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BERSERK

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Not as strange a crossover as you might think, and not even the first Disney/Berserk crossover fanart from a fan. An Italian artist made this fan art once before:
https://theozilla.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148970282788
https://theozilla.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F149403205673
Reminds me of this thing I found before:
tt5hfff0mtw51.jpg

Not sure who drew this, though.

Also, if anyone wants to suffer, I wrote out the entire plot of my shitty Gravity Falls/Berserk crossover.

There's a few scenes I'm kinda proud of in there, but a lot of it is half-baked admittedly.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
It looks like Young Animal has confirmed that they'll have an official announcement when there is a decision made about what to do with the Berserk manga, but as of now it's still undecided (and I expect that to be the case for a significant while as that's one hell of a task to commit to, especially for the people who'd've been closest to Miura).




X :neo:
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I feel the need to share this in light of recent events.
972se9zqhk751.jpg

The merge is coming.


...


Anyway, I saw people on SK.net talking about this, so I was wondering how some of you would feel about berserk continuing under another author? I both want to see it happen but don't want to see it happen. Conflicting feelings. On one hand, nobody could do it like Miura could, but on the other hand, I feel like there's enough of a beating pulse in the story to extrapolate what might have happened next.

The compromise I'd personally come to would be to have Studio Gaga finish the next episode, print volume 41, then relaunch their continuation of Berserk as a new manga to finish the story. Like "Berserk Max" or "Berserk Gaga" or something. That way it's kind of a separate entity from Miura's story, so people not wishing to see it handled by anyone else can just take Miura's work as it is, and people who want to see what the team can come up with have an option too.

I dunno, it's a rough situation.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
What I can say is that with BERSERK specifically, this is especially difficult because of how it's carrying on a lot of existential examinations from Osamu Tezuka's own unfinished life's work in the manga Phoenix, as he was the godfather of manga and died in 1989 the same year BERSERK began. He established countless components about the themes around humanity that are all extremely particularly executed as the bounds for how the story of BERSERK evolved over time.

If you approach BERSERK with the idea of being responsible for bringing it to its conclusion – I think that it's something to be left alone. If it's something where they think that the heart of the story can be preserved and continued in order to achieve what Miura would have wanted from every. single. episode. – then it's worth doing. The manga's release cycle and other things were already at a point where the value in the story was about the nature of where it was going at each moment, and not ultimately where it was intended to arrive.

That ask is an absolutely monumental task, and is why I think that it's only something that those closest to Miura could possibly decide, as I think that any other approach wouldn't be doing justice to the legacy of what BERSERK represents. If it's something that they do, I think that it also depends on how much of his work they have to be able to build from as to whether or not to add in a change in the title to indicate the differentiation.




X :neo:
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I feel like if you were to approach Berserk as a larger than life legendary epic story, then that would be a bad place to start. We view Berserk as this incredible thing, yes, but Miura himself was a very humble guy. Between every masterstroke of visual storytelling there was crude humor, star wars references, and plenty of other goofy things. I don't think he saw his own wok the way most of us regard it, so having that mindset when approaching it would be flawed. Don't try to live up to that ideal, just make something out of it that's worthwhile in its own right. The person and people who would finish Berserk shouldn't just do it so Berserk has an ending, they should do it because they have a story worth telling. That's my opinion. Living up to Mirua's long shadow and trying to do "what he would have done" is a bad approach.

I spent a while doing a bit of a deep dive into the mess that was the Archie Sonic comic, and how a bunch of weirdos had created so many characters and storylines, that Archie fired them all and hired someone else to clean up the mess. Ian Flynn took all those disparaging ideas and made something with them that people actually enjoyed. Obviously Berserk is leagues above a shitty video game adaptation comic, and I would never call it a mess, but I think the philosophy would be the same. Take the threads Berserk left, and make something out of it.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Unless there's an outline, a specific author drafted outline of the story that gives even the most basic hints of the plot's direction and conclusion, there's simply no way to create a derivative work that would function as the spiritual successor/conclusion necessary for the saga's respectible conclusion. Why even bother?

Like, there's nothing inherently wrong with a work being done with care and creativity to bookend what was left unfinished by an author's unexpected demise, especially if the author in question left their work to be carried on by their staff. However, there needs to be a basis and it needs to have the talent necessary to actualize it. If one or the other is missing then it's DOA.

