Episode 370

Keeping up with the episodes post 364 and this community I've come to realize Aazealh, Walter, Griffith, Grail and the other veterans seem to know how to continue the story better than Mori and Studio Gaga. No disrespect meant to them, and of course they knew Miura, but when looking into it from a pure story perspective the post 364 episodes have had so many major blunders that easily could've been solved (which people here pointed out) and dialogue that's been... terrible.. which the veterans here made much, MUCH better. Mori having known Miura for so long... unfortunately doesn't mean it'll make good episodes. But the old guys here who've studied Berserk to the absolute max, genuinely could make a better continuation if coupled with a few great artists (of which there is no shortage of in the Berserk community). With Miura's broad stroke and this community's almost scary sense of detail we'd get great episodes.
 
Keeping up with the episodes post 364 and this community I've come to realize Aazealh, Walter, Griffith, Grail and the other veterans seem to know how to continue the story better than Mori and Studio Gaga. No disrespect meant to them, and of course they knew Miura, but when looking into it from a pure story perspective the post 364 episodes have had so many major blunders that easily could've been solved (which people here pointed out) and dialogue that's been... terrible.. which the veterans here made much, MUCH better. Mori having known Miura for so long... unfortunately doesn't mean it'll make good episodes. But the old guys here who've studied Berserk to the absolute max, genuinely could make a better continuation if coupled with a few great artists (of which there is no shortage of in the Berserk community). With Miura's broad stroke and this community's almost scary sense of detail we'd get great episodes.
The point Is that Mori Is the only one to have an idea of how Miura would have continued and end the story.... I appreciate the "veteran" input but I personally want the story to come, to be told as close as possibile to what Miura envisioned, and not to be completely fan fiction
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Just to be clear, neither I nor Walter or anyone else here has any pretension of coming up with the rest of the story in Miura's stead. That's why I refused to indulge in the exercise last year. Personally I remain invested in the continuation in order to learn what Miura intended, which only Mori can tell us about. That being said, it is within our purview as dedicated fans to discuss and critique the way the new team is portraying said intent and to speculate on what Miura himself might have done.
 
Too much thinking about the sword & not enough thinking about Casca!!! She would be the first thing on his mind!! He should be extremly worried, mad at Griffith + Zodd and angry at himself that he couldn't protect her, not complaining that the sword failed. Casca isn't even depicted in his weird sword flash backs. Why?? What?? :mozgus:

Also there is one panel that baffles me. Was it really necessary to depict a closeup of Schierke's face right next to her entire head? It adds nothing. Really odd choice. Not only that but before and after that we see Schierke's head again. So she is depicted 4 times just standing there talking. In my opinion it disrupts the flow.:shrug:
 
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Yeah that's got to be the cherry on top: she's not depicted even though she was actually there in two of the scenes they show (hundred men fight, bonfire of dreams).
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Honestly that was my biggest gripe with this episode, Casca came back after so long, and ever since the continuation started, she hasn't felt like an actual character for a single panel. It almost feels like they're brushing her aside so that Guts can "struggle" more by himself.
It wouldn't suprise me if Casca doesn't get to do a single thing for the rest of the manga until Guts saves her. It all depends on how much Mori knows... And even then, I don't trust he'll do justice the things he does know.
 
It wouldn't suprise me if Casca doesn't get to do a single thing for the rest of the manga until Guts saves her.
I hope that's not what's going to happen...Miura who wouldn't do it...His bff on the other hand...who knows.

It's frustrating. I don't hate Mori or everyone else working on Berserk. But I dislike this new Guts who is more concerned about his sword then about his girlfriend. The flashbacks makes it look like Casca never had any impact on him. Suddenly it was always THE SWORD(s).

I don't believe for a minute that this is was that Miura told Mori. I'm not saying Mori is making it up but it's not right either. But well...it's just what Mori rememberes and memories are very unreliable.
 
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Sailors loading Guts on the ship because he's too depressed to move by himself? Molda, a teenage slacker, taking charge of the entire group of refugees and bossing around Serpico and Farnese? Still Molda, who knows next to nothing about the group, explaining to Schierke of all people what the dangers of the Berserk's armor are? And acting as if being depressed is a danger (it's not)? Roderick frantically yelling at Guts not to kill himself? Or is it Guts, crying to himself while thinking about one of his swords from the Golden Age (the one that broke while fighting Boskone, when he needed it the most)? And while having forgotten Casca? I'll tell you the answer: none of this came from Miura. All of it came from Mori and the staff.
I wonder if Studio Gaga and Mori read through all of Berserk before undertaking this impossible task. You can't possibly make all those choices if you read and understood Berserk up until the last episode Miura wrote...right?? :judo:

They just don't make any sense.
 
