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I only recently caved and finally read the Berserk manga and yeah, it's true, it's loving incredible. Not always an easy read, but loving incredible. Hands down best arc is Tower of Conviction. Best supporting cast, best villain, best development, concludes in the most Berserk way possible. No interest in any of the animes, although the Golden Age movies seem to have had some actual care put in them, it just ain't Berserk without the meticulous Bosch-and-Goya-on-an-opium-bender art stylings. Over time Miura has definitely changed the tone, but skillfully so, losing the excess edgelording but still keeping the bite and sense of foreboding consequences yet to occur. Griffith is a bitch but his current crew is pretty excellent and the main thing that keeps his chapters tolerable. Anyway, my metaphorical interpretation of the series is this: Berserk is about how difficult it is to be a functioning human being. You got your fantastical cases like Guts and Casca being too demon-haunted to just have a day off, you got your universal cases like Isidro dealing with the insurmountable mediocrity that is adolescence, and you got your very specific cases like Farnese "so maybe I'm a recovering pyrophiliac one-percenter with nothing to put on my resume but 'technically a knight that one time' but I TRY, OKAY" (my favorite character is Farnese by miles)
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Dec 24, 2019 06:44
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I'm most saddened by the fact that we won't get to see Casca's story from here. She above all else deserved more. But this isn't a bad ending.
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May 20, 2021 08:16
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gently caress deadlines.
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May 20, 2021 08:36
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It took me a long time to warm up to reading the manga, due to some of the content. It turned out to be worth braving. The strongest theme, hands down, is so very simplistic: It's hard to just be a functioning human being. Miura was telling it straight from the heart. My favorite character is still Farnese.
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May 20, 2021 22:54
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Viridiant posted:Griffith's scary because I constantly -want- to like him. He's a charming, beautiful person who'd be amazing to have on your side. Miura did a great job making a guy who people would follow into literal hell. Griffith was and is a bitch and now will never be redeemed as such (not that he was ever going to be.) His character cannot be detached from why the Eclipse occurred. He made his choice in his lowest moment based around the sole sentiment that he was the only person that ever mattered. It's sad and not entirely unsympathetic, but it was his choices, made from a place of pride and jealousy, that caused his downfall to begin with, and the Eclipse was an overt manifestation of those very sins of his, and appropriately enough, the consequences were to everyone except himself. He's a good villain, and it's easy to see why people not aware of how he got what he's got to happily start following him (and why, even if some people found out, it would be abstracted enough that they could compartmentalize it away with little difficulty), but the reader's perspective is the most important one, and from that perspective, he's impressively awful.
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May 23, 2021 22:03
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Julias posted:People don't need to spoiler tag berserk discussion in this thread, as long as they have the common sense to not quote the posters reading it for the first time and spew spoilers directly at them. I think most of the people playing catchup know what to expect from the thread an not read the posts discussing future content. I can only speak for myself, but thanks to general osmosis I knew just about every plot beat without having read so much as a page. It did virtually nothing to diminish the enjoyment of reading through. Hell, it even lent a nice sense of vaguely smug satisfaction in getting to breeze through the whole boat arc in one evening.  (I loved it too, even the goofy mermaid antics, but I can see how multi-hiatuses might have wore out its welcome)
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May 23, 2021 23:49
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Audacious armaments predate anime and video games by a good while, but it was tough back in the day, seeing as how if you were in a position to design said gear, you'd either be wearing it yourself, or with a vested interest in keeping the person who would be using it alive. Still, extravagance will always find a way.
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May 24, 2021 02:16
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Puck in the first arc is mostly a somewhat clumsy counterpoint to a then overly-edgy Guts. By the time Golden Age is done and we get back to the present, he's far more confidently and consistently characterized, and his role in the story cements itself. He gets even better as other characters show up. So to new readers: Be patient with him. Oh yeah--- a few pages late to this, but regarding Griffith: It would be too easy say that he just "went insane" over a year of torture. That's not the term for it -- and in fact, it's too often used as a hand-wave explanation in place of actual motivations, which Griffith did not lack for. He was always a stone cold sociopath, and nothing was more important to him than being the center of the universe. Seeing Guts and Casca relatively happy, healthy, and independent was as painful to his still-intact ego as everything his body had endured. Mazed fucked around with this message at 07:28 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 07:23
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Probably Berserk's second most famous villain behind Griffith, and an absolute delight. This holds up, in my opinion, as the single best arc.