If that's the case, then let the series rest. If nothing was planned ahead for Berserk and no contingency was in place to do something to carry it on then the fact is, the story died with him. It's incomplete and no one can just soothsay or seance a conclusion. It'd just be fanfiction.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
It's easy to forget that Miura had a whole team, considering he did so much on his own. They knew the man better than anyone else probably, so I'd be hard pressed to say that something they produced would be on the same level as any old fan fiction. It's not like a completely new staff would take on a continuation.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
It's easy to forget that Miura had a whole team, considering he did so much on his own. They knew the man better than anyone else probably, so I'd be hard pressed to say that something they produced would be on the same level as any old fan fiction. It's not like a completely new staff would take on a continuation.

True, but unless there's something there to document or chart where to take all these characters, storylines, themes and the setting, all they're doing is shooting in the dark. They could have known Miura intimately but that doesn't give them a direct line to how he would have taken the story. There's no way of predicting his imagination, so regardless of them being staff, if they don't have anything concrete, it's just interpretative fan fiction from his closest colleagues.

I mean, anything that would be done post-Berserk would be a derivative work just by definition. However, for it to have a tether to the narrative written by Miura and be a conclusion to that story, it has to be based on something and adaptive, not just simply imaginative to fill in a "hole" or "want" for an ending. If that's all there is, then what's the point? It won't be anything adjacent to Miura's creation. Just someone else filling in with their own interpretation and belief of what they think it'd be. I think a work that would take up the mantle of concluding the Berserk story would need to be more than that. If nothing like that exists, then just let it be.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
I feel like if you were to approach Berserk as a larger than life legendary epic story, then that would be a bad place to start. We view Berserk as this incredible thing, yes, but Miura himself was a very humble guy. Between every masterstroke of visual storytelling there was crude humor, star wars references, and plenty of other goofy things. I don't think he saw his own wok the way most of us regard it, so having that mindset when approaching it would be flawed. Don't try to live up to that ideal, just make something out of it that's worthwhile in its own right. The person and people who would finish Berserk shouldn't just do it so Berserk has an ending, they should do it because they have a story worth telling. That's my opinion. Living up to Mirua's long shadow and trying to do "what he would have done" is a bad approach.

I spent a while doing a bit of a deep dive into the mess that was the Archie Sonic comic, and how a bunch of weirdos had created so many characters and storylines, that Archie fired them all and hired someone else to clean up the mess. Ian Flynn took all those disparaging ideas and made something with them that people actually enjoyed. Obviously Berserk is leagues above a shitty video game adaptation comic, and I would never call it a mess, but I think the philosophy would be the same. Take the threads Berserk left, and make something out of it.

Miura was quite a humble dude, but the undertaking of what he wrote about in Berserk wasn't so much just a dark fantasy narrative. The Star Wars references and goofy humor are the exact same type of thing that you see flavoured all throughout Osamu Tezuka's work in Phoenix as well.

In the interview with him in 2012, he mentions that while the first 5 volumes of Berserk were written based off of what he wrote in college, but also that in working alone, being removed from human contact, and being exposed to information only through the news and other sources gives you a really particular perspective of your own view of the issues in world – and that largely became the driving perspective that built Berserk's story based on that removed objective look at how he personally understood the larger scope of what's happening in the world.

The reason that I mention Osamu Tezuka's work is that the last Volume of Phoenix is a story about the Church of Light and the people from the world below struggling to oppose it who are being forced to wear Wolf helmets that indoctrinate them into accepting that world. That is EXACTLY what Miura establishes with Griffith as the Hawk of Light and with Guts' berserker armor, and the types of narrative lens that he utilized when looking at the world as a whole while writing Berserk.

Yes, it's a dark fantasy manga with a deeply compelling story, but the underlying narrative arc and the way that it creates a commentary about the state and place of the world as a whole was EXCEEDINGLY intricate in how it integrated history, current events, and mythology into those narratives. Like... just based on some of the character names and minor details in the portrayal of certain events in Berserk, I can tell you that Miura probably had a better understanding of the history of the rise of modern Christianity than most people who aren't religious historians.

