#Guys Miura is the only one who has no arc going on and he’s like my favorite somehow

[crowsandturtlesandbatsohmy]

Your Haikyuu ocs are so awesome and I want to hear EVERYTHING about them, but I can’t think of questions…..

How did their first meeting with each other go?

+ just any lil facts abt them you have?

Okay so I haven’t written this part but I really want to. So maybe I’ll do that and post it. BUT! For now I’ll tell you what I think it went like :)

So, they would’ve met at the first day of school. They’re all in different classes, so they didn’t meet until club time.

Kōsuke, being Kōsuke, preferred hanging back and watching the other first years and getting a general idea of who they are, how they play, etc.

Tani didn’t want any part of meeting the other first years because he didn’t want to be at Karasuno in the first place and was holding out hope for things to fix themselves back home so he could transfer to Nekoma. But he also didn’t want to get out of practice in volleyball.

Igarashi was an excited little ray of sunshine and introduced himself to everyone. He pretty quickly latched himself onto Hinata and Kageyama though.

And then there’s Miura. Thank goodness for Miura. Miura also introduced himself to everyone, but he was determined to make best friends out of the other first years. So he was the one to pull them all aside after practice and actually get everyone talking.

From there they gradually started practicing together and meeting up outside of class time (AKA, Miura hunted down all three of them on three separate days over the week, and then Igarashi realized that was a thing he could do and he started doing it as well. Kōsuke and Tani still want to be left alone XD)

They eventually fall into their little duos, most commonly being Miura and Tani, and Kōsuke and Igarashi. They still all walk together after practice and Miura gets them all together to hang out outside of practice, but they’ve also all got someone they tend to default to.

Miura and Tani naturally paired off in my head when I made them, and it’s all Miura’s fault. He looked at Tani, went “yep. Best friend material” and didn’t take no for an answer, so now they bicker and banter 90% of the time because Miura has adopted Tani as his newest sibling.

Kōsuke and Igarashi were a little less natural, but they’re good friends. Igarashi chatters away and Kōsuke listens, or sometimes offers his opinion if Igarashi asks for it. He also keeps Igarashi on track XD

And this is all just like their initial dynamics. Once they’ve had a year together is when their dynamics really start getting fun!

Little Tidbits:

Igarashi’s name in Hinata’s phone is “Baby Setter”

Miura would 100% be an emojis type of guy

Kōsuke is determined to learn how to receive Hinata and Kageyama’s quick. This has resulted in him staring at Hinata a couple times and Hinata later texting Noya and wondering if Kōsuke is mad at him. (The answer is always no. Kōsuke is just being Kōsuke and trying to figure out a tell)

Tani is still in touch with his cousin at Nekoma, but the frequency dies off as Tani gets more accustomed to being part of Karasuno.

In my head I’ve paired all my first years up with their respective second/third years. Obviously Kōsuke has Nishinoya, and as a result he also has Tanak. Igarashi has Kageyama and Hinata. I tend to slot Tani in with Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, but if I’m being honest he doesn’t really hang out with much of anyone other than Miura, or Igarashi and Kōsuke. I think if I were to put him with some of the older players though he’d fit right in with them :) And then Miura hangs with Narita and Kinoshita, sometimes plus Ennoshita.

Igarashi’s canonical nicknames typically refer to the fact that he’s an absolute airhead (/affectionate), but I always call him “Igs” in my brain.

Thank you so much for asking Moo :)

[alovelyburn]

Rambles about The Golden Age Arc - Part 8

It’s interesting to go back to a fandom that used to be much more active (due to the timing re: OVAs or animes or whatever). The quiet is a little strange but also peaceful because Berserk fans used to be so combative. Maybe they still are in some circles but eh.

Anyway!

Rambles about The Golden Age Arc - Part 8

Honestly, there’s not TOO much to add about Doldrey since it’s essentially a big fight scene (a great one, don’t get me wrong, but still mostly action), so I’m just going to go over a few thoughts real quick (for me) and then scoot along to the celebrations and such.

1. Baww Laban and Owen. They kind of represent the newer aristocracy that isn’t so stuffy and locked into their class assumptions, I think... thus they have greater faith in and acceptance of Griffith’s abilities. That said...

The nature of Griffith’s plan at Doldrey was pretty fascinating to me because it kind of hinges on his manipulation of Gennon’s fixation on him. Because essentially his presence, especially on the frontlines, creates discord between Gennon and Boscogn that ultimately leads Gennon, who is a crappy military leader, to wrest command away from Boscogn, who is obviously far more competent. Without that discord, it’s questionable whether they could have pulled the win off, but that’s interesting to me because Griffith spent one night with the guy like 6 or 7 years ago and yet presumably he understands his impact on people well enough to know Gennon would want to capture him alive. 

Strange? Maybe but he does say later that he’s always been aware that no one can disregard him - they can only love or hate him, but never dismiss him. Which is true, and he definitely knows how to use that to his advantage.

The situation also exposes Guts’ growing misunderstanding of Griffith’s personality, which is just tragic. In his defense, Griffith actually is always calm and composed - even in the face of Gennon, the cause of his having something of a mental breakdown a few years back, he barely bats an eye. And while Guts really should know better (at least regarding Griffith’s reaction to him), I do think that the Promrose speech ended up putting him on a pedestal in Guts’ mind... like it kind of elevated him beyond where he already was by virtue of being the boss and an insane genius. And of course the fact that he is so composed despite Gennon and then later despite having to go to court war with royalty for example, just ends up reconfirming in Guts’ head that Griffith is unflappable. Which he usually is, at least on the surface, but of course...

When do you ever see Griffith break into a nervous/panic-induced sweat? Only when Guts is endangered. I mean. Come on.

In fact, he was already starting to get nervous even before Gut’s sword broke. Anyway, other than that I have two main observations about Doldrey:

The whole situation with Casca’s battle with Adon/taking the fortress proper is kind of...... I mean, look, I appreciate that she gets her moment, that she finally gets to kill Adon, and that she’s the one who takes over the fortress proper but the way it’s handled does kind of reinforce my complaint about the way the series treats her once she starts drifting into being Guts’ love interest. Because this is her big moment, right? And it’s treated like half a joke. And on top of that, she gets poisoned so that Guts has to hold her up after the fight. Ehhhh. It’s one of the things I think the OVA actually improved, along with the Charlotte sex scene. 

Also, about this scene...

Look, I’m often the first to say that Berserk tends to eschew good vs evil values - Miura also said that when talking about Griffith’s morality post-Eclipse. That said, Gennon is one of a scarce few characters that I really just thing has no redeeming qualities - Donovan being another one of those. The reason I’m bringing this up is because back when I was doing Berserk fandom in like 2013ish, I distinctly remember running into a comment from someone describing the ways in which Griffith is just an evil monster, and one of the examples they used was that Griffith killed Gennon coldly, even though Gennon loved him so much.

And look, all I have to say is... if you’ve come to the point in judging a character that you think he’s evil because he killed the rapist pedophile who wanted to capture him for sex - if you’re willing to call that love as part of your drive to vilify a character, maybe take a look at your biases and get yourself a reality check. Gennon is a pedophile who keeps children as sex slaves. Killing him is not a moral problem for me.

Genuinely, I personally find Griffith very sympathetic, but I don’t fault people who have a hard time with him or can’t get past some of the things he does, or just don’t want to. Whatever whatever. But Gennon, really? Yikes.

Moving on!

2. i think this moment right here is where Casca starts developing feelings for Guts - or perhaps when she becomes aware of them to some degree. Thus that beam of light hitting her head and the blushy look away. And it’s not too hate to understand why, really - Griffith is always out of reach, right? She’s lucky if she gets a “welcome back” from him. And when she does, she’s so emotionally overwhelmed by it she can barely respond. It’s... a very different dynamic than they used to have, if you think about it - back when Guts arrived, she was the one sitting closest to where he was lying in the grass. Now she has to watch him from afar, so of course that hurts. She’s drifting farther and farther from the person she most wanted to be near... and most importantly, he barely sees her. Meanwhile, Guts is always showing her attention and compassion, looking to her needs, encouraging her, seeking her out. 

Also, it does seem like Casca has an attraction to those epic types.

I mean, heyo, who wouldn’t?

It’s funny, really - through all this, you can kind of tell that Guts feels increasingly distanced from Griffith as well - he’s off on the sidelines with Casca after all, looking at him from afar, wanting to be near him but unable to imagine it. Even though he has no difficulty pushing Casca to bridge that gap, he can’t do it himself presumably because he’s now moved on to thinking that Griffith is on a level above him and he can’t reach that place without finding his own dream, thanks for that Griffith. 

But when I’m reading about Guts having these moments... I can’t help but think about how...Griffith has no idea any of this is happening right? Like, to Griffith, Guts is still his best friend. He doesn’t feel this rift between them that Guts has taken as a fact... which leaves him wholly unprepared for what Guts chooses to do in order to cross that... illusionary schism.

It’s another of those things people do for love, right? I’m bringing up the Queen and Julius because this is kind of a theme in Berserk, especially during the Golden Age. There are all these people who don’t understand their own feelings, and as a result of that they waste the time they have with the one they love, or they fumble those relationships entirely while navigating them under the wrong impression... like the queen realizing that she loved Julius only after he’s been killed, Griffith only coming to understand his feelings for Guts fully when he’s being tortured in a dungeon, or Guts yearning to be closer to Griffith only to find out far too late that the chasm he perceived between them was never there to begin with.

...

IT’S 3AM IM GOING TO BED the last few of these have been shorter than I’d like (in terms of how many chapters are covered more than in words written about whatever), so I’m going to make a concerted effort to get through the timeskip tomorrow BUT WE’LL SEE.

[sarahjtv]

BNHA Chapter 318 Quick Spoiler Analysis: Lost and Found

Ok, I think I need a few days to process everything that’s happened during this chapter and I might make a longer analysis for this chapter later, but holy shit when I tell you I ascended, I ASCENDED!  That page of Deku thinking about his classmates with a genuinely big smile on Shoto’s face and the last pages of Bakugo straight-up watered my crops, cleared my skin, expended my lifespan, and sent my soul into the great unknown for a bit.  I screamed happy sounds last night.  With that in mind, some very quick thoughts today:

Hooray for overseas Pro Heroes coming over to help Japan!  This means that Deku and Co. will have more allies on their side and Deku doesn’t have to take care of everything.  I hope and pray he listens to Endeavor and get some freaking sleep.

I’ve heard people mention that Endeavor’s been treating Deku like an adopted son lately and I can see it.  It’s almost like he’s trying to become the good father he wasn’t with his own children.  Like he’s making it up with Deku this time as the son figure.  I kinda like it actually.  It’s good character growth for Endeavor.

