Episode 370
- Thread starter Aazealh
- Start date
Please Do mention this on the Upcoming podcast i would love to hear what you think Miura was Going for at those last 5 pages Mori & studio Gaga made.
I feel like this is one of the Bulletpoints Which Miura told Mori only question if He actually managed to Portray them Properly
Read it last night. Some thoughts.
First this doesn't feel like the last episode of the Fantasia Arc. It feels like the episode after. We are off the island, on the way back with presumably the witch and wizard refugees. There is no mention of Hanarr, Volvapa (sp?) or the Gurus. Also no acknowledgment of why Puck was spared, or whether this would affect other magical creatures on the mainland. Is Skull knight with them? Maybe that information is forthcoming, but a line or two would have been appreciated
The idea that Hanarr would 'upgrade' Guts seems like a far shot now. It's possible that his depression about his sword will lead to Hanarr working on it (if he's even alive). This might be why there is so much focus on it.
As others have said, I do appreciate Guts' emotions regarding his sword letting him down. It harkens back to his thoughts way back at Godots about how his sword has always been with him and got him through tough times. Guts faced Femto in volume 3 but he's never gotten a chance to face him in his incarnated body, so he must have thought he had a real chance to stop him. But as others have said, the absence of acknowledging that Casca just got kidnapped by Griffith is deafening. It's like an afterthought.
Some odd reaction panels from Serpico. Not sure what they are going for here. And the distress from Farnese and Scheirke aren't adding much. I've seen Farnese cry about being useless too many times.
Lastly, Roderick's reactions feel more than a bit off, like Guts is going to self-harm. I'm really looking forward to real consequences to come from the armor, as we've had several fake-outs with it. We keep hearing it's dangerous, but we never see it.
Some great art in this episode. They are getting better and better. I'm also noticing a technique of having blurry over-the-shoulders in the foreground which is neat.
I wonder if the next episode opens in Falconia with Casca getting introduced to that all and having words with Griffith.
First this doesn't feel like the last episode of the Fantasia Arc. It feels like the episode after. We are off the island, on the way back with presumably the witch and wizard refugees. There is no mention of Hanarr, Volvapa (sp?) or the Gurus. Also no acknowledgment of why Puck was spared, or whether this would affect other magical creatures on the mainland. Is Skull knight with them? Maybe that information is forthcoming, but a line or two would have been appreciated
The idea that Hanarr would 'upgrade' Guts seems like a far shot now. It's possible that his depression about his sword will lead to Hanarr working on it (if he's even alive). This might be why there is so much focus on it.
As others have said, I do appreciate Guts' emotions regarding his sword letting him down. It harkens back to his thoughts way back at Godots about how his sword has always been with him and got him through tough times. Guts faced Femto in volume 3 but he's never gotten a chance to face him in his incarnated body, so he must have thought he had a real chance to stop him. But as others have said, the absence of acknowledging that Casca just got kidnapped by Griffith is deafening. It's like an afterthought.
Some odd reaction panels from Serpico. Not sure what they are going for here. And the distress from Farnese and Scheirke aren't adding much. I've seen Farnese cry about being useless too many times.
Lastly, Roderick's reactions feel more than a bit off, like Guts is going to self-harm. I'm really looking forward to real consequences to come from the armor, as we've had several fake-outs with it. We keep hearing it's dangerous, but we never see it.
Some great art in this episode. They are getting better and better. I'm also noticing a technique of having blurry over-the-shoulders in the foreground which is neat.
I wonder if the next episode opens in Falconia with Casca getting introduced to that all and having words with Griffith.
I think they have improved at drawing expressions, molda looked great in many panels to me.
The digital issue of Young Animal is now available to purchase.
Killing Griffith doesn't hinge on Guts having a deadlier sword. That seems like the wrong lesson to learn from this encounter.
Killing Griffith doesn't hinge on Guts having a deadlier sword. That seems like the wrong lesson to learn from this encounter.