The thing that's so difficult to explain is that crafting that type of mythology and doing detailed world-building are infinitely different beasts. I've been doing D&D world-building at immense scales since I was like 9 years old, and I'm really good at it. I appreciate an absolutely immense amount of how well those things are executed in Berserk. However, the way that the story's mythology is built with VERY specific choices based upon just an absolutely immense amount of information so that certain themes tie in to a sort of elevated fantasy version of the real world in the way that Arthurian fiction, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, & Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix all do is REALLY difficult to overstate. Miura really wanted to craft a world that was as believable as the ones in Western fantasy, and it's why he puts in SO much effort to understanding how those were built in ways that pay off and get utilized as visuals in other works, like Bloodborne.

As an example – the real-world Vlad Tepes and the Vandal King Gaiseric were critically important in the roles and designs of Nosferatu Zodd and the Skull Knight. The parallels to their role in the story, their perspectives towards the events, all of the elements that is revealed about each of their histories, and how those mesh to the themes of the primary narrative all thoughout the story. That's not even touching on all of the things from Celtic & Norse mythology that have been exceedingly overtly set up in the most recent parts of where the story currently sits.

That's why I bring it up as one of the biggest components that makes it difficult to know whether or not his assistants have the scope of knowledge to be able to create more of Berserk even if narrative notes and the artistic ability to carry it on from where it currently sits. If you really lean in to it, the influences that make up every single facet of the story are the sum amount of the influences that shaped Miura himself, and there are SO many of them that are more than just fancy window-trimmings for an exceedingly gorgeous work of art.



X :neo:
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
That's also why I specifically say it'd be an adaptive derivative work.

Because there's simply no way a continuation of BERSERK could happen. It wouldn't be the same. At best a wrap up and a concluding story meant to flesh out the plot left behind could be done to properly wrap up the story. But there's just no way a long term continuation of the series could ever be done and in line with the work like it is. Because it wouldn't really be Miura.

And that's why it would necessitate something to essentially pilot the narrative that's still midair back down for landing, otherwise it's just going to be lost.

This situation happened with Highschool of the Dead when the mangaka, Daisuke Sato, who was sick and put the manga on hiatus, died of a heart attack suddenly. He had associates and staff and they knew a little of what he wanted to do, but there was simply no conclusion written. They hadn't planned that far ahead. So what happened?

It just died. The manga couldn't be continued so it was just left as is. That might just happen if nothing was solidified or planned out at all.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Miura was quite a humble dude, but the undertaking of what he wrote about in Berserk wasn't so much just a dark fantasy narrative. The Star Wars references and goofy humor are the exact same type of thing that you see flavoured all throughout Osamu Tezuka's work in Phoenix as well.
You're kind of looking past what I was saying. I know Berserk was more than a fantasy manga, but I was trying to illustrate that Miura himself probably didn't think of his work as the grandiose thing we do, and I feel like approaching a continuation as such would miss what Berserk really was. it's not just an epic story, it's also a very grounded, introspective thing tht isn't afraid to have fun with itself. The last chapter of Berserk ever published prominently features Jar Jar Binks. Berserk is as much an action senien as it is a shojo manga and a crude comedy manga, that's what I'm saying. The fact it was able to so smoothly shift and evolve is what made it great; Berserk never stayed in one place too long, and it never repeated itself. There weren't villains of the week like in Dragon Ball (comparison stolen from the SK.net thread,) that's what makes it a very difficult thing to follow up on without being Miura himself.

That's why I bring it up as one of the biggest components that makes it difficult to know whether or not his assistants have the scope of knowledge to be able to create more of Berserk even if narrative notes and the artistic ability to carry it on from where it currently sits. If you really lean in to it, the influences that make up every single facet of the story are the sum amount of the influences that shaped Miura himself, and there are SO many of them that are more than just fancy window-trimmings for an exceedingly gorgeous work of art.