The panel of the OFA Holders trying to get Deku to rest is a parallel to the chapter where we go into Shigaraki’s psyche and we see his family trying to grab him and stop him too.  Of course, both Deku and Shigaraki ignore the spirits and just move on with Shigaraki moving towards AFO and Deku moving onto the next villain to beat.  I really like it when Horikoshi parallels these two characters and their symbolism.  I actually just like it in general when it’s done right.

It’s clear that the OFA Holders feel like that maybe they pushed Deku too far with their words and motivations.  But, this is ultimately what Deku wants.  For better or worse, he chose the path of a hero and he’s bent on getting to the finish line.  Though it’s interesting that the 2nd Holder is the only one who thinks that Deku pushing himself so hard is the right thing to do.  I don’t think the 2nd Holder is being malicious in saying this.  I think there’s something to his character and backstory that molded his reasonings.  I mean, Deku really is the only one who can do this, but he does need help.  If Deku can get some help then he can finally rest and fight properly instead of exhausting himself to death.

God, it’s upsetting to see Deku actually being feared by people despite saving them.  Just the way Deku looks alone is scary enough.  The kid doesn’t remotely look like a hero anymore.  He’s not the hero who’s presence can put everyone at ease right now.  Deku’s strayed so far away from his original origins.  The main thing staying there is his want to save people.

And as all these burdens are on his shoulders, the most important thought in his head are his classmate’s smiles.  Everyone is smiling from Ochaco to Shoto who’s pure, rare smile will remain in my head rent free for the rest of eternity 💙.  Deku wants a world where there’s peace and smiles even if he has to suffer for that.  Throughout everything, he’s never forgotten about his friends and their happiness.  I really do love this kid, guys.

As Deku’s facing this other assassin, Dictator (who’s Quirk is similar to Shinso’s except the people he’s controlling are conscious), Deku looks so, so tired.  He’s thinking of ways to save all these controlled civilians while being attacked by them, but he’s just standing there exhaustingly.  There’s a small panel of his eye and it looks so tired.  I know I keep saying that, but he is.  There’s a small flicker of light in his eye too.  I looks to me like it’s going to go out at any moment really.  Deku needs to get a proper meal and sleep before he collapses in on himself.

AND NOW WE GET TO KATSUKI BAKUGO!!!  HOLY SHIT WE HAVEN’T SEEN THIS DUDE IN SINCE LATE LAST YEAR AND HE’S BACK AND HE’S SO BEAUTIFUL 😭💥🧡  The internet’s still going nuts about him I can tell.  He blasts Dictator with an AP Shot and Deku sees him with some life back in his eyes.  Bakugo then pulls out his phone and tells someone “Guys, I found him”!  Which means that Bakugo wasn’t the only one searching for Deku!!!  Please tell me who else joined him, Horikoshi!  I’m betting on Shoto, Ochaco, and maybe Iida, Momo, and Kirishima since they helped Deku rescue Bakugo back in Kamino (which is where Bakugo actually found Deku ironically enough; right in Ground Zero where the All Might statue is).  

Also, the 2nd Holder mentioned before “But if there is someone who could make Midoriya Izuku whole at the moment, that would be…” and then we go right into the big Bakugo panel!  BKDK’s rise 🧡💚!!!  But seriously, this is amazing.  These two really do complete each other not just as rivals, but as friends.  And it’s great how this goes to show how much Bakugo’s grown from the beginning.  This kid who wanted absolutely nothing to do with Deku at the beginning became one of the people actively looking for him and even found Deku first.  Bakugo’s character development truly is one of the best in the series.  

And this would be a great time for Bakugo and Deku to finally have that talk they’ve been needing to have for a long, long time now.  I almost hope that the other kids don’t reunite with Deku next chapter because I really want that talk if they didn’t have it back at Central Hospital.  A glimpse of the other kids would be good and I’d love to see Shoto again, but I NEED THAT ANGSTY TALK!  I wonder if we’re going to have a roll reversal here too: Bakugo lends out a helping hand towards Deku and asks him to rest, but Deku ignores Bakugo’s hand and turns away and leaves again instead.  That would absolutely kill me.  Just as much as the All Might angst we got last week.  If that happens then the turns really will have tabled.  I will cry again for a week straight.  I would still thank Horikoshi for his masterful storytelling though.  I would also cry if Deku does take Bakugo’s hand though.  God, there are so many feels to these two characters it’s wonderful.  I need Chapter 319 like yesterday.

But unfortunately, we won’t get that for a while.  Horikoshi is taking a break next week and so is the anime on July 3rd I think.  So, we’re going to have a dry spell for a week straight my MHA friends.  I’m honestly ok with this though.  For me, the new OP and ED and Horikoshi sketch will tide me over with their bangers (I hope) and Horikoshi needs as many breaks as he can get.  He’s been drawing and writing pure 🔥 this arc and I want him to get some much deserved rest.  Especially after Berserk’s Kentaro Miura’s passing and JJK’s Gege Akutami taking his month long break.  Hey, Jump?  Please give your mangaka better schedules.  I hate seeing them so exhausted.  Anyway, enjoy your break, King 👑!     

Me reading Horikoshi’s last few arcs:          

[bthump]

If you were Miura's chief assistant and decided to end Berserk in a couple of chapters, how would you do it (ofc it'd be an open and abrupt ending, but still)?

hmm interesting question. this is tricky lol, all the endings I like to imagine require like, another arc of build up to work.

well, casca sees moonlight boy, remembers fetus, flashes back to eclipse bc that's all interconnected in her mind, behelit opens. i know that much lol.

OK I KNOW. Casca sacrifices moonbaby which is not a werebaby but is an astral projection by the fetus griff grew out of or whatever. Sacrificing it removes any fetus influence from Griff. OH that's why NGriff is here also, and it's a bit of a fakeout, like, it seems like he showed up bc fate required him to be sacrificed but then only the fetus part is sacrificed and it actually maybe makes him more undefeatable, oh no. also maybe he gets a black swordsman femto-esque villain moment where he gloats about this. Or if not him, Ubik does.

This would be better if Griff takes off and we got a whole nother arc in between but w/e, so basically Casca goes monster, Farnese is also there and like, power of friendship convinces her to chill and not get between Guts and Griff, bc I need them to just fight without distractions. idk. or maybe she does try to attack Griff too and Guts goes beast of darkness and injures her. whatever.

guess they're still in the vortex for this bc elfhelm being around would be too much to deal with. Femto goes back to Griff form to taunt Guts and they sword fight and the godhand just think it's funny I guess. void is like, 'really guys, do we have to do this' and slan's like 'shut up i'm trying to watch the show' and griff is basically toying with guts. Oooh also their commentary tells us that Griff is not all powerful, like 'yeah sure he's got the advantage, but after all he did return to that pitiful human form, and the black swordsman is full of surprises, don't count him out yet' that kinda thing.

from guts' beasty pov griff is a shining light in front of him.

uhhhh this can't go on too long bc you said only a few chapters lol. so like, it's not an epic battle, it's just guts trying and ngriff easily evading/countering him.

hmm Guts being all hidden away in the armour makes it harder to get a moment for NGriff to fuck up because of his feelings which obviously have not actually gone with the fetus :/ Well okay, how about Griffith ends up standing on the dragonslayer and they both have a whole ~moment~ where they stop and stare at each other. Kiiinda want Guts' consciousness to return here but it might be too much. Hm. Actually yeah, ok here's what happens: from Guts' pov we get a whole bit where he remembers human Griff and his consciousness returns, his helmet retracts, they fuckin make eye contact, Griff smiles, and then Guts sends them both over the edge of a platform.

Bc they're in the escher room from yk chapter 7 and also the swirl of hell souls is there below them. gotta mention that.

griff grabs the edge of the platform, guts grab his hand, they look at each other again, maybe guts is like, 'i'm not letting go this time,' if i want to be really heavy handed about it, close up of their hands - and griffith is holding on just as tightly to guts' hand. then griffith's fingers slip.

during their fight we also got a moment with casca and injured farnese, bc yeah I guess what I'm saying is Casca tried to attack and Guts fucked her up and now she's huddled in a corner with Farnese. And their moment is something like Casca, in mostly humanoid form, knocking Farnese aside with "a what are you doing, didn't you see what happened? what I became?" while F is trying to bandage a gaping wound and Farnese coming back and resuming with something like "Stop it, I'm staying right here at your side." They just need /something/ vaguely conclusive and hopeful, bc I'm not brainstorming an epilogue montage lol.

So yeah. idk maybe the final panel should be Casca and Farnese clinging to each other, while the godhand retreat, with Guts and Griff's swords lying on the ground.

so let's see that's like, 1 chapter for behelit to open, 1 chapter to make sacrifice, 1 chapter of everyone going holy shit and guts going beast of darkness and injuring casca, 2 chapters fighting, 1 chapter end. Rushed, like even just this should be like 10 chapters with an epilogue, but can't really help that.

That said, if you literally just meant a couple chapters as in two chapters, thennnnnnnnnn fuck it, moonbaby transforms into Danann who tells Guts she helped guide them all there and asks what he's going to do now, Guts looks back at Casca and Farnese and smiles sadly and asks for a lift off the island, alone this time, without even Puck. Danann gives him a magic thing that unlocks the fast travel system and mentions that Griffith can use it too, and in fact he's on the move right now (bc we gotta have some explanation for griff's disappearing act). Maybe with some implication that Griff knows he’s off to meet Guts for a final duel or whatever lol. (And the assumption is he can manifest clothes and armour. Or is it. Maybe that’s the secret hint they’re actually going to fuck when they meet up.) The last page is like, Guts walking into a portal or whatever, shot of his pouch ft behelit, shot of the brand, shot of him from behind with dragonslayer slung over his back, doublechecking he’s got a condom in his wallet.

lmao i spent all those paragraphs on the long ass first answer trying to squeeze in as much of the stuff I like as I could but honestly the 2nd one is way better when you don’t have any opportunity for build up and it has to be v truncated. Just Guts going off alone back on his revenge bender. i’m leaving my stream of consciousness answer as is anyway.

ty for asking! this was fun :3

[nightcoremoon]

I started reading a random berserk chapter to see if it would hold my interest. somewhere in the conviction arc.

so a topless lady is self flagellating, guts kidnaps her and ties her up and literally every single panel she’s in has her tits in full view, clearly meant to entice and serve the male gaze (plus her hands are tied behind her back, a common fetish). a loli fairy chats with him. then a bunch of monster demons show up and he fights them. a horse tries to… “mount” the girl. so guts has war flashbacks to another girl being what I can only assume is being… “mounted”. and kills a bunch of monsters faster. then the girl wants to fuck guts so another demon comes over and has her strip and masturbate (yes you can see it to the extent that japanese law will censor it). and then the girl tries to fuck guts and rubs her cooch on his big stupidly fuckhuge dark souls greatsword until she stops getting possessed. then she gets “rescued” from guts, and tells her rescuer to kill him so that nobody founds out she’s not actually a good christian girl after all because she’s kinky and horny as shit and she gets off on the whipping. then her rescuer says fuck no that guy’s strong and he’ll kill me, let’s just go. and guts walks off into the horizon.

