Aazealh said:He means that the men all have penises of a fairly good size and shape from what we can see of them.
I see. What I was trying to say here is that the effect of a poor nutrition should be reflected in a woman's breasts.
Aazealh said:We see a total of 2 women being used to create Daka, plus a few corpses. The second one's breasts didn't look all that big either.
I think there are more in the background awaiting their horrible fate, but I guess it doesn't make a difference.
Aazealh said:I don't understand your sentence. Clothes or not, there are no "real women" in Berserk. And as I already pointed out, physical attractiveness does not solely depend on being fat/slim and having well-formed breasts. Besides, there are many physical deficiencies that can be found in real-life men that you don't see in the average guy in Berserk. Maybe not as common as the percentage of oddly shaped breasts in a given female population, I don't know (and neither do you).
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used the term real women. What I mant to say here is that there are differences in the people that live in the world of Berserk. We have seen young people, old people, ugly people, good looking people, overweight people, skinny people and so on, and yet when it comes to the people shown naked, while the men depicted do have differences, i.e, we see muscular men, skinny men, chubby men, taller men, shorter men, ugly men, better looking men, plain men; the women depicted tend to be young and on the better looking side a lot more.
Griffith said:These women were also being selected specifically for sex if you didn't realize (like humans, the trolls didn't seem fundamentally interested in only procreation).
I know trolls are not only interested in procreation, that is clear. What I don't quite understand (and this is me, not my wife) is that they eat anything, even their own kind, but when it comes to sex, they're so selective, and not only that, they somehow manage to find enough women that meet their standard in a village like Enoch (and maybe even another small villages in the area)
Griffith said:Ganishka would similarly have to impregnate the women somehow unless you think they were just all pregnant when he found them. Women selected for sex being physically attractive? Gee, that's an odd coincidence.
Are you saying that Ganishka impregnated all those women? Every single one of them? This is an honest question because I don't remember if that was established. If he did, then it does make sense that they only got him attractive women, absolutely. If not, I don't think it would be hard to find men interested in getting the job done, even if the women involved were less than attractive.
Griffith said:Yeah, they were probably empowered type-A militant feminists with self-involved agendas.
Who's being a smart ass now?
Griffith said:Anyway, I'm not saying they were forced there, but the folks in charge probably weren't inviting the ugliest women in town to their fuck ritual either.
And again, I find it surprising that they would be able to convince enough attractive women.
Griffith said:I thought she only read to 23, so you're the one talking about Daka and Trolls with me, unless she skipped ahead just to scrutinize the tits there too.
Yes, she has only read up to 23, but I can confidently say that she will feel the same about the scenes with the trolls and the Daka once she gets there.
Griffith said:I wanted to refrain from bringing her into it personally if she's not here to argue. But yeah yeah yeah, this is of course an issue I can't possibly understand because I'm a man,
She didn't say that, it was actually me. I was only speculating and I only did it because I myself hadn't heard the opinions of other women. Now I know that women in general do not share my wife's opinion.
Griffith said:or maybe because when I read the story I'm not actually going through it focusing on the naked people and counting perky breasts, but rather judging it on its substance, not my body issues (which isn't one of the major themes).
I don't think she goes through the story focusing on the naked people, as you put it.
Griffith said:As for her appreciation of the story, if this is what she reads into it and takes away from it, if these are her deep and most important insights that must be shared first and foremost, if she can't give it the benefit of the doubt and appreciate it otherwise, then big loss. Tell her to stop reading it.
I said that this issue does have an impact on her apprecitaion of the story, not that she can't appreciate the story at all because of this.
Griffith said:Also, you said you wanted women's opinions, so why don't you address Lith's posts then? They probably have the best perspective in here.
When I posted my previous reply, Lithrael had only posted once, and then she agreed with Aazealh in that men doing bad things were depicted as ugly men for effect. I don't have a problem with that so I felt no need to reply.
Lithrael said:As to a woman's appreciation of the story, well. Any girl who likes to read comics is already WAY WAY WAY WAY over the 'too many hot ladies' thing. Sadly it takes a lot of motivation to draw frumpy naked women and the few artists that do it well tend to end up way over there in the unshaven insane borderline unreadable category (much as I love Sam Keith).
Irvine said:Hm all this reminds me of the endless discussions about the looks of females in video games. Mostly they are started by angry feminists. ::)
Lithrael said:Yeah, video game women are straight up eye candy. What ya gonna do. If you want hot oiled men you gotta go for the genres where beefcake brings cash. Honestly the mainstream comics industry, along with the fantasy-action film genre, are just about the only ostensibly straight-male audience places you can find hot nearly naked guys by the assload.
My wife doesn't really read comics and she doesn't really play video games either.
Irvine said:The majority of Berserk readers are men so what's wrong with good looking women? Besides this Berserk is a fantasy manga and no realistic nude painting.
slan69 said:I don't see what the problem is. I'm a girl and I like reading mangas with hot chicks and muscular guys. (No fat chicks/guys.) Hahaha jk, anyways it's not like Miura is the only one drawing women this way, tons of artist do it. It's best to leave this subject alone since it's going nowhere. Miura is only drawing what the people want to see that's all.
Lithrael said:Snark aside, it's the inclusion of women as real characters that interests me. And within its setting, I think Berserk does that extremely well. What they look like naked doesn't enter into it.
Thank you for your opinions, my wife and I appreciate hearing from other women.
Aphasia said:Being disappointed over this seems more akin to not liking a certain style. This huge argument to me all boils down to an artist who likes portraying women in a certain manner. Maybe Miura likes drawing women with tone abs and large backsides. Frank Frazetta did exactly the same thing. Not because he was sexist, but because he simply enjoyed that shape in women.
I didn't mean to say tha Mr. Miura is sexist, and I don't think my wife thinks so either.
Lithrael said:The lack of body hair in Berserk, now that's a significant issue. Do you expect me to believe every single one of those medieval women are shaving their pits on a regular basis?
Aazealh said:Has your wife noticed how men have no nipples in Berserk? It's almost like they're not real men from the real world. Also, what about body hair? All those guys (and girls!) are so glabrous... Not realistic at all! It's almost like this is a fantasy story whose purpose isn't to represent a statistically accurate sample of the real world's population, but to tell an entertaining tale. What a disgrace! Reminds me of all those movies and TV series that don't feature enough fat and/or ugly people... How unrepresentative of real life!
Of course the facts that men don't have nipples, women have no hair and naked women are attractive are Mr. Miura's decisions to make. It's his universe and his rules. It's just that the author's choice to represent naked women the way he does is not really what my wife expected, based on the expectations she formed from reading the story. She expected better from a great artist based on what better means to her.
Anyway, we just wanted to put it out there to see what other people thought and we can see that most people think very, very differently.