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May 26, 2021 02:55
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TheLoneStar posted:So far I think it's better than anything else after The Golden Age. Just saw some poor guy get dragged into a den of sin, sex, and cannibalism before falling off a cliff. Poor guy. It's been pretty weird how little Guts has shown up. Since he took out those assassins and saved that boy, he's been pretty absent. A pretty strange change. It's one of those very precious moments. Remembering reading it for the first time: "So, the refugees are blowing steam with an orgy. Fine, whatever, they're all maybe-consenting adults (or what passes for that in Berserk-land) so everything is oh oh they're literally eating babies. ...dammit."
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May 26, 2021 04:30
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Some of us, like Isidro, struggle with being adolescent. Some of us, like Guts and Casca, struggle with mobs of literal demons who want to eat us constantly banging down the door. Some of us, like Farnese, struggle with a charmed yet dysfunctional upbringing and occasional bouts of pyrophilia. Berserk is about the human issues. 
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May 26, 2021 22:54
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I couldn't resist and am now doing my own reread. I like Zodd's intro. It might actually be my favorite single scene as of the time it occurs. He comes as a shock, the first sign of supernatural happenings, and he's ready to casually end the entire Band of the Hawk until he notices the Behelit. So, he tells Guts precisely what's going to happen, and casually fucks off. They don't spend a lot of time thinking about him, because Griffith's rise to high society is now the focus...because of course it is, and Zodd's probably off somewhere with a bowl of popcorn just waiting.
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May 27, 2021 02:50
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What works better than there being an "Idea of Evil" is that morality is fundamentally nothing; all that matters is what you do. The single most complicated element of Griffith's character is that, with the power he acquired by condemning his closest to death and endless horror, he's doing something that seemingly benefits a far larger group of people than his dead company, a group which include both humans and apostles. Further muddying it is when the humans start to catch on, like Sonia first but then members of the Midland army, they're just willing to roll with it, and the apostles are making a conscious effort not to prey on them. It'd be one thing if they were all playing the long game to ensure a greater feast to come, but arguably very few apostles are capable of that kind of restraint, considering that "restraint" isn't a common virtue at all in those who cross that threshold. Yet the most confounded thing, the reason Griffith is still such a poo poo, is that all these good moves are ten thousand percent about his ego.
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May 27, 2021 22:23
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Bisse posted:Quiz: Which apostle are you? oh, oh, I'm this guy, the big chompy guy  Borkoff! he's the one who got Guts' arm, but he's showed up in like every apostle squad scene since. I'm eating fried chicken as I consider this and being very chompy seems like a reasonable thing to relate to.
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May 27, 2021 23:47
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Where does Griffith's fever dream of being married to Casca and having Guts as their child fit in? Or...wait. Was Guts their child in that scene, or was Guts the dog their child was playing with?
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May 30, 2021 22:54
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The list of things Berserk inspired is incredibly vast, but absolutely ridden with mediocrity. Sturgeon's law is emphatically real. I would assert that the few Berserk "tributes" that actually work (that I've seen) are the Dark Souls games, which use a toned-down facsimile of the aesthetic (dialed back up in the third, which is more Berserk-grade tense and grotesque) and maintains a melancholic thread about the nature of humanity, and Final Fantasy, which puts a spin on the Guts-Griffith dynamic with Cloud and Sephiroth in FF7, and in FF14 has the Dark Knight quests, which take an introspective look at dealing with trauma and loss. Mazed fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 05:50
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Got up through the Tower of Conviction arc in my reread. God drat. Luca is just the best character. The best person. "Bunch of hosed up demons eating everyone, but you need to remember to take care of yourself." "Guess I've died and gone to hell. How's your day going, Skull Knight?" "Pour one out for the weird little egg man. Yeah this might be all his fault, but he had it rough."
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Jun 2, 2021 19:09
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Waffleman_ posted:I don't think being trapped in a torture dungeon for a year for loving the princess was part of his machinations is all and then taunt the guy who put you there for being horny for the princess (his daughter)
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Jun 5, 2021 02:15
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It's the perfect note to end that initial story on. Credit especially for how, it's not that single tear, clench-fist "manly crying" you see. Dude looks like he's barely able to keep himself from collapsing into a sobbing wreck. When doing a Berserk re-read, I like to do the Black Swordsman/Guardians of Desire part in it's chronological spot, even though the opening scene is wildly nonsensical there. Anyway, in my current read, I've finally encountered the most important character: What a turn this tale takes.