I’m.

I’m just…

ok so I know that berserk is supposed to be super fucked up but I expected it to be fucked up in grimdark edgelord gory ways, like corpse party / blumhouse levels of juvenile horror that wants to be junji ito but actually ends up being higurashi but that’s not what I got. instead I got a pervasive almost hideo kojima esque misogynist power fantasy for shonen dudes who probably think cannibal corpse are the greatest musicians of all time. and I LIKE some of kojima’s work and cannibal corpse’s music and specific shonen manga. but…

yikes.

I genuinely hope that the context of the full story was important because if not then holy shit miura and his fanboys, what the hell?

and I know that berserk’s biggest fan in the world hidetaka miyazaki is not a misogynist cunt because every single female character in every single one of his games has huge agency and respect put into their design which isn’t sexual even when they’re Amazing Chest Ahead or LavaSpiderTits.

but… what I saw is not painting a pretty picture.

[nox-artemis]

Catharsis: One Week Later

Firstly I’m very happy that so many people liked my little tribute to Miura, and it seems – from my perspective at least – that everyone else seems to be faring much better than I, but we all grieve differently.

I don’t think the surrealness of what has happened is going to lift for me anytime soon, or at least not very quickly. Theoretically I’m a *little* bit better than I was last week, but I still have pauses where I think too much and too deeply and then I spiral downward. The best way I’ve been coping with the changes is through viewing this situation as just another hiatus: I still cling to thread of hope that something more will become of Berserk. If that is to be, it’ll be a slow and steady process, as usual, but more so than ever to maintain the story’s integrity, so something might come in the near future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something will come much later at a further point in time. If that is not to be, then our hiatus will be until some of us greet Miura on the other side of eternity – but I’d rather stick to the optimism of the former.

The amazing thing about Berserk is that its myth and character arc allowed me to create so many theories and ideas – of which I’ll continue to do since I have more precedent to shape those ideas into some form of reality through fanwork – and I’ve seen so many others do the same, through general discussion of fan theories to implementing their own creative side projects (fanfics, fan comics, etc.). From the amount of legit good and feasible ideas/theories I’ve seen fans produce over the years - all of which they did by themselves, during their own free time, and with all of the commitment and passion they have toward the series – is why I have some hope that Berserk can persist in the hands of creators that Miura trusted in life, creators who have ample access to his resources, ephemera, and personal memories. Again, wishful thinking, but still in the realm of possibility (we wouldn’t have The Silmarillion if it wasn’t for Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, after all).

The future is still blurry though, so until things become clearer, I will definitely be focusing on my own writing. I have many fanfics lined up that I aim to continue and complete, but there is something cathartic about creating a tale from scratch, if not admittedly using ingredients forged from a preexisting story I hold dear; it’s what I’ve been doing during my hiatus from Tumblr. Doing so has allowed me to wrestle with my own feelings and expectation of Berserk and its characters, but also allowed me to appreciate how much of his own emotional weight Miura put into the story and its characters (yes, I disagree with some aspects of Miura’s storytelling, but I’d imagine that he knew the emotional pay off would come in due time).

Could I make some of the same tough choices even to character that I love? I wouldn’t want to, but I’ll have to. Will I be able to create a masterpiece? Perhaps, but I don’t know. Of course, this isn’t the only story I’ve been playing with: I find myself writing more historical fiction/magical realism than high fantasy; one of those will be a more likely contender for Magnum opus, but I don’t want to focus on being famous or reaching Miura’s level, because no one ever will, because he’s in his own unique space in time, just as the rest of us will be in our own journeys.

I guess I’m just focused on healing and looking forward for now.

[recentanimenews]

ESSAY: Berserk's Journey of Acceptance Over 30 Years of Fandom

  My descent into anime fandom began in the '90s, and just as watching Neon Genesis Evangelion caused my first revelation that cartoons could be art, reading Berserk gave me the same realization about comics. The news of Kentaro Miura’s death, who passed on May 6, has been emotionally complicated for me, as it's the first time a celebrity's death has hit truly close to home. In addition to being the lynchpin for several important personal revelations, Berserk is one of the longest-lasting works I’ve followed and that I must suddenly bid farewell to after existing alongside it for two-thirds of my life.

  Berserk is a monolith not only for anime and manga, but also fantasy literature, video games, you name it. It might be one of the single most influential works of the ‘80s — on a level similar to Blade Runner — to a degree where it’s difficult to imagine what the world might look like without it, and the generations of creators the series inspired.

  Although not the first, Guts is the prototypical large sword anime boy: Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, Siegfried/Nightmare from Soulcalibur, and Black Clover's Asta are all links in the same chain, with other series like Dark Souls and Claymore taking clear inspiration from Berserk. But even deeper than that, the three-character dynamic between Guts, Griffith, and Casca, the monster designs, the grotesque violence, Miura’s image of hell — all of them can be spotted in countless pieces of media across the globe.

  Despite this, it just doesn’t seem like people talk about it very much. For over 20 years, Berserk has stood among the critical pantheon for both anime and manga, but it doesn’t spur conversations in the same way as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, or Dragon Ball Z still do today. Its graphic depictions certainly represent a barrier to entry much higher than even the aforementioned company. 

    Seeing the internet exude sympathy and fond reminiscing about Berserk was immensely validating and has been my single most therapeutic experience online. Moreso, it reminded me that the fans have always been there. And even looking into it, Berserk is the single best-selling property in the 35-year history of Dark Horse. My feeling is that Berserk just has something about it that reaches deep into you and gets stuck there.

  I recall introducing one of my housemates to Berserk a few years ago — a person with all the intelligence and personal drive to both work on cancer research at Stanford while pursuing his own MD and maintaining a level of physical fitness that was frankly unreasonable for the hours that he kept. He was NOT in any way analytical about the media he consumed, but watching him sitting on the floor turning all his considerable willpower and intellect toward delivering an off-the-cuff treatise on how Berserk had so deeply touched him was a sight in itself to behold. His thoughts on the series' portrayal of sex as fundamentally violent leading up to Guts and Casca’s first moment of intimacy in the Golden Age movies was one of the most beautiful sentiments I’d ever heard in reaction to a piece of fiction.

  I don’t think I’d ever heard him provide anything but a surface-level take on a piece of media before or since. He was a pretty forthright guy, but the way he just cut into himself and let his feelings pour out onto the floor left me awestruck. The process of reading Berserk can strike emotional chords within you that are tough to untangle. I’ve been writing analysis and experiential pieces related to anime and manga for almost ten years — and interacting with Berserk’s world for almost 30 years — and writing may just be yet another attempt for me to pull my own twisted-up feelings about it apart. 

  Berserk is one of the most deeply personal works I’ve ever read, both for myself and in my perception of Miura's works. The series' transformation in the past 30 years artistically and thematically is so singular it's difficult to find another work that comes close. The author of Hajime no Ippo, who was among the first to see Berserk as Miura presented him with some early drafts working as his assistant, claimed that the design for Guts and Puck had come from a mess of ideas Miura had been working on since his early school days.

  写真は三浦建太郎君が寄稿してくれた鷹村です。 今かなり感傷的になっています。 思い出話をさせて下さい。 僕が初めての週刊連載でスタッフが一人もいなくて困っていたら手伝いにきてくれました。 彼が18で僕が19です。 某大学の芸術学部の学生で講義明けにスケッチブックを片手に来てくれました。 pic.twitter.com/hT1JCWBTKu

— 森川ジョージ (@WANPOWANWAN) May 20, 2021

  Miura claimed two of his big influences were Go Nagai’s Violence Jack and Tetsuo Hara and Buronson’s Fist of the North Star. Miura wears these influences on his sleeve, discovering the early concepts that had percolated in his mind just felt right. The beginning of Berserk, despite its amazing visual power, feels like it sprang from a very juvenile concept: Guts is a hypermasculine lone traveler breaking his body against nightmarish creatures in his single-minded pursuit of revenge, rigidly independent and distrustful of others due to his dark past.

  Uncompromising, rugged, independent, a really big sword ... Guts is a romantic ideal of masculinity on a quest to personally serve justice against the one who wronged him. Almost nefarious in the manner in which his character checked these boxes, especially when it came to his grim stoicism, unblinkingly facing his struggle against literal cosmic forces. Never doubting himself, never trusting others, never weeping for what he had lost.

    Miura said he sketched out most of the backstory when the manga began publication, so I have to assume the larger strokes of the Golden Arc were pretty well figured out from the outset, but I’m less sure if he had fully realized where he wanted to take the story to where we are now. After the introductory mini-arcs of demon-slaying, Berserk encounters Griffith and the story draws us back to a massive flashback arc. We see the same Guts living as a lone mercenary who Griffith persuades to join the Band of the Hawk to help realize his ambitions of rising above the circumstances of his birth to join the nobility.

  We discover the horrific abuses of Guts’ adoptive father and eventually learn that Guts, Griffith, and Casca are all victims of sexual violence. The story develops into a sprawling semi-historical epic featuring politics and war, but the real narrative is in the growing companionship between Guts and the members of the band. Directionless and traumatized by his childhood, Guts slowly finds a purpose helping Griffith realize his dream and the courage to allow others to grow close to him. 

  Miura mentioned that many Band of the Hawk members were based on his early friend groups. Although he was always sparse with details about his personal life, he has spoken about how many of them referred to themselves as aspiring manga authors and how he felt an intense sense of competition, admitting that among them he may have been the only one seriously working toward that goal, desperately keeping ahead in his perceived race against them. It’s intriguing thinking about how much of this angst may have made it to the pages, as it's almost impossible not to imagine Miura put quite a bit of himself in Guts. 

  Perhaps this is why it feels so real and makes The Eclipse — the quintessential anime betrayal at the hands of Griffith — all the more heartbreaking. The raw violence and macabre imagery certainly helped. While Miura owed Hellraiser’s Cenobites much in the designs of the God Hand, his macabre portrayal of the Band of the Hawk’s eradication within the literal bowels of hell, the massive hand, the black sun, the Skull Knight, and even Miura’s page compositions have been endlessly referenced, copied, and outright plagiarized since.

    The events were tragic in any context and I have heard many deeply personal experiences others drew from The Eclipse sympathizing with Guts, Casca, or even Griffith’s spiral driven by his perceived rejection by Guts. Mine were most closely aligned with the tragedy of Guts having overcome such painful circumstances to not only reject his own self enforced solitude, but to fearlessly express his affection for his loved ones. 

  The Golden Age was a methodical destruction of Guts’ self-destructive methods of preservation ruined in a single selfish act by his most trusted friend, leaving him once again alone and afraid of growing close to those around him. It ripped the romance of Guts’ mission and eventually took the story down a course I never expected. Berserk wasn’t a story of revenge but one of recovery.