I agree. But it would explain the focus on the sword a bit more if Hanarr comes in like a surrogate Godot with some life lessons and a polish-up. Right now it's weird that he's not focused on losing Casca AGAIN.
Honestly, I think continually upgrading Guts will get kind of boring and feel like a video game level-up. One of the interesting things about the series is that Guts is just human, and yet he fights monsters. His limitation creates real stakes and forces him to be clever, just as much as strong.
Making the Dragon Slayer magical to win just seems lazy.
I appreciate your efforts to make sense of the narrative choices that were made, but to be honest I'm not convinced there's a good justification for it.
Indeed, and besides, it's already got some form of magical properties from all the evil spirits Guts has cut through over the years. I did expect in the past that Hanarr might "temper" this stuff to make the Dragon Slayer more effective against ethereal bodies, but even if that were the case, what we saw at work with Griffith is beyond that.
Yep, and that's a much more interesting way to make it magic. And it's been shown to work just fine on everything else. The lesson here seems to be that he's not going to win with his sword, the thing he's relied on his whole life.
I guess Hanarr was just a roundabout way to give Skull Knight a flashback...
Well, I do think he'll end up cutting him down, it's just that it'll take more than brawn to do it. I expect it'll be a team effort to some extent, which will highlight how precious his companions are. As for figuring out the trick to do it, well he's got a whole bunch of magic experts with him and they have months ahead with nothing to do but think about it.
Honestly I'm 100% sure Miura had other things planned for him, he wouldn't have introduced him just for that. But Mori may not have known the details, and so it's not guaranteed we'll see any of it... Same for a lot of other things, unfortunately.
Plenty of clunk in this one but the narrative thrust was pretty good, felt more like an episode with a point to it than some of the previous ones. The color picture is lovely. I'm really not getting much vitality in the way they draw Guts though.
Grail
Feel the funk blast
I think the slower pacing definitely worked in their favor for this episode, but I was still left with a lot of unanswered questions echoing the ones already summarized here. I hadn't considered the idea of Mori using Guts as a way to talk about his personal grief, that does add a point of interest to that scene - but am I the only one getting tired of seeing Guts blankly staring into nothing? 
One thing I found distracting was the studio's method of portraying people in the foreground of a panel. At first I got them confused with lines depicting motion, but I guess they're just trying to show things as out-of-focus. It seems like a new thing that they're trying (possibly as a time-saving method).
One thing I found distracting was the studio's method of portraying people in the foreground of a panel. At first I got them confused with lines depicting motion, but I guess they're just trying to show things as out-of-focus. It seems like a new thing that they're trying (possibly as a time-saving method).
First props to the person that made the colour page I really like it, I love the atmosphere and watercolor look of it.
I have a few thoughts about this episode but Walter's post pretty much covered everything I was going to mention. Firstly I chuckled seeing puck flying across the page, just without any explanation I think I knew they wouldn't bother explaining why puck and Iverella weren't affected, but who knows maybe there are things we just don't know yet about the disappearance of the astral beings in elfhelm.
It's pretty funny that Molda is the one that's actually doing pretty well considering the circumstances, because now she can finally set out on an adventure away from the island, but she reinvigorated Farnese and Schierke so she's a positive force right now. But one of her lines was pretty funny about that she's weary Guts could go "BERSERK" which doesn't really make much sense if the armour didn't activate when Griffith was Infront of him why would it now? Unless after Casca has gone the beast can take a firmer hold of Guts and Guts could potentially give in, I do believe the beast said something to the effect of he'll be lying in wait until the moment Guts's is at his weakest or is vulnerable but I forgot the exact line.
Guts thinking about how his sword has always been there felt a bit childish to me, I know it makes sense to contemplate that right now because that's been his entire identity and that's how he's gotten through life and also protected the woman he loved till now but I would have preferred him to be thinking about Casca directly in this moment, I feel like they are simplifying the character a bit by doing this, but maybe I have to think about it a bit more. This is a joke but if the beherit rolled out of his bag right now it would totally make sense, just because this is a pretty dire situation for Guts and his mental state is all over the place right now, I'm just saying that's how bad I think Guts feels right now. I'm not in any way saying that will happen because that's stupid but this is like a moment when a broken person summons the godhand.