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Jun 7, 2021 07:56
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Charlotte is a great character in a really low-key way. She can make a scene if she wants to, strong-arm into things if she's really feeling it (like infiltrating the prison with Casca's crew) but is otherwise just prone to shutting herself out and focusing on whatever it is that makes her happy -- which for a large portion of the timeline was never leaving her room and just making embroideries of Griffith, as if he were her social media art OC. It's a kind of awkward introvert behavior that makes her very relatable. It's also, in true Berserk form, a highly sympathetic trauma response. You also get the impression that over that time, she's put herself in a frame of mind that, inadvertently, prepares her for the weirdness that ensues when Griffith reappears. The emotional catch is that she figured things could only get worse (going from shutting out her molester dad to being courted by open cartoon evil overlord Ganishka) when somehow it instead gets better. Bet Zodd felt very awkward being obligated to participate in swashbuckling romance antics.
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Jun 9, 2021 02:32
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"This is me. This is my life now." Viridiant posted:The big question with Charlotte is, I think...when it's revealed exactly what Griffith is, does she double down or turn against him? People are good at compartmentalizing. She might've been the character in the single best position to start the, "did his act of immense evil justify the good he'd go on to do later?" debate in-universe. At least, unless/until he signaled a big mega-eclipse rug pull. Although I'm increasingly convinced that's not what was gonna happen, just because people in the story know about Apostles now, the audience has seen it happen twice, and it'd really just be kind of trite.
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Jun 9, 2021 05:03
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I have to say-- having reached the point where Guts got the berserker armor and they're on their way to Vritannis: Why doesn't the Skull Knight just join their party? He seems to show up for drat near any scene where anything happens, often to help out. You'd think they'd finally be like, "hey, you want some breakfast too?"
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Jun 9, 2021 05:42
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mdct posted:Also dang what do you think that the Skull Knight doesn't do anything behind the scenes dogg has his own job to do *cuts to Skull Knight on a couch watching Hell's Kitchen, munching on a bag of behelit cheetos*
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Jun 10, 2021 15:31
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As an ending, I do not hate this. It's so outrageously inconclusive that it manages to be strangely fitting. If it continues, it will not feel the same, because even if Miura left a straight up script for the rest of it, this is what kicks off a completely new arc. I'll read the hell out of it, either way, but I'm happy with the Berserk we already got (sans a few distasteful items here and there) no matter what.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:35
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This is very good news. If it's bad, whatever, we've got the Miura run and that's that, but Mori sounds like he knew Miura probably as well as it was ever possible to know him, and they appear to have a good amount of material to work with, so the chances of it being bad are reassuringly low.
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Jun 7, 2022 22:14
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Predicting that the heaviest point of contention will be any future plot twists -- the most contentious of which is almost guaranteed to be Guts and Casca's ultimate reckoning with Griffith, and to some extent with each other. This could happen in literally the very next chapter or hundreds of chapters from now, but whatever form it takes, and I do mean whatever form, it's bound to be heavy, and met with a bunch of "there's no way that's what Miura planned" backlash.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:05
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you'd think a guy named Weedlord Goku would be chillmabels big day posted:Are guts and griffiths gonna fight I almost hope they don't. Rather, I'd prefer it if it were Casca who gave Griffith a beatdown, with Guts' angle being "if I tried to summon up the anger and hatred again, no matter how much you absolutely deserve it, I'd fall off the wagon and be just a raging animal, so I'mma let the cold, disciplined lady kick your rear end around." Mazed fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 02:37
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as Griffith lies, battered and dying from a beatdown given by every named character in the cast except Guts (including Puck, the Prostitutes, the Idea of Evil, and Schnoz), Guts walks up to him, unbloodied and serene, nods in appreciation of their handiwork, locks eyes tenderly with his one-time friend and arch-nemesis, and says, "Good thing I didn't go berserk." -THE END-
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Jun 8, 2022 04:03
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Wonder if they delayed announcing this for a year in order to work up a backlog for a good chunk of regular updates. Not that they'dve been obligated to, but that would be like Christmas coming early.