  Guess that’s enough beating around the bush, as I should talk about how this shift affected me personally. When I was young, when I began reading Berserk I found Guts’ unflagging stoicism to be really cool, not just aesthetically but in how I understood guys were supposed to be. I was slow to make friends during school and my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood had my friends' parents moving away faster than I could find new ones. At some point I think I became too afraid of putting myself out there anymore, risking rejection when even acceptance was so fleeting. It began to feel easier just to resign myself to solitude and pretend my circumstances were beyond my own power to correct.

  Unfortunately, I became the stereotypical kid who ate alone during lunch break. Under the invisible expectations demanding I not display weakness, my loneliness was compounded by shame for feeling loneliness. My only recourse was to reveal none of those feelings and pretend the whole thing didn't bother me at all. Needless to say my attempts to cope probably fooled no one and only made things even worse, but I really didn’t know of any better way to handle my situation. I felt bad, I felt even worse about feeling bad and had been provided with zero tools to cope, much less even admit that I had a problem at all.

  The arcs following the Golden Age completely changed my perspective. Guts had tragically, yet understandably, cut himself off from others to save himself from experiencing that trauma again and, in effect, denied himself any opportunity to allow himself to be happy again. As he began to meet other characters that attached themselves to him, between Rickert and Erica spending months waiting worried for his return, and even the slimmest hope to rescuing Casca began to seed itself into the story, I could only see Guts as a fool pursuing a grim and hopeless task rather than appreciating everything that he had managed to hold onto. 

  The same attributes that made Guts so compelling in the opening chapters were revealed as his true enemy. Griffith had committed an unforgivable act but Guts’ journey for revenge was one of self-inflicted pain and fear. The romanticism was gone.

  Farnese’s inclusion in the Conviction arc was a revelation. Among the many brilliant aspects of her character, I identified with her simply for how she acted as a stand-in for myself as the reader: Plagued by self-doubt and fear, desperate to maintain her own stoic and uncompromising image, and resentful of her place in the world. She sees Guts’ fearlessness in the face of cosmic horror and believes she might be able to learn his confidence.

    But in following Guts, Farnese instead finds a teacher in Casca. In taking care of her, Farnese develops a connection and is able to experience genuine sympathy that develops into a sense of responsibility. Caring for Casca allows Farnese to develop the courage she was lacking not out of reckless self-abandon but compassion.

  I can’t exactly credit Berserk with turning my life around, but I feel that it genuinely helped crystallize within me a sense of growing doubts about my maladjusted high school days. My growing awareness of Guts' undeniable role in his own suffering forced me to admit my own role in mine and created a determination to take action to fix it rather than pretending enough stoicism might actually result in some sort of solution.

  I visited the Berserk subreddit from time to time and always enjoyed the group's penchant for referring to all the members of the board as “fellow strugglers,” owing both to Skull Knight’s label for Guts and their own tongue-in-cheek humor at waiting through extended hiatuses. Only in retrospect did it feel truly fitting to me. Trying to avoid the pitfalls of Guts’ path is a constant struggle. Today I’m blessed with many good friends but still feel primal pangs of fear holding me back nearly every time I meet someone, the idea of telling others how much they mean to me or even sharing my thoughts and feelings about something I care about deeply as if each action will expose me to attack.

  It’s taken time to pull myself away from the behaviors that were so deeply ingrained and it’s a journey where I’m not sure the work will ever be truly done, but witnessing Guts’ own slow progress has been a constant source of reassurance. My sense of admiration for Miura’s epic tale of a man allowing himself to let go after suffering such devastating circumstances brought my own humble problems and their way out into focus.

    Over the years I, and many others, have been forced to come to terms with the fact that Berserk would likely never finish. The pattern of long, unexplained hiatuses and the solemn recognition that any of them could be the last is a familiar one. The double-edged sword of manga largely being works created by a single individual is that there is rarely anyone in a position to pick up the torch when the creator calls it quits. Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and likely Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter X Hunter all frozen in indefinite hiatus, the publishers respectfully holding the door open should the creators ever decide to return, leaving it in a liminal space with no sense of conclusion for the fans except what we can make for ourselves.

  The reason for Miura’s hiatuses was unclear. Fans liked to joke that he would take long breaks to play The Idolmaster, but Miura was also infamous for taking “breaks” spent minutely illustrating panels to his exacting artistic standard, creating a tumultuous release schedule during the wars featuring thousands of tiny soldiers all dressed in period-appropriate armor. If his health was becoming an issue, it’s uncommon that news would be shared with fans for most authors, much less one as private as Miura.

  Even without delays, the story Miura was building just seemed to be getting too big. The scale continued to grow, his narrative ambition swelling even faster after 20 years of publication, the depth and breadth of his universe constantly expanding. The fan-dubbed “Millennium Falcon Arc” was massive, changing the landscape of Berserk from a low fantasy plagued by roaming demons to a high fantasy where godlike beings of sanity-defying size battled for control of the world. How could Guts even meet Griffith again? What might Casca want to do when her sanity returned? What are the origins of the Skull Knight? And would he do battle with the God Hand? There was too much left to happen and Miura’s art only grew more and more elaborate. It would take decades to resolve all this.

  But it didn’t need to. I imagine we’ll never get a precise picture of the final years of Miura’s life leading up to his tragic passing. In the final chapters he released, it felt as if he had directed the story to some conclusion. The unfinished Fantasia arc finds Guts and his newfound band finding a way to finally restore Casca’s sanity and — although there is still unmistakably a boundary separating them — both seem resolute in finding a way to mend their shared wounds together.

  One of the final chapters features Guts drinking around the campfire with the two other men of his group, Serpico and Roderick, as he entrusts the recovery of Casca to Schierke and Farnese. It's a scene that, in the original Band of the Hawk, would have found Guts brooding as his fellows engage in bluster. The tone of this conversation, however, is completely different. The three commiserate over how much has changed and the strength each has found in the companionship of the others. After everything that has happened, Guts declares that he is grateful. 

  The suicidal dedication to his quest for vengeance and dispassionate pragmatism that defined Guts in the earliest chapters is gone. Although they first appeared to be a source of strength as the Black Swordsman, he has learned that they rose from the fear of losing his friends again, from letting others close enough to harm him, and from having no other purpose without others. Whether or not Guts and Griffith were to ever meet again, Guts has rediscovered the strength to no longer carry his burdens alone. 

  All that has happened is all there will ever be. We too must be grateful.

      Peter Fobian is an Associate Manager of Social Video at Crunchyroll, writer for Anime Academy and Anime in America, and an editor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: Peter Fobian

[elmaxlys]

About Juo’s decision to die and his last words

I am talking, of course, about this panel from chapter 251

(all quotes and panels are from MangaBox’s translation)

For context - some things to keep in mind

A few things we know about Juo in a concise way before going in some more details for the last arc: Juo kills for fun - he willingly chose an evil life-style in a yolo kind of way and has caused the suicide of a classmate back on Earth. On top of that, he doesn’t like “good guys” who do the right thing and can’t kill for their benefits and thinks they’re weak. He didn’t like begging for his life to one of those good guys (Rika).

After his fight with Rika and with the activation of the next stage by the Administrator, Juo had been thinking of changing his ways. He mentions it a few times, as he’s considering whether allying with the Administrator or with Yuri.

He chooses to get the code first, which backfires on him as it convinces the Administrator that he is a real threat that could hinder his plan to become God. Yoshida gets the code, the Administrator takes his body and breaks Juo’s neck. Doing so he also uses “the capability to stop the move” and he seals Juo’s ability to life transfer.

Then the Administrator yeets Juo from the helicopter and leaves him to die, unable to move in body or in spirit.

What are Juo’s thoughts at that moment? Again, he thinks about changing his ways, thinking “changing my way of living doesn’t matter anymore”, along with other regrets and the fear (or unwillingness) to die. 

Yuri jumps, Juo sees her and thinks: 

“I’m going to survive, going to live and change my way of living.”

This, of course, is immediately followed by the middle finger panel and him falling to his death while thinking:

“It’s meaningless after all. No matter what you do and how hard you try... we can’t change our ways of living. As long as we exist, humans are still evil. You deserve it! Idiots!”

Why is it so important?

Because Juo is able to disobey orders from the Mask. Now I should have included it in the previous section but this gets his own because that’s the most badass thing anyone has done in this manga.

Obeying the Mask is the one thing Sniper, Kuon and Yuri haven’t been able to counter. Those three have the most powerful minds in the whole manga apart from Juo himself and Rika - who didn’t get a Mask but was exposed to the Apostle code who works the same way and that he only managed to resist for a bit before awakening.

Sniper is the one that exposed the rule in the first place. You can’t disobey the Mask’s orders. He wasn’t able to resist it. Kuon, who managed life transfer and was able to complete the God Code Trial, wasn’t able to resist it and broke her Mask. Yuri, who became God’s antithesis out of pure spite, grew her power exponentially thanks to her powerful mind and overthrew the Administrator to become the new one, wasn’t able to resist it and broke her Mask. 

Juo didn’t.

The Mask’s code penetrates in your brain, it locks informations and memories away. Its orders are absolute because it comes from your own brain.

Juo was able to resist it. Badass mofo

“After putting on the Mask, there was an order to destroy it... But I refused with all my guts, and I was able to get away from that order! You know, I hate getting orders.”

Now back to the last arc and his death scene.

Despite his movements having been sealed, he moved.

I’m talking about how he went from totally limp and just falling to flipping Yuri the bird. Also, he breathed enough to be able to laugh.

What I’m getting at is: he broke the Administrator’s restrictions on him. Just like he did the Mask, he broke the orders given to his body. My guess is, it was easier since it was an exterior seal and not one from his brain directly. But that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re discussing Juo’s last words.

How does it tie back to his last words?

If he broke the seal on his body’s movements, he might have also broken the seal on his soul’s. Aka he might have performed life transfer anyway.

“but you’re a Juo stan,” you might be thinking, “you just want him to be alive” 

Well yes and no.

For me, his last words can mean three (3) things:

1- Basic stuff (aka he’s really dead and really evil good riddance for the world)

He knows the heroes won’t ever run out of bad guys, lmao have fun with that and anyway he’s not letting good guys save his life once again. Miss him with that shit. Plus, he’s not feeding that hero complex, thank you very much. Find someone else to save.

2- Life Transfer (aka as a Juo stan please Miura make it that)

He knows he’ll live on, thus about “we” still existing to make humanity evil. If so he might have a role in TSA and I also have thoughts about it but no spoilers and I don’t have the translation to the info on TSA’s antag so we’ll see when I do if my theory holds (unlikely but who knows. might be fun).

