Episode 376

[cijhho123]

Well said Aaz, you're always able to put into words my gut feeling about this.

Talking about Rakshas made me remember his eccentric behaviour towards Griffith, so many loose ends that will go unanswered.
After the Mori route will be over, I'd be curious to see your take on the rest of the story, it will be as close to canon as possible for me tbh

 

[Todd Liu]

[...]

What you said is very good, I should share this with conservative fans in China

 

[bodhista]

im sure this has been asked a million times, but has Mori responded to criticism about the continuation? obviously the egregiousness of it all is not lost on Berserk's Japanese fanbase who have the ability to voice their agitation?

 

[Aazealh]

im sure this has been asked a million times, but has Mori responded to criticism about the continuation? obviously the egregiousness of it all is not lost on Berserk's Japanese fanbase who have the ability to voice their agitation?

He addressed it a little bit in a string of interviews he did six months ago.

Reception of the continuation

-Regarding feedback, Hakusensha and Mori have received "a variety of opinions", including negative ones from readers who say they won't read this "fake Berserk". They highlight positive opinions, including from "overseas fans" who are happy the series has restarted. [Yahoo News]
-Mori says even he has mixed feelings about continuing the manga with uninterrupted volume numbering. (as opposed to doing a separate thing) [Yahoo News]
-He says it's natural that some people will be in favor and some against the project, and that it's impossible to satisfy all fans. But he hopes that even fans who dislike the continuation will cherish the 41 volumes that Miura created. [Yahoo News]
-Mori says there are many things he wants to say to Miura. Regarding the continuation, it boils down to "I did what I could." [Yahoo News]
-Mori has been conflicted about the continuation, thinking that maybe they shouldn't be doing this since Miura isn't here anymore, before declaring he'll just pass on Miura's words. [Digital Asahi]
-Mori believes that continuing another mangaka's work shouldn't be done, as "a manga belongs to its creator". However as a mangaka he also knows the pain of a story ending prematurely, before it has been fully told. [Mainichi]
-Mori felt he had no choice but to push for this project because he was the only one who knew the ending, even though under normal circumstances there shouldn't be a Berserk without Miura. [Da Vinci]

 

[bodhista]

He addressed it a little bit in a string of interviews he did six months ago.

wow. {personal vent here that i'm sure ya'll have had many time already}...

so, Mori started out by selling everyone on this idea that he knew - basically - all the plot points and the story lines... he was Miura's best friend and Miura shared all the information with him and discussed in some detail the plot... they took all these walks together and he was, to infer, Miura's confidant, colleague, and soundboard (this is what I gathered from the initial 'continuation' narrative from Mori).

and now you read these various quotes and he is so conflicted and - obviously - not the person he seemingly presented himself to be. the whole 'i hope the fans cherish Miura's work despite what we are doing' is RICH! bro, why are we even engaging with this nonsense? and i'm sure there are possible translation issues here with what he's saying, and i am willing to concede there are cultural possibilities i am not appreciating.... but yeah, this guy came in all gung-ho and now he's wriggling around to avoid accountability for the poor reaction.

and i think i read another interview on here - somewhat recent - where he talked about being unsure of where Miura was going with certain major plot points, and that Miura himself was struggling with these, and how these were HARD and - by extension - critical to the story!

maybe Mori feels compelled to help his friend keep the story alive for Studio Gaga,? i don't know...

anyhow, it's all moot. i'll still subject myself to this continuation in an effort to glean some semblance of closure. i don't doubt that Mirua DID share a lot of the story with Mori... but it's a torrid and ugly and - as we are increasingly seeing - bastardized version which is an affront to the story, the characters, the essence of it.... and basically to Miura himself.

sorry for the rant. i'll end by saying i genuinely think all parties involved have the best intention, but they are just so so SO - from my perspective - misguided. and i just ache for what could have been.

 

[Aazealh]

and i think i read another interview on here - somewhat recent - where he talked about being unsure of where Miura was going with certain major plot points, and that Miura himself was struggling with these, and how these were HARD and - by extension - critical to the story!

Mori said two different things. The first is that with only what he knows, the story doesn't make sense, so the people involved in the project speculate together to "strengthen" the "original work". It's an extremely generous way to describe what they're actually doing, and as you mentioned it goes squarely against the narrative we were originally presented with.

