jackson_hurley
even the horses are cut in half!
Thats what I usually do but have been slacking. Ive pick up my volume 1 last week to restart the series.
Itll be a good refresher and will sooth my heart from those awfull continuation episodes.
Episode 384
- Thread starter Aazealh
- Start date
Itll be a good refresher and will sooth my heart from those awfull continuation episodes.
It is worse than seeing Guts doing the Yamcha and I thought they couldn't go lower.
Understandable error here on your part. You see, Rakshas is an exiled Bakiraka, a Kushan. Berserk's Kushan Empire is a sort of exoticized depiction of the Near East and India. Clearly Rakshas is a yoga master and contorted his original body into a puddle. Being unable to escape this hellish form, his beherit activated, in his time of deepest puddled agony. And later, having died, he turned back into a puddle.
On a more serious note, I sympathize with a lot of the concerns people have here on this forum and I would agree that the Continuation ought to be seen as a separate work, not as Berserk proper. Which, as I understand, is also how Mori and Co view it? It's fanfiction (friendfiction?) made by people who have clues or some kind of outline to the broader story.
I'm hoping that this "You have always dwelled in the threshold, Guts!" thing doesn't mean that he's always been in the Interstice. That would definitely seem like a retcon/inconsistency. Or, at least, if he has, it's been on a much more subtle (and less demon-attracting) level until he got the Brand. I saw people on Reddit have wildly differing interpretations of this latest chapter, and I can't really say I have any clue what is happening either.
I could connect dots between "threshold dweller", and having "the devil's luck", and having some "connection to the elves". Those latter two things have always stood out to me, so I guess I never got invested in the idea of Guts being entirely non-supernatural. That and being born from a corpse making him exceptional at escaping death seems more of a figurative thing than literal- unless, of course, it has had some supernatural influence. Being born from a corpse, I'd think, would realistically just make you sickly more than anything. Not so if magic is involved.
Magic, if I recall correctly, is something that anyone can theoretically learn, right? Mind over matter kind of stuff. So having some kind of vague magic aura by default wouldn't really be "inhuman" of Guts by the standards of the setting.
A subtle supernatural attunement would explain his freakish inhuman strength. Swinging a giant two-handed sword with your mouth is a bit much even for a guy as buff as him. And much of magic is fundamentally about one's will, right? So that at least wouldn't contradict the "achieving things by human will" concept.
But, that's just speculation on my end, and I don't know how any of this will play out. Maybe I'll come to be on your guys' side more.
Hi and welcome! Just wanted to clarify for the record that while we were apprehensive about the Continuation project (because we knew it would be really difficult to pull it off), it's not like we didn't give it a chance. We very much did and it's only because the inconsistencies kept accumulating that we had no choice but to face the truth. We simply came to the realization faster than some other people.
I don't know what translation you may have seen, but Flora does use the word for "Interstice" in Japanese, the exact same one that's been used in the series since the beginning. There's absolutely no doubt as to what she means.
Yeah several people have told us about it and, in short, those interpretations are wrong. Here's what I personally had to say about this episode, if you care to check it out.
Except Guts was already in the Interstice by the time he first lifted the Dragon Slayer. No need for any of this stuff. See? Miura had already taken care of it.
All enforcement of rules is based on common sense and is left up to the administrative team. In this case, you were arguing the opposite of your previous post: First saying Zodd didn't need guidance through the World Tree, then later that of course he couldn't do it without Griffith or Sonia (neither of whom were there to guide him); as well as first saying Guts is "outside the causal system" and then arguing that "Guts and Skull Knight are part of the flow of causality". You also said castle walls would protect people against Fantasia, despite everyone who read Episode 306 seeing a dragon on top of a castle. Such mistakes and contradictions are exactly what happens when you press a chatbot who forgets key facts.
Now, certainly you can say that you didn't use AI in your post or reasoning, and maybe it's even true, but that's only incidental to the real issue: You're here arguing to argue, without a coherent point and clearly without a proper understanding of the material you're referencing. So we're either wasting time talking with a bot, or someone who doesn't actually understand the series, nor is willing to listen to reason when given actual proof against their claims. You see the issue?