3- Redemption (aka my personal favorite, fanfic writing-wise)

“What do you mean, ‘redemption’? this dude is a bully and a murderer. stop simping and come back to earth”

I hear you and I raise you: Juo really wanted to change his ways. That’s literally what he’s thinking about before the middle finger.

Juo’s desperate to live. He’s about to take Yuri’s hand and change. He actually wants to. What he was hesitating over a few chapters back, he’s taking it seriously and realizes that as long as he’s alive he can change. And he wants to.

Then the “It’s meaningless after all, we can’t change our way” line. That might seem a bit contradictory at first but listen, here’s how I understand it half the times I read this scene (the other half goes to the two aforementioned meanings) : It’s meaningless because he’s done so much wrong there’s no going back for him, especially since he had chosen evil willingly and knowingly, done it for the heck of it and not for some grand ideal like, say, Aikawa.

Now for the last lines.

“As long as we exist, humans are still evil”

What is Juo doing at that very moment? Letting himself die. Killing evil. If the good guys won’t do it (looking directly at the Honjo siblings) then he’ll do it himself. 

“You deserve it! Idiots!”

Saying he’s talking to himself or the evil “we” mentioned before would be too much lmao - but I still think that works. You good guys deserve to see me die of my own free will and thus more effectively getting rid of evil that you guys did in your whole career as good guys. (Admin killed Aikawa, not the good guys. Biker killed the corrupt humans. Sniper still controlled by his Mask killed the molesters. Faceless-kun via Floor 9 killed the Administrator. Ultimately the Administrator (and Juo himself) killed Juo. None of these actions was performed for the greater good by the good guys.)

By dying Juo both redeemed himself and atoned for his actions - as it’s what the Administrator talks about as he’s killing Juo.

-

That’s it. If you read it all, thank you very much and don’t hesitate to tell me what you think! 

[bscully]

I see a lot of people praise caska for being an amazing female character but I kinda feel like she’s written like a bad joke about women (looses battle because period, too emotional, told her role is to comfort guts, etc...) she doesn’t get much time to really shine as a fighter either bc she’s constantly being saved of course I love her and will always defend her but do u think she’s actually written well as a girl? I feel like I’d be lying if I praised her for it

Hello and thanks for the ask!

No offense but I mean…

Let’s put it into perspective. There is a reason why Casca during the Golden Age was written the way she was, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad writing. Some (questionable) views about women were expressed that way, but I’d like to think that’s more because of the time the Golden Age was written in, rather than because of malicious intent.

During the Black Swordsman Arc we were shown how Guts handled those who were weak: He absolutely detested them.

During the Golden Age we were shown how he dealt with other’s weakness (Casca’s) and also *why* he hated the weak during his Black Swordsman Arc days: During the Eclipse, the Hawks all died because they were weak, and Casca was violated and lost her mind because she could not defend herself either. (The irony of this is that both of these things all happened because of his best efforts to save Griffith, boyo was too distracted)

Black Swordsman Arc

Guts generally was very contempt towards those he considered weak, and also especially towards other men, e.g. Vargas whom he just let die. Another time someone weaker than him died, it was the priests’ daughter, who was slaughtered by evil spirits. He also felt remorse killing her possessed body, even then and also vomits later on (he always vomits when he hurts a child or girl, see Adonis, see killing the fire children in the lost children chapters). In the page below, bottom panel, you can see white sprinkles which I believe are tears.

He then goes on to say how he cannot bother to crush ants below his feet when he walks. That was his way of dealing with the sadness, getting someone who is weaker than him killed because of him. His love-hate relationship to weaker people was also shown to us by his interactions with Theresia: in some way, he did save her here from falling off the ruins. But she had to hold onto a sharp blade so she wouldn’t fall.

Guts was hurting someone who he would love to protect, and he also hated himself for it. He made Theresia go down the very same path like he did because revenge is the only way to give her something to hold onto after losing everything.

It reminded of his own suffering, losing the Hawks and Casca. At least, this is the conclusion I made when I read the Golden Age and then look back to the Black Swordsman arc.

Golden Age

When Casca was later introduced during the Golden age, IMO Kentaro Miura wanted to show us how Guts usually treated people. As it turns out, Guts does want to protect and make sure people are safe. He also listens to them trying his best to meet their expectations. In other words, he was not always an asshole. In regards to other people’s weaknesses, his treatment of Casca was still rough in the beginning, but at the very least imo, well-intentioned.

Now you can critique Miura for his display of Casca’s womanhood. I am personally not particularly bothered by it, especially if this situation is a set up for romance in the first place. Of course the protagonist is going to take note of another character’s feminity if the author plans to hook them up. Guts was confronted with Casca’s female problems (periods) and what we were shown is that Guts, while he may have had his preconceptions about women too, still is understanding of their struggles AND their weakness.

Like… he first gets upset at Casca, but then acknowledges that she doesn’t have it easy, dealing with her own problems and emotions at times (Casca is a VERY emotional personality, too, but usually she has more self-control than this).

If anything, this bit right here displays Guts’ willingness to change his mind, his capacity to understand others and also help them in the process. Empathy, compassion, y’know? Something he lacked during the Black Swordsman Arc (this here happens right before Vargas is being beheaded):

That being said, I don’t think Miura actually thought that women being emotional is a negative thing when he wrote this, but he may have been affected by negative (cultural?) bias.

In the face of that weakness, Guts tries to help Casca out where he can and be supportive of her, e.g. by protecting her from Adon and his men - the 100 Man slayer scene was basically Guts protecting Casca’s womanhood from thirsty mercenaries, while she COULD NOT defend herself as effective because of her state (and he does that DESPITE of Casca throwing a knife at him earlier). This theme also repeats during the Eclipse, however, here he could do nothing but watch in his own helplessness.

Also let it be said that Miura’s potrayal of Casca’s period isn’t too far off, because periods CAN knock you the fuck out like that. My last one was absolutely devastating and I wouldn’t have survived without taking pain meds. So can periods affect your capacity to fight? Yes, they definitely can. You also gotta consider that Miura is male, and males *usually* do not know the effects of periods in detail unless they confronted themselves with it; also consider the Golden Age was written in the 90s, so that topic wasn’t prevalent for men at all.

Contrast & Comparison as writing tool

Miura also set up a nice contrast by adding in a particularly sexist character: of course I’m talking about Adon.

Adon calls Guts a fool for protecting someone at the cost of his own well-being, and the way he talks it’s like saving multiple women and exploit them is normal and acceptable.

But: Guts is literally taking multiple arrow shots for Casca and does not ask for anything in return. (It’s also interesting to note that through Adon’s mockery Casca realizes what Guts is doing for her) Now, you could argue that Guts is still a sexist asshole, however, at least in comparison to Adon, Guts still appears like the good guy  You can critique the ideas about women, how their prejudices and problems they struggle with are depicted, yes, and imo it is valid critique, too. But creating comparisons by showing how differently the characters act or think in the same scene is still an effective way of story-telling.

What Miura later did with other female characters, like Farnese or Schierke, was to “mature up” his writing. His tools however, stayed the same.

More examples comes to mind:

Guts leaving the Hawks

When Guts leaves the hawks, Griffith, Guts, Casca and Judeau all hold monologues, depicting how differently they think. While Casca and Rickert view  the Hawks as family, Judeau still considers them a mercenary band, and Griffith treats his subordinate Guts like a possession and has no inhibition to kill him if it meant he would either not leave or not join another faction and potentially become his enemy. I wrote about this in more detail here on my website

Conviction Arc Farnese

The contrasting happens again when Miura makes Guts meet Farnese for the first time. He was captured by the Holy Iron Chain Knights.

Farnese treated Guts pretty badly: she whipped him out in a desperate attempt to assure dominance, then threw him outside into the cold so he would eventually freeze to death.

When Guts takes HER hostage, they switch roles. Surely, he is being rough to her, but at the same time, is saving her multiple times, e.g. from falling to death or evil spirits.

This is the same writing tool used, just filled with different ideas. Miura’s writing itself hasn’t changed.

Casca is not powerless

Also Casca indeed is capable of defending herself. She is NOT always being saved. Even when being pursued after escaping from the 100 Man Slayer Scene, she gave the pursuing mercenaries a hard time, e.g. ramming a branch into one of the merc’s eyes. In that scene, it didn’t look like Casca was losing, she just got herself out of a dangerous situation and leaps to grab her sword! Only THEN we see how a volley of arrows interrupts the fight.  Does this look like a Casca to you that is about to lose? It doesn’t to me. She could have easily defeated the other two pursuers all by herself.

Casca, NOT GUTS, later defeated Adon all by herself and she was at a disadvantage too (think the poison dart).

Even during the Eclipse she dealt the final blow to take down the apostle that killed Judeau. She is not being depicted as powerless at all. She always seems at a disadvantage, struggling against all odds, and *still* is victorious. Guts acknowledges the strength it takes for her to do what she does, and that’s why Guts is helping her as much as he can.

Now you could STILL say “omg but that’s still sexist”, but eh. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging someone else’s struggle, celebrating them for pulling through despite of all the obstacles, and also willing to help out, but I’ll keep that politics stuff for another post. Stuff like this can go wrong yes, but in either case and as far as I am concerned, Guts is not trying to be patronizing or strip her off her independence in any way.

However, Casca’s strength does have limits and her full strength was not shown to us either, but I’d like to think that’s mostly because she is more a side-character and didn’t have much chance to shine during the Golden Age. I really really hope that will change with future chapters.

TL;DR Just because an author expresses outdated ideas or ideas you disagree with, does not mean it’s bad writing.

[hatianidiot]

Berserk Live Reaction Pt3: I Understand Why People Read This Now

It’s not fair to ask a person to spend hours, or even days of their life reading or god-forbid, watching a long-running shonen manga... if they don’t like it. If you don’t like a movie, it’s over in 2 hours. If you don’t like a long manga... well, you just don’t get the satisfaction of an ending. The time you’ve spent is just spent, it’s a sunk cost.

I bring this up not because I hate Berserk, quite the opposite. There are parts of the story that I’ve come to love, even if it’s the kind of love a parent feels when they watch their toddler do something horribly dangerous.

I bring this up because this first arc is the cut off moment. If you have gained nothing from Berserk up until the end of Volume 2, there’s probably nothing in this story for you.

So the arc opens with a meaningless witch hunt. The screaming defendant is clearly innocent because beauty equals goodness in Berserk, yet she is decapitated in front of a crowd anyway to please Jabba the Potatohead over here.

His main henchman is a catholic priest who kisses up to his physically intimidating boss with the power of divine authority. It’s a familiar character to anyone who just watched Infinity War last month.

No not this guy... Hold on...

There’s the one.

Anyway the setup is pretty standard. There’s a crooked, church-sanctioned massacre going down and Guts the handsome cowboy comes in to save the day. With a flick of his sword and a little bit of luck he... has to run away.