The second quote is about the final parts of the story, and it's not that Miura was struggling with some elements, just that he hadn't necessarily settled on the exact way he wanted to do them yet. Which is rather normal since it was still quite far off. What it comes down to, though, is that Mori only knows some aspects of Miura's planned ending, and isn't sure what to do about the rest of it. Anyway, you can find our thread about that interview here.

 

[Irvine]

I enjoyed the episode. The art is much better now. Honestly I was scared to read 376 but now I want to know how the story continues and I don't feel any dread regarding the next chapters. I'm also interested in how the art style is developing. I like what I see so far.

 

[hsvfan-jan]

Casca. I think Miura intended for her to escape by her own means, finding help with Luka's group (girl power!) and probably having an encounter with Charlotte and possibly Sonia, which might have opened their eyes a tiny little bit.

Tbh it's one of the few things I imagine to still happen somehow. Caska's attempt to flee is probably my personal second "favourite" part (the maelstroem of 366 being my favourite since it felt like it was something they knew Miura wanted to do specifically, otherwise it'd be too specific considering how vague everything else they do is) part attempted in the continuation and it felt like a set-up for when she tries again and hopefully succeeds. So I'm cautiously optimistic about it happening in the continuation

The first is that with only what he knows, the story doesn't make sense, so the people involved in the project speculate together to "strengthen" the "original work".

I just wish they wouldn't try to make sense of the glue that holds the story together. A disjointed (lots of time skips) manga would've been more enjoyable to me. People would be more on the opinion "this is one of Miura's ideas. Let's try to make sense of it ourselves how this situation got established".
Don't know how Caska escapes her prison? Just show her once she got out and meets up with Luka or so. I can already picture how Locus clumsily isn't able to stop Caska running away and puts it off with a "Man, she's a swift one! ", just to angrily grab and squash a stone wall in the next panel (he did it before so he's doing it there as well! ).
It's only beneficial for very casual readers how they're continuing the story now. People, who read earlier volumes years ago and don't want to make the effort of refreshing what happened or who each character was, how the world and the magic system worked and so on.

 

[Aazealh]

the maelstroem of 366 being my favourite since it felt like it was something they knew Miura wanted to do specifically, otherwise it'd be too specific considering how vague everything else they do is

Well it's definitely in line with what Miura had set up in the past, by which I mean it's mostly a callback to what happened in Shet and to Schierke's explanation about why she had to use a bird to observe the events.

I just wish they wouldn't try to make sense of the glue that holds the story together. A disjointed (lots of time skips) manga would've been more enjoyable to me.

I think many fans would like to have a summary without extrapolation, containing only Miura's ideas.

 

[hsvfan-jan]

Well it's definitely in line with what Miura had set up in the past, by which I mean it's mostly a callback to what happened in Shet and to Schierke's explanation about why she had to use a bird to observe the events.

Definitely, but using a specific word for it felt like it was something Miura talked about a bit more specific compared to e.g. "Guts and the group will fight against Griffith" which made the team think it'll be a full-out war (which doesn't feel very much like that was Miura's idea for it).

I think many fans would like to have a summary without extrapolation, containing only Miura's ideas.

Me, too, but they decided to continue the story in manga format (which is understandable from Hakusensha's perspective) and they won't change that fact now so what I wrote is closer to "just the essentials" I think. Maybe they'll at one point realise the current way of doing things isn't for the best and change things up, as unlikely as it currently seems. I'm wary we'll ever get the summary so that's just my preferred way of how the continuation should be continued instead

 

[Vitris]

I decided to finally sit down and put into words what I think about the episode.

I agree with Aaz that the first pages might be about Schierke trying to have Guts and Casca meet or see each other. So, I guess that now Schierke can just pull your soul out of your body? That's kinda creepy... But I guess that she'll use this power this time and then never again, like Daiba's fortunetelling. Now for a little question: why didn't she do this in the first place, bringing Guts with her when she started her ritual? Guts locked himself up in a room but the Kushans opened the door just fine, so Roderick could've tried a bit harder back in episode 371. Of course, the answer is: they don't know how to make characters interact, and are too afraid to have Guts say anything. My guess is that Guts will come back as if nothing had happened, and all that bitching about “MuH sWoRd!!111!1!!” will be thrown out the window, because they can't even explore the things that they themselves insert in the manga. Guts has been in this state for 5/6 episodes, and his condition is as one dimensional as it gets.

