Uriel said:
Did everyone else have the grey-scale pictures instead of the usual black-page with the white BERSERK logo at the end of episodes.. I really like them! Hopefully they'll stick around.. mostly because the printing costs of mostly black must be painful =P
Yeah, obviously everyone has them. I didn't mind the change myself (I find the new presentation nicer in some places), and I doubt it's just a one time thing. However the cost of ink has evidently nothing to do with it. If you look in detail, the usual black pages are still there, only more numerous and with less white in them (they're systematically between each episode now, giving the full episode, chapter and arc titles but without the big logo), and they've actually added the pictures as some sort of additional delimitation between the episodes. It's more like they replaced the occasional white page with a black "BERSERK" logo we used to get from times to times.
One thing that I'm not sure I like is that now we don't get seamless transitions between episodes anymore. The good part is that nothing covers the art anymore (and now we get the chapter/arc titles everytime too), but the titles were usually well placed so it didn't bother me. I'm still unsure whether I want those to return or not.
Other than that, the added summary at the beginning of the volume is unnecessary as far as I'm concerned, but if it's helpful to other people, I don't mind it. After all it's not like regular readers need the character summaries either. The new episode index isn't bad, more stylish than the old one, but then again the old one was fine with me in the first place.
Overall, while I didn't think changes were needed, I like what they've done.