Berserk

[one-armed dwarf]

I want to post thoughts on it as I go through, but I don't think it belongs in the anime thread. It's too much to post in a general thread. I wanted to wait until end of deluxe volume 3 to say anything (that's 9 normal volumes) but it's actually going to take me a really long time to read all that, particularly as the story gets way wordier and the art more detailed after the 'Black Swordsman Arc' and sort of demands you take things more slowly, so I underestimated the pace of it a bit. Deluxe Volume 4 won't be here until the 19th and I have vol 5 already so I have no reason to rush. Won't post unmarked spoilers or anything like that cause this story has got a current interest in it now again after recent events.

 

Anyway it's pretty slow, isn't it? I'm up to 'Nosferatu Zodd' for reference, I don't know who that is but it's the name of the last chapter I looked at which I've not started to read. My impression of it all is it takes a while to decide what it wants to be and then settles on that somewhere around the middle part of the arc with the Count, which I thought was quite good actually but it took its time. The art also improves towards the end of that story, beforehand I thought it could be a bit shonky. But Miura was like 21 or something when he started this so it makes sense a style like that takes time to mature, and it even matures a lot by the end of that first arc. I'll also grant that the battle scenes are really good at conveying... well the battle and the actions happening and stuff. They 'look' noisy and intense. I don't read lots of manga so sometimes I find it hard to actually see what Guts is doing but there's enough stuff in it that feels kind of clever, at least when you get to the 'Golden Age' arc. Before that I found the 'Black Swordsman' arc mostly consisted of him walking in a room and seeing some fuckers and cleaving them in half, them he would go into another room and bisect some other dickheads. Just walking into rooms and swinging his body around in a circle and separating people from ass to elbow, head to balls. Rinse repeat. But it got better with

Spoiler

young Guts

and you start to see people coming up with tactics and strategies for stuff. At least on the bit I'm on it's like that. Not that I hate the blood and gore but for a while it was like there's only so many ways I can see a skull cracked open until the eyeballs come flying out on their stems. Sorry for that image, but that's what a lot of it is early on.

 

Not really spoilers but just to be sure, early golden age stuff

 

Spoiler

I did hear just before starting that the story doesn't actually start at the start, so the one thing I know about this story that I thought was a spoiler isn't as much a spoiler as I thought. At least not in the sense I thought it was. The part of the story I'm on now is still way before that stuff, they introduce Griffith and it's very homoerotic and there's lots of like satanic undertones to everything that's going on. Too early to say much about that character cause they haven't had much to do yet, other than be naked in one scene and throw water around. But it definitely threatens to be a lot more interesting now that there's actually some characters in the story beside just Guts.

 

These spoilers are photos of the book itself.

 

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Spoiler

 

 

Not that I know if anyone but och will post in this but while I'm fairly casual about spoilers myself and have actually read years ago a plot synopsis of 'Golden Age' I'd prefer no-one try and foreshadow any weird or unexpected event that occurs pls. Not that it would ruin my day or anything but I still like to figure out what's going on in a story thematically even if I might already know some major Red Wedding style plot twists (that are nearly always impossible to dodge anyway)

[DANGERMAN]

Yeah, it's weird isn't it. There's so much of Berserk that a lot of spoilers would be meaningless. But at the same time, there's moments that are huge, that ideally you'd have no idea about. 

 

Money and space willing I think I'd like to finish collecting Berserk. I've got up to book 25, OCH will correct me if I'm wrong but it "ends" on 43 I think? So not impossible to make a dent in it 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think it's 41, there was a tweet the other day by the publisher tho which indicates things are up in the air for how 'ended' it is 

Reading the translation of that tho it does sound like it's a case of waiting to confirm what people already expect

 

[Maryokutai]

If you get spoiled about Berserk you were just looking for it IMO. The series never went pop-culture mainstream and even the week or two after Miura's that resulted in a couple more social media posts and talk about it never went into anything really. All I know about Berserk I know from reading the first 22 volumes. To this day I have absolutely no clue what happens after that and I didn't particularly shelter myself from info. It's just not a series most people go blabbering about I think.

[OCH]

On 10/07/2021 at 08:10, DANGERMAN said:

OCH will correct me if I'm wrong but it "ends" on 43 I think? So not impossible to make a dent in it 

I did look into it. The current released Dark Horse volume is 40. They were only two chapters beyond that. Which isn't enough material to make volume 41. So for now, 40 is The End.

