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As much as I want more Berserk I completely understand Miura wanting to do some other stuff creatively, he started Berserk in 1989. I think I'd be at least somewhat bored of a work too after continuously producing it for 30-31 years.
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Jul 17, 2020 18:51
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Not gonna like it's kinda great watching Skull Knight awkwardly bro around with Guts for a change instead of just vanishing after three words. Anyway my guess is that after confronting his inner demons via the armor he's going to do something colossally stupid like try to abandon the rest of the party because "I'm just a burden to Casca living a normal life" and "GRIFITH".
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Jul 24, 2020 00:38
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The Notorious ZSB posted:I've been kinda waffling on getting the omnibus releases of this, and the art work this chapter reminded me of how crazy amazing Miura is with detail and I probably just should get them because of the sheer art of the thing. I have the first three and the one thing I will say is that while they are beautiful and very high quality, they are also massive. Unless you've got a ton of space I'd only settle for one or two.
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Oct 23, 2020 22:00
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Honestly I think that Griffith showing up and burning Elfheim down is lazy and predictable, and robs Guts of what has been set up as a really character defining choice for him. Here he is, having accomplished his stated goals. Casca is healed, he's protected by the island's magic from the curse of the brand, and the rest of his party seems happy living in a virtual paradise. If he is really over his desire for revenge as he's stated, then that should be enough. But it's clear that he really isn't over his revenge, is getting really antsy about sticking around doing nothing, and cannot currently really interact with Casca much at all because the mere sight or sound of him sends her into a PTSD-induced shock. Skully showing up once again also reinforces this as if Guts does give into revenge and leaves to go after Griffith, it's very likely that means following the same path as him. My guess is that the child will magically calm Casca - similar to how it sort of did when she was insane - such that while it is around she can interact with Guts somewhat normally. And then when the child inevitably vanishes after the full moon is over, Guts will leave the island under the pretext of finding the child, but with the undercurrent that it also allows him to continue to entertain the fantasy of revenge.
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Jan 22, 2021 01:56
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I mean, Griffith's whole thing prior to the Eclipse was that he still on some level struggled with justifying all the horrible things he had to do to obtain his dream. He still remembered the little boy he found dead after a battle still grasping his toy knight even up to the Eclipse, he was literally ripping his skin off and asking Casca if she considered him "filthy" for selling his body to a noble to fund the Hawks, and after he burns the Queen of Midland and her conspirators to death and has Guts double cross the thugs he hired to blackmail Foss he asks Guts if he thinks it was all a bit too brutal. And what's interesting is that instead of rebuke for his actions he gets affirmation: Casca responds by telling Griffith she'll follow him no matter what he does, and Guts tells him that worrying about getting his hands dirty is out of character for Griffith and he should just focus on obtaining his dream. Hell, part of the reason Guts leaves the Hawks is that he recognizes Casca is on some level right about him distracting Griffith from his dream. None of this justifies what Griffith did at all - this is not a "Griffith did nothing wrong" post dear god - but it makes sense that from Griffith's own perspective following through with the Eclipse and sacrificing the Hawks to continue to march towards his dream was not only the right thing to do, it followed the advice that his fellow Hawks had themselves given him time and again.
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Feb 11, 2021 20:06
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It's also pretty clear that by creating a utopia in Falconia and then unleashing hell on the rest of Earth, Griffith and the God Hand are trying to gather all of humanity together in one place, presumably for an even bigger sacrifice.
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Feb 11, 2021 21:34
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When Griffith and Guts reunite briefly at the graveyard of swords, Griffith claims that "[his] heart is free" and that he no longer feels any attachment to Guts. Despite that though he feels his heart rushing when Guts and Zodd get into a serious battle, and goes out of his way to save Casca from being hurt. So clearly he's lying to himself a bit there. There's also the narrative irony that after sacrificing Guts and Casca, Griffith reincarnated into the body of their child, binding himself to them even more so than he was pre-eclipse. I agree that redemption is not in the cards for him, but I'd be surprised if he just goes out in a completely unsympathetic manner.
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Feb 12, 2021 08:13
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The ultimate dramatic irony between Guts and Griffith is that each actually had what they wanted in one another but couldn't see it because of their respective traumas. What Griffith really wanted was an equal who would treat him as a human being rather than an idol to worship or a commodity to be used, but because of his warped perception could only see Guts through the lens of somebody he wanted to own. What Guts ultimately wanted was the sense of genuine love and belonging he felt he had with Gambino's group before being horribly betrayed, but when he found that with the Hawks he ran away from them because he felt like he needed to foster a dream equal to Griffith's for those desires to be reciprocated. If anything I suspect a sort of Heaven's Feel Shirou vs Kotomine battle where each acknowledges that deep down they actually do still like the other despite everything that's happened, but it won't stop either one from trying to kill the other to finish their business.
