Episode 329

Walter said:
It's not the first time Guts encountered an Elf. He used to have them as a late-night snack.

203.jpg

Nice one, with the marinated elf :ganishka:
But you've forgotten to add some of that Sea God bouillabaisse there :beast:
 

Aphasia

ALL MYSTERIES MUST BE SOLVED
This was an incredible episode. It's a testament to Miura's ability that I can go from grinning my freakin' face off to being distraught that this brand new character is gone. I'd also agree with some of you guys
that this is the cutest thing in Berserk. I almost couldn't contain how cute and excited she was to meet a new friend. I really felt for her when she was talking about the sun going down and being all alone in this dungeon.

Still, I'm glad Guts took the flower...I'd like to hope that things work out!
 
I agree with Chaos, even though Chich was a wonderful refreshment from the dark horrors of the Sea God (I'll never forget the panel where Roderick opens the tavern door and finds the villagers staring at him), from what Mr. Miura has said this story is pretty much bound to leave a bad experience to Guts. The guy just doesn't get any breaks, does he :sad:


I just hope the flower doesn't get crushed in the duel...
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
Surakemastura said:
I just hope the flower doesn't get crushed in the duel...

That's what I'm afraid of. I have a feeling that Guts attempt to replant the flower will fail somehow...
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Surakemastura said:
from what Mr. Miura has said this story is pretty much bound to leave a bad experience to Guts.

On contrary, Miura said this story would be "warm", which is why I'm fairly confident Chich will return by the end of it.
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
Rhombaad said:
On contrary, Miura said this story would be "warm", which is why I'm fairly confident Chich will return by the end of it.

But I thought this 3 parter was to explained why Guts was uncomfortable with elves... I don't see how succeeding in replanting the flower would make him uncomfortable? Just wondering of course..
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
jackson_hurley said:
But I thought this 3 parter was to explained why Guts was uncomfortable with elves... I don't see how succeeding in replanting the flower would make him uncomfortable? Just wondering of course..

The source of Guts's discomfort lies, at least partially, in the idea of self-sacrifice in order to help another person. After the Eclipse, Guts sees that as a pathetic sort of weakness, which is why he made that comment about disliking elves after meeting Puck. Anyway, like a few folks have already mentioned, it probably won't be clear that Chich is being restored right away, so Guts may never know if she ever fully recovered. Us readers will hopefully get the whole story though. :guts:
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
Grail said:
Anyway, like a few folks have already mentioned, it probably won't be clear that Chich is being restored right away, so Guts may never know if she ever fully recovered. Us readers will hopefully get the whole story though. :guts:

oh yeah, I forgot about that possibility! Thanks you for clearing that out.
 
... Nice break ...
But I need to understand ... "Chich" is not an elf ... she doesn't have wings ...
... she's an another sort of spiritual member ?
Thx
 

RaffoBaffo

Ex-Newser of the late Berserk Chronicles
flagawax said:
... Nice break ...
But I need to understand ... "Chich" is not an elf ... she doesn't have wings ...
... she's an another sort of spiritual member ?
Thx
I think she's an Elf but not a Pisky.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Rhombaad said:
On contrary, Miura said this story would be "warm", which is why I'm fairly confident Chich will return by the end of it.

The announcement that it would be "warm" came from the YA advertisement, actually. And I think this episode fits the bill. Chich refers to warmth quite a bit.

flagawax said:
But I need to understand ... "Chich" is not an elf ... she doesn't have wings ...

Like RaffoBaffo said, Chich is most definitely an elf. There exist different types of elves.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Aazealh said:
The announcement that it would be "warm" came from the YA advertisement, actually.

My bad! Thanks for correcting me, Aazealh.

My apologies, Surakemastura! I should have checked my facts before correcting you.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
The hell, where did my post go?

Anyway, I was pointing out that it's likely a nymph, not an elf, unless Mirua is allowing the two to be interchangeable. Nymphs are typically grounded to a specific location or object, are female, and almost always related to nature.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
Anyway, I was pointing out that it's likely a nymph, not an elf, unless Miura is allowing the two to be interchangeable. Nymphs are typically grounded to a specific location or object, are female, and almost always related to nature.
Chich is an elf. There are many different kind of elves in the Berserk world, as we've known for many years. The known species of elves are Piskies, associated with wind; and Dwarves, associated with earth. Chich is just a different kind of elf.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
Walter said:
Chich is an elf. There are many different kind of elves in the Berserk world, as we've known for many years. The known species of elves are Piskies, associated with wind; and Dwarves, associated with earth. Chich is just a different kind of elf.

