Should I get the Dark Horse Berserk volumes or the Glénat ones?

Hey, Skull Knight forum.

It is as the title says, the Glénat ones are cheaper for me and I don't mind reading in french or spanish but are they worth it in comparison to the Dark Horse ones?
Is the paper quality, the poster quality, the volume sturdiness, the translation, the interpretation of the original as good of a product in relation to the Dark Horse or even the Young Animal editions?:shrug:

Sorry if this has been asked a couple of times before...
Thanks in advance for all the responses. :guts:

By the way, thank you skull knight forum for being a great source of Berserk related information throughout the years.

Have a good one.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
The Japanese volumes have the highest quality. But obviously they're in Japanese so there's that problem.

Glénat's edition does absolutely stand up to Dark Horse's as far as paper quality and printing goes (DH isn't exactly brilliant in these areas).

As for the translation... To be honest I haven't read enough of them to compare. From what I've seen, both Glénat and Dark Horse have problems there. Neither is perfect. I've been thinking recently that I might just try to do an in-depth comparison one of these days, but I'm not promising anything.
 
Thanks for the quick response. :rakshas:

I'm gonna go for the french Glénat volumes for now and maybe I'll even talk about them later in a future thread or something.
It would be great if someone did a breakdown of most (if not all) the Berserk editions out there in the global market.

As a side note, just want to point out that I can't open the link about the forum rules and for now I'm only getting a 404 error.
I'm sure this is only happening because of the recent website overhaul (btw: great job on that). :badbone:
 
I own the french Glénat's edition, but like Aazealh I won't be able to compare it with Dark Horse's. I've never read one of their volumes and even if I did, I don't speak Japanese so I wouldn't know which translation is better. As he already said, in both cases, it's not a perfect one, but personally I'm pretty satisfied with Glénat's even if there is a few noticeable mistakes. At worst, if you have any doubts, SK.net is there for you! :serpico:

I don't know where you're from but about the paper quality, I would say it's approximately the same as any other manga in France, if you own some.
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
It would be great if someone did a breakdown of most (if not all) the Berserk editions out there in the global market.

Funny you mention that. In my spare time I'm trying to buy pretty much all the edition available from around the world even though I cant read most of them since I only speak french and English. I have hald the series in german, 5 volumes in italian, 2 in french, 1 in spanish 5 in japanese, all of them in English and I might have 1 in thaï or korean (not to sure about that one since it's a friend that gave it to me and I have no idea where he got it when he was in asia...). Im a loooong way from having them all obviously but its a fun activity to try and collect them. :guts:
 
Funny you mention that. In my spare time I'm trying to buy pretty much all the edition available from around the world even though I cant read most of them since I only speak french and English. I have hald the series in german, 5 volumes in italian, 2 in french, 1 in spanish 5 in japanese, all of them in English and I might have 1 in thaï or korean (not to sure about that one since it's a friend that gave it to me and I have no idea where he got it when he was in asia...). Im a loooong way from having them all obviously but its a fun activity to try and collect them. :guts:

That seems to be one hell of a challenge! :isidro: Good luck!
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
That seems to be one hell of a challenge! :isidro: Good luck!

It is indeed. To be honest I'm veeeeery lazy on it these days. The french volumes are super easy to get for me at least but the others are a bit more troublesome. I think the main ones that I'll try to complete first will be said french version and the japanese one. Then I'll slowly hunt the other editions. I'd like to complete my german one since I have half the series already.
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
Is Glénat's edition commonly sold in Canada? You can find it in bookstores and such?
Yes, in Québec province, french is the first language. So most of our manga comes from Glénat. And we have a bunch of european comic book too that comes from Glénat. Though its been a while that I've check so I'm not sure if there is a lot of volume in-store. But yeah they are commonly sold in bookstores that sells them of course. :badbone:
 
The Glénat volumes are arguably better than the DH release quality wise. They have simple cover layouts with a simple berserk logo, they have dust jackets so the spines are always consistent, and the paper quality and print is as good if not better than DH. For most of the series, if you end up buying the Glénat volumes during their first printing, the paper quality would be superior to DH volumes and later Glénat printings. They would use the same quality paper that's used in a vagabond vizbig, that nice non-recycled paper. This gives the volumes a heftier weight but at the same time makes the volumes harder to open since the paper is thicker and they use the same amount of glue on the spine. Vizbigs have this same feel, vagabond volumes are not easy to open wide and I highly not recommend doing that, glued spines suck in general. I'm not sure if Glénat still releases volumes in this format since I haven't been keeping up with the last few releases.
 
Just want to warn that the Glénat volumes' pages are cut off a bit at the bottom compared to the original tankōbon (and the Dark Horse volumes).
Here's some examples I took from volume 37 (Japanese, Dark Horse, Glénat):

EHEqecs.jpg

^Notice how much higher Farnese's arms are cut off

5fUlt3s.jpg

^Notice how much higher the hand is cut off

and volume 28 (Dark Horse, Glénat):
to3Y5fk.jpg

^Notice how the Berserker armor bottom helmet is cut off in the right panel

s5eqDEI.jpg

^Notice Schierke's hand cut off on the bottom left

I also have Glénat's volumes 22-38 and they ALL have the same issue with the bottom of the page cutting off some of the artwork.
 
Hey Léon-Solide, thanks for the warning and for taking the time to show those comparisons in this thread. :guts:

Also, a big thanks to everyone in here who helped me out. :badbone:
This question has been bugging me out for some time but thankfully I now know what I'll do.:ubik:

Hope you have a good day. :ganishka:
 
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