Under the cover of shadow and with the help of a mutilated old quack doctor, Guts and Puck manage to escape the town square for a moment, but not before carving up a few soldiers and inspiring one to take revenge at any cost. While that guy gets the unholy power to kill Guts from Meatneck Potatosack’s slug demon, Guts and Puck learn that the noseless doctor who saved them is the way he is not because of any deal with the devil, but because Dickhead Potatertot decided to EAT Doc’s spare limbs and spare family members in front of him.

Guts not being able to bully his way out of this situation? A heathen doctor who turns out to just be a good guy pushed to the edge? A demon-hunting king who moonlights as a demon? The theme of the day clearly is masks. Don’t think you know a person just because you caught a look at their face. Unless they’re a nameless fodder minion.

Or a nameless old guy who happened to ask if a fellow human being was okay.

Yeah. that’s what you get for having empathy you prick. Also, notice how little fanfare this death gets compared to: 

It’s a li~~iitle different.

The arc goes on, Guts faces the vengeful slugtato monster and saves Doc for all of twelve seconds until the guards catch up with him. King Saltn’Vinegar puts Doc to death as a show to draw Guts into a trap.

Puck contrasts Guts’s learned apathy with concern: while Guts runs away from Doc’s execution, Puck does their best to stop the procedure, fruitlessly of course. Puck gets captured and given as a gift to Lord Idaho’s Daughter.

Here’s where the masks begin to peel.

It turns out King Tater has a daughter he cares about, his one human trait. 

Despite his constant and unforgivable atrocities, all he wants is to have a relationship with his daughter, which is obviously impossible because he’s a malicious demon and she’s a pure princess.

Guts eventually fights his way to Slugtato himself and is thoroughly trounced. The invincible warrior’s persistence cannot overcome...

this...

Guts gets some good licks in, sure, but ultimately King Pringle beats him unconscious. And then:

This happens. Guts finds an opportunity to use the pretty princess against her father, FINALLY an opportunity to screw the world back. And he takes it with gusto.

No honor, no boundaries, just a cheeky grin from Guts as he uses the same dirty tricks against the evil king as the evil king used on him.

It’s at this point. This point here, is where... the segment that got me to care about this series begins.

Given the opportunity, Guts doesn’t just kill the Starch Lord. He tortures him.

And for once, the wanton violence, the blood, the guts, the gore...

felt just a little...

Cathartic.

Soon after, the potato’s demon eggmcguffin transports all relevent charaters to MC Escher’s Shadow Realm where Guts’s final bosses live.

Our hero, looks like a tenderized porkchop. He hobbles toward the object of his rage, a pretty demon called Griffith, as the fiends present lord French Fry with a choice.

Your eternal damnation?

Or your daughter’s?

Also, Potato-head’s wife the queen fell on the “madonna” side of the two female characterizations in Berzerk, so... Boohoo for King Tato? I guess?

It’s protrayed as his own trauma but it really falls flat for me. There could be so many layers to what happened in that room that get explained away with the misogynistic explanation that, “Tater Queen was a hoe”

It’s problematic. At risk of doubling the length of this review, I’m going to save this concept for a later post. There’s a lot to unpack here.

In his first onscreen act of... kindness? Tato king keeps his mouth shut and lets the demon-centipede bring him to hell for the sake of his daughter.

And better yet: despite the differences in their character... Vengeance is a sin. Tato is dragged down by none other than Doc himself.

Guess hell doesn’t care who started it.

Guts’s attacks bounce off Griffith’s shiny codpiece, but Griffith’s demons fail to drag Guts to hell. With the ceasefire, the demons dump the humans back on earth, and Guts is left alone with Princess Theresia.

After a brief conversation, it becomes clear how similar these two are. Guts is a child, thrust into a world that doesn’t care and actively wants him dead, by no fault of his own. Unable to keep the girl safe, like the priest and his daughter in the covered wagon, like Doc, like everyone else he’s failed... Guts helps her the only way he knows how.

He gives her a goal. A target to focus on. He becomes her Griffith.

He wouldn’t wish this life on his worst enemy. And yet. It’s the only life he knows how to live.

_________________________

It’s not fair to ask a person to spend precious moments of their life consuming a long-running shonen manga if they don’t like it.

I bring this up because over the course of this arc I have come to understand what it is about this series that enamors people so much with Kentaro Miura’s gritty, brutal, and downright tragic story.

I don’t love Guts, and my feelings for Puck are lukewarm at best. they don’t make me laugh and despite all their hardship, they have yet to make me cry. I don’t care at all for this world of harsh shadows and useless, braindead goons who die in an instant to nobody’s surprise or concern. I don’t care for how women are either portrayed as beautiful objects fresh for the slaughter, or disgusting harlots who deserve to die, rather than as people who want things and resist this cruel world.

I don’t care about any of it. In fact, I want to look away.

But if I do that...

Then Guts will be all alone.

And no depiction of distasteful, sickening gore will ever be worse than the guilt I would feel if I ever left this poor child’s fate uncertain in my own mind. No matter how much I complain about the themes, no matter how much I gripe about sometimes stiff art... I have to see Guts’s story through to the bitter end. And if Mr. Miura feels similarly, it might explain why after 25 years he still continues producing his depressing manga, despite clearly moving on to new interests.

_________________________

If sometime in the future, you twisted fans of Berserk ever want to introduce your loved ones to the terrible world you’ve spent a chunk of your precious life in... Tell them to read to at least Volume 3.

[akatsuki3519]

Your top 5: favourite 'One Piece' characters, least favourite 'One Piece' characters, anime guys, anime guys that you would date (:P ;)), waifus, favourite opening songs, favourite anime endings, manga, favourite non-anime shows and favourite anime!!! That's quite a list!! Obviously, please feel free to pick the ones that interest you the most!! :D If I think of any more....I'll be sure to put them in your ask box!! ;)

Thanks so much for these, they’re great!!

Favourite One Piece characters: (I have SO MANY, but I think this is accurate! :P)1) Roronoa Zoro2) Monkey D. Luffy3) Trafalgar Law4) Jinbe - if he doesn’t join the crew I’m gonna riot, he’s just the best:’)5) Donquixote Rocinante/Corazon 

Least favourite One Piece characters:1) Blackbeard/Teach - one of my least favourite anime characters EVER, I can’tstand him!! I can’t wait to see him get his ass kicked…2) Akainu/Sakazuki - I hate him too, for obvious (spoiler filled) reasons…3) Trebol - he’s so annoying… >.4) Charloss - I wanted to just say the Celestial Dragons as a whole (except onefamily who shall remain nameless because massive spoilers) but that’s kinda cheating, so I picked my most hated one >:(5) Hody Jones (I just mildly dislike him lol)

Anime guys:1) Killua Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)2) Yuuri Katsuki (Yuri on Ice)3) Lelouch Lamperouge (Code Geass)4) Makoto Tachibana (Free!)5) Rin Okumura (Ao no Exorcist)

Anime guys you would date: (this one was actually REALLY difficult, I changed my mind so many times and had to discount some of my faves for various reasons XD)1) Kiyoshi Teppei (Kuroko no Basuke) - he’s an actual angel 2) Trafalgar Law (One Piece) - okay, so he’s kind gruff and messed up but he’s actually a great person, even if he won’t admit it… :’) I was gonna say Roci but I figured Doffy would likely kill me so maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea lol3) Asahi Azumane (Haikyuu!!)4) Shizuo Heiwajima (Durarara!!)5) Sakuragi Rokurouta (Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin) - a bit of acurveball perhaps, I haven’t seen this show in quite a while and rarely talkabout it (partially because although it’s excellent, it’s very graphic and Ifound it very hard to watch), but I remember loving this character so much,he’s such a sweetheart and really looks out for the younger kids in the show

Waifu’s:1) Yona (Akatsuki no Yona)2) Nico Robin (One Piece)3) Celty (Durarara!!)4) Bishamon (Noragami)5) Machi (Hunter x Hunter)

Favourite opening songs: (okay so for both OP’sand ED’s, I took into account the video for the OP/ED as well as the song,otherwise it would have taken me days to decide!! >.1) Death Parade OP (Flyers by Bradio) - so, SO catchy! 2) One Piece OP 16 (Hands Up by Kota Shinzato) - the song never fails to cheerme up and the footage in the OP is excellent too (and spoiler free! :P)! I haveto mention that this is tied with OP 14 (Fight Together) though… sorry I knowthat’s cheating! XD I prefer the video of OP 14 (has spoilers though) but thesong of OP 16 so they kinda add up to me loving them both the same in the end!3) Haikyuu!! OP 4 (Fly High!! by Burnout Syndromes) - love the song and it’svisually STUNNING as well, the camera angles are phenomenal!! 4) FMA: B OP 5 (Rain by SID) - again, love the song and video 5) Kuroshitsuji Book of Circus OP (Enamel by SID) - and again, love the songand video! I particularly love how the credits are incorporated into the OPtoo!!

Honorable mentions: I feel the need to say I adore all the Durarara!! OP’s, bothNoragami OP’s, Akatsuki no Yona OP 1 and Naruto Shippuuden OP 6, I feel reallybad I couldn’t include them!! >.

Favourite ending songs: 1) Bungou Stray Dogs ED 1 (Namae Wo Yobu Yo by Luck Life) - beautiful melody and beautiful animation 2) FMA:B ED 2 (Let It All Out by Miho Fukuhara) - one of my all time faves!3) Parasyte ED (It’s the Right Time by Daichi Miura) - beautiful, beautiful song!4) Aldnoah.Zero ED 1 (A/Z by Hiroyuki Sawano, vocals by Mizuki) - I love all the music in Aldnoah.Zero, it’s composed by Hiroyuki Sawano after all :P5) Battery ED 2 (Wakamono no Subete by anderlust) - stunning ED… not so good show lol… this one JUST won out over Tokyo Ghoul ED 2 due to the video being gorgeous

Honorable mentions: Baccano! ED, Rainbow ED (first time I heard Galneryus and was blown away by the vocal range), Haikyuu!! ED 3, SnK ED 1, Kuroshitsuji ED 2, Higurashi ED 2, HxH ED 5, Durarara!! ED 2

Manga: (I’m excluding HxH because I’ve only read/amreading the Dark Continent arc in the manga lol)1) Akatsuki no Yona2) Noragami3) Ao no Exorcist4) Rurouni Kenshin5) Kuroshitsuji 

Favourite non-anime shows:1) Dexter - still haven’t finished it, oops…2) Masterchef - I’m obsessed with food/cooking programmes in general lol3) Daredevil - I really enjoyed the first season a lot! 4) Casualty - haven’t watched it in a few months… >.5) Game of Thrones - I’m only on like season 4 but I quite enjoy it tbh lol

I don’t watch much TV at all but I’m probably forgettingsomething… I also really liked Doctor Who when David Tennant was the doctor, notso much now though

