100+ 'Uncollected' Artworks from Miura

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Some fans might not be aware that Berserk hasn't had a full-fledged art book since 1997. That art book, the Berserk Illustrations File, contains high-quality reproductions of volume covers (up to vol 14), unseen paintings, sketches, and an exclusive interview with Kentarou Miura that's about 4,000 words long, recently translated by Puella thanks to our member-supported Patreon.

When I start lamenting the lack of recent Berserk art books, I'm often asked: "How much material is there for another artbook?" Quite a bit, actually!

Since that book was released, there have been 23 new volume covers, 32 volume poster inserts, and an unknown number of other paintings and sketches Miura has released across the past 18 years. These include phone cards, new year's postcards, DVD/BR covers, promotional art, original art for the 2005 trading card game (TCG) and more. Many of these are only seen by hardcore collectors, leaving the rest of us to ogle them through low-resolution photos on Japanese auction sites — and those are only the ones that surface online.

Because of their obscure nature, it's likely there are many more we have never seen, or that Miura has never released. Some of these appear to be assets pulled from Miura's generous stack of unused paintings. Others were clearly created for an exclusive purpose. Some are simple character poses, while others show glimpses of scenarios with characters that we've never seen in the manga before. For fans, they're all pretty incredible and worth checking out.

So I started collecting images of them, even if the quality of the images sucks, to get a better understanding of what the potential for another Berserk artbook is. It is vast. In total, I gathered 118 pieces of art, excluding volume covers (from 15-37), and of course anything I missed. In reality, it's probably closer to 150 pieces. Which is more than enough for 3 art books, based on the size of the Illustrations File. It's not complete, and it's not really meant to be. It's meant to be a taste of what's out there, unbound, uncollected, unseen by the vast majority of fans of Berserk.

These deserve a better place to appreciate them. I can't provide that — only Miura and his publisher can. But until then... here's what I have assembled:

Rare/Uncollected Berserk Artwork: http://skullknight.net/images/uncollected/index.html

Miura's original art for Konami's Berserk TCG (2005): http://imgur.com/a/ZtfKH

Volume poster inserts: http://imgur.com/a/VvEMW
 

Oburi

All praise Grail
Wow this is truly awesome. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Walter. I've been secretly hoping that someday somebody would do something like this because as you say, there's so much material that none of us have seen, or we've only seen partially in poor quality. So this is really great. I mean it man, seriously, thank you :ubik:
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
Yeah, I'm pretty much mirroring Oburi here, but thanks so much to you Walter for putting this thing together! It's great to be able to appreciate so many of these great pieces in one place. And what's more, I can't believe that I recognized most of them! :ganishka:
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Grail said:
And what's more, I can't believe that I recognized most of them! :ganishka:

I found probably 5-6 totally new pieces in my own search, not including the 8-10 pieces from the TCG Aaz shared which I'd never seen before. All in all, quite a learning experience.

Thing is, rare things pop up on Yahoo JP and then disappear a few days/weeks later. So there are probably dozens of things that just don't show up regularly.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Walter said:
Thing is, rare things pop up on Yahoo JP and then disappear a few days/weeks later. So there are probably dozens of things that just don't show up regularly.

From my experience the rarest ones aren't even from merchandise (because those are typically reused), they're one off illustrations/posters from YA that were never republished.
 
Incredible effort, thanks Walter and Aaz.

As far as cards go, I can't think of anyone who'd rival Tirade or Aaz in terms of card sets and knowledge about em. While my card set is a bit incomplete, I can offer scans if that helps? Coincidentally, that Guts signed card popped on YJA (different looking signature) and the seller refused to comment on its authenticity, so I didn't risk bidding on it.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
IncantatioN said:
As far as cards go, I can't think of anyone who'd rival Tirade or Aaz in terms of card sets and knowledge about em. While my card set is a bit incomplete, I can offer scans if that helps?

Thanks, but I think every illustration Miura did for the TCG is already included. The rest are from different artists who simply duplicated scenes from the manga.
 
Wow, I really enjoyed seeing these! Thank you Walter and Aazealh for sharing them with us. There were quite a few I had never seen before. I absolutely love the one of Schierke reading a book with Ivalera beating up Puck off to the side and Isidro looking on by the fire. It's a good thing Schierke's training has probably given her concentration of steel, because I imagine it would be pretty difficult for most people to focus on their reading with some of the more rambunctious companions she has around. :ganishka:
With all this material it really is a shame there haven't been more art books made to showcase them.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
JMP said:
Wow, I really enjoyed seeing these! Thank you Walter and Aazealh for sharing them with us. There were quite a few I had never seen before.

Mission accomplished :badbone:
 

Yozuru

"I say when it ends!" - Lucina
WOW! This is awesome, I haven't seen a lot of these before! Thank you Walter for sharing with us. Going to save some of these to my berserk folder. :ubik:
 
Oh, the volume posters... They could be easily the volume covers. I love them! Hoping we get a badass Rakshas artwork for volume 38.

Thanks for this incredible collection, Walter!
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Tripas said:
Oh, the volume posters... They could be easily the volume covers. I love them! Hoping we get a badass Rakshas artwork for volume 38.

If he's not on the cover, I guarantee there'll be a poster of him.
 
Wow, thanks so much for doing this, there's a bunch I'd never seen before. Man, the TCG art is so great...
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Well the biggest change since I posted this was that we did eventually get a new artbook—the Artwork of Berserk catalog—which did a great job of putting some of the unpublished (non-tankoubon) material together. But naturally, there's not a ton of rare things in it, and it weighs heavily on painted and colored art. Fans are still in need of a comprehensive book or series of books.
 
Well the biggest change since I posted this was that we did eventually get a new artbook—the Artwork of Berserk catalog—which did a great job of putting some of the unpublished (non-tankoubon) together. But naturally, there's not a ton of rare things in it, and it weighs heavily on painted and colored art. Fans are still in need of a comprehensive book or series of books.
true that artwork of berserk book has a lot of stuff in it, i wish I could get it
 
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