[DANGERMAN]

Definitely doable to catch up then. Not this month because I've been an idiot, but could pick up a couple of books a month from now on 

[one-armed dwarf]

19 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

If you get spoiled about Berserk you were just looking for it IMO. The series never went pop-culture mainstream and even the week or two after Miura's that resulted in a couple more social media posts and talk about it never went into anything really. All I know about Berserk I know from reading the first 22 volumes. To this day I have absolutely no clue what happens after that and I didn't particularly shelter myself from info. It's just not a series most people go blabbering about I think.

I was spoiled about (edit: to be specific about the spoiler, it's at the end of golden age. On the offchance someone clicks this without knowing)

Spoiler

the eclipse and Griffith sacrificing the band

but I really disagree with what you're saying. It's got a huge presence in anime/manga circles and it is literally the epitome of the meme 

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greatest anime betrayal

. Just listening to the superbest friends cast over the years is enough to make you absorb a lot of Berserk stuff cause those dudes natter about it all the time. And yea eventually I went off and read a summary somewhere which I forgot almost all of besides the end. Berserk has always been on my list to follow eventually but I always put it off cause of two major things. I'm not really a manga or comic book kind of person cause I'm of the view you have to read that stuff in physical form, pdfs feel like homework to me and my kindle is (sadly) not up to the task of showing the art in good enough detail to enjoy. I prefer anime, but all the Berserk animes are hamstrung in some shape or form. 1997 just adapts the Golden Age and the movie trilogy which goes into the 2016 anime has very bad animation, so I felt I wouldn't be doing it justice like that

 

The other major thing is that it never looked like it will ever finish, which I guess I was right about. But I am ok with getting onboard with an incomplete story, Deadwood is my favourite TV series so I am trained in that kind of frustration (and I seriously doubt that Berserk's ending can be as bad as how Deadwood originally ended)

 

But I'm also not that bothered by this spoiler anyway, cause the story is framed in a really interesting way which deals with an antagonist's backstory in a way I'm not used to. Which I'll talk about when I finish deluxe volume 3 and have something more to say on it

[OCH]

It's funny you say that. Because I wasn't spoiled. Getting into Berserk what must have been about 10-15 years ago now? So I went from the Black Swordsman arc, wherein That Name is almost a slur. To finding out why it is, which was quite shocking. Beyond That Spoiler though, Dwarf. There are still quite a few afterwards for you to experience for the first time.

 

Although it is a lot harder now, as the Internet does like to ruin every surprise in anything popular. Which is why, any time I become interested in a new Manga series, I immediately ignore anything written or said about it online.

[Maryokutai]

So that moment is basically like Aerith in Manga/Anime circles? I don't know if I'd have the willpower to go through Berserk if I got spoiled about it but if you found something else that keeps you intrigued I guess it's all good.

[one-armed dwarf]

It's more I don't want to let spoilers cripple my enjoyment of it, I think yes it's best to experience it without having that stuff in your brain but I think our culture has attached to much importance to this also. It doesn't rob a story of its excellence or undermine the themes it's trying to bring across, which I think is a more important thing. Like to me I would find it more annoying it someone told me Berserk was a story about

Spoiler

abandonment, and longing for parent and/or savior figures and a place to belong. At least in these earlier arcs? I dunno if that's a thing which carries right through the story but it is certainly a big thing in the volumes that I have read so far. Also don't correct me on this if I've read it wrong or even tell me if I read it correct cause as said that's actually a bigger spoiler for me personally. At least if you're referring to future stuff, obviously if referring to stuff I've read is different (trying not to be difficult lol)

 

Also every single one of these volumes also has a little pamphlet which literally spoils the story of the previous volume, so I have to throw those things away quickly without reading them. But at the same time when you really think about it stories don't just exist to shock and surprise us and 99% of what I'm finding with Berserk is it's making me think of things that I didn't expect to think before reading it, if that makes sense. 

 

The funny thing is I heard that spoiler I think in a lets play of Tony Hawks Underground, where (this is a spoiler for both Berserk and Tony Hawks lol)

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Woolie and Matt liken Eric Sparrow's theft of the hawaii tape to Griffith's betrayal of the band, and then they even put the eclipse into the opening of their TH2 playthrough ?