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Jun 10, 2022 04:15
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:How did Rickert slap him? Is Griffith only invincible when he's naked? recursive nudist power feedback loop. the nakeder you are in Dark Souls, the stronger, so it's that way in Berserk too
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Jul 8, 2022 02:12
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Mraagvpeine posted:I get the feeling that when Griffith returns to his kingdom, he'll leave Casca under the watch of Charlotte. Casca will attempt to escape, but the mere sight of the monsters roaming around guarding the castle will put her into panic attacks. Hoping for this, honestly. She deserves to eventually be able to power through her breakdowns on her own, and confront her own victimhood with a clear head -- which the Golden Age demonstrated she's strongest while maintaining. Bottom line: Berserk as a whole, in order to maintain the story, needs her to be as important as Guts and Griffith, and no longer a perpetual damsel without agency. If Berserk goes for another 10 years but it's 80% Casca's perspective, that'd be fine. Very interested in what kind of chemistry she's hopefully going to have with Sonia and the various "noble" apostles in their circle. She should, for certain, have a chance to form an opinion of the latter aside from "you're a victim of their kind." Meanwhile, as heartbreaking as Guts' situation now is, he's now in the precise spot where we discover if his found family and the self-actualization he's experienced over his journey are enough to keep him from going pure rage monster. In a way, this new conflict is what the story since the ending of the Conviction arc has all been for.
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Aug 15, 2022 22:42
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I don't have much to add that hasn't already been very well said. A current, anxious point, though, centers around whether or not Casca will even get to keep her agency now. The story has come a long way since her character was, debatably, mishandled and effectively erased. She's straight up owed a proper role, for a good long time. Bad Seafood posted:The Tower of Conviction incorporates sexuality with a touch more thematic weight and narrative purpose, but also gets bogged down in the name of pulpy sensationalism. It kind of worked. The biggest matter of that subject was the juxtaposition between the prostitutes and the cultists. The former were depicted fairly wholesomely, with everyone shown to be respectful and consenting (and Luca's getting to be a PoV character here for pivotal moments), and the latter grotesquely, with all involved completely bereft of dignity -- although it got pushed to almost nonsensical levels with how they were literally eating babies.
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Aug 23, 2022 00:02
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Sydin posted:Honestly Luca and to a lesser extent Jerome and Nina are what make the Tower of Conviction arc work imo. Without them it would just be a bog standard rescue arc where Guts cuts through a bunch of demons to get the girl back but instead all the insane poo poo that happens is grounded by a group of camp followers just trying to navigate the absolutely hosed situation they're stuck in. This is true, but not to discredit Mozgus. His archetype isn't unusual but he has a compelling villain formula: 1) He believes he's 100% good despite being 2) objectively 100% evil, and 3) is a weird fuckin dude in his own right. On the subject of Nina, I don't get why she gets hate from fans. She's cowardly, pathetic, and has practically zero moral compass, but that's the point. Her role in the story works. I freakin love the Conviction arc. The send-up of religious moralism vs. compassionate humanity is as hamfisted as it gets, but it fully complements the patently Berserk grim madness it all takes place in.
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Aug 23, 2022 06:21
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Sydin posted:If you'll allow me to be kind of a ponce - Nina's disliked because she does what most people would actually do given the situation she's in, and in a genre that largely deals in self-insert fantasy that tends to make the reader uncomfortable. Like yeah everybody wants to think they'd be the hero who'd stick their neck out like Luca to unconditionally help others, but realistically most people would fold quickly under the threat of torture or imprisonment or persecution to save themselves. Particularly if the ones they're trying to protect are just acquaintances rather than family. Likewise given how absolutely hopeless Nina's situation is coupled with the STD she picked up basically destroying her one way of making a living, it makes sense she fell in with a weird satanic sex cult that offered her escape and a sense of belonging despite it all. This nails it. Nina is lame in a way that real people are lame. We probably all know someone who's like this, and it's possible that that someone is ourselves.
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Aug 23, 2022 16:25
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Berserk should be dubbed by that same roster of British VAs that does FFXIV, the Souls games, Xenoblade, etc.
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Sep 26, 2022 02:50
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that and if they took Puck out of the story for real it would disqualify the Mori run of Berserk faster than literally any other plot contrivance. 
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Oct 14, 2022 02:59
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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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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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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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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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