The question is if Miura kept notes about these things, or if it all lived in his head. Other Mangaka like Oda keep extensive notes and plans, but others still just make it all up on the fly. From what I understand of Berserk's production, Miura was more of the latter sort of writer. He made a belivable world, but Midland didn't exist until it had to in the Golden Age arc, and the Holy See and Iron Chain Knights didn't exist until the conviction arc (you won't find their religious symbols anywhere in the GA arc, though the anime adaptations retroactively add them.) Miura does set things up in advance too, however, such as the Kushans, Skull Knight's whole past is alluded to in volume 10 and not paid of until the chapter before the current one. So it's kind of 50/50 on what actually exists past the resent moment. I'm not just talking about future plans either, I mean notes about the setting, various groups, design details, all those little world building things.

I guess I just see potential here, in a stupid way. You say Berserk is influenced by real life events, and you're right. The conviction arc was based on a refugee crisis if I remember right, for instance. Well... Miura's death is a real life event. I feel like there's potential in a continuation to explore what it even means to be a continuation in the wake of the author's passing. A work to celebrate and mourn for the man who gave it life.

I guess it's a difference in philosophy. You think that if it isn't Miura's Berserk, then it's not worth it. I think it can be something. Not Miura's incredible work, but it can be something that has merit in its own right. I know for Mako at least that that's tantamount to fan fiction, that it doesn't matter, especially if there wasn't a plan in place already, but I'm not so sure that matters. It'd be a work birthed from the grief and determination of a team without its leader, and I still think that's something worth seeing personally, if they want to do it. It doesn't have to be Miura, the fact that it isn't would be the point, in a way. That's why I proposed a change in title and a reset in volume number, it wouldn't be Miura's Berserk, it'd be Studio Gaga's Berserk.

And, I mean, if you don't think that's worth seeing, that's fine. Nobody can replace Miura, and the fact it wouldn't be his ending would make the whole thing hollow for a lot of people. I could hardly blame the team themselves for not wanting to poke the bear, those are enormous shoes to fill. I just find it very interesting that they haven't flay-out said that it won't happen yet, since that's what's happened to other series.

tl;dr I think there's potentially merit in a work made specifically because Miura died, not because it will provide the ending he would have written, but because it would explore what even being a continuation of such a massive work would mean.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
I think most fans of Berserk, want a Berserk from Miura. Like, that's just how it is. They're not interested in some derivative work adjacent but simply spawned from someone else because it has to continue through some corporate or monetary mandate. That's not going to fly or please an audience looking for what would fill the role left behind by the series. That's not going to be a wholly creative work, and that's why when a manga series author dies with no roadmap to its completion, most publishers and staff respect the autonomy of that work and let it die with the author.

If others want to create their own work inspired by Berserk, let them. But it isn't going to be the same, and it isn't going to conclude or be connected to the story that was left unfinished by Miura. Like, you can't just hitch your idea or interpretation of that story to his late work, which is his and then somehow begin steering it with your own interpretation. That's just not how it (ethically, reasonably, fairly) works, and I'm pretty certain even those really wanting a conclusion or fix of Berserk would not be satisfied with them doing that.

It'd be like Dragon Ball GT except 100x worst since the actual author derived work has no way of continuing, being complete and whatever derivative works that comes next will simply just be rolling in the greatness of what came before, for better or worst. That's just not going to be acceptable as some sort of continuation however you dress it up. It either is tethered to his work and an extension of his creative efforts, or it isn't. And if it isn't, then it deserves to live and die with its creator.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
You're kind of looking past what I was saying. I know Berserk was more than a fantasy manga, but I was trying to illustrate that Miura himself probably didn't think of his work as the grandiose thing we do, and I feel like approaching a continuation as such would miss what Berserk really was. it's not just an epic story, it's also a very grounded, introspective thing tht isn't afraid to have fun with itself. The last chapter of Berserk ever published prominently features Jar Jar Binks. Berserk is as much an action senien as it is a shojo manga and a crude comedy manga, that's what I'm saying. The fact it was able to so smoothly shift and evolve is what made it great; Berserk never stayed in one place too long, and it never repeated itself. There weren't villains of the week like in Dragon Ball (comparison stolen from the SK.net thread,) that's what makes it a very difficult thing to follow up on without being Miura himself.

This is all the exact reason that I brought up Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix, because Tezuka was literally the godfather of manga. Manga comics were considered a completely frivolous artform when he ditched medical school to start writing them. The genre of manga comics and the way that they integrate mythology, historical references, and lighthearted non-sequitur humor is ALL stuff that he established and utilized when defining what manga became. It's not something that in any way indicates that BERSERK is any less serious because it includes those things, they're literally just a natural part of the art form at its core roots. That's why BERSERK ISN'T something where looking at its genre is helpful in understanding what makes it truly great.

