Relationship of the Guin Saga to Berserk/ Miura as an writer

Somebody brought this topic up recently in the current episode thread, and it sounded interesting-- that there might be some legitimate similarities that might shed some light on Berserk and/or Miura as a creator. As a literature lover, issues of influence are interesting to me. So I searched "Guin Saga" on the site, and came up with a few threads, but nobody ever gave any real answers--

What sort of similarities _are_ there between Berserk and the whole Guin Saga? Is there any real substance to be found in comparing them? Does Miura make interesting changes to the Guin Saga plot line-- i.e. he took the Guin Saga template and altered it in some interesting ways.... or, what is very similar between the two, and what might that say about Berserk and where it's headed, etc. etc.

I'm basically only really curious how it relates to Berserk and Miura's creation of Berserk. Does anyone have any insight into this, who has read some/ alot of the Guin Saga?

Thanks.

During an interview(the one that's included as bonus material on the U.S. DVD), Miura mentioned Guin Saga as having influenced him to write a fantasy epic of his own. I've only done the barest of research myself, but I think its safe to say that Miura did not make a GS clone somuch as he used similar archetypes from it within his own story--a perfectly legitimate practice, within reason, that has occurred for approximately the last three thousand years or so.

Of course, it's been awhile since I watched that interview(my DVD has an error), so I could be wrong about some of the details; but I do remember him mentioning Guin Saga

The following was what was said on the DVD.

I see. That's actually similar to the second question. I'd like to know if anything influenced Berserk.

It is a Japanese novel, but... a novel called "Guin Saga" written by Kaoru Kurimoto was the most influential. Guin Saga is a fantasy novel series, and it's been trying to set arecord in the Guinness World Records as the longest fantasy work ever written by a single author. It was planned to be 100 volumes from the beginning. But it's already 80-something, so it'll go over 100 easily. I started reading it when I was in junior high and I'm still reading the new volume every month. So I could say Guin Saga is the most significant novel. And other stuff like movies and cartoons influenced me, too.

Click to expand...

QuestionMark said:

Somebody brought this topic up recently in the current episode thread, and it sounded interesting-- that there might be some legitimate similarities that might shed some light on Berserk and/or Miura as a creator.

Click to expand...

Herald of Yama's post in the Episode 252 thread was facetious, relating the current events in Berserk to Guin Saga like he did would otherwise be really far-fetched.

QuestionMark said:

What sort of similarities _are_ there between Berserk and the whole Guin Saga? Is there any real substance to be found in comparing them?

Click to expand...

As it has been said already, there isn't so much to compare between Berserk and Guin Saga (from what I know). As a matter of fact, there's not so much to pertinently compare between Berserk and anything it was influenced by, as Miura has always been developing a rather unique world. It's difficult to find any reliable information on Guin Saga anyway since only the first few volumes are available in English.

Miura stated that Guin Saga influenced him, even as a kid, and that can be easily explained: that series itself was inspired by occidental mythologies and seems to fit in the tradition of "western heroic fantasy". In Japan that would be a major similarity with Berserk, while from a global point of view (ours), it's almost nothing. I don't think there's much more than this to that comment, even though some parts of Guin Saga inspired Miura more specifically (characters, etc).

From what we can see, Miura likes to take elements from history, old mythologies, and adapt them to his universe. Now that doesn't mean you have great parallels either, it's mostly names, some concepts or events that very vaguely resemble each other. That's as far as I can tell Miura's major source of inspiration, aside from the common archetypes that can be found in any story of this kind, even books written thousands of years ago, as Herald of Yama pointed out.

I know about the interview on the DVD-- and I know he reads the Guin series.  I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.  And I know that any good writer appropriates different elements from different stories and makes them his own, changes them.  Many, many Shakespeare plays come from Italian originals, and it'd be wrong to say they're "clones", but influence is influence, and you can find a lot out about the plays by reading the Italian influences-- things Shakespeare decided to change, what to keep, etc. etc.-- you basically get a sense of some of the decisions he consciously made as a writer, because you have the influences to compare his works to.  It seemed to me that perhaps the same could basically be said of Miura, Berserk, and the Guin Saga.

If what Herald of Yama said was true (even if he undercut himself by saying "WUI, so don't take it too seriously"), i.e. that "The man with the helmet of a beast concealing his features; The too-beautiful man who wins himself a kingdom; and now, through this marriage, a brother and sister in line to inherit a throne..." are all things that occur in the Guin Saga, well, I would call those some legitimate similarities that Miura took inspiration from, and then augmented.

(I'll make an aside here, and say that some of that is based on speculation-- Griffith has no kingdom yet, and the marriage has not been made final by any stretch of the imagination -- still, these are elements that are being introduced into the story, even if they havn't panned out yet.)

And of course, animal masks are an ancient concept, and all the rest-- there are obviously many many mythic themes running through Berserk that have been around for thousands of years.  My point was simply that we _know_ Miura reads the Guin Saga, and therefore it would seem to be a legit source for comparison, particularly given some of the broad (yet seemingly pretty significant) similarities between the two.

Of course, I haven't read the Guin Saga, and I can't tell, but it seems the others haven't either-- right? So I suppose that would make it all speculation..... which is all good, and interesting too, but I was also hoping someone who has read the series could comment on it......

QuestionMark said:

If what Herald of Yama said was true

Click to expand...

I guess I'll have to repeat myself and say that it has no relevance.

QuestionMark said:

The man with the helmet of a beast concealing his features

Click to expand...

Guts very rarely wears a helm, though recently he acquired an armor that had one looking like the Beast of Darkness, a cross between a wolf and a shark. He still goes around without the helm most of the time. Guin has a leopard mask stitched to his face, he can't remove it, and has no memory of his past. No relevance.

QuestionMark said:

through this marriage, a brother and sister in line to inherit a throne..."

Click to expand...

This is even less relevant. In the first volume of Guin Saga (around 100 volumes out in total), Guin saves 2 teenagers in a forest, twins, that are the last survivor of a fallen kingdom's royal family.

Farnese and Serpico are half-brother/sister, Serpico being a bastard child. Farnese, by marrying Roderick (very unlikely event at the moment), would be the wife of a third-in-line man to the throne of some random small country. Serpico would be nothing.

QuestionMark said:

I'll make an aside here, and say that some of that is based on speculation

Click to expand...

All of it. You're speculating that Berserk is influenced right now, in the most recent episode, by something written in 1979, basing yourself on a comment that is several years old. Read my previous post again please.

I guess you're right.  It must has no relevance.