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Feb 12, 2021 10:43
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Yeah I was gonna say, correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like it's been years since rape or the threat of rape/sexual assault has been a thing in Berserk. Miura obviously still has his writing hangups but that whole angle has been dialed way back for a while now.
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Apr 10, 2021 02:20
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The sadness really hasn't hit me yet. Just kinda numb. It was always a dumb joke "hurr Miura's gonna die before he finishes Berserk!" but in a "the pace is so slow it's gonna take him another 30 years to wrap it up" way, not a "drop dead out of nowhere at just 58." 
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May 20, 2021 04:56
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https://twitter.com/GoodWillsmith/status/1395228526194872320 I feel like Miura's abilities can't be overstated. Genius illustrator. Genius at composition. Genius storyteller. He was an absolute cut above and to read Berserk is to experience three decades of that talent blossoming. The tragedy of Satoshi Kon all over again, one of the absolute greats of the industry taken far, far before his time.
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May 20, 2021 09:44
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CrashScreen posted:This one hit more than I expected, honestly. I knew we'd probably never see Berserk end, but this feels too sudden and soon. It feels like Miura was viciously chewed up and spat out by his industry, despite being one of its current biggest figures. He was, and he's not alone. Creative industries in general are loving awful with crunch culture and the anime/manga industry is no exception. Togashi, Kubo, many other highly prominent mangaka ended up having to bow out because they literally destroyed their bodies trying to keep up to their industry's demanding schedule.
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May 20, 2021 22:24
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https://twitter.com/calebandrew/status/1395434622448594945 Incredibly fitting that the guy who wrote a story about how the struggle to find hope and happiness even after experiencing the worst pain imaginable responded to his industry exploiting him by doing what little he could to break the cycle: hiring his own staff full time and paying them a wage they could actually build a life off of. What a loving guy.
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May 21, 2021 02:18
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Berserk ended with Guts succeeding in his mission to restore Casca's sanity and reach a place of relative safety and peace. Casca still has her own horrible traumas to work through, but just as Guts pushed through all his pain and suffering to once again find the ability to love and rely on others, Casca can too. In his last conversation with SK, Guts learned just how self-destructive the mindless pursuit of revenge can be, and finally cemented that his pursuit of Griffith wasn't worth it: something that the manga had been building to for a long time. The final culmination of Guts telling Zodd to piss off because he cared more about his comrades than "a pissing contest between monsters." It's not a perfect ending. It certainly wasn't the planned ending. But somehow, someway, even in the face of tragedy circumstances contrived that Berserk's "ending" was, at least, ultimately satisfying of its own overarching themes.
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May 21, 2021 04:26
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Josuke Higashikata posted:I agree that if Berserk needed to end, here is the best place it could have ended at basically any point in its story to date. Casca is regaining herself, she would have gotten to the point where she could approach Guts and talk to him. Guts was able to rest and was in safety, his followers are also safe, they're not on the loving boat.... I know, none of it is fair. 54 is too early for anybody. That a genius of his medium was taken that early - let alone a genius who was a genuinely good person with so many relationships in in the industry and who paid his success forward to those working under him - is beyond cruel. All the more so since the medical complications that lead to his death were almost certainly the result of the industry he was working in. Even after he had finally been able to take some time to himself (hopefully) with the hiatuses, how much he wrecked his body in his earlier years finally caught up with him. I keep using the word tragic, but I can't think of another one. He had so much left to give and take from the world that he'll never have the chance to now. e. No matter what, I genuinely hope it's true: 
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May 21, 2021 08:46
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The 90's anime is more or less a faithful adaptation of the Golden Age arc, with a couple things cut for time. I'd highly recommend just reading through the manga before watching it since otherwise you will be very confused about the ending.
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May 21, 2021 18:02
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I was at an anime convention years ago and they were showing the first two movies, and a friend of mine tagged along because he'd never read or watched Berserk. When it got a bit into the Griffith and Charlotte sex scene I remarked "oh wow they're really animating the whole thing, huh?" and he just turned and gave me the biggest  I think I ever saw out of him.I actually thought the movies were fine aesthetically but he just absolutely could not get over the more low effort CG shots.
