I couldn't understand what happened in the end though. Is Guts broken because he can't use the Dragonslayer and the side-effects of the armor of Berserk are surfacing, or is it because the sword "failed" him?
I think what we're seeing is 'Berserk' slowly but surely becoming a shonen manga. And it's horrifying, to be frank.I said my thoughts on Casca earlier, but reading through the continuation episodes again, Guts hasn't felt like a character either. At best he feels like a caricature of the character we once knew. All of his personality traits have been exaggerated, from his rage, to his suffering, it all justs feels like the person writing his lines has no idea who Guts is.
From episode 365, his character went from "GRIFFITH!!" to "I couldn't land a single hit" to "My sword is the only thing I've trusted", basically a Guts only focused on fighting, and specifically killing Griffith, and how I'd imagine a fan that only reads Berserk for the gore and suffering to write it.
In the end, even if the main points of the story moving forward come from Miura, the way my favorite characters are written will always sour me on it. (Not to mention the numerous inconsistencies in the last few episodes, but I've gotten sort of used to them by now).
Will he? I think lots of things that have been established in episodes before Miuras death are sadly now Null and Void (heh) and that could perhaps include Guts going blind.He's already going blind
That whole sequence is incredibly poorly executed and infuriating for me.Speaking of, would Guts lock himself into a room to mope? Does anyone think that fits his character? And why can't Roderick enter that room exactly? It's a storage room on a sailing ship and there appears to be no lock on the door nor anything barring it (page 13). Beyond that, why is Roderick so worried anyway? He wasn't there for the confrontation and he didn't see Casca get abducted. I guess maybe Farnese is supposed to have told him? Or is he just worried because Guts is so fragile in general that he needs special care? It's not clear... and doesn't really matter in the end because, again, the entire sequence feels wrong.
Well written.Conclusion
Of course, I'll keep following the publication because, well, I'm ride or die for Berserk.But I really do wish they would add a subtitle to differentiate the continuation from the real Berserk, because, man, the comparison is embarrassing. I've said it before, but the real work for us will start after it's all said and done, to try and extract the parts that matter from the chaff and speculate on that basis.
If anything, I feel like these 6 episodes would be 25 if miura was alive. It's massively condensed and based of a few sentences, like you've suggested.
When Guts bemoans that he lost all he ever had
We've no way of knowing what Miura was going for and if the suddenness and relative silence of what took place was even his intent or just a coincidence because that's just the format going forward.
When fantranslations produce dialogue better suited to coping analysis than the real thing. Lots of laugh. Makes no difference to the steelman I'm presenting though, the intent is the same. He's bemoaning that when he didn't trust anything he could trust his sword, his way of affecting physical reality, but in this case he couldn't struggle or affect anything, be it killing Griffith, saving Casca or even saving his own life.He doesn't say anything like that. See Puella's translation for reference. Trying to analyze or rationalize things based on shitty translations is a waste of time.
When fantranslations produce dialogue better suited to coping analysis than the real thing. Lots of laugh. Makes no difference to my point though, the intent is the same. He's bemoaning that when he didn't trust anything he could trust his sword, his way of affecting physical reality.
The only thing to clue us in that it may have been intended to be sudden is the idea that Miura only planned 6 more episodes for Fantasia
Oh, 100%. There's a reason I ended my post by saying that nothing in either how the scene is framed in particular or the way the Continuation is handled at large makes me think that what I'm presenting is likelier than what's going on on the face of it, only that these are the respects in which the situation is different from his past failures and so can lead to a breakdown similar in form to what we got. The futility of affecting Casca's abduction or Elfhelm's destruction in even minor ways while not even being responsible for his own survival is what produces a different reaction to even say, the Eclipse, where he could at least resist and fight Apostles. That is a character beat that I could see Miura exploring. Though yes, the boughs of Elfhelm'd probs disagree on his uselessness.Trying to make it about Guts' ability "to affect physical reality" really does just feel like an attempt to cope with how poorly executed the sequence is. Besides, he affected reality just fine when it came to the scenery. He did some pretty heavy landscaping.![]()
I might've missed it, but as I understood it Mori'd said that when Miura passed away there were six episodes until the end of the chapter and he was keeping to that. If it was entirely his spontaneous pick to go for six episodes or he never even said that at all, then all this flies out of the window, since not only the fight or Guts' depression but the entire structure of how things went down might as well bear no resemblance to what Miura had in mind.That's just what Mori decided to do. First off, nothing says Miura would have ended the Elf island chapter after exactly six more episodes (they likely would have said so if he had planned to), and second, I really doubt he would have closed the Fantasia arc with just a single chapter.
I might've missed it, but as I understood it Mori'd said that when Miura passed away there were six episodes until the end of the chapter and he was keeping to that.
Cheers for the clarification, then the whole structure of what's gone on and how it's paced even in terms of page count flies out the window.Nope. When the continuation was announced, Young Animal's editing department said that six episodes would be published until the end of the Fantasia arc/Elf Island chapter, and that a new arc would begin after that. Mori himself didn't comment on the matter.
Seeing guts like that ,broken. I think that it may open the behelit which is with him. Or maybe it's for Farnese she is broken too. (I think that the behelit is more for Guts) .
And there is a countdown on the website of Berserk with a behelit that coincides with the release of the next episode, I think it is related.