Fair enough, though it still sounds to me like Miura's is confusing elves with nymphs. Also what the hell, when were there dwarves?

edit: oh you're saying dwarves are earth-bound elves in Berserk.

double edit: I guess I just forgot over time how Miura likes to blanket so many different things as being elves.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
Fair enough, though it still sounds to me like Miura's confusing elves with nymphs.
It's more like we just don't know the full extent of the species yet. Maybe there's something like a nymph among elves, but it doesn't change what Chich is. She was likely an introduction to one of the many other species we'll learn more about in Elfhelm. We talked about all this stuff two weeks ago in the last podcast.

It's part of a larger discussion I'd like to have once we have a little more information: what connects the different elves we've seen? Thus far it's been elemental affiliation—wind and earth. That was pretty straightforward. But Chich is an elf tied to a specific plant. So the spectrum is clearly much larger than we'd anticipated. What connects them all then, just "natural" things? The essence of nature?

Also what the hell, when were there dwarves?
We see a silhouette of them in volume 14, when SK is talking about the history of Godo's mine. At the time he merely calls them elves (妖精), and we infer based on their design that they're dwarves. Dwarves also crafted the Berserk's Armor. So yeah, we've heard of them a few times.

Jesus Miura, find a fantasy level and stick to it.
Sounds like bad advice to me.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
All-in-all I'd still say this thing is an elf-nymph. I mean if there's elf-dwarves it certainly seems possible. Like I said, I just forgot how much he likes to stitch together all kinds of lore to make his own thing. You're right though, it's still an elf first and foremost because I guess that's just how it works in the Berserk story.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
Fair enough, though it still sounds to me like Miura's is confusing elves with nymphs.

Sounds to me like you don't know what you're talking about.

MrWeatherby said:
I guess I just forgot over time how Miura likes to blanket so many different things as being elves.

Miura doesn't "blanket" anything as being elves. Really, you probably shouldn't speak too much about this.

MrWeatherby said:
All-in-all I'd still say this thing is an elf-nymph.

You're wrong and just don't want to admit it.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
Aazealh said:
Sounds to me like you don't know what you're talking about.

Yes, thank you. Walt and I have been over this. I forgot that Berserk is literally "elves all the way down." The whole "elves are related to specific landforms" thing is a pretty blatant holdover from nymph lore, though.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
I forgot that Berserk is literally "elves all the way down."

Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about. There's only one species of elves we've been clearly shown and one we've inferred. That's not "literally elves all the way down." We've suspected for a long time that there were more than one kind of elves, but there are also many unrelated creatures in the world of Berserk.

MrWeatherby said:
The whole "elves are related to specific landforms" thing is a pretty blatant holdover from nymph lore, though.

Just because that's your single point of reference does not mean there aren't others. In this case, the nymphs from Greek mythology don't really correspond to Chich in my opinion; both as far as visual appearance and the context of their existence goes. I'm not telling you the comparison is entirely without merit, but even if Miura were to call this particular type of elf a "nymph" it still would be a passing reference more than anything as the differences outweight the similarities between them.

MrWeatherby said:
If there's a dwarf that's an elf, how is it a stretch to assume that this thing absolutely can be a nymph similarly blanketed by the term "elf."

You must not be aware of the fact that dwarves and elves are very closely related in traditional folklore.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
All I'm saying is miura is ripping off ferngully :troll:


Seriously though, I get that it's an elf, I already said Walter was right about that and I am wrong. The fact remains that I personally still see quite a bit of crossover with nymphs, which is just like, my opinion, man. I dont quite get the repulsion to someone being able to find that bleedover and speculate that the mythology could at least be borrowed. If I'm wrong then the only person who has their perception effected is me.

Also no, I didn't know that about dwarves and elves.