The other reason that I brought this up is because Phoenix is another manga that was considered its author's life's work – and it was left unfinished because he died before he was able to complete it – and it was left unfinished.

I guess it's a difference in philosophy. You think that if it isn't Miura's Berserk, then it's not worth it. I think it can be something. Not Miura's incredible work, but it can be something that has merit in its own right. I know for Mako at least that that's tantamount to fan fiction, that it doesn't matter, especially if there wasn't a plan in place already, but I'm not so sure that matters. It'd be a work birthed from the grief and determination of a team without its leader, and I still think that's something worth seeing personally, if they want to do it. It doesn't have to be Miura, the fact that it isn't would be the point, in a way. That's why I proposed a change in title and a reset in volume number, it wouldn't be Miura's Berserk, it'd be Studio Gaga's Berserk.

And, I mean, if you don't think that's worth seeing, that's fine. Nobody can replace Miura, and the fact it wouldn't be his ending would make the whole thing hollow for a lot of people. I could hardly blame the team themselves for not wanting to poke the bear, those are enormous shoes to fill. I just find it very interesting that they haven't flay-out said that it won't happen yet, since that's what's happened to other series.

tl;dr I think there's potentially merit in a work made specifically because Miura died, not because it will provide the ending he would have written, but because it would explore what even being a continuation of such a massive work would mean.

The point we're making is that for a work like this, the author IS the story in so many ways. What is the point of "continuing" the story unless you know that you can preserve those things? That's why Mako makes the comparisons to fan fiction – because fan fiction is overly focused on the narrative and characters within the context of the story itself, and not about the overall assembly of elements that makes up those things in a particular way for a varying set of purposes.


As a point, let me get into some Berserk-centric things about the narrative construction.

Griffith & Casca are explicitly designed in ways that are meant to mirror Guts' relationship to his own adopted father & mother, because the sore of the psychological narrative about Guts is the primal panic and detachment that he experiences in not knowing how to identify a connection and value it because of the events and traumas that he experienced as a child.

Griffith's suffering in the tower of rebirth is caused because of the grief he is unable to cope with upon Guts' departure because Guts naïvely believes that he was just another stone in Griffith's path and everyone will be just fine without him. Guts reverses on his decision and comes running back to save him from the tower of Rebirth after it's already too late for Griffith to realize his dream. That means that not only did he ruin Griffith's dream, but he's also destroying the path he chose to abandon them and have his own way, so he's destroying his OWN dream as well to continually keep clutching at the broken pieces of what he left behind. When Casca tells Guts he has to keep his commitment to leaving and she can't come with him, Griffith attempts to leave and kill himself to let them be free and then Griffith has a vision of a normal life with Casca where they have kids and live in a tiny house together, and Guts is still out in the world somewhere. That reality never comes to pass because Guts ONCE AGAIN runs back to Griffith's rescue, and Griffith is attempting to scream at Guts to stay away but has no tongue to speak and stop him.

Judeau explicitly states that he's not sure if Griffith is an antagonist or not, and every single member of the Hawks joined willingly EXCEPT Guts. Griffith sacrificing the Band of the Hawk in the Eclipse is exactly in line with the types of necessary sacrifices where people HAVE to die to realize a dream like the one Griffith is after, and he's always attempted to find the path that involves the least amount of death – but unifying an entire country is bathed in blood & warfare. Everyone there except Guts signed up willingly ready to sacrifice their own lives for that cause, and that's exactly what they did to bring their leader back and realize that dream – with the exception of Casca and Guts, who survive and who Griffith explicitly does not kill despite having all of the possible power necessary to do so. (Also, as an interesting point – the entire Eclipse scene where Femto emerges is a direct mirror to ALIEN when the Xenomorph kills Parker & Lambert, and is the only time in the film where the creature actually intentionally kills members of the crew rather than capture and regress them into eggs to perpetuate itself. Their suffering is directly meant to be a tool to psychologically manipulate Ripley into compliance, because he's meant to represent the embodiment of the absolute darkness and opposite of humanity as one of the God Hand).