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May 21, 2021 23:38
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I was torn between the predictable happening of Griffith attacking Elfheim and forcing Guts and co to flee, or Guts rationalizing his revenge by deciding Casca is finally safe and his presence only makes her suffer, so he sneaks off with SK and kicks off a journey by everybody he left behind to reunite with him. Even before Miura's death (and now even more) this little bit in particular really struck a chord:   Guts had accomplished everything he set out to do, but it didn't bring him peace. It seemed like he was ready to fall right back into revenge, but then we got SK's backstory driving home "all that mindless revenge will destroy is yourself" to him. We'll probably never know so maybe I'm way off base, but it really does feel like this was building to a pretty critical choice for Guts, and either way he chose the consequences would kick off the endgame.
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May 22, 2021 02:17
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Lucasar posted:Guts was chosen for the assassination mission because Griffith does not feel the need to maintain a veneer of nobility with him. This is because Guts is the only member of the Band of the Hawk who does not rely on Griffith. Guts does not need to believe in Griffith to be effective - think of why Corkus is so unnerved by Guts; he's not just jealous, Guts represents a real challenge to Griffith's cult of personality. Griffith would absolutely kill a child if it meant getting what he wanted, but he also wants to maintain his clean-cut reputation. His allowing Guts to see this side of him and then the following scene where Griffith talks of friendship has got to be one of the most important parts of the whole Golden Age. It's arguably the pivotal moment, because it puts in Guts' head that his lack of a greater purpose means he can't stand shoulder to shoulder with Griffith as an equal and a friend. If that never happens then Guts doesn't try to leave the Hawks, which means Griffith doesn't go off the deep end and kick off bad times. PhantomOfTheCopier posted:On the one hand Griffith never "lost his mind" or went insane. He was the same controlling ab/user the entire time. Going to Charlotte was tactically accurate: He was using her because the king would have to acquiesce if there was a child. It was a direct power play. Marrying Charlotte as a means of seizing the throne was a good idea sure, but breaking into her room to bang her with no escape plan except hoping she'd get pregnant and the King would have to give up was not. Presumably had Guts never left Griffith would have tried to get Charlotte's hand but when it became clear the king was never going to let her marry anybody, Griffith would have bumped him off just as he did the queen and then swooped in to pick up Charlotte on the rebound. Sydin fucked around with this message at 23:18 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 23:14
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It also plants the seeds that the worship of the church and the worship of the God Hand are unbeknownst to the clergy one in the same, a tidbit that becomes a lot more important when Griffith gets proclaimed by the pope as humanity's savior. Also chalk me up as a weirdo who likes Nina. She really grounds the entire arc by being a very normal person with very normal reactions to things. Under threat of death or torture she is scared, self-interested, and willing to say and do pretty much whatever keeps her alive. She genuinely cares about others and in her mind wants to be the hero like Luca or Guts who rushes into danger to save her friends, but she simply doesn't have the courage to do so. Miura was always good at capturing those frank elements of humanity, both the good and the bad.
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May 26, 2021 05:12
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Miura imo pulls a really cool "trick" so to speak with Femto in that once Griffith reincarnates back into his familiar guise at the Tower of Conviction, he looks like that for a looooong time. So long that you almost forget or at least wonder if he's become something different, something removed from the horrors of the God Hand. And then bam, he's back to Femto when he's away from his followers and the culminating moment comes to kill Ganishka.
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May 27, 2021 22:36
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Rody One Half posted:The thing is Griffith the human did care about people. You can't make a sacrifice if you straight up don't care, that's the point. He's a ruthless, evil fuckwad, but the entire argument Conrad and Ubik pull him over the edge with is "you've been spending bodies this whole time, because if you stop you'll betray those you've spent already, and this is just that same logic on a bigger scale." There is of course, the additional, more personal layer of his relationship with Guts, but if this wasn't relevant, Conrad and Ubik wouldn't have bothered. He also saves Casca from the mineshaft collapsing on top of her, feels excitement at watching Guts battle Zodd despite himself, and is pointedly staring straight at Guts from afar after his and Zodd's battle on the Holy See docks, just before the invasion. Griffith may want to believe he's free, but it's clear he still has all the same obsessions he had as a human, just more suppressed.
