#BERSERK MANGAO MOVIE#
#BERSERK MANGAO SERIES#

#BERSERK MANGAO SERIES#

(© Miura Kentarō/Studio Gaga/Hakusensha) Fantasy with a Japanese Twistīerserk has won a steady international following, with the series being translated into a number of languages. The frontispiece of volume 34 of Berserk. Either way, Berserk took its place alongside fantasy games in making the sword-and-sorcery style a driving force of Japan’s entertainment offerings of the 1990s. It is hard to say whether Miura recognized early on the potential of the heroic fantasy model for his own medium of manga or if he found his muse naturally. Starting in the latter half of the 1980s, fantasy titles like The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy captured the imagination of people in Japan and elsewhere and grew to be cultural sensations.

#BERSERK MANGAO MOVIE#

However, fantasy remained a relatively minor genre in Japan prior to Berserk coming along.Īlthough the manga’s popularity had no rival in print or on movie screens, the video game sector was a different story. Earlier works like Kurimoto Kaoru’s Guin Saga books, Mizuno Ryō’s Record of Lodoss War, and manga creations like Wada Shiji’s Dragon Pigmario and Hagiwara Kazushi’s Bastard!! demanded a small but devout following. Forging a Path for Fantasyīerserk was equally influential in bolstering the appeal of heroic fantasy genre, which today is a staple of the Japanese entertainment industry. Although recent best-selling titles like Gotōge Koyoharu’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba follow the tradition of “rewarding good and punishing evil,” characters from earlier hits, such as Eren Yeager in Isayama Hajime’s Attack on Titan and Itadori Yūji in Akutami Gege’s Jujutsu Kaisen, show a willingness to cross moral lines that, while not truly dark, at the very least owes a tip of the hat to Miura. However, Nagai’s influence on expanding the classic manga hero mold to include murkier elements is arguably less than Miura’s. Prior to Berserk, the nearest equivalent to a dark hero in the Japanese manga canon is Fudō Akira, the main character of Nagai Gō’s grim-toned Devilman. In volume three of the comic, for instance, when facing the Count, one of the demonic “apostles” who populate the story, he shows no hesitation at using the young, innocent daughter of his adversary as a shield in order to defeat his foe. Brutish and an emotionally broken, he is driven to vanquish the malicious forces tormenting his world and does not flinch at employing morally questionable means to achieve this end. In Guts, Miura diverged from the prototype manga hero, one who is pure of purpose, and introduced comic readers of the day to what some have labeled a “dark hero,” a protagonist who fights evil, but whose motivations and means are not always honorable.įate has forced Guts to spend his entire existence battling the malevolent forces around him, with the endless combat robbing him of an eye and a hand and leaving him cursed with a brand on his neck that attracts evil creatures. Blueprint of a Dark Heroīerserk centers around the character Guts, a towering and battle-scarred warrior known as the Black Swordsman who wields an impossibly colossal blade called Dragonslayer. Looking at the intricately rendered illustrations on display, which represented only a fraction of the massive catalog of drawings in the long-running work, I was struck by Miura’s inventive style, his ability to plumb the depths of the human condition, and his boundless imagination that wove together the complex threads of the manga over such a long span. I had the opportunity to reflect on Miura’s talents and influence on pop culture while visiting the exhibit “Berserk: 32 Years of Miura Kentarō,” a retrospective of the manga series recently held in Tokyo. Miura’s unexpected death in April 2021 at the relatively young age of 54 was a huge blow to fans and the manga industry as a whole, and is all the more tragic as Berserk remains unfinished.

Set in a world populated by mercenaries and supernatural beings, the work brought dark fantasy to the fore in Japan and established Miura as a pioneering force of the genre. Miura Kentarō captivated readers in Japan and abroad for over three decades with the artistry and elaborate story of his seminal manga series Berserk.

Berserk mangao