The reason this forum is considered to be surprisingly civil and qualitative is because we actively discourage bad faith arguments and mindless back-and-forths. That means curtailing certain posts. I know it's not pleasant when it happens to you, and you might even claim we're censoring you, but you're not owed the right to shitpost or troll. If you find that too stringent, then you and anyone else is free not to participate here.
Anyone genuinely interested in furthering their understanding of Berserk and in discussing their ideas is welcome here, and always has been. But in order to preserve a sane space for discussion in an increasingly chaotic online world brimming with new opportunities for shitposting, we will not allow continuous posts that disagree with established facts of the series just for the sake of airing it out of your mind.
Agreed 100%. Part of why Berserk was so great and has been for 30 years was that for all this time Miura not only developed his storytelling/storyboarding/drawing skills but he also had the opportunity to growth as a human being. Setting up his own company, hire employees, living family life, watching TV, reading books, for sure witnessing many life situations that had impact on him as a person. Manga as a medium also allowed to elevate this experience due to it's episodic release. It really shows when you look for example how grand and tasteful Farnese development had been that spans for several volumes - a true mark for not only a genius artist but also mature man.
This also is one of many problems with Continuation - I think the team not only lacks understanding of the story or other things that many of you pointed out. They lacks also the depth of a mature human being.
if you don’t want to like the continuation, that’s fine. I just don’t understand how people can call this a cash grab. They took nearly a year to release this chapter. The releases are way too infrequent to consider this a cash grab. Studio Gaga are clearly trying to handle this with care and respect to Miura’s memory. People calling this a cash grab or even trying to claim that Mori is lying about the details he was given by Miura is really disrespectful. It’s silly to act like we knew Miura and his vision better than someone who was actually his close friend
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Hi Cblu and welcome!
Just to clarify: it's not like people are claiming that they knew Kentarou Miura better than Mori did on a personal level. That's obviously not the case and nobody is actually doing that. What we're doing instead is pointing out the numerous and undeniable discrepancies between what Miura created and what the Continuation team is doing. From that follows a simple, if painful, deduction: it really doesn't seem very faithful at all. Of course it's fine if you don't care about it, that's your choice. But we're not going to stop talking about it.
Like any community online, there's not one doctrine for how we collectively feel about the continuation. We're all individuals with our own opinions. My thoughts: I think it's gone off course from where Miura had left things, but the people making it are doing so earnestly, not cynically. They chose an extremely difficult path—translating Mori's patchwork memories of Miura's plans into an episodic continuation. And the cracks in its consistency and coherence are starting to show to many of us.
That said, it's obtuse to think that money played NO role in the decision to continue Berserk in this fashion. Afterall, the decision wasn't Mori's alone. He was crucial for credibility. But I can guarantee you some bean counters at Hakusensha weighed this opportunity versus cancellation and saw money. The assistants also had their own livelihoods to consider when deciding to stay on or seek new work after Miura's death. So money is a factor. I just don't think it's the driving one for those doing the work, because it can't possibly be that much money.
It's pretty simple: When something doesn't add up, we say so. The alternative is to unplug our brains and ignore our sense of inconsistencies. Why would we do that? Because talking about it makes someone on the internet mad? I can live with that.
It's true that Mori has special knowledge from his casual talks with Miura over the years that no one else has on the planet. But he also evidently hasn't tracked Berserk's details closely, because plenty of things don't make sense and I doubt they'll be addressed or rationalized at this point. He's even expressed frustration at not being able to remember things well, or understood what Miura meant. If you think that's ridiculous, then I encourage you to read what he's actually said over the years since this project began, because it may surprise you.
Just sharing some thoughts here...
I wonder if the easiest (not that it's easy to make at all) route would be Skull Knight telling Guts about Griffith and the Moonlight Boy sharing the same body, instead of him hearding Flora's speech inside a Stupa.
Not that Guts didn't understand this (as he saw his son transforming in real time IIRC), but by explaining that this is a major vulnerability for Griffith.
That would also create a conflict : would he kill his own son in order to defeat Griffith?
Not only that, but would it be the same wish as Casca?
Perhaps he could also tell Guts that no one but him could save her. Which sounds stupid, since it should be very obvious for Guts.