The Art was good, but the lines feel a lot thinner and scratchy it's less uniform and neat, Molda looked spot on but maybe it's because I'm not as used to seeing her. Isidro and Guts look completely off model to me, and yeah what Grail mentioned about the characters in the foreground the panel of Isidro when Schierke was running looked strange.
Also I thought of a funny joke about Roderick, after the moment when he says "Guts don't do anything stupid!" The next panel is Guts hanging from the ceiling with the text underneath "BERSERK:END"
Damn it ended quicker than we thought!!
Yeah I think Hanar could awaken other memories of the armour and those memories could help Guts get back on track and even help him control the armour whilst also giving the reader insights into Gaserics past and what happened all those years ago.
I have a few thoughts about this episode but Walter's post pretty much covered everything I was going to mention. Firstly I chuckled seeing puck flying across the page, just without any explanation I think I knew they wouldn't bother explaining why puck and Iverella weren't affected, but who knows maybe there are things we just don't know yet about the disappearance of the astral beings in elfhelm.
It's pretty funny that Molda is the one that's actually doing pretty well considering the circumstances, because now she can finally set out on an adventure away from the island, but she reinvigorated Farnese and Schierke so she's a positive force right now. But one of her lines was pretty funny about that she's weary Guts could go "BERSERK" which doesn't really make much sense if the armour didn't activate when Griffith was Infront of him why would it now? Unless after Casca has gone the beast can take a firmer hold of Guts and Guts could potentially give in, I do believe the beast said something to the effect of he'll be lying in wait until the moment Guts's is at his weakest or is vulnerable but I forgot the exact line.
Guts thinking about how his sword has always been there felt a bit childish to me, I know it makes sense to contemplate that right now because that's been his entire identity and that's how he's gotten through life and also protected the woman he loved till now but I would have preferred him to be thinking about Casca directly in this moment, I feel like they are simplifying the character a bit by doing this, but maybe I have to think about it a bit more. This is a joke but if the beherit rolled out of his bag right now it would totally make sense, just because this is a pretty dire situation for Guts and his mental state is all over the place right now, I'm just saying that's how bad I think Guts feels right now. I'm not in any way saying that will happen because that's stupid but this is like a moment when a broken person summons the godhand.
The Art was good, but the lines feel a lot thinner and scratchy it's less uniform and neat, Molda looked spot on but maybe it's because I'm not as used to seeing her. Isidro and Guts look completely off model to me, and yeah what Grail mentioned about the characters in the foreground the panel of Isidro when Schierke was running looked strange.
Also I thought of a funny joke about Roderick, after the moment when he says "Guts don't do anything stupid!" The next panel is Guts hanging from the ceiling with the text underneath "BERSERK:END"
Damn it ended quicker than we thought!!
Yeah I think Hanar could awaken other memories of the armour and those memories could help Guts get back on track and even help him control the armour whilst also giving the reader insights into Gaserics past and what happened all those years ago.
I'm glad more people are slowly coming around to this take. It's an idea who's time will increasingly come as more corners are cut.
As for the actual episode though, I'm more mixed on it than the previous one. There are attempts at characterization and some of the beats I can follow what they were going for but we're now two episodes in from Casca's abduction and we're not treated to Guts' thoughts on it. The musings on his helplessness aren't bad by themselves and the colour scheme lends itself to them in a way that the otherwise just sort of functional art hasn't done before, but I'm less enthused about the way it's framed. Natural pessimism aside, the focus of the scene leaned more on Guts' general helplessness even when he's come this far rather than on his sword as a tool and how it failed him specifically, i.e by not being able to protect Casca after he finally had her back.