Edit: in general I should probably find a way to read the comic again, my memory of it is way more fucked than I thought.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
All I'm saying is miura is ripping off ferngully :troll:

Berserk and its elves actually predate Ferngully by a few years. :iva:

MrWeatherby said:
The fact remains that I personally still see quite a bit of crossover with nymphs, which is just like, my opinion, man. I dont quite get the repulsion to someone being able to find that bleedover and speculate that the mythology could at least be borrowed. If I'm wrong then the only person who has their perception effected is me.

Like I said, there are elves associated with nature in European folklore, it's not exclusive to Greek mythology. You seemed to exhibit quite a bit of bad faith in your posts ("Miura is confused, Miura is mistaken, Miura blankets everything under one name"), and I don't like that very much, so I thought I'd go ahead and clarify things a little further than Walter had. No hard feelings though.

And Miura's always picked concepts as he pleased in traditional folklore (or even history) and then adapted them however he wanted to, so another point I wanted to make is that mixing influences is nothing new and is really quite common in Berserk's world. We've seen creatures inspired by Greek mythology (hydras, harpies), European folklore (too many to name, but sometimes very specific references, like kelpies or merrows), Indian mythology (the Makara, Pishacha), Lovecraft's mythos (the Sea God), traditional Jewish folklore (golems, plus the references to the Kabbalah, like the name "Qliphoth"), and so on. Miura's weaving it all into his world in whatever way he wants to (sometimes merely borrowing a name), making Berserk the ultimate fantasy story. It could be its own thread really.
 

MrWeatherby

What's up, ketchup?
Yeah it's a broad and interesting enough subject that it could make a good thread.

The stuff about him being wrong or mistaken was because I not only forgot just how cobbled together the in-universe is, but because I horrendously misread a post and never bothered to do much to correct myself. I do stand by the blanketing thing, because honestly that's not even a slight. I could go on all day about the differences I've seen in everything called an elf in this story, but there's no need to, because you throughly pointed out that a lot of the in-universe is stitched together from various things. And that's fine, Miura is certainly entitled to that, in fact I like it (fyi that "pick a fantasy level" thing was just me being facetious, I removed it because I didn't think that'd translate well in text, and I was right.)

Anyway this really does seem like it's veering a bit off topic and should probably be saved for a thread dedicated to discussing the similarities and differences Berserk has to various fantasy lore, so I'll drop it until something like that crops up. Until then let's all just get along.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
MrWeatherby said:
I do stand by the blanketing thing, because honestly that's not even a slight. I could go on all day about the differences I've seen in everything called an elf in this story

Hahaha, are you sure you could? Reeeeally? :daiba:

It's not been used to refer to many creatures so far, and was even used abusively in one occasion (Rochine). And there are subtleties in Japanese that don't translate into English, see these ancient posts for reference. I would say that the species is quite easily distinguishable from other astral creatures.

Aazealh said:
Actually, they're called "yousei" in the manga, which usually refers to elves. However the guys shown in the picture didn't look like typical elves (i.e. Puck), so the translator went for "fair folk" instead. In volume 26, when Schierke refers to the dwarves, "dwarf" is in furigana and the kanji is basically "miner sei" (from yousei), so miner elves or miner spirits. So in short, it's definitely possible to me that the "yousei" that lived in Godot's mine were actually dwarves (a different variation of "yousei" from the piskies, what Puck and Ivalera are), but it isn't sure for now. This also means that we might see dwarves in Elfhelm.
Aazealh said:
Actually, Ivalera calls him a piskie/piskey (ピスキー) and not a pixie, which is a variation of the spelling in old English and French. Usual Miura stuff. The kanji accompanying it means "spirit of the wing", and they are kindred of the elemental spirits of the wind (some kind of descendants). She is also a piskie herself.

I'm glad you're talking about that actually because it gives me the opportunity to clarify again the different words used to denominate our little friends:

There's "yousei" (妖精), that's a generic term of some sort (can mean elf, fairy, sprite...). The dwarves and other creatures that are very succinctly hinted at would be "yousei". Then there's "elf" in katakana which refers to... Elves, specifically (often used as furigana with the kanji "yousei"). And "piskie", which is also uniquely employed to talk about Puck and Ivalera (and their kin).

SK calls the King of the Flower Storm the king and master of "yousei", so I think we might indeed see some other types of "yousei" in Elfhelm, closer to other elemental realms and not just wind. Whether they'll be called elves (エルフ) or just be another kind of "yousei", I don't know. It's still called Elfhelm though. :puck:
 
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