Messages

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 355

« on: April 01, 2018, 03:17:57 AM »

The conviction arc had started, but Vol 18 (which takes place in Albion around the Tower of Retribution) and the DC game in Japan came out around the same time. So for those of us following the volume releases at the time, they were probably synonymous.

....

we were still 3 volumes before the actual moment of incarnation.

That's probably what I remember. That the arc had started, but I was still pretty clueless about many events that would transpire between where we were, and the events of the game.

We knew they were headed to Puck's homeland, but I don't think we knew the name Elfhelm until vol 22.

Meh

Not sure what you mean, we're still just starting out the Fantasia Arc (began in vol 35), and the Elf Island Chapter.

Okay, so it is a new arc, I thought it was still the Millennium Falcon arc

If we're remembering the same one, it wasn't so prophetic. It still comes across as BS to me. Here it is: http://www.skullknight.net/forum/index.php?topic=67.msg1452#msg1452

Little less than I remembered, but I have a habit of remembering things that didn't happen. For example:

Nope. I'm afraid you're imagining that scenario. There's an episode that reveals the merrows and the sea god were at war with each other long ago, and that they had sealed him away on the island. Maybe that's it...?

I can vividly remember seeing Isma finding tons and tons of Merrows dead, before finally finding her mother who had been disemboweled or something, but was still barely alive. Shit like this happens to me every day. Dunno what is wrong with my brain. Mandella effect'd. Only thing i can think of is that maybe something similar happened in another manga, and I somehow got them confused.

Hey, welcome back!!

Thanks

What are the aspects of the current art style that irks you? And by "old one", did you mean the Millennium Falcon-era art style?

You still like the Conviction Arc style best? I feel like there's some potential movement in that direction. I was wondering how Miura was going to get more detailed after drawing like every piece of the Kushan military's armor. I'd love to see him go more minimalist and interpretative, precisely because that's clearly not his way. I think he'd feel guilty trying.

What has been bugging me for years is inconsistency. I feel like the art has been inconsistent ever since the end of the conviction arc. Ever since the incarnation in particular it feels like sometimes different artists are drawing. I think waaaaaay back in the day it was speculated it could be Miura's assistants changing. Overall I came to see the art style as improving until just recently. A lot of panels in the Fantasia arc look really iffy to me. The last two episodes in particular look like a whole other manga to me. I dunno if moe is the appropriate term. It could be a deliberate thing to try and set up some sort of visual mood whiplash, in which case I love it, but if not, then I hate it.

I worry that it's more than a deliberate style change. Outlines are looking way thicker, and I'm seeing less line weight. Tones look kinda worse to me as well (that could be shitty scan quality though). Those are common symptoms of switching from traditional to digital. I hope it's just my imagination.

There are a couple other things that bug me here and there (I think most people would just find it nitpicky), for example: I personally think the neck piece on the Berserker armor looked like ass after he transformed the first time. The transformation itself seems like a really sweet idea, but to me the armor looks a little awkward while transformed. The helm looks a tad like a porpoise or something, rather than The Beast. Also rivets, why the fuck are rivets visible on some ancient magical relic - I think that looks stupid, like slapping "made in Taiwan" on it. I feel like Dark Souls managed to convey a similar idea with the Iron Dragonslayer Armor, but managed to pull off the ancient magical look a little better as their are no recognizable fasteners holding it together.

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 355

« on: March 28, 2018, 06:37:35 PM »

Had to come back when I heard the news. I sort of stopped following for a while because I couldn't stand the pace of the manga anymore. It just seemed like so little progress was being made each year. I remember first being exposed to the series in 97, or 98 when I was still in highschool. I found bootlegs on some old website I used to grab DBZ episodes off of back in the old dial-up days. Funimation sued the site, so they took down their DBZ stuff and put up 5 different anime series. Berserk was one of them. It was shortly after that I found BSOM. I ended up buying the laserdiscs for the series, and I quickly got caught up on the manga (as best as I could without knowing Japanese). Then the Dreamcast game came out, I don't think the manga had even started the tower of conviction arc when it came out, but all the way back then the game told us that Guts started his quest for ElfHelm. It has been a long long time since then. As Walter said, I'm an old fart now, but it has finally happened. Does this mean that this story arc has come to an end? Does anyone have that alleged future timeline thing that Olivier got off of a Japanese BBS. I think everything that was outlined has now comes to pass, except for the portions that deal with Gaiseric and the creation of God Hand.