There's an overall sense of regression here that I don't know if it's intentional or just a way to be sure the characters fit the broad stereotypical strokes of their personality. Farnese lamenting her own uselessness goes back to why she got into magic in the first place, and I can't tell if Molda's prompt is meant to show us how relatively far Farnese has come or is a retread of her dynamic with Schierke. That said, I am glad Molda still exists, though why she, Puck and Ivalera are still there where many others aren't is beyond me. Other aspects feel almost like retroactive book-keeping, like the Armor being brought up after episodes of high stress events where it's inexplicably a non-factor.
For all the criticism, this one is the closest in feeling to Berserk's quieter moments and the first time the Continuation has tried to focus on aspects of tone, characterization and dialogue. There's a lot wrong with it, but on its lonesome I disliked it less than the last several even with how truncated the character interactions seemed and some bizarre choices besides that (Why is Roderick the one so focused on Guts?)
The same amount of people hold this view than when the continuation started. You weren't the first. But it's as misguided now as it was then. What's inherently silly about it is the cognitive dissonance. To hold that the current team, working on this project following what they determined was the best course of action, is producing a bad result, while also believing the same team, if they attempted against their better judgment to do something arguably more difficult and with a higher risk of failure, would yield something superior.
It both berates them and puts them on a pedestal, simultaneously underestimating their professional judgment and overestimating their abilities. And underneath it all, it implies that maybe the problem with the project is actually that they want to convey, however partly and imperfectly, Miura's vision. That if they did their own thing without caring, it could be good. Which is simply irrational.
Anyway, since we're at it, here's a thought exercise for the people who think all this needs to become good is for Mori and staff to add more of their ideas to pad things out. What part of this episode do you think actually came from Miura?
Sailors loading Guts on the ship because he's too depressed to move by himself? Molda, a teenage slacker, taking charge of the entire group of refugees and bossing around Serpico and Farnese? Still Molda, who knows next to nothing about the group, explaining to Schierke of all people what the dangers of the Berserk's armor are? And acting as if being depressed is a danger (it's not)? Roderick frantically yelling at Guts not to kill himself? Or is it Guts, crying to himself while thinking about one of his swords from the Golden Age (the one that broke while fighting Boskone, when he needed it the most)? And while having forgotten Casca? I'll tell you the answer: none of this came from Miura. All of it came from Mori and the staff.
My guess for what they had is: "Guts would have a crisis of confidence after his failure to strike Griffith and would fall into depression". The rest is what they conjured to form a somewhat coherent narrative.
Now, I don't want this thread to devolve into a circular argument like the last one, so I'll be using my admin privilege (unfair, I know) to cut any such discussion short going forward. If someone really wants to keep arguing the issue, they should make a dedicated thread.
If that is the sum of Miura's intent that Mori was made aware of when it comes to what is an essential turning point for the main character, then answering the prior question is pointless as the project itself as a transmission of Miura's intent is discredited by the lack of any real insight beyond, at absolute best, a Wikipedia summary of broad, dry plot information. Plot information so free of tissue that for the first time in the manga's lifetime elementary details like why certain Elfhelm characters vanished and others didn't or why they vanished in the first place are left entirely to reader speculation.
The example you provide is entirely right and also speaks to the problem going well beyond the relatively less important points of failure on the mechanics of the plot. Even if the conveyance were perfect and we didn't have basic issues of trying to figure out what's going on, the purely mechanistic summary of the story fails to capture the strength of a work overwhelmingly about theme, mood and characterization. Suppose the Bonfire of Dreams or Farnese's musings on her role in her family were truncated to "Guts and Casca discuss life" and "Farnese is sad at home".
We're in agreement, but unfortunately, the "illustrated broad strokes" is all we can hope to get.
We'd get something much like episodes 365 to 370. But it's not because they'd be truncated (it's rather been the opposite), it's because the scenes recreated from those simple descriptions could never match up to Miura's vision and execution. This episode wouldn't be better if it was twice longer.
