class commentary, other times you get soldiers referring to Casca as "Big Sis", armies with Megaman X style name schemes, and just a general sense of a juvenile writing ability and target audience. It's really all over the place. From page to page it feels like the age of intended readership jumps between 8 and 18. These days the most I get out of Berserk is some of the more impressive artwork that can be enjoyed without context and the music that Susumu Hirasawa wrote for the various adaptations.
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Oct 16, 2022 18:20
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By the standards of seinin manga Berserk is the epitome of nuance and taste. By the standards of literature in general (although fantasy literature notoriously suffers from many of the same issues…) lol
Ccs fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 23:24
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there are plenty of gratuitous scenes in berserk that the story would probably be better off without but I’m not sure i really get the comparison between “quiet is naked all the time because she has to breathe through her skin because of magical bacteria” and “a driving force of Guts’s character is his intense fear of intimacy brought on by being a victim of sexual assault”
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Oct 17, 2022 00:03
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If you're past the eclipse you're past the worst of it but it's a series that never fully relents on being edgy and violent and even post eclipse the violence is occasionally sexual. While I agree with the comments that say this might just not be for you, if you've made it this far I'd actually recommend to keep reading - most of what you find objectionable becomes less and less frequent and the art and high fantasy concepts peak later on as well.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:36
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Gotta be real: The rape angle completely ruined the otherwise fantastic Qlippoth arc. It wasn't necessary (even if it did give us the single best English-localized epithet for an apostle, "whore princess of the uterine sea"), and the series is better for having had it as the last time anything like that featured so prominently. I really hope it stays that way. I still feel as if the perfect "edgy" chord was struck during the Conviction arc. That might still be reaching a bit for a storyline that featured a cadre of professional torturers whose work is graphically shown, as well as a sex cult that literally eats babies, but that's Berserk for you. The grimdarkness of it all is used to complement the humanity on display, even on the villains' part, rather than used to suffocate it, and it shows a ground-floor view of ordinary people (thank you, Luca, best character) as opposed to a nigh-superhuman warrior's encountering the supernatural, yet in Guts' own case, it probably marks the single most important turning point for him, which all that we're up to now has been building on.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:55
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It’s exceptionally mild compared to most fantasy dark literature. Game of Thrones is worse, First Law is worse, The Second Apocalypse is much worse, Between Two Fires is about the same, Clive Barkers series are much worse….
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Oct 17, 2022 01:13
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Oh yeah, and as you mentioned above, it's vast orders of magnitude better than most seinen manga. The shelves are packed with edgelord authors who took away from Berserk the shock factor and nothing else, ignoring any of the context that even in Berserk is stretched past plausibility at times, or not even perceiving it in the first place. And that's super loving disappointing because these people are frequently good artists who could also be creating a good story.
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Oct 17, 2022 01:40
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Yeah whenever I get anything recommended as being similar to Berserk I’m pretty sure I’m in for some trashy stuff. Like Ubel Blatt or some other rubbish
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Oct 17, 2022 02:04
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Ubell Blatt is loving WILD also terrible
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Oct 17, 2022 04:24
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Rody One Half posted:Ubell Blatt is loving WILD It starts out good imo, but yeah, it kind of falls off the rails later on.
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Oct 17, 2022 05:04
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Ccs posted:It’s exceptionally mild compared to most fantasy dark literature. Game of Thrones is worse, First Law is worse, The Second Apocalypse is much worse, Between Two Fires is about the same, Clive Barkers series are much worse…. Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 06:55
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Good chapter. Agreed that the art's odd in this one. The early pages are a bit messy, blurry. The later pages where they focus on the characters/props are significantly better. Sucks to see my boy Guts like this, but I still believe you'll kill the motherfucker Griffith with the Dragonslayer... Believe in our good old swordy friend.
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Oct 17, 2022 14:33
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I do wonder how I would have responded to Berserk had I not gone into it with such low expectations. For years I dismissed it as misery porn, and only got into it when a couple reactors I followed started the anime. The latest developments with Casca do have me worries I misread some elements of the story. I didn't think we'd be revisiting the damsel Casca well.
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Oct 17, 2022 16:32
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I'm praying that capturing Casca just leads to The Slapp 2.0
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Oct 17, 2022 18:08
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Guts just needs to strengthen his Haki so he can nullify Griffith's immateriality stand, Nirvana.
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Oct 17, 2022 18:32
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Casca is not going to regress to having no agency. While she might not escape captivity alone, she's not going to make captivity simple for Griffith when she figures out he's the scum of the earth.