But for the way he is being treated in the Continuation, it is less worse, I guess?
Perhaps they gonna make exactly this in the next episodes, though...
I wonder if the easiest (not that it's easy to make at all) route would be Skull Knight telling Guts about Griffith and the Moonlight Boy sharing the same body, instead of him hearding Flora's speech inside a Stupa.
Not that Guts didn't understand this (as he saw his son transforming in real time IIRC), but by explaining that this is a major vulnerability for Griffith.
That would also create a conflict : would he kill his own son in order to defeat Griffith?
Not only that, but would it be the same wish as Casca?
Perhaps he could also tell Guts that no one but him could save her. Which sounds stupid, since it should be very obvious for Guts.
But for the way he is being treated in the Continuation, it is less worse, I guess?
Perhaps they gonna make exactly this in the next episodes, though...
The thing is, I don't think that's what this episode is trying to address at all. I feel like it's doing two things:
- Providing an excuse for Guts to get out of his funk and back in business, all the while not really reflecting on anything to any great extent
- Providing a solution to the fact he could not hit Griffith when the Continuation started
Now obviously, the problem is that it's not how Griffith's power works. He doesn't phase out of reality, rather he distorts the fabric of reality around him, as we saw him do with the Skull Knight in volume 34. Another issue is that Guts was already in the Interstice anyway, due to the Brand. But I think they're just going to ignore those details. And of course it's also possible they've got a completely different, even crazier idea in mind. You can never quite be sure with these guys...
So why else continue Berserk instead of Duranki, a project that was specifically created with the idea of training his assistants to do more work? It's obviously not purely money related, but being the ones to "finish" Berserk should give them a career boost.
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Hey, I just want to clarify something.
Mori being Miura friend doesn't grant him immunity. We already have two opposite examples in the west of actual biological sons and how they acted with their Father's work. I think that's a more deeper relationship than best friends (Blood thicker than water and all).
1.Christopher Tolkien (Son of R.R Tolkien, Author of Lord of the Rings)
He held his dad's work in high esteem and released all the notes in a single book. He did not try to add or alter anything.
2.Brian Herbert (Son of Frank Herbert, Author of Dune)
has been grifting Dune fans for 61 years over the existence or non-existence of his father's Dune notes that he uses as a basis to justify his own Dune novels as canon yet he refuses to publish or share his father's Dune notes to the public. Brian Herbert even refuses to take a photograph of his father's Dune notes. In early 2000's he slipped and said the dune 7 notes his father left were like barely few sentences. Then said in the 2010's that they're thousands of lines but even so that doesn't justify the fact that he made over 20 dune books (the original series is 6 books by the way).
Mori is in my view the Japanese version of Brian Herbert. Even worse since all the things miura told him could have changed (As said by mori himsellf, Miura tended to change things in the go) and even things he has written (the god chapter). Also the dialouge and characterizatin is something Miura would likely not go in detail with Mori. Unless someone seriously believes Miura told him every single panel and dialouge for 10+ volumes somehow and somehow that Mori remembered it all in detail. At most Miura told him some major plot points that can change while writing.
Mori being Miura friend doesn't grant him immunity. We already have two opposite examples in the west of actual biological sons and how they acted with their Father's work. I think that's a more deeper relationship than best friends (Blood thicker than water and all).
1.Christopher Tolkien (Son of R.R Tolkien, Author of Lord of the Rings)
He held his dad's work in high esteem and released all the notes in a single book. He did not try to add or alter anything.
2.Brian Herbert (Son of Frank Herbert, Author of Dune)
has been grifting Dune fans for 61 years over the existence or non-existence of his father's Dune notes that he uses as a basis to justify his own Dune novels as canon yet he refuses to publish or share his father's Dune notes to the public. Brian Herbert even refuses to take a photograph of his father's Dune notes. In early 2000's he slipped and said the dune 7 notes his father left were like barely few sentences. Then said in the 2010's that they're thousands of lines but even so that doesn't justify the fact that he made over 20 dune books (the original series is 6 books by the way).