Favourite anime: (I’ll probably change my mindtomorrow but anyway :P)1) Hunter x Hunter - this is definitely no. 1 anyway 2) FMA/FMA: Brotherhood - can’t decide, sorry… T.T3) One Piece4) Code Geass5) Kuroko no Basuke

Guilty pleasure anime! :P (one you sent me after this message! i.e. shows I liked that a lot of people didn’t. Therearen’t many of these tbh because I’m very selective with the shows I choose towatch, so I’m also gonna include ones I’m embarrassed I liked lol…)1) Sword Art Online - I really liked the first half a lot, and I also thoughtthat scene in the parking lot near the end was really good lol. I definitelydidn’t hate the second half of the series as much as some people… 2) Black Bullet - I really enjoyed this one okay lol3) Highschool of the Dead - listen, Ecchi aside, I thought this show was prettygood… the Ecchi was SO unnecessary though, it really annoyed me, it wouldhave been a great show without it!4) Trickster: Edogawa Ranpo ‘Shounen Tanteidan’ Yori - okay, so I gave this a 6 and gave it a pretty hard time when I reviewed it, my main thought after the last ep being ‘what was the point in that??’, HOWEVER… I really enjoyed and looked forward to it every week? So I dunno this is a weird one for me lol5) Kuroshitsuji II - PLEASE DON’T DISOWN ME GUYS I’M SORRY! XD This season was objectively awful, but I didn’t hate it for some reason…? I mean I definitely didn’t love it either lol… but I don’t think I had as strong a hate for it as the rest of the fandom… it was a really messed up season though, Alois creeped me out big time… 

Favourite anime endings: (the other one you sent me after this message!)1) Code Geass (R2) - there’s a S3 coming out so I guess you could discount this as the ending of the series now lol… but it was fantastic T.T AND I don’t think I had it spoiled for me beforehand! Massive plus! :P2) Kimi no Na wa - is this cheating? >.3) Hunter x Hunter (2011) - Yes, there are some loose ends (that are continued in the manga), but I think even as a stand alone show the ending was very satisfactory, I loved it!4) FMA: Brotherhood - just a really satisfying and complete ending! 5) Clannad: After Story - I was just so relieved it ended the way it did, I couldn’t have handled it otherwise haha… T.T

Honorable mentions: ACCA, Shouwa Genroku, Angel Beats!

And that’s it!! :D Thanks somuch for these they were such great asks!!

[berserksweg]

A recorded message from author Kentaro Miura to fans of Berserk

(Google)Translated from an unofficial transcription/translation 

Hello. I would like to thank all of you, old fans and new, for supporting me all of these years. It really means a lot to me and my team to know people still like this series even after all these years. And so, with a heavy heart I have to say I am quitting Berserk. Yes, this may seem sudden and poorly timed, but I do have my reasons.

For one, I have been drawing messed up sh*t for over half my life and that stuff starts to get to you. Like at first it was fun, seeing the horrible dark side of humanity, but after a while it just became tiring. I had nightmares about things I had created and no amount of comic relief would help. I added comic relief character after comic relief character and nothing helped.

From the very beginning there was Puck, who was a funny, but insightful elf who brought a little levity. He was to make sure things didn’t get too dark, but after the Lost Children chapter and it’s literal piles of dead children I decided there needed to be more, so I added Isidro. With Isidro and Puck I thought for sure the nightmares would stop, but they kept coming, so I reduced Puck to purely Chestnut Puck and added a little cute witch. That was all to balance out the trolls who were horrible. How did I even come up with that? Why did I even come up with that? After the trolls I added Magnifico, the pirates, Isma, Sonia, Mule, Azan, and others to help remedy this problem. Heck, all of Elfhelm doesn’t have one piece of nightmare fuel, just loli witches and fairies, and I still was having issues!

Anyways, so then after the Empire of the Millennium Falcon Arc with the Kushans and Reborn Femto I decided to have Guts and his group stay on the boat. I know I took a long time on that, and I’m sorry, but honestly I was hoping people would lose interest. Yes, the story was nowhere near over and the group were almost to Elfhelm, the place where Casca could possibly be healed, but I was running out of ideas. Now, we are actually in the dream world and Farnese and Schierke are trying to piece Casca back together, and I know it seems like a bad place to stop, but I just have to.

The fact is my health isn’t what it use to be and I’m getting old. Also the 2016 anime gave me cancer. Literal eye cancer. I’m going blind and that’s part of the reason why the art style changed, that’s why I’m taking so many hiatuses. It’s also why I will never finish Berserk. I love this series, but I just don’t have the passion or the ability to keep it going. But I will tell you how far I planned the ending.

First off, Casca does come back, just not in the way you thought. See Farnese does a soul transfer, like Donovan did to Guts except less prostitution (Kudos to fans who figured that out, most of the Donovan theories that I’ve seen are true; he was a much deeper character than he seemed), and becomes Casca, so now Farnese and Casca share Casca’s body and Farnese is a potato brain. Guts doesn’t notice right away, but Serpico does and he is super mad at Farnese. Farnese goes insane from Casca’s memories and Casca wants to jump off another cliff while Farnese want stuff to burn. Farnese soul transfers back into her body (this time with prostitution) because Casca won’t let her burn stuff. She masters the fire wheel spell and burns Elfhelm to the ground. Everyone is mad at her, but she realizes she wants to become a great witch and uses earth magic to fix everything. Everyone is happy again and Casca decides to come back finally. Casca does jump off a cliff, and dies instantly.

Infact, everyone gets a power up, even Roderick. Isma gets more mermaid magic, Isidro gets a second 4000 degree knife, Serpico gets parachute pants, Farnese has more magic training and inner peace, Roderick get a fairy boat (a kind gesture, but it only fits like one person), Puck gets a better bag to sleep in, and Guts gets the only woman he’s ever loved back and then immediately loses her forever. Everything seems too good to be true.

And it is.

It turns out the Elf King was evil the entire time and was luring them into a false sense of security. Why? I don’t know, but you people seem to like betrayal. All of the magic creatures attack and all of Griffith’s demons attack Elfhelm. The group escapes only to take the boat ride all the way back. This boat part is a little shorter than the last one, I planned on it only taking like 7 or 8 years instead of 10 like the last one. After being attacked by a different crew of funny pirates, and some Vikings as well, they land in Roderick’s kingdom of Ith, only to find out he too was evil the entire time and just wanted Farnese to be his rich witch wife. Farnese doesn’t care now that she’s found inner peace, but Serpico does and he accidently reveals that they are half siblings.

Nobody is really shocked. So Isma kills Roderick mostly on accident and it turns out Ith is also infected with horrible demons, so the group runs away until they meet up with Rickert, Erica, and the Kushan assassins. Rickert has become a super skilled Inventor and has built a medieval mech suit run off of magic and the will to live. It also has a giant sword. Erica has become a skilled assassin. The mech suit forms up like Power Rangers, each of the limbs representing a different element (Farnese-earth, Serpico-wind, Isma-water, and Isidro-fire) with Schierke forming the head. Guts has the Berserker armor and no reason to live beyond revenge. As terrible as the anime was, it’s more Shounen themes gave me the idea to use Mechs. I know it seems like it clashes with the dark fantasy theme of Berserk, but just think about it.

They launch an attack on Falconia and are captured immediately, but this was all a plan and they escape. They form into Voltron- I mean the mech that is totally unique in design and attack again. All of the demons attack causing havoc in the streets and lot of death and rape happen. The force breaks through to Griffith and there is a lot of ‘GRIFFFITHSU!!!!’ Griffith still has Guts outclassed by a lot so Guts becomes overcome by his beast of darkness and calls Puck ‘bug.’

Everything stops. You guys thought the Behelit was for Casca? Guts? Farnese? No. It was for Puck from the very start. Yes Puck. He’s the true villain of Berserk. You thought it was Griffith? The God Hand? The Idea of Evil? No. It was Puck.

Puck uses the Behelit  to summon the God Hand and Sacrifices Guts’ bag to gain more power. Puck then kills Casca and Rickert before being killed by Corkus.That’s right, Corkus comes back from the dead and kills Puck and then Griffith, before finally killing Guts. Just as Puck was the main villain, Corkus was the main hero not Guts.

So Yeah, that’s that’s the ending. I took a lot of inspiration from online forums after the boat burnt me out of all of my ideas. It may seem a little dark, and I know I said I didn’t think I could write a sad ending, but this really isn’t a sad ending. It actually shows how even the worse people can be redeemed and even the most innocent can fall. Actually no, it doesn’t. I know people will always point out my deep symbolism and philosophy in Berserk, honestly I didn’t write it with that intention. Most of the time it was an accident, or people reading too much into it. The whole dream speech? That was just to show how full of himself Griffith was and Guts took it too seriously like everyone else. The dream thing came to me when I was watching Disney’s Cinderella and thought, ‘dreams seem to be really popular I should include that to Berserk.’

Is that what you guys wanted? Some ridiculous, over the top, sad ending? From what I’ve heard, some fans are unhappy with how happy everything was going, but doesn’t it feel better to know this horrifying story has a horrifying ending? Doesn’t it fit all of the ‘themes’ and ‘parallels’ to that thing that happened once but has been redone five different times (*cough* Eclipse *cough*) where everyone died. Also what point is there to give a character development when you are going to kill them off for shock value anyways.That’s what I figured, just give the fans what they seem to want, a dumb edgy ending to bookend an immature and edgy beginning.

I’ve also been very busy with IdolM@aster. It is a very fun game, and a new anime recently came out for it so I’ve been watching that. It’s one of the few things that makes me want to keep drawing and creating things, so I’ve been taking inspiration from it. Some of you have noticed the lean towards more cute character design and style in the most recent chapters and that is me trying to capture Idolm@ster’s unique and eye catching visuals. It’s still not right and that frustration is another reason for my quitting Berserk. It simply is not my vision anymore (since I’m still going blind) and I’m going to try and write stories for them in the future. The dark themes are nice, but I needed more cute girls.

This is why I added characters like Sonia and Isma, and brought the Princess back. It is also why I made Griffith look even more like a girl. I guess even Guts started to look more feminine, which actually wasn’t intentional, but more of a happy accident.

I haven’t given up writing Manga for good though. I have a few ideas of writing a shoujo/slice of life/comedy/harem/sports manga, but I need to perfect my style and heal my eye cancer first. I really hope my fans forgive me and are willing to support me in my new passion: writing about cute underage girls being okay at something.

So that’s it. That’s the end.

Where’s my paycheck, I just bullsh*ted an ending for you. Why are you shushing me? What? We’re still recording? Why-

[booksandchainmail]

nanoha vivid liveblog: episode 8

TOURNAMENT RC TOURNAMENT ARC TOURNAMENT ARC

oh the castle from the op

and looks like it’s the saint church, makes sense

… this was probably already established, I just forgot

must be awkward fighting clone jesus in a tournament when youre a nun

this is a really good point, and also raises questions about vivio’s friends all training together

some sort of invisibility?