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My most charitable read would be that Guts is so shell-shocked currently he can't even bring himself to think too specifically about what happened yet. I know that's bullshit though.

Chances are Guts being frustrated at his powerlessness and Guts freaking out about Casca are gonna be two separate scenes. Perhaps once Schierke more directly addresses what happened it'll drive him over the edge and he will go Berserk?

If there's one single thing I can give them, it's that certain aspects are definitely being emphasized for a reason. Guts impotently swinging at Griffith for two episodes was clearly set up for this scene, so that gives me the slightest hope this scene with Molda is actually building to something.
 
I'm happy that more people are enjoying this continuation. I'm not in that group, but it's nice to see. That said, I need to express some discontent here from my experience of this episode.
The art seems to have gone from either mostly bad with occasional good moments or mostly good with occasional wonky moments to mostly just okay. It's hard to describe, but it all just seems off. Everything feels a little blockier, a little fuzzier, a little less detailed. It seems like this is around where it will settle. I would hope with the final arc that they'd settle for a bi-monthly release instead of monthly so they could dedicate more time to fine-tuning the art. But there's no indication that would lead to better quality, and perhaps YA wouldn't allow it.
The characters seem to be just reverting to their simplest tropes, with Farnese having her signature "I'm useless" breakdown being a sad regression from how far she'd come. I had sincerely hoped we were past all that. But I suppose Miura didn't tell Mori she was, so her crying helplessly is still on the table whenever the need arises.
Puck and Ivalera are still around! Why? I don't know, but it's good to see them being all elfy. In the past, I may have looked forward to an explanation as to what's going on, but now I can only assume the explanation is "just don't think about it."
As others have pointed out, Guts being paralyzed by the big sad is laughable, and the idea that he is still focused solely on that with nary a thought in Casca's direction is even worse. This idea of having a crisis over the sword and then Casca later makes me concerned we'll get some shonen scene of his crew giving him a pep-talk about how he's not alone in his struggle, and how they're all his nakama. Some ham-fisted moment of him realizing "did I forget what was precious to me again, again?"
I'm just getting cantankerous about this whole thing, which is depressing in and of itself.
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
I don't believe for a minute that this is was that Miura told Mori. I'm not saying Mori is making it up but it's not right either. But well...it's just what Mori rememberes and memories are very unreliable.
I wonder if Studio Gaga and Mori read through all of Berserk before undertaking this impossible task. You can't possibly make all those choices if you read and understood Berserk up until the last episode Miura wrote...right?? :judo:
These are some things that have been going through my mind as I've been reading through the continuation, too. I would like to think that the team and Mori had done their homework and read the series before getting started on these new episodes, but there are some glaring errors that strike me as a fundamental misunderstanding of characters and story elements. This has got to stick out to even some casual fans.

As we've discussed, the idea of Mori just writing what Miura told him without any embellishment at all is impossible, so the onus is on him and the team to stick as closely as they can to the facts of the series. Given that the story's intricacies are going to become even more important as the continuation pushes forward, I really hope that they can tighten things up on that end.
If there's one single thing I can give them, it's that certain aspects are definitely being emphasized for a reason. Guts impotently swinging at Griffith for two episodes was clearly set up for this scene, so that gives me the slightest hope this scene with Molda is actually building to something.
I dunno. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here, but so many things have been set up without a satisfying explanation (the gnawers, the disappearance of the elves (including Isma) on Elfhelm, only leaving Puck and Ivalera for no discernable reason), makes for a very jarring reading experience, and I don't think we have a reason to believe that that's going to change. The feeling of trust I wanted to give the team at the announcement of this endeavor has been eroded, I'm sorry to say.
 
I dunno. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here, but so many things have been set up without a satisfying explanation (the gnawers, the disappearance of the elves (including Isma) on Elfhelm, only leaving Puck and Ivalera for no discernable reason), makes for a very jarring reading experience, and I don't think we have a reason to believe that that's going to change. The feeling of trust I wanted to give the team at the announcement of this endeavor has been eroded, I'm sorry to say.
The knawers, as awful and poorly explained as they were, still served a function. Whether or not they were always planned to serve that function or if they were invented to handwoven why the island falls apart is another matter. Puck and Ivalera still being around for no reason is definitely baffling though.

I guess I'm just assuming this is going to be so bare bones that anything at all that points to a future event basically has to pay off, but who knows.
 