Mori is in my view the Japanese version of Brian Herbert. Even worse since all the things miura told him could have changed (As said by mori himsellf, Miura tended to change things in the go) and even things he has written (the god chapter). Also the dialouge and characterizatin is something Miura would likely not go in detail with Mori. Unless someone seriously believes Miura told him every single panel and dialouge for 10+ volumes somehow and somehow that Mori remembered it all in detail. At most Miura told him some major plot points that can change while writing.
One positive note for this episode in particular was the appearance of Shisu...
I don't recall her being shown since her death. It's just so small though that I can't ignore the rest.
My post was mostly referring to what I think that should be done and also what they gonna do in a future episode.
But perhaps I'm wrong, as your explained, since they've already shown an excuse to Guts get out of depression and provided a (stupid) reason for why he couldn't hit Griffith.
I wonder if they even gonna use Skull Knight again...there's no way to tell.
I don't recall her being shown since her death. It's just so small though that I can't ignore the rest.
Oh, I understand.
My post was mostly referring to what I think that should be done and also what they gonna do in a future episode.
But perhaps I'm wrong, as your explained, since they've already shown an excuse to Guts get out of depression and provided a (stupid) reason for why he couldn't hit Griffith.
I wonder if they even gonna use Skull Knight again...there's no way to tell.
Well if I remember correctly, their explanation was that they felt that the ending could only be properly presented continuing the manga rather than just giving a brief summary or notes of how it ends. Again, the releases are way too sparse for this to be a cash grab. If it was, they’d be pumping out chapters without a care in the world.
Well yeah of course it’s a business at the end of the day but I think you misunderstand the term “cash grab”. They’re basically saying the only reason for the continuation is money motivated. This is clearly not the case with how long they’re taking to release these chapters.
Maybe this is a quibble, but I dont think the members of Studio Gaga are being paid per release. It's employment at the end of the day, whether they release 3 or 30 episodes in a year.
While I don't agree that it's a "cash grab" in the sense you say above, I'm not everybody. But, there are certainly people out there who say there was NO money factor here at all, it's all goodwill for Miura.It can't possibly be that much money?
Lets do the math here (Manga volume sales only)
Talking to the creator of “Kaguya-sama: Love is War”! The dark side of the manga industry!? | Guya.moe
Has Aka ever slept on top of another guy? Roughly how much money does Aka make? Does Aka like Apex Legends? Answers to these questions and more! The interview itself is worth a listen too, if you understand Japanese. This is not a full transcription.
guya.cubari.moe
Aka’s personal sales milestone, and Norio on being complimented by Aka
T: By the way, when did you begin to feel the impact of your income?
A: I think the threshold was the 1 million books sold milestone.
T: Did you, like, get a nicer place to live in after you sold a million copies?
A: Well...when I started weekly serialization at Young Jump, my manuscript fees added up to more than my royalties.
T: At the start, yeah.
A: At that point, I had stopped looking at the deposit receipts.
"T: Let’s teach everyone how to calculate royalties, then. Roughly 10% (of the sale price) goes to royalties, and now (as of Nov 14, 2020), 12 million copies are in circulation. Do the math."
Aka is an author with around ~40 million combined circulation. Has multiple houses on Japan and lives very comfortable upper class to rich life.
Now for Berserk
The publishers pay authors in two ways (for manga, not counting merchandise or anything else)
1.Per page - usually 4k-10k yen
2. (and) Volume sales - 10% (90% goes to publisher)
lets disregard the per page thing and go for volume sales. Berserk retails for around 800 yen. 10% of that is 80 yen per sale. 10 million copies sold = 800 million yen = 5 million USD. He achieved 10 million copies by march 1999. about 11 years after publishing. So if we average it out he gets around 454K USD yearly salary.
He achieved 20 million just 6 years later in 2005. So that bumps the numbers even harder. Now its at 70 million circulation, with his cut being around 35 million usd at current very weak yen exchange rates. For the publisher? They made more than 300M USD in revenue (Again, at current weak exchange yen rates). Berserk without a doubt is their biggest flagship for the magazine/publisher.
Also note this is with current weak yen exchange, it's probably closer to 6-7 million USD.
Also need to adjust for living costs in japan being a lot cheaper. Anyway Miura networth is probably >20M USD and berserk is a great money maker for anyone here even if their cut is less than 5%. It's more than the majority of people would make in Japan (or in any country in the world) in a year.