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Oct 17, 2022 18:48
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I have to admit though, I'm anxious about that. Berserk has been surprisingly good about its female characters (as in, there actually ARE any, as opposed to purely props and trophies), at least for its genre. It's been discussed a lot how appropriate it was to turn Casca into an infantilized demon magnet for a large part of the story, but Casca herself is definitely top-notch, and even until the latest chapters, the story shows that it did not forget about her. Berserk has been INCREDIBLY careful in using its characters, to the point that Rickert had a hero's journey sneakily unfolding in the background, and it fits naturally. I chose to believe the team knows what it's doing - since a lot was planned out long ago. Furthermore: the story made a point of it, multiple times, that original Casca is an utterly lethal motherfucker almost on the same level as Golden Age Guts, and this Casca is still there. We got to see her murder a bunch of robbers at one point when trauma relapsed, and she demonstrated her skills against some vikings after being brought back, as if to make the point: YES, dear readers, she is still badass, don't you worry, we're not keeping her helpless. There is rarely an utterly pointless scene (if you don't count comic relief). Why give us that scene if she's a passive damsel for the rest of the story? It could easily have been left out (disappointingly so), but there it is, so I believe Casca's skills WILL come into play again. Even if, for now, she's probably a heavily guarded captive in Griffith's castle, since she represents a great danger to him if left unchecked. Oh god she's gonna meet Charlotte. OOOOOOH GOD she's gonna meet Charlotte. And I'm pretty sure it will devastate Charlotte way more than Casca. Could this be what triggers things going to poo poo in Falconia? Griffith has always been the one bringing about his own downfall, this could be multiple of his misdeeds coming back to haunt him...
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Oct 18, 2022 11:54
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All that needs to happen is for Sonia to get a glance at what's going on in Casca's subconscious.
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Oct 18, 2022 19:04
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Mazed posted:All that needs to happen is for Sonia to get a glance at what's going on in Casca's subconscious. unfortunately I don't think we can discount the possibility that Sonia's reaction would be "oh hell yeah" But either way, Casca in Falconia has pretty apocalyptic implications for Griffith, to the point where I wonder if he's really taking her there...
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Oct 18, 2022 20:12
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We know he's not gonna kill her and will make sure nothing else does.
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Oct 18, 2022 21:55
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Episode 5 of the Memorial Edition has the bonfire scene and the new Susumu song. It's nice. The remaining thing I'm waiting to see is if they put Zodd back into the next episode or Guts still beats the purple knight guy by pushing a flag in front of his face or something.
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Oct 30, 2022 03:47
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https://twitter.com/SrChaos8/status/1586834718057762817
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Oct 30, 2022 23:48
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He's made of evil! (How did that happen?)
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Oct 31, 2022 01:02
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Finally had a chance to read the chapter. Felt like I had forgotten half a chapter so I had to back up and read the previous one again. Naup, I remembered it all, but the new chapter felt like it dropped in the middle of a scene. Also a bit weird trying to figure out which characters should exist in this plane at all. Will have to ponder a bit where I think it goes from here, at least regarding Guts. As to new readers, welcome, but it sounds like you've stumbled on the wrong series; like way wrong. Berserk is not Golden Age, despite what all the modern re-re-re-adaptations want you to think. There's a lot above to unpack, but my first thought was, Wow I had a completely different reaction when I hopped from the anime to the manga. The story and characters spoke to me. It starts with slavery, cannibalism, sex as power, gratuitous violence, body parts flying, and torture. A child murders her grandfather, is sliced in half like a fly, and a mutilated half man is abused. Oh yeah, and then it gets "better": In the first major battle the antagonist is impaled, head split like a melon, sexual slavery backstory appears, ... but blasting people with cannons makes it all better? These are the things that happen in the Berserk world. The story and characters are underneath.
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Oct 31, 2022 07:31
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I on the other hand read it, was confused, and realized I'd missed the previous chapter, read that and read again to check for more context. Rough times, man.
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Oct 31, 2022 09:37
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it is sort of funny how out-and-out edgelordy the initial "black swordsman" arc feels. The thing that still winds up making it work is that it's building up to that single panel of Guts failing to hold back tears after just putting on a show of hardassery to the lady who's life has just been ruined (whether or not it's his fault.) There's a satisfying note of "this is it. This is who Guts really is." And then next chapter, boom, cut to a hanged corpse giving birth to him. Welcome to the Golden Age. 
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Oct 31, 2022 11:01
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