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 What is Berserk? Berserk is a (slowly) ongoing manga series drawn by Kentaro Miura; it's a sprawling, intricate dark-fantasy epic about the bromance-turned-bitter-hatred between two men, a mercenary named Guts and his leader, Griffith. Why should I read Berserk? Well, in short, because it's loving amazing. While, on the surface, Berserk looks like yet another edgelord action series about Big Angry Dude tearing up hordes of mooks and demons, there's a whole lot more going on under the surface than that; the series is fundamentally a character study of a man trying to heal from a life of constant trauma and violence, and of the man who largely caused that trauma and violence throwing everyone in his path under the bus to achieve his dream. It's a story about the consequences of ambition, a story about the necessity of relying on others, and a story about the human spirit being able to smash through any and all obstacles and keep pushing forward in the face of inconceivable odds. To put it a little more bluntly, Kentaro Miura has been making George R. R. Martin his bitch for 30 years and counting; if you like Game of Thrones, this is GoT But Actually Good. It's also an absolutely gorgeous manga. Miura's art is probably some of the most intricate and detailed in the entire medium of manga, taking heavy influence from Hieronymus Bosch, Gustave Dore, and Albrecht Durer; he's an artist who manages to instill beauty into even the most upsetting and awful moments, and he never lets the intricacies of his art get in the way of the raw emotion of any given scene. Most impressively, his art has constantly improved over the course of the series, and at the current stage he might arguably be one of the greatest artists alive. Even if the story is completely uninteresting to you, Berserk is worth reading just to look at the drat thing. Where should I start with Berserk? If you're unsure about the series, but curious: watch the 1997 anime. It essentially adapts the "Golden Age" flashback arc as a standalone story, and while this causes it to suffer some cuts (particularly stuff relevant to other arcs), it's about as good of an adaptation as you could hope for, and the arc it adapts is probably the best vertical slice of the series for a newcomer. If you're already sold: just start with volume 1 of the manga and go from there. The series starts a little rough, which is why I'm not saying fence-sitters should do this (the point at which the 1997 anime begins is usually the point where people think the series comes into its own), but it's a rewarding read, there's at least one really cool fight scene in the pre-Golden Age stuff that will likely never be animated, and the stuff the 1997 anime cuts is pretty important to the other story arcs. Do not watch the Golden Age movie trilogy or the 2016 anime as your first experience with Berserk. The former is made for fans and, while it doesn't cut the same things as the 97 anime, the cuts it does make are much, much bigger, essentially rendering it an incoherent greatest-hits of the arc. The latter is just outright terrible. Isn't this that anime with all the rape and gore? Yep.  In spite of the above, Berserk is absolutely loving not for the faint of heart, and if I were to list content or trigger warnings for it, we'd be here for a very, very long time.With that said, though, there's another side to Berserk's reputation, and it's that it handles all this poo poo remarkably well. It does inarguably make some missteps, but two out of the three main characters are explicitly victims of sexual violence and a whole loving lot of page time is devoted to the effects this has on their psyches. It's not exactly Goblin Slayer; in fact, the Berserk fandom tends to have serious beef with the Goblin Slayer fandom over this exact issue, because Goblin Slayer handles the subject matter much worse, and its fans have a habit of trying to use the widespread love and acceptance of Berserk as an excuse for GS' own particular brand of bullshit. Isn't this that series with all the hiatuses? Yep. Miura likes to take long breaks from doing Berserk. The fandom likes to joke that he's doing this to play Idolmaster, but in reality, it seems to be a mix of him changing up his drawing methods and building up a proper studio, consulting on adaptations of the series, and... playing Idolmaster. Didn't the last thread get closed because of some creepy pedo poo poo? Yes. Long story short, Kentaro Miura doesn't just draw Berserk, and occasionally when he puts it on hiatus he'll do an unrelated miniseries. These unrelated miniseries are generally staggeringly loving awful; the last one he did, Gigantomakhia, heavily involved piss drinking, and the current one, Duranki, has an absolutely uncomfortable amount of child nudity and handles its non-binary protagonist very poorly. A lot of Berserk fans attempt to give these series the benefit of the doubt because Berserk is just that good and nobody wants to believe that Miura is actually a skeevy dude, but... at best, his influences from medieval and Renaissance art resulted in some really loving bad optics, and at worst, he's an outright piss-drinking childfucker, and I'm not sure any of us really want to know for sure where he falls on that spectrum. This is the last that needs to be said on the issue. This is not a thread for Gigantomakhia or Duranki, and while I'm not Wark Say, talking about the latter will probably get you probated or banned due to all the naked children in it. While Berserk has a lot of rough-rear end content in it, none of the poo poo that sparked the drama was actually in Berserk itself. So what can we talk about, if this series is constantly on hiatus and the author's side stuff sucks rear end? There's a lot to talk about! Maybe you haven't read the manga or you're due for a reread; post your reactions! Maybe you have dank memes from /r/berserklejerk to share! Maybe you have some crazy fan theory about how Skull Knight is a time-traveling future version of Guts or something! Maybe, God willing, you actually have cool analysis of the art or writing to post! Just don't poo poo this thread up with pseudo-jokes about how hilarious you think it is that Guts was molested as a child or anything like that, and you'll already be soaring over the bar the rest of the Berserk fandom sets for discussion quality. Is Guts off the boat? Yes, he's off the boat, and the plot is actually progressing again. Rejoice. Per explicit instructions from Wark Say, this is not a blanket-  thread. If you're going to post an image from Berserk or something directly related to it, and that image has non-worksafe content, tag it and link it. If it's from Duranki, do not post it at all.
WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 20:33
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 05:36 |
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Honestly, I disagree; I think it's actually pretty clear at this point what the manga's overall theme is, and the current direction fits that perfectly. Berserk is a manga about trauma, and also about the healing process; about how total self-reliance is unhealthy, and you need support to properly grow past the horrible poo poo that's happened to you if you want to actually succeed and not just keep spiraling downwards. It'll be a little cheesy if it goes full-on shonen ~power of friendship~ but I wouldn't be surprised if Guts' improved mental state and new reasons to live end up being crucial to him beating Griffith's rear end. (And there's no way it's not ending with Guts and Griffith throwing down, and Guts winning. Anything else would feel like a cop-out after 30 goddamn years of this, and Miura's more or less said he realizes this.)
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Nov 18, 2019 06:21
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ETURNA posted:Isn't the current hiatus supposed to be ending soon? From what I understand, this particular hiatus was so he could restructure his studio, hire more assistants, and train them to be able to do more on their own; it'll probably end when Duranki does, because that was supposed to be a training project of sorts iirc, and we'll hopefully get less hiatuses from that point.
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Nov 24, 2019 19:30
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Sjs00 posted:I really really don't agree. It looked just about as cellshaded as the Movie trilogy, because it was. But you're free to disagree and tell me how wrong it is to like something. The movie trilogy was a mix of CG and traditional, and while the CG looks kinda butt, all the traditional stuff looks fine to great. Meanwhile the new anime is 100% CG and looks entirely like the kinda-assy parts of the movies.
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Feb 22, 2020 02:03
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Miura's already straight-up said in interviews that Berserk isn't gonna have a full-on downer ending, because he's too attached to the characters at this point and assumes the fans largely feel the same way, and thinks a downer would be too unsatisfying at this stage. At the same time, though, an ending that's just full-on happy would feel weird for Berserk. My prediction is that Guts dies, but takes Griffith (and potentially the rest of the God Hand) with him and somehow re-splits the worlds in the process.
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May 20, 2020 19:16
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Also, I'm not overly surprised Berserk is continuing (picking up, even) during the quarantine, since Miura only very recently set up a proper external studio (which was where a lot of the most recent hiatuses came from, iirc). COVID probably just meant he had to put that on hold and keep making Berserk pretty much on his own for a bit.
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May 20, 2020 19:21
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I feel like this doesn't preclude some sort of legit announcement happening at the thing, tbf. Like, if they're putting up a whole rear end statue of Zodd and Miura's gonna be there, that indicates something's happening, I don't think they'd just put up a random Zodd statue somewhere for shits and giggles.
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Oct 6, 2020 18:32
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Ccs posted:If you live in Japan and have a Japanese credit card you can donate and rewards include original artwork from the manga. how much does the original artwork cost? i don't live in japan or have a JPN credit card, but if it's anything approaching semi-reasonable i'll try and track someone down to middleman for me
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Oct 11, 2020 02:42
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 05:36 |
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 SKULL KNIGHT FLASHBACKHOLY gently caress
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Oct 26, 2020 05:45
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