I actually found out about Casca's awakening because I saw a video listed on my recommended youtube videos about some major Berserk related event, and knew what it was. As always I am not liking the artstyle being changed (I had just gotten used to the old one that I didn't like), but maybe Miura intentionally used it to set a sort of fairy-tail-ish tone.

BTW, did Miura remove another episode? every year or so, I would check out whatever the latest episode was, just to see if they had made it to Elfhelm yet, and I distinctly remember reading an ep where Isma goes off on her own to find that the Merrows had been massacred. It wasn't in any of the scanlations I downloaded (I know, shame on me but I'm just getting back into Berserk after I can't remember how many years and I'm jobless ATM, I think the last volume I actually bought was like, 22 or something).

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Re: Movies that influenced Miura

« on: May 27, 2009, 02:56:58 PM »

Sounds like someone's too broke to make a bet/

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Re: Movies that influenced Miura

« on: May 26, 2009, 07:11:47 AM »

I'd bet money that the white streak is a reference to Evil Dead. Miura has seen Army of Darkness at the very least, and mentioned it in one of his interviews.

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Video Games / Re: The Last Guardian

« on: May 22, 2009, 02:38:22 AM »

My mistake, I was under the impression they were the same. I never actually bothered getting there myself. As awesome as I thought sotc was, I never saw any real incentive to explore.

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Video Games / Re: The Last Guardian

« on: May 22, 2009, 12:39:08 AM »

Well, Ueda does say that he wants his intentions to only be considered possible interpretations. I see that as license to make up your own endings. Indeed, there was an Ico fanfic that apparently became a best selling novel at some point.

It's also interesting that the beach that appears in ico's dream appears in the forbidden land that Sotc takes place in.

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Video Games / Re: The Last Guardian

« on: May 21, 2009, 02:28:28 PM »

Yorda didn't die.

Actually she did actually die. The scene on the beach is just a dream Ico has while on the boat. There was an interview Ueda did for 1up that confirmed it. She died, and said her goodbyes as a spirit before Ico's ship sailed off.

Either way, I'm eager to see what they show at E3 (this trailer is actually from almost a year ago, as I understand it, it just never was made public).

It'll also be nice to dust off the PS3. I bought it for MGS4, and haven't played it since.

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Re: Traditional and non-traditional mythology

« on: March 03, 2007, 03:00:16 AM »

http://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Bestiary-David-Day/dp/0517120771

Not really the 'definitive' (i hope i spelt that right) resource but worth a look if your into mythical creatures.

As for an encyclopedia of beserk monsters and their origins go for it would be good to see all of the comparisons between tolkein/warhammer/beserk/mythology/fairy tale/various other writers.

Personally, I don't know that I would consider Tolkien's work 'mythology'. Certainly it's probably fairly influential to Berserk, and draws on many other sources of classical mythology, but I classify it as popular fiction of the fantasy genre. Certainly many myths began as such in their own day, but I don't think many people would call Anne Rice's novels 'vampire mythology' for instance.

Maybe this thread should be expanded beyond mere mythology to general Berserk influences, but I feel that would make things too disorganized.

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Re: Traditional and non-traditional mythology

« on: February 27, 2007, 02:34:19 AM »

There isn't much that I know about the Kelpie, aside from the it being a spirit that each lake apparently has, similar to a water Nymph. Also similar is that it can change its shape at will. Though unlike the Nymph, it seems distinctly malevolent.