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Although I've resolved to the fact Berserk ended on episode 364, I can't stop rubbernecking at this total car crash.
As @Cyrus Jong rightly put it, Studio Gaga are not mangaka. They might become mangaka in their own right someday, but they are not fit to carry on Miura's legacy. I'm not sure anyone would be, to be brutally honest, but demonstrably so in the case of Studio Gaga.
They took the extraordinary nature of Guts' character and errantly reframed it into a 'chosen one' trope. It's the laziest, hackiest route they could've taken. They've called to attention everything unique about Guts and then completely missed the point. Guts is the counterpoint to Griffith. Guts defies his fate, Griffith submits to it. Guts was born into struggle and marked for death, Griffith was cosmically engineered and destined for greatness. Guts stands in CONTRAST to Griffith not comparison. Instead, they've literally depicted them as two halves of the same whole.
I want to call it fanfic-tier writing, but it's worse than that. It is so antithetically subversive to everything Miura established that it's downright offensive.
As @Cyrus Jong rightly put it, Studio Gaga are not mangaka. They might become mangaka in their own right someday, but they are not fit to carry on Miura's legacy. I'm not sure anyone would be, to be brutally honest, but demonstrably so in the case of Studio Gaga.
They took the extraordinary nature of Guts' character and errantly reframed it into a 'chosen one' trope. It's the laziest, hackiest route they could've taken. They've called to attention everything unique about Guts and then completely missed the point. Guts is the counterpoint to Griffith. Guts defies his fate, Griffith submits to it. Guts was born into struggle and marked for death, Griffith was cosmically engineered and destined for greatness. Guts stands in CONTRAST to Griffith not comparison. Instead, they've literally depicted them as two halves of the same whole.
I want to call it fanfic-tier writing, but it's worse than that. It is so antithetically subversive to everything Miura established that it's downright offensive.
Becoming a mangaka isn’t usually the path you choose if your sole aim is to line your pockets. That said, whilst the decision not to let a profitable franchise die may not have been purely for financial reasons, I don’t think it’s likely they did it out of the goodness of their hearts either. Following Miura’s death, they had two options: to find another mangaka to assist, or to try to serialise a work of their own. But they also had a third option: to continue with the only intellectual property that the higher-ups were interested in salvaging from their late mentor… In the end, faced with a stable but poorly paid job and the uncertainty of an original project that pays nothing because you’ve got nothing secured yet, most people choose the former. It’s something to add to your CV, a stable job (all the more so if they don’t rush to the end by any means, they managed to squeeze out 5 years more of employment after their boss died); it’s all advantages. As for Mori, I prefer to believe he’s doing it (badly) out of goodwill: after all, the idea that the person Miura considered his best friend didn’t deserve that title strickes me as depressing.
Are the members of Studio Gaga perhaps sincere in their intentions regardless? Personally, I don’t think it’s very likely, because it seems they haven’t read the work they were apparently so keen to continue out of respect. But is it possible? I suppose so. I don’t know them. Nobody does.
Look I don't want to get into the details of it (because it's really not worth anyone's time) but your calculations aren't very good. We don't know how Mori or the Studio Gaga staff are remunerated for their work on the Continuation, but it's not a regular situation so the compensation might not follow the usual industry standards. Besides, the overwhelming majority of volumes being sold are from Miura's Berserk, and they aren't getting anything from these. Hakusensha certainly is making money off of it, that's not in doubt. But it's not what Walter or Cblu were talking about.
Anyway everyone, it seems the thread has run its course as far as discussing the contents of the episode goes, but I don't know that it's very productive for us to be debating the degrees of greed involved for each party in the Continuation, especially since we have no way to determine it. I would suggest that perhaps those interested could instead talk about what they expect from episode 385, which is releasing in a week.
I'm curious whether Flora will have more dialogue, since she's shown to be in the Stupa after Guts awakens. I guess a simple question is whether Guts is going to come out within the next episode (maybe at the end), or if they'll keep that for 386. And do they give him some form of actual introspection to show that he's "fixed"? Or just an acknowledgment that he's special and that's it.
She'll disappear like Azan did a couple of episodes ago.