I thought this episode was better than the last few.
- Guts being effectively broken by being unable to land a hit on Griffith and focusing on that aspect as opposed to Casca's recapture makes some sense to me. As has already been mentioned, I'm assuming that Guts felt that he'd be able to do some damage to Griffith considering all of the dramatic battles Guts had won up to this point and considering that Griffith had taken a physical form again. In the previous episode, I felt that Studio Gaga had dropped the ball by not having Guts say something along the lines of, "... once again, I failed to protect her. Even now, I couldn't land a single blow..." which would've tied Casca's capture in with Guts' failure to hit Griffith, but this episode has me thinking that the intent was always to have Guts get broken over the idea that he was still effectively powerless compared to Griffith. I don't know if his inability to attack Femto back in Volume 3 would've played a role here, since he tried to attack Griffith at the Hill of Swords, but never got a chance to see how that would turn out thanks to Zodd (hell, Zodd protecting Griffith could have furthered a belief in Guts that Griffith was vulnerable now).
- Given that Molda is a witch of Elfhelm, I don't find it that much of a stretch that she would know about the Berserk armor, or that she would assume Schierke doesn't know all there is to know about it (since, from her perspective, Schierke is an outsider).
- I'm assuming Puck and Ivalera did not disappear because they were interested/immersed in the outside world, whereas those that disappeared likely had no interest in the outside world. If it turns out that Molda is the only magic user from Elfhelm to not escape, I assume this would be the reasoning there as well.
- Emotions are weird things, and grief can turn into rage rather quickly. Everyone being on edge with regards to the Berserk armor wasn't all that surprising to me.

That said, all of these are just reasons that I came up with, and clearly weren't communicated at all in the actual episodes, so there are definitely holes that Team Gaga should fill in the future.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
- Guts being effectively broken by being unable to land a hit on Griffith and focusing on that aspect as opposed to Casca's recapture makes some sense to me. As has already been mentioned, I'm assuming that Guts felt that he'd be able to do some damage to Griffith considering all of the dramatic battles Guts had won up to this point and considering that Griffith had taken a physical form again.

Guts isn't a moron. Griffith may have a corporeal body, but he's an extraordinarily powerful supernatural entity. It's one thing to be shocked and dismayed that he couldn't do anything. That's completely normal. It's another to focus solely on that and wax poetic about lost trust towards his sword while completely ignoring the actual, real, bigger issue, which is that Casca was abducted.

- Given that Molda is a witch of Elfhelm, I don't find it that much of a stretch that she would know about the Berserk armor, or that she would assume Schierke doesn't know all there is to know about it (since, from her perspective, Schierke is an outsider).

Both of them went down to Hanarr's place and Molda didn't know anything about the armor then, while she saw Schierke handle it like a pro and complimented her on it.

- I'm assuming Puck and Ivalera did not disappear because they were interested/immersed in the outside world, whereas those that disappeared likely had no interest in the outside world. If it turns out that Molda is the only magic user from Elfhelm to not escape, I assume this would be the reasoning there as well.

The merrows, who didn't belong on the island and (except Isma) didn't even step foot on it, did disappear. That directly contradicts what you're saying, which by the way has no basis in the rules of Berserk's world as we understand them. As for Molda, she's obviously not the only magic user to have "not escaped(?)" (not sure what you mean here) since the hold of the Sea Horse is filled with magicians. Molda isn't unique.
 
The knawers, as awful and poorly explained as they were, still served a function. Whether or not they were always planned to serve that function or if they were invented to handwoven why the island falls apart is another matter.

Unfortunately, we are left to keep attempting to fill in the blanks. Like maybe one intention —for the gnawers, was to show (literally and symbolically) how the past gnaws at the present. That no matter how deep you bury it, and no matter how much time has passed, it will find a way to come back and destroy you. So Guts, Casca, and everyone else in the same boat, must to find a way to resolve or conquer the past, to truly live in the present.
 
Oh god, this episode was pretty bad.
I really wanted to like it but the almost all the dialogues and the characters expressions felt artificial to me.

And about Guts...
The only valuable explanation would be that by experience this tragic event, he's recalling his earliest memory, which was using a sword to protect his own life.
And THEN after this episode they gonna finally convey how he's feeling about Casca.

Otherwise this is very disappointing and unacceptable.
 
I said my thoughts on Casca earlier, but reading through the continuation episodes again, Guts hasn't felt like a character either. At best he feels like a caricature of the character we once knew. All of his personality traits have been exaggerated, from his rage, to his suffering, it all justs feels like the person writing his lines has no idea who Guts is.
From episode 365, his character went from "GRIFFITH!!" to "I couldn't land a single hit" to "My sword is the only thing I've trusted", basically a Guts only focused on fighting, and specifically killing Griffith, and how I'd imagine a fan that only reads Berserk for the gore and suffering to write it.

In the end, even if the main points of the story moving forward come from Miura, the way my favorite characters are written will always sour me on it. (Not to mention the numerous inconsistencies in the last few episodes, but I've gotten sort of used to them by now).
 
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