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May 28, 2021 17:23
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Hunt11 posted:Guts always saw Griffith as a beacon of strength and could never imagine him being so weak as to just completely snap like that. He also just genuinely did not realize that Griffith cared about him in the way that he did. When Guts overhears Griffith talking to Charlotte about how he doesn't consider anybody in the Hawks his comrade because they're not his equal, Guts assumes he's also lumped into that bucket. He assumes his leaving wouldn't impact Griffith any more than Corkus or any such rando leaving or dying. What makes Guts leaving the hawks such a tragedy is that it's all predicated on a misunderstanding. Guts thinks he has to leave in order to strike out on his own and foster a dream that would let him stand as a true friend to Griffith, but Griffith already considered Guts a friend - his only true friend at that - and so he can only see Guts' decision to leave as a personal betrayal.
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May 30, 2021 22:00
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The kid in the vision is also almost certainly Guts and Casca's child. Casca was already pregnant at the time with Guts' kid and given what Griffith was put through by the torturer there's no way in hell his junk was intact. The vison was what Griffith's life would be like if he didn't go through with the sacrifice.mind the walrus posted:Also Griffith believed his own hype and had been on way too long of a winning streak to not take the humbling by Guts super personally. One of Griffith's issues was definitely that he could only see relationships in terms of power dynamics. He "wants" Guts, decides that Guts "belongs to him", and consequently sees his trying to leave through that distorted lens. Griffith even justifies potentially having to kill Guts in their duel with "well if I can't have him nobody can." Which again feeds into the tragedy of their relationship: like Guts, Griffith had what he really wanted but couldn't see it. He had in Guts a friend and and equal, but because of his hosed up worldview he decided Guts belonged to him, which exacerbated his reaction when Guts not only leaves, but smokes Griffith in a duel on the way out the door, thus "proving" himself the stronger in the relationship. And yeah, that he immediately moves on to somebody he knows he can dominate - drat the consequences - and thinks of Guts the whole time he's doing it makes it pretty clear what's going on.
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May 31, 2021 03:02
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I am retroactively very glad Miura slowed down his output over the last several years so he could take time to sit around and play Idolmaster or whatever the hell he was doing. A tragedy it didn't come soon enough to save his body, but I hope he took advantage of the time between chapters to actually have some leisure.
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Jun 3, 2021 03:21
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Sonia's primary way of making fun of people was to compare them to ducks, she called her clueless escort the Duck Knight and when telling him a story about how Charlotte thinks Griffith loves her but really he's just marrying out obligation she does it by introducing her as a duck princess. Yet despite her using this analogy over and over to belittle others, when she goes into battle she herself has a helmet prominently shaped like a duck bill. It's a bit on the nose, but I always took this as foreshadowing that Sonia herself is really the one who is clueless and in far over her head, and that eventually that revelation was going to come crashing down on her.
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Jun 8, 2021 22:17
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Mazed posted:Bet Zodd felt very awkward being obligated to participate in swashbuckling romance antics. I mean, Zodd has the most perfect "contemplating how my life got to this point" thousand yard stare while doing it, so: 
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Jun 9, 2021 04:39
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I kinda feel like nothing could turn Charlotte against Griffith at this point, even a point blank, outright betrayal would just be met with confusion and disbelief up until she died. Griffith's already unnaturally compelling charisma has now been supernaturally altered to the point where the people around him treat him like a walking god. The pope fell down in prayer before him and declared Griffith the savior of all the world, the hawk of light, who will lead the people into the new era. So take all that into account, and now add in the savior complex and feelings Charlotte had even before any of that. I don't even know if she'd be able to believe that Griffith would rape somebody or cause the events of the eclipse, even if he himself told it to her. All of this is part of what made Griffith such a compelling villain. He had the unquestioning adoration and respect of basically any person or demon of import outside of Guts' and Rickerts' respective groups.
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Jun 9, 2021 08:31
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I mean, Guts manages to climb his way back up to the top if the hand where Griffith is pretty quickly, and Griffith is staring right at Guts when he chooses to sacrifice the Hawks.
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Jun 10, 2021 16:49
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I wanna believe in his staff and studio but man I just don't know about continuing the series on past Miura's death.  That panel of Casca smiling and holding the child though. 
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Aug 11, 2021 00:17
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I'm sure it's a deeply personal and difficult question for Miura's assistants as well and it doesn't surprise me that they first put their time and energy into finishing Miura's last manuscript before coming to a decision of whether to continue the manga on without him or not.