In terms of Dwarves, I know in Norse mythology they seem to correspond to the same sort of creatures as in Tolkien's myths, save for the fact that they are not described as particularly stout. In some descriptions the term Dwarf or Troll or even Dark elf are used interchangeably, but the author of the book I mentioned earlier suggests this to be a translation error, and feels that there is indeed a distinction.

In regards to Miura's usage of the word "elf", or "elven", it seems that this author would use the word "Fey" (though romanized differently) creatures, or "Fairie" much the same way. Perhaps "fairfolk" might also be accurate. In terms of the origin of the word, there is a lengthy introduction at the beginning which discusses maybe 10 or more different theories on that very subject, but the one which he seems to put stock in is that the word dates back to the indo-persian word "Peri". The creatures described in the short tale are not dissimilar to that of Arabian Jinn or Greek Nymphs, or Tolkien's elves in some respects, but there isn't enough info to get a real description of what they were like.

The word itself "Elf" is thought to originate from the Norse word "Alfar", but I know very little about the Norse Elves aside from them being divided into light and dark kinds.

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Re: Traditional and non-traditional mythology

« on: February 26, 2007, 09:57:08 PM »

I'm sorry, the only books I know that I could recommend you are in French. It's an interesting topic though, I'm glad some people are reading up on it. I always found that Miura's interpretation of these old concepts was exceptional, but unfortunately not many people can even understand that.

I'd be happy to check them out anyway. If I know the titles and/or authors I might be able to find English translations of some.

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Berserk Miscellaneous / Traditional and non-traditional mythology

« on: February 26, 2007, 09:05:10 PM »

I recently started reading a number of books on Viking era mythology. In my quest to search for better descriptions of the creatures, artifacts, and places surrounding these myths, I ended up learning about the origins of some of these myths, and learning that there really is no end to it all.

For instance, In a book by Thomas Keightley (The world Guide to Gnomes, fairies, Elves, and Other Little People), I learned that fairies and elves date back not to Scandinavia or even Europe as I had always thought, but pre-historic Mesopotamia, and creatures in whom the author feels the word "fairy" is rooted from can be found in both Zoroastrianism and Vedic religions.

I was hoping that some people here had books they could recommend on mythology, general or specific, especially those that attempt to reveal the origins of not only words associated with ancient myths, but concepts surrounding them (for instance, when did the idea of pointed ears get attributed to elves?). It doesn't have to be limited to conventional mythology, Indo-Persian, East Asian, African, they are all welcome.

I figure this would be a pretty good thread to discuss Miura's interpretation of mythological concepts as well. So far we've had dozens of discussions of mythology scattered throughout other threads, but if people feel, they could treat this thread as a place to centralize said discussions. I only ask that people cite sources, especially literary ones.

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Video Games / Re: Ōkami

« on: October 20, 2006, 06:03:57 AM »

Gimmicy? Nearly every element of the game is based on this "gimmic", it is the game in a lot of ways, hardly a lame gimmic.

Oh and as to the closing of CLover studios, it should be noted that both Hideki Kamiya and Inaba have left Capcom. Rumors are they might start up a new studio themselves. Shinji MIkami did stay Capcom though.

I think Mikami had already left Capcom and had started his own company early this year.

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Shootin' the Breeze / Re: I cant believe this is not a scam

« on: July 30, 2006, 01:22:04 PM »

If it was any longer than 30 minutes.....

If you want extra money, work for it.

What do you do for a living? Because seriously, I'm not familar with many professions that pay $140 an hour, unless you're willing to take a load internally.

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 277

« on: July 24, 2006, 10:04:06 AM »

I would be surprised if Zodd were to die. That's kinda funny, how a few episodes ago I was expecting the protagonist to die, but Zodd seems far fetched. Either way I dunno if I can last 4 more days.

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Shootin' the Breeze / Re: Shadow of the Colossus

« on: June 29, 2006, 02:03:49 AM »

I know what you're talking about, but I'm not so sure it qualifies. It'd be Colossi 0 anyway 

Close enough.