However, that power exists because of that sacrifice that the others made. It's the reason why Griffith actively ensures that those around him don't retaliate against Rickert when he slaps Griffith in the face and leaves. He ALWAYS gave his men the choice to follow him or not – with the singular exception of Guts. He doesn't bear them any ill will, malice, or lingering thought, because that's not what they died for. He is instead, focused solely on attaining and creating the kingdom that he always dreamed of, because NOT doing that would be to make all of the deaths and sacrifices it took to achieve that utterly meaningless. It would make the absolute horrors that he experienced and the person he had to turn himself into utterly selfish and pointless. This is connected to why Casca is absolutely horrified whenever she's in Guts' presence, but when she is in Griffith's presence – she is completely calm and serene. That's amplified by when Griffith returns to the physical world after the Incarnation, he is now ALSO interconnected to Guts & Casca as the form through which their child is allowed to exist. This is why he instinctively protects Casca, even though he's able to stand among the graves of the Hawks without feeling any emotion about them any more, because he's come to terms with what happened as being the reality that he lives in now. It's why Guts is still insane with rage and pain, and when questioning Griffith, he simply replies that nothing has changed and that Guts more than anyone should understand the type of person he is, because everything Guts is doing is in an attempt to be Griffith's equal, and he's driven by the same underlying hatred for his father Gambino and protective instinct of his mother Shisu.

This is because the issue that it presents NOW (which is where the manga was at when Miura passed away) is that Guts is now faced with the fact that if he's willing to commit to his path for singular vengeance against Griffith – he's going to have to murder his & Casca's own son to achieve that. He has to be able to recognize that he's becoming a reflection of all of the types of pain and abuses that he went through by clinging to those things, while also refusing to ever accept the world as it is, but only remain singularly committed to the idea of the world as it COULD be... – which is literally the exact power that Griffith obtained to accomplish his goals ONLY as a direct result of Guts' choices. Which means that Guts would also be rendering all of the deaths of the Hawks meaningless if he killed Griffith and destroyed his kingdom, but he views it as the total opposite where he's the only one who's fighting in memory of the absolute horror that they went through and the destruction that was caused in their lives – which is once again, something that he actively committed to giving up when he abandoned them all to seek his own dream.

That's why Guts is paired with the Skull Knight and Griffith is paired with Nosferatu Zodd, as they're echoes of the individual that they no longer have in their lives. Skull Knight keeps pointing Guts towards a goal because Guts still doesn't know how to find the thing he really wants, while Griffith utilizes Zodd as a tool of destruction but also offers the Apostles a place where they can experience a sense of belonging that they lack everywhere else in the world. So, the issues in bringing up those conflicts are inextricably intertwined into Miura's view on the problems of the world and how they came about and what to do about them. It's more than just the narrative pieces of the story, but it's an exceptionally intricate look at countless historical events and how those all interconnected to those themes and ideas, and how he made use of those by creating a story where it's supposed to be a commentary about the actual world from his perfective of his own perspective on the issues of the world.

The point here is that BERSERK is an exceptionally complex examination about life and how the perspective you take in the narrative from will inform your emotional attachment and understanding of the events in the story – but there's nothing that points to the protagonist being on the path of justice and righteousness – which is also the core message that's being portrayed constantly throughout Phoenix. If you want an understanding of how deeply complex those elements are in terms of religious mythological narratives, CLAMP's debut manga RG Veda is a retelling of themes from Hinduism with the Deva-Asura War that utilizes a shitton of the same visual iconography (both of which are also foundational in the designs that Nomura draws on when making the characters in FF7, which is why I'm exceptionally tl;dr about it all).

When it comes just JUST how big of a deal BERSERK is – There's a reason that in the first episode of Evangelion in the very first battle against Sachiel, Unit-01 gets stabbed in its right eye and then gets its left arm cut off before going "Berserk" and Anno continually builds off of that visual iconography and mirroring it, which is why in End of Evangelion, Asuka gets stabbed in the left eye and her right forearm gets split in half, but her Eva doesn't go berserk, and instead just gets ripped apart by the Mass Production Evas. He even emphasizes this more in Rebuild where in Shinji's second battle, there's a subtle change to the scene where rather than both of Shinji's eyes being hidden by his hair like in the original, only his left eye is visible in Rebuild in the moment before Shinji once again instantly attacks with feral instinct rather than following the training that he was given. It's impossible to overstate how important just... and indescribable number of meticulously intricate details in BERSERK are that most people don't give a second thought to (which again, I've been uncovering while researching for a year in obscene amounts of detail because a countless number of them are a part of the lifeblood of Final Fantasy VII).