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Sep 7, 2021 18:24
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Pindakaas posted:https://imgur.com/a/zJSwrJc That would be a... hell of a way to end the series for good.  No spoilers: chapter was very short but also there was nothing where I looked at it and thought "ah that was clearly done/finished by the assistants rather than Miura."
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Sep 8, 2021 22:38
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean that’s probably why it was short I actually went back through it and I think there's at least one glaring example of where there is a page missing but it's not a big deal.
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Sep 8, 2021 23:18
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Pretty clear that this chapter was hacked together with the finished or mostly finished pages Miura left behind. Sucks we didn't actually get to see much of sane Casca's first real interactions with the child. Sounds like we're on ice with regards to the future of Berserk until December when they release the next volume. That seems like the logical point to make an announcement about whether Gaga is going to carry on the series in Miura's stead or not.
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Sep 9, 2021 17:48
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Yeah worst case scenario is that a continuation sucks and you can just ignore it as a lovely fanfiction. Best case the folks at Studio Gaga know what they're doing and got enough sense of the series and what Miura's thoughts were about it from working with him that they can put together a compelling finale. Even if they do choose to continue I doubt it would be a very long continuation unless somebody opens up the floorboards and finds Miura's super secret detailed outline for another 100 chapters or whatever. It'd probably be a dozen chapters or so setting up and kicking off the final conflict and bringing some closer to the main cast.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:04
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Slightly Absurd posted:goddamn, you weren't kidding. Okay yeah wow that's a lot more complete.
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Sep 10, 2021 18:25
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That outline is interesting but it makes me wonder what the hell Miura was going to do with Casca. Assuming we're at the "Griffith and Guts cross swords" point, that means Guts was shortly going to abandon his party to go back off on his own to hunt Griffith ala Black Swordsman Arc 2: Electric Boogaloo. Which in a vacuum could be an interesting direction, but one wonders then what the hell the point was of bringing Casca back and having a big show of how she can still fight? Maybe the plan was to split focus between Guts on his own and the others all trying to find him/do something else? I do think the plan is ultimately to have Gaga resurrect/carry on Berserk, but they're taking their time to figure out the best way to convey the messaging and also - frankly - to brainstorm how they would even want to continue the series and what direction they would take, all the more if they have nothing to go on but an incredibly vague outline Miura gave at an expo panel.
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Sep 13, 2021 21:23
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Zakutambah posted:There's also the "her goals may not be yours" warning. That could be the cause of a split in the party. I think that was more a warning from SK that Casca may not want to return to sanity, because doing so would mean having to face the realities of what happened during the Eclipse. After all, her regression to a child-like state was a defense mechanism in response to her inability to process what happened to the Hawks, Griffith, and her child. We saw those consequences in action too when even if she got her sanity back, Casca flat out can't so much as look at Guts without going into shock from her trauma. Granted, I also do wonder if where this was going was that Guts was renewed with a desire to kill Griffith, but Casca doesn't want him killed after learning he reincarnated into the body of her child. That's what forms the rift and ultimately leads to Guts going back out on his own, maybe relying on SK to get him off the island and back to Midland. Then the others would agree to team up with Casca and find another solution and/or try to stop Guts.
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Sep 13, 2021 21:44
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The difference between Guts and Skully is that, per the latter's flashback, SK lost the person he cared about in the Eclipse and so when he survived there was nothing left for him but vengeance. Guts meanwhile still had Casca, even if she was in a completely broken state, and the primary locus of his arc has been that he can only balance a self-destructive quest for vengeance and a quest to heal Casca for so long before one inevitably consumes the other. And I think that's why Skull Knight went out of his way to save both Guts and Casca: so that each would still have something to hold onto besides vengeance. He also appears multiple times to caution Guts that vengeance will ultimately consume his humanity in the way it consumed his own. With the hindsight of SK's full backstory I think it's pretty clear he regrets what he's become but doesn't really have anything else left but to see his vengeance through, and that's a fate he doesn't want to befall Guts or Casca.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:40
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Somebody linked reddit post a while back where Miura said at an exhibition that the manga was close to its final arc and he gave an extremely high level outline that was basically "Casca regains her sanity, then Guts and Griffith cross swords again, then Guts separates from his companions to once again become the black swordsman." Considering the final chapter we got we're almost certainly at the crossing swords point, which would then have probably transitioned into the series endgame. So yeah while nothing is ever going to be fully faithful even if Miura left 100% detailed notes somewhere, the story is in a place where you could reasonably wrap it up within 2-3 years of monthly publication.
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Apr 7, 2022 18:43
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