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Shootin' the Breeze / Re: Shadow of the Colossus

« on: June 29, 2006, 01:13:05 AM »

Technically there is a 17th colossi, but you don't fight it.

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Vagabond / Re: Vagabond Returns.

« on: June 28, 2006, 01:22:10 AM »

I saw that one, and a magazine or something that looks like it has some unreleased vagabond artwork, but neither seem like what you would call "artbooks", so I dunno.

Update 2: I just emailed Inoue and the Itplanning staff. His PR guy responded to me once before pretty quickly, when I'd asked if Inoue was returning to the series after volume 20 (yes, he was, of course).

Oh, neat. I'm interested in seeing how things turn out.

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Vagabond / Re: Vagabond Returns.

« on: June 28, 2006, 12:29:53 AM »

It wasn't specified whether it was the US or Japan, actually.

I should have checked first. Even if it is a Japan only thing, I don't give a damn, I'll be getting them, it's just i don't think I've seen them on amazon.co.jp before.

edit: actually, I seem to still be having trouble finding it.

edit: even inoue's website doesn't have mention of them.

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Vagabond / Re: Vagabond Returns.

« on: June 27, 2006, 11:49:54 PM »

I just heard that there are going to be two different Vagabond artbooks. Confirm/deny.

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 276

« on: June 27, 2006, 11:41:57 PM »

I don't care about grammar much either but agreed with you and looked it up in Webster's anyways and actually:

Shit, that's what happens when you don't standardize a language.

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 276

« on: June 25, 2006, 02:21:36 AM »

Here's the thing, even if there wasn't a glaring weakness in his apostle form, MAGIC is what puts him well above any of the other apostles. Magic is something Griffith doesn't have and is fearful of. Magic is what allowed him to fry all those flying apostles like a shooting gallery. With Magic, he's able to take on the hawks army like this, irregardless of his apostle form's strength

That is assuming that the lightening is magic rather than an apostle ability.

Also, I know my grammer and spelling suck ass, so I should be the last person to go grammer nazi, but irregardless isn't a word. It's a combination of irrespective and regardless.

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 276

« on: June 25, 2006, 01:45:18 AM »

You know, I'm not sure if I can articulate why I think that if Ganishka's apostle form weren't related to the fog, that his interest in magic would have to stem from some glaring weakness stemming from his apostle form.

Regardless of my inability to explain, as well as the availability of alternate explainations, it's still a hunch I wouldn't be able to shake.

Either way, if it turns out i'm wrong, it's not something that that I'll have trouble accepting once I see it, it's just I'll have to see it first.

As far as WHY I can't see why the fog as anything besides Ganishka himself is because I can't see why he would he stop there? Why not flame, the sea, and light itself. You would think if Ganishka would be able to manipulate them all in the exact same way he manipulates fog; without requiring some sort familar being present within the manifested 'body'. He wouldn't have had to use the snake familar within Kundalini (which made that familar extremely vunerable when compared to the fog). yes, I know it was Daiba that summoned it, but if Ganishka could do it, why not allow Daiba as well, infact why have subordinate magic users at all?

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Current Episodes / Re: Episode 276

« on: June 24, 2006, 08:31:40 PM »

If Ganishka's fog form isn't his apostle form, then I'd be willing to bet that, as an apostle he is completely and utterly underwhelming. It would explain the Kushan's heavy reliance on magic.

I'm still not convinced that the fog isn't his apostle form though.

Also, I think Daiba's survival is proof enough that Ganishka will not be dying. Retreating perhaps, but definately not dying. There is no reason for him to survive if Miura is killing off his master. Therefore Ganishka's survival is pretty much garunteed.

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Shootin' the Breeze / Re: Korgoth of Barbaria

« on: June 21, 2006, 08:22:47 PM »

I've been waiting for fucking ever for VB season 2. I can't wait.

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Vagabond / Re: Vagabond Returns.

« on: June 21, 2006, 01:43:03 PM »

Out of curiosity... who here has read Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi?

Me. Probably the best novel I've read. I tried to read Shogun afterwards and was just like "ugh".