And now the Gurus will learn magic (again) with Daiba's help. This will only solidify the fact that Studio Gaga know fuckall about magic in Berserk. One episode they can't use magic, the next one they can, because reasons. 10/10 would read again (I won't).

Basically, having Guts in his emo phase, the Gurus losing their powers and Schierke's ritual were plot conveniances to get the party to reach the Kushans without any struggles or bloodshed whatsoever. I don't know if this is really a bad thing, given how lackluster the “fight” against Zodd was, and how so far only two members of Roderick's crew have died in the dumbest way possible.

Silat's dialogues are some of the worst they've written yet. Besides him not giving two shits about the crew and kinda forgetting who Guts is, why is he saying to Roderick that he should know who they're going to fight against? Of course he doesn't know. Studio Gaga are just making him throw one liners here and there to make him sound cool, but instead he comes off as a douchebag.

I also find pretty funny that Roderick doesn't have a problem with them being dragged into a war that they have no business with, but is afraid of them being handled to Daiba.

This is another forced development: they're not fighting this war because of their own reasons, but because they're forced to by some probably made-up-in-the-spot by Gaga Kushan custom. There is no suspension of disbelief that holds up with a writing this bad.

Another really strange thing is that while they locked up Guts (in a cell that conveniently has only ONE handcuff), everyone else from the crew carries their weapons around. This is just dumb. It would've made more sense if you gave them back their weapons AFTER you told them that they'd be going to war. It gets worse when you remember that Serpico forgot about his sword while they were in the middle of the sea, where they fought pirates and a SEA GOD.

So, it seems that I was right about Studio Gaga completely skipping the Bakiraka's hidden village. Their village is so hidden that neither Mori nor Studio Gaga know where it is, and what role it would've played in the story. Great, that's just what we needed. I can't imagine someone carefully reading all the volumes and not seeing this huge skip, or the other inconsistencies for that matter. So, what we end up with is Silat having all of this informations (most of them being a dumbed down version of what Miura showed in episode 358) about Griffith that he shouldn't have in the first place. Will they even bother explaining how he knows so much about the Hawk of Light? Of course they won't, why would they? That would actually require skill and attention to detail.

I also can't see in any way how they could find out about Griffith's “fear” of astral creatures. How can you get that bit of information by just observing the situation in Falconia from afar, without having any deep knowledge or understanding about the Godhand? Did Daiba tell them? He never really seemed to be someone that had studied the God Hand, unlike Flora and the Gurus (whom still had to figure out Griffith's goal when Guts arrived on the island). Did they just watch him killing giants and then said: “Eureka! You see that? He clearly thinks those are outside of his own principles!”

Also, why is Griffith even going to the East for? He had other things to do regarding Falconia and its borders, but now he's just going to attack the Kushans unprovoked because he “wants to expand his empire”. I mean yeah, this is what Miura already established, even though he pretty much made it clear that that was the main objective that had to be reached by following more steps than what we're seeing in the continuation. There's no way that he planned for Griffith to just go fot it, especially after he said this in ep. 358: “The standing army composed of the soldiers and mercenary of the current royal family and the nobles will be exorbitantly shorthanded”.

It's now more apparent than ever that Mori knows WAAAAYYYYYY less than what he's claimed in the past. I guess this is the part that they've been struggling with that he mentioned in one of the latest interviews? Because if it's not, then the worst is yet to come.

There's already been enough discussion about how Studio Gaga and Mori want to finish the manga as fast as possible, but this is hurting the developement of both characters and plot more than anything, and it keeps getting worse. I really don't understand what they're trying to achieve by half-assedly ending one of the best manga of all time after lying about what they know about the plot's progression and not being able to keep their promises.
I also don't get how they thought it was a good idea to leave Berserk to a mangaka that claims that he could never create a fantasy world like Berserk's and a studio that has no experience in storytelling whatsoever.​