 

edit another part I might have heard it is

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Dark Souls 3 literally contains a reference to it which whenever it's brought up everyone points out the Berserk-ness of it

https://www.google.com/search?q=dark+souls+3+the+eclipse&sxsrf=ALeKk02iw-rso4QBwDTqHBHseadPetDgmg:1626007506902&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZ9eb-hdvxAhUJWsAKHc7XBoIQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1099&bih=634#imgrc=qqCqNbs_BXC_2M

 

[OCH]

You are right about the art, too. It improves dramatically in a relatively short space of time. I say relative, since to us, it is one volume to the next. Without the context of how much real life time separated each chapter and arc. It is something you can never fully appreciate when reading through collected editions of anything.

[one-armed dwarf]

I've not quite finished volume 3 (eg, volume 8 and 9, I know it's confusing but anyway) but sort of at a watershed in the story now anyway. Up to the last point I posted about it I had been having a hard time getting on with it. But the stuff I have been reading is such a massive improvement over it cause of the change of focus to the Griffith character. I think I still have some hangups in terms of character writing, Guts exists to provide cool battle scenes and but the inner life of this dude is only starting to be fleshed out and it's got a long way to go just yet. But the story is a big improvement I think, in terms of tone and style the early volumes of this were like a black metal album cover or something, it was just a bit much. It's kinda steered heavily into the opposite direction at the moment, away from the really constant pitch black stuff. I think the main thing is it's just a bit more substantial at least. Even the bits where people get chopped in half have the ebb and flow of a proper action scene and aren't just flourishes of pointless gore all the time. Speaking of the gore is also more gory

 

Spoilers up to around the end of volume 8 I think.

 

Spoiler

I've read up to a bit now where Griffith had sex with the princess and now he's kidnapped, so things have taken a turn. Up to this point he's been weaving a sort of legend for himself to get more people that he can use. He's got this ultra utilitarian perspective where people are like tools and everything has a strategy and trick to it, which makes for exciting reading. There's also weirdly a lot of comedy in it, like this guy who I'm pretty sure is a pisstake of anime characters who shout kamehama at ppl to blow them up. Anyway he becomes a shark at one point

 

 

I said earlier it felt like the story was about lost people trying to look for savior figures, which is there from pretty early on with the Gambino stuff.  It's a story full of very needy and damaged people, tho it's taking a turn now where it's trying to problematise being so dependent on one person all the time, and also putting that one person in a pretty compromised spot now that he got caught with his pants down literally.

 

This sick burn right here makes me wish for a modern anime adaptation with a good budget, that isn't 3D or some shit like that.

 

 

 

 

So despite a rough start I'm really enjoying it now, even if it's largely being carried by one character for the time being. Deluxe volume 4 arrives Monday and then I have the complete current set of the deluxe copies, which means I'll be forced to take a break after volume 21 (which is the end of an arc I think, so it suits me and I'll probably have had enough by that point for the time being)

[DANGERMAN]

that 2nd fight is great, really shows how much Guts' has grown, and what that means for 

Spoiler

Griffith. He didn't realise that he actually needs Guts, he's not just one of many he's grown too big and got away from him. Which is one of the themes around the story

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Volume 4 arrived early so thats the full set of deluxe editions until 8 comes out in August

 

[OCH]

 

Nice!

[one-armed dwarf]

Man, I could not put deluxe 4 down at all lol. I read it all in one sitting

[OCH]

I think you're definitely getting to the peak of the Golden Age arc?

[one-armed dwarf]

The parts I really enjoyed was a big change in focus over to Casca, who I'm not sure if I posted it here or not but I thought her character was really weak and dull. But that changes a lot 

Spoiler

when Griffith is out of the picture, and then when he is back in again. Big themes about disillusionment with the shattering of the band but also the difference between people who lose meaning when that happens and those who just fucking get on with things, eg Casca taking the lead. I think all the stuff with rescuing Griffith is really tense and exciting. You get also the first sort of hints of Guts' eventual cruelty when dealing with the apostles (eg, how he sliced the tongue off the jailor and threw him into the pit) and rage when fighting the weird monkey man thing I forget the name of.