Regardless of how humble Miura was about his work, the impact it had across the industry of anime, manga, & games is literally impossible to express, and it's INSANE to think about what carrying that weight looks like for those who are left to potentially be able to do so. That's why it's SUCH a complex question when you're talking about continuing BERSERK and the complicated questions around what that actually means, because the story is ALL of those things, and it is consistent about that through line in the narrative at all times, because it's intrinsically interconnected to how the psychological mechanisms of the story are established and the lessons about the inheritance of those struggles.

If you're going to change the title and make SOMETHING, the question is – is that something still BERSERK or is it something else entirely? There are a shitton of different Evangelion stories, but are they ACTUALLY continuing the story or are they just writing fan fiction? There's a huge difference between the two, and when you're considering something that is a 30-year-long life work and a manga that is considered a unique masterpiece of art, and for an author who is no longer alive and that work represents his legacy – that is a choice that cannot be made lightly.




X :neo:
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I'm exceptionally tl;dr about it all
I have a hard time believing you're tl;dr about anything lol.

Let me put it bluntly. I don't care if it's still "Berserk" as written by Kentaro Miura. I don't care if it follows his writing. All I'm saying is that I think a Berserk ending written by Miura's assistants to the best of their ability, trying to honor their mentor while doing their own thing with the work would be interesting and worth looking at. The reason I said it should be a seperate hing, a spin-off essentially, was because I wanted people who wouldn't want Miura's work to be tainted to be able to take it or leave it. Of course people might not be able to make the mental separation regardless, but that's their problem. It's something I think would be neat. That is all.

Berserk is ever-evolving. It could be interesting to see it evolve past its own author.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Let me put it bluntly. I don't care if it's still "Berserk" as written by Kentaro Miura. I don't care if it follows his writing. All I'm saying is that I think a Berserk ending written by Miura's assistants to the best of their ability, trying to honor their mentor while doing their own thing with the work would be interesting and worth looking at.

What I'm telling you is that the only people who are left behind to potentially take up that task DO care about that – because that's what honoring their mentor and his work in BERSERK means.



X :neo:
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Which is why the matter is under careful consideration. The fact it hasn't been dismissed outright after three months is pretty telling that continuing it is at least on the table. I'm not saying they should totally disregard Miura, I'm saying that if they decide to go ahead and continue it anyway, I'm still interested in seeing what they might do even if it's not strictly what Miura would have done.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
I think they're probably trying to research, interpret, and piece together whatever notes, designs, and preliminary sketches Miura left behind while discussing if there's any path forward.

It's not... unheard of to do continuations when authors die, but they're usually given careful consideration, particularly if the source material is scarce. I will say this though, it's extremely rare for it to happen with Japanese manga. If a manga-ka dies and they don't leave enough material to clearly and cohesively plan out a continuation, they simply move on.

It's why these type of incidents are planned out ahead of time. Toriyama did this with Dragonball by giving Toyotarou his blessing and notes for certain things so he can cohesively and confidently proceed with the manga without entire direct supervision. It's a passing of the reigns so that some sort of integrity in the storyline and direction is maintained.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Exactly what Mako said in regards to manga-ka VERY rarely having anyone pick up their work posthumously unless it was explicitly set up in advance. I think that the other part to consider about what they're deciding is that it's VERY likely that Miura had SOME content that was completed for the next episode (especially given what it was covering), so it might just be deciding whether to release JUST that small bit of work, given that it was unfinished still.

Depending on what's there, there might be a page or two that make it an even MORE difficult cliffhanger to put out there, especially if they don't want to attempt to complete any of the partial work that's there. Those things alone are decisions that are likely monumental undertakings all on their own, let alone the idea of moving past that.




X :neo:




X :neo:
 
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