Much as I'd have liked a more fleshed out version of this that went beyond the bullet points, if only for the sake of a more coherently told story, I gotta agree with Aaz that it's not something this team could manage to pull off. A team that COULD pull it off would consist of people who would never want to touch this and would much rather write their own works. I think it's best to just take the highs with the lows at this point.
I just wish YA would stop pushing this like the rebirth of Berserk...
I just wish YA would stop pushing this like the rebirth of Berserk...
We're entirely in agreement that it could never match up to Miura's vision or execution. But examples like this episode are why it can't live up to his intent either because it's in moments like these that it tries and fails to make the move from summarizing broad events to summarizing specific essential emotions and relationships. I'm interested in hearing you guys' long-form thoughts, because in terms of extracting Miura's intent from a beat like this anyone without that level of chops couldn't get much out of it. As a communique on what Miura meant to do going forward "Guts is upset because he couldn't protect Casca" and "Guts is upset because he couldn't hit Griffith" are, while illustrated the same way and can be summarized with "Guts is upset" radically different directions for his character and future progression. My gut and preference tells me Miura would've done the former, but the format means that the longer we go on the more muddled this'll get.We're in agreement, but unfortunately, the "illustrated broad strokes" is all we can hope to get.
We'd get something much like episodes 365 to 370. But it's not because they'd be truncated (it's rather been the opposite), it's because the scenes recreated from those simple descriptions could never match up to Miura's vision and execution. This episode wouldn't be better if it was twice longer.
I'll post my thoughts in detail when I have the time, but in short I think Miura would have done both in a way that would have felt completely organic and natural, to the point where it would have seemed obvious to the reader. It's all about what scenes you choose to have him reflect back on, and what thoughts you have him thinking. Here's an example:
I've lived my life through my sword. Earning, surviving, protecting... It's all I've ever known. But maybe... maybe this is the limit. Maybe my sword can only carry me so far. When he returned into this world, I thought he was within my reach... But even as he stood before me, he remained hopelessly beyond.
I once was told I had to choose between seeking revenge and protecting her... But in the end, I could do neither when it mattered most. I've lost her, once again. He took her from me, once again. And before that, I couldn't even tell her anything... Any of what I had to say... She is farther away now than she's ever been.
By the way, there's another component no one's mentioning, and that's the fact he saw the boy transform into Griffith and was even explained what's going on. He's bound to put two and two together eventually, and that should also be a huge deal for him. Hard to tell whether Mori and team will address it directly though.
These are so much in line with Miura's style. One of these days I want to see the Aazealh take on how it would have concluded.
Grail
Feel the funk blast
I think reading your version made me realize what was bugging me about Mori's/Gaga's version of that scene - it sort of felt like Guts was blaming the Dragon Slayer in this episode, which is way off given what we know about his character. This discrepancy might give us a better sense of what Miura might have told Mori in the moment, but what you've written clicks so much more naturally.
this comment It's the best thing coming out of this episode
I like what Aazealh wrote but as he's said himself we are just guys, we can have our own interpretations and ideas about dialogue and what could have been but we'll never no what Miura would have wrote, but it definitely wouldn't be what Mori did for this episode. That being said i would have preferred something more along the lines of what Aazealh wrote because it doesn't just focus solely on his Sword
what I dont like: 1) they all on the boat just like that. ok, is the new berserk, skipping a lot things. 2) puck and the other elf safe, no explanations on why they not vannished, not expecting to be explained in future. 3) the crew's dialogue were kind rubbish, superficial, no talk about what happenned. I dont know how it would happen with Miura, but its just feels off, like something from the true berserk is missing. Like what farnese was crying about exacly? the last episode anyone did nothing, all happenned so fast, they were like vults there, barely appearing. But know they draw her crying? Its just weird. She should be just on shock like ''what just happenned'' instead of crying out guilt.
what I did like: the part of Guts, his thoughts were good. Seems like its from Miura actually. The font was good. And the drawing overall were good. Thats it.
what I did like: the part of Guts, his thoughts were good. Seems like its from Miura actually. The font was good. And the drawing overall were good. Thats it.