Oh no wait she was the speedster right? So too fast to be seen

Also, cool device design

OH FUCK YEAH I LOVE TONFA

Okay, paying attention during the tournament section of the op this time, and it looks like harry punching with fire, 

victoria with a polearm and lightning,

unknown glasses girl with chain circles, chantez with her tonfa (do they spin?), 

shrine maiden with a katana, 

miura gets a longer segment, 

and then sieglinde still hooded

That is the least trustworthy thing you could possibly say

called it

I feel like attacking before your opponent is armed is cheating

Then again, vivio was in a fighting stance and ready to go, so maybe its legit

Also, on a closer look I think chantez’s weapons could also be wielded like swords (edit from later: no kidding she can, her style was listed as dual swords)

Huh, have we ever seen a non-transforming power up before?

naruto run

eye glint! magic is happening her folks

i will never get over how happy vivio looks all the time when she’s fighting

dramatic much?

wait what

(also i promise this looks genuinely worrying when its not a screencap paused on a goofy mouth) 

oh okay it was a vision? Killer intent or whatever?

Do not tempt fate like that chantez

like i said, maybe don’t fight clone jesus in church when you are a literal nun

d’awww

it’s the tie club

awww, they have a family gesture thing

KITTIES

...okay, those particular kitties are kinda doofy looking around the faces

agito has good clothes

AWWWWWWWW

HOW DARE YOU NOT LIKE THE CAT

LOOKIT HIM

thank you for giving this child one soft cute thing, even if it also a weapon

BABY KITTIES

well fuck now im sad

oh gods

so they just actually are nerds

okay then

that’s a really good name that i had completely forgotten from the manga and am now suddenly flashing back to

this is very fair, and a major disadvantage of being an unarmed fighter. normally that gets mitigated by speed i guess, but no one in this show seems to have trouble swinging giant weapons around, so that might not actually give an advantage

So golem practice for corona, and maybe some basic review just in case her golem goes down? Though at the level she’ll be competing at, basic skills probably won’t help

More martial arts for rio I guess. It might be better for to be training with her family since she uses their style?

And vivio either needs a weapon, which I kinda doubt based on the shape of this anime, or techniques to counter weapons and range

With who? I guess it could be chantez, but that seems implausible for the whole “going to be competing against each other thing”

Presumably the tsab group is too busy with work, and hayate has her own candidate, so maybe another number?

Oh so it was another competitor, and a new character. Bit of a conflict of interest there, but im glad nove has made friends

And holy hells is she experienced

actually, I took a look at the wiki, and nove is technically 17 (barring clone weirdness). Which means she’s younger than this girl, and could totally be participating in this tournament. Honestly, if your teenager’s tournament has coaches who could compete in the age bracket they’re coaching it’s probably a sign you should narrow the brackets. 

That said, I’m guessing nove doesn’t compete because this is a civilian tournament, and even four years on I doubt she sees herself as a civiliain

So… do you have any strengths?

... they used to belong to jesus, so if anyone you’re fighting is religious it’ll throw them off?

Okay, I thought nove was just going to go for some sagebrecht power thing, given the eyes association, but using the cradle would probably disqualify vivio

~magical girl show technically~

called it!

didn’t call it!

Yeah, nanoha probably has access to a hell of a lot of training materials, plus footage of high power fights

oh, for chris? didn’t think of that

... the fact that he’s looking for this on his own raises disturbing questions about how sentient devices are

this reminds me a lot of bnha where baby izuku watches all might, except its just a tiny plushie

BUSTER HEAD

THE BEST NAME

Oh that’s gonna be hard for rio

Though they both have similar personalities I think? And maybe both use flames? So could be a fun matchup

So that’s sword girl against vivio? And her weakness is weapons, and that girl has a long sword…

Honestly kinda surprised it doesn’t look like einhart and vivio will fight each other

Maybe they’re saving that for past the qualifiers? But honestly with the power levels we’ve been shown, idk if vivio could make it realistically, and idk how much this show will push protagonist plot powers

OH 

So we do have two of our protag group in direct competition, but not a pairing that’s thematic

Huh

And no mention of who else is in that group. Probably at least one other important character? Victoria or sieglinde would have belkan relevance to einhart

theyre also so sweet and kind about violence

good team name!

Every group competing at once is probably the only practical way to get through this many people, but it must be annoying if two good/personal matches are on at once

this year’s contestants are noticeably more anime than the girls in the video from earlier

also, are there any guys in this thing? there’s no mention of it not being co-ed, so i guess were just running on nanoha rules of very few guys existing

His voice is so deep

There are at least 367 contestants in this thing? Even with six matches at once, that’s at least 60 rounds, and those things could run for a while

Oh she’s tiny and excitable, it’s like vivio’s mirror

HOW MANY CONTESTANTS ARE THERE?!!

also they can’t use devices this round, which makes things fairer I guess. Probably non-device weapons are allowed, otherwise this would bias towards hand-to-hand fighters, but this levels the playing field in terms of money and equipment

Someone weve never seen before, who’s disparaging towards our protagonist… yeah she’s going down

she is so nervous

in utter contrast to literally all of teachers being battle hardened knights

so she’s kicking focused? a good contrast to all the punch girls

also, im a big fan of miura’s opponent

MAGICAL GIRL LYRICAL NANOHA: where tiny girls beat up teenagers

Oh so that’s the personally important matchup they’re going for

also i guess it isn’t one ring per group

[bscully]

have you ever read the lost chapter that miura requested to be removed off the eclipse Arc before Griffith transformed into femto ?? if not look it up I want your opinion on this chapter and the idea of evil “god”

Hello and thank you for the ask!

Yes I have!

People have spun quite the theories about it, however I don’t think its as canon as some people make it out to be.

Miura took it out so he can be flexible as he continues Berserk. He’s still developing the concepts around this. That said, we might in for a surprise towards the finale (I’m personally predicting a new god-hand type character or “astral force” that will reveal itself unexpectedly and it might turn out very different to the IOE).

The IOE is in essence an entity that controls human fate: “I am the idea. The desired god. The Idea of evil.” At least, that’s what the lost chapter says.

However, I always thought Miura only tells 4% of the story and world building he has in mind and the fact he took the IOE out and replaced it with something similar, but with extremely sparse information, seem to fit this idea.

I think Miura borrowed the IOE from real life belief systems. There is this one (pagan/shaman, afaik) belief that every being is part of a collective consciousness that potentially “stores” all feelings, dreams and thoughts somewhere in a non-materialistic layer of reality - a “spiritual DNA” so to say. If this system was used as inspiration - which imo it seems to be, this is literally what the lost chapter is all about! - this makes the IOE a self-made “God” somewhere residing in the astral world, and it’s probably mostly made up from hate, despair, malice, violence (wellp humanity at its finest I guess?). I actually typed this up before reading the lost chapter again and wellp:

At the same time, this self-made God is likely disconnected from the greater scheme of things e.g. ask yourself: do other species or astral beings have their own “God”…? (Do Elves have their own “God”? And does that make Guts and SK a unpredictable factor in the equation given they both have a connection to Elves…?) So if this is anything to go by, that means just because the IOE is trying to manipulate causality in a certain way, does not mean it will succeed doing so.

Instead of 100% revealing how the IOE works, we do get a couple of hints about the astral world from Flora. Here, for example she states that the behelit is a spiritual object that governs human fate. But she also states there might be even something greater that sent it to the physical world. This is from volume 24.

Let me just stress out here that this “greater existence” here DOES NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO BE THE IOE.

But then Guts asks what the God Hand is and we get this answer from Flora:

There seems to be 1) the concept of “fate” somehow connected to the behelits and a greater existence, but at the same time we also have 2) the god hand being the executors of something lurking deep in the astral world.

Are these two the same thing? As far as I am concerned they do not have to be!!! To me it appears like Flora is talking about two different, but related things.

I mean the fact Flora answers these questions completely separate of each other already tells me the Godhand and Behelits/the ”greater existence” seem to be two different concepts entirely: I mean were the Behelits REALLY connected to the GOD HAND directly she would possibly have said so, or brought them up. Note how it was GUTS who brought it up and who knows much less about the topic. I mean sure, Behelits are used to call the “angels” (in this case, the God Hand) - but are they created by the God hand? Flora in fact seems to imply there are different KINDS of behelits and they obey some kind of MASTER. Are Behelits just fateful stones (neutral by themselves) USED by the God Hand for their own benefit? What other “master” is using these Behelits???

What if Behelits in themselves are NEUTRAL TOOLS of fate, NOT affiliated with the God Hand, and the Angel that was called 1000 years ago during Gaiseric’s reign was actually a different “type” of astral being? What if the IOE didn’t exist yet at this point, but manifested through this act of sacrifice…!?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

EDIT:

Flora DOES state that “A Behelit. […] A a fetish to summon the five angels”. I still find her wording interesting. E.g. she is not stating “all behelits are a key that links a deep layer of the astral world…”. She’s looking at it, saying its a Behelit and then describes its function. Is she talking about about THIS particular Behelit, or is she talking about Behelits in general? Because what she said above ^^^^ about Behelits being devices of fate sounds like a general statement, that is not necessarily tied to the God Hand members.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So if we have different MASTERS of behelits (edit: presumably, members of the god hand still), it’s already fitting with these depictions from volume 10, which clearly show actual angels, that DO NOT look like the God Hand at all:

Inb4 that dude in the middle ^^^^ is the guy that made the first god hand member ascend

It seems like these angels somehow existed during Gaiseric’s reign, but then Humanity fell astray from their “real” path to growth and fell under the influence of the IOE/The God Hand (this would have a lot of resemblance to the biblical story of adam and eve, being expelled from eden after eating from the tree of knowledge)

Shit man if this holds any truth Miura’s gonna surprise y’all. This is why you shouldn’t be so focused on what the lost chapter says!!!

Also side note: Flora says it is NOT possible for someone to actually reach whatever is deeply hidden in the astral world, which directly contradicts the fact Griffith managed to do so in the lost chapter by retaining his ego and conversing with the IOE. Please consider that for a moment before thinking anything the lost chapter contains is still up-to-date (the concept of collective consciousness may still apply - but the rest may not).

Anyway how much control the Behelits, the “greater existence “or the god hand has over humanity is not revealed at all - even if you try to “reverse engineer” this from Berserk’s world events, you still cannot say for sure, but that’s for another lengthy post.

What is also implied later on Elfhelm (chapter 345) is the fact that different “dragon roads” to the astral world seem to exist, and activating a Behelit is only one way to open a road. What is also being mentioned is that differently sized roads to the astral world exist, the larger ones being called dragon roads.

What other roads exist and who is using them? Presumably, other powerful astral beings.

Funny visual parallel: the IOE is also depicted as a spiral.