 

But that brings me to another thing, and this is a bit like complaining that Berserk is Berserk and I can sort of anticipate the response a bit but I think at this point I feel the series indulges in sexual violence in a really rough way. Like I don't think it's expressed well at all and it does it an awful lot, nearly every mortal duel involving Casca has her clothes torn off at some point. A certain poster on this forum will bemoan the forced 'wokeness' of this take I think lol. But the reason I mention it is it comes up in a really savage way in the ending of the first major arc of the series.

 

I mean obviously I already knew it happened cause I think it's a fairly iconic scene but Griffith gets the behelit and there's a bit of ambiguity over the way it happens but he calls the great ones into the world. There's a bit there where he's telling everyone to keep away and I'm not sure if it's like the mechanics of the behelit require a specific feeling to summon them, or he knows that he is going to do something terrible to them if Guts reaches him. But there's a lot of uncertainty over how much of it is willed and how much of it is trickery by the god hand in turning himself over. My take on it is he knew what he was going in for and he's trying to keep Guts away cause he's worried his love for him will keep him from going to do the terrible thing to keep his dream alive and it's his love he fears more than what will happen to them. Which makes the whole thing very sad cause he's trying so hard to keep from feeling human, which I think explains how cruel he becomes when he transforms

 

 

It loses me though at the eclipse itself, I'd seen bits of it in cutscenes for a PS2 game or something and in that it's a bunch of dumb monsters eating people. In here it's an orgy of murder and rape, I get that the whole thing is supposed to be a vivid nightmare but there's a bit in it where Casca gets taken by a huge demon where every appendage is a phallus, that is the image they go for. I expect someone will say 'well this is the narrative justification for what's going on there', but I get that. It's more I think, IMO, it might be a bit unearned and gratuitious. Where they go for and what happens then after. But anyway

 

 

 

Now though I've sort of hit a point where I'm slowing down again, because well a lot of the characters I liked got eaten by monsters or lost their minds or turned into the Batman and Guts was never the main reason I was invested. It's picking up again after the Black Swordsman stuff where Guts is this loner haunted by ghosts with a grudge against demonkind. Also I think the world is starting to end or something and Femto is supposed to bring it about. The conviction arc is the last arc I will get to read until they start publishing more editions but that will still bring me halfway through the full 30 year story so it's something. Maybe in the meantime a decision will be made WRT are they going to have different writers and artist articulate an ending for this thing, release an 'Epistle 3' which summarises some of the broad strokes that Miura might have had in mind for his ending or just end it as it is.

 

[OCH]

I do hope for even just a novel, depicting Miura's view on how the series ends. As stated in the quote I posted from 2019, he at least envisioned one more arc after the current one. There is a Berserk novel, that I doubt will be in the HC volumes. As Miura didn't write it and, to me, it shows he didn't write it. Not that you'll be missing out on anything major as it focuses on one of the newer secondary cast characters .

 

We could write pages on the interpretations on the bits you've read so far. There is lots to dissect there. T

Spoiler

here is a lot more going on than the overt and bloody cull of the Golden Age cast.

It isn't just for shock value ala Robert Kirkman's routine cast culls in The Walking Dead comic and/or Game of Thrones (as I have been told).

 

RE: Sexual violence. I watched the '97 anime first, before I started to read the manga. The Eclipse is largely there in tact. Two scenes are omitted from both the 97 anime and the 2000's films. Those involving Donovan and Wyald. The opening volume of the Golden Age, the Donovan scene in particular, I think sets the tone for how Miura handles the subject. That this is a cruel and merciless world. That's without the Apostles entering the narrative. 

 

There was one Manga I read - Gantz - wherein I thought the sexual violence was too much and stopped reading. Berserk walks a fine line with it. Because it is a consistent tone. Without spoilers, this isn't the last time the subject will come up.

[one-armed dwarf]

You should block out that bit in the second paragraph lol.

 

From what I read they were still only 75-80% of the way through the entire story and from what I see the only thing that could realistically happen is they try their best to imagine an ending faithful to what the author might have done. The 'death of the author' is very literal with Berserk I think cause apparently his whole process didn't involve him writing tons of dialogue and story sequences in advance, he worked his way visually through the story. So whatever stuff he might have ideated there is probably lost, so not a lot to work with. Which won't satisfy a demanding fanbase's cravings for canon and closure but it's probably the 'best' outcome available.