Dark Horse Releasing Berserk Guidebook

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
This I'm actually kind of interested in, though I dread the impact any typos or mistranslations would have, maybe I'll check the local Barnes & Noble.
 

Oburi

All praise Grail
Walter said:
Regarding a retranslation, or at the very least a re-edit, There's a recent precedent. DH has gone back and revised their name for the Sovereign from the half-translated "King Hanafubuku" to "Flower Storm Monarch." So if they're going to do that, why not dig deeper and fix (some of) the older stuff too?


He's referred to as King Hanafubuku in the guidebook they just put out so...
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Oburi said:
He's referred to as King Hanafubuku in the guidebook they just put out so...

:ganishka:

ef2f145bebf040e0277cd4f16d2346be770a040c13ccec0e44fe606f03d8356f.jpg


So, they're just re-releasing the exact same prints as the old DH volumes but larger, virtually confirmed, right? I bet they didn't even draw from a higher res source; it'll probably be the regular print version all all blown up, blurry and shit. It's a "deluxe" shit job, extra shitty. :carcus:

Hell, they probably got pirated scans of their own editions online to reprint, "Hey, these look pretty good... I think they cleaned up the quality in Photoshop!" :troll:
 

Oburi

All praise Grail
lol Yea. I mean, I'm going by what these pages look like in the online preview here http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2018/06/08-1/exclusive-preview-the-berserk-guidebook-ahead-of-fall-launch

Note the many other errors. I can't believe I let myself get mildly excited over this.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Oburi said:
lol Yea. I mean, I'm going by what these pages look like in the online preview here http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2018/06/08-1/exclusive-preview-the-berserk-guidebook-ahead-of-fall-launch

Note the many other errors. I can't believe I let myself get mildly excited over this.

This page alone is incredible:

63938643beb763092e7dd791acad070f1528469104_full.jpg


Aside from the fun of the "estimated" vital statistics (couldn't they settle on those for the purposes of selling a book on them? =) and completely made up parameters (happy to know Guts' legerity is stronger than his sociability; he also got a 1 out of 2 score for 50% on eyeballs possessed and his depth perception rating is accordingly lacking), was Guts' description switched with Farnese's in the original guidebook or did DH manage to fuck that up on their own? I'm betting they did it, but it's great either way because it means they're either that dumb or just too lazy and on autopilot to fix it. :ganishka:
 

Oburi

All praise Grail
It's unbelievable. Why sociability? lol Who gives a shit how social he is. We don't read Berserk because we're interested in seeing Guts try to make friends in the cafeteria on his first day at high school (... or maybe we are what do I know).
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Oburi said:
It's unbelievable. Why sociability?

They needed to come up with some characteristics for this little graphic, which they needed in turn to fill the pages of that book. Without all that made-up bullshit they would have nothing to sell.
 
Bender said:
The publishers fully embraced the Jrpg meme :schierke:

Those "parameters" are more indicative of a medical exam or something to me. Just picture Guts getting his parameters checked and in order.

I fail to understand how can DH be so shallow and out of touch with the community and the essence of Berserk after so many years of publishing it.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Bleac said:
Those "parameters" are more indicative of a medical exam or something to me. Just picture Guts getting his parameters checked and in order.

I fail to understand how can DH be so shallow and out of touch with the community and the essence of Berserk after so many years of publishing it.

To be fair that's from Hakusensha, Dark Horse is just translating it. These things are popular in Japan, but more appropriate for shounen series than for a manga like Berserk.
 
Griffith said:
This page alone is incredible:

63938643beb763092e7dd791acad070f1528469104_full.jpg

What cracks me up about that page is "Guts sayings"; why not just say quotes? This page title makes it seem like Guts is putting together a series of self help books.

"My life as a One Armed Swordsman": An inspiring true story of one man's struggle against fate, evil, and disability.

"Love and Loss as a Branded Man" : Never again will you feel compelled to bemoan your torrid love life after reading this harrowing tale of a truly cursed relationship.
 
Oburi said:
lol Yea. I mean, I'm going by what these pages look like in the online preview here http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2018/06/08-1/exclusive-preview-the-berserk-guidebook-ahead-of-fall-launch

Note the many other errors. I can't believe I let myself get mildly excited over this.

Dark horse said the preview pages are outdated: https://twitter.com/DarkHorseComics/status/1041829161856249856
I don't have the guidebook, so I can't confirm if it's all fixed.
 
Aazealh said:
To be fair that's from Hakusensha, Dark Horse is just translating it.

I thought they added some stuff like that in, because it looks so out of place. I guess Hakusensha is not an exception when it comes to bad marketing decisions (at least from my perspective, maybe Japanese people love knowing exactly how sociable and emotionally stable Guts is).

Aazealh said:
These things are popular in Japan, but more appropriate for shounen series than for a manga like Berserk.

That's true
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Bleac said:
I thought they added some stuff like that in, because it looks so out of place. I guess Hakusensha is not an exception when it comes to bad marketing decisions (at least from my perspective, maybe Japanese people love knowing exactly how sociable and emotionally stable Guts is).

For comparison, here's that page from the Japanese edition (2016, welcome to the party guys :griffnotevil: ).

And while yes, most of the content in this dumb book isn't of much use to fans, let's not all shit our pants. Don't forget that it has a sizable (16 pg), recent interview with Miura, touching on things like his message to fans about the breaks, he and his staff's reaction to the anime (slim, but it's there), along with a variety of other awesome topics. That alone is well worth the price of admission. Number of times US fans have had an official translation of a Miura interview prior to this: One.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Walter said:
And while yes, most of the content in this dumb book isn't of much use to fans, let's not all shit our pants. Don't forget that it has a sizable (16 pg), recent interview with Miura

You know where that interview could have been? At the end of a new artbook. :casca:
 
Walter said:
And while yes, most of the content in this dumb book isn't of much use to fans, let's not all shit our pants.

Yeah I understand, it's not such a big deal but it kinda makes you wish they came up with something more ingenious to add there, even if it's filler. Baseless parameters and stats they pulled mostly out of their asses to attribute to the characters is just silly.

Walter said:
Don't forget that it has a sizable (16 pg), recent interview with Miura, touching on things like his message to fans about the breaks, he and his staff's reaction to the anime (slim, but it's there), along with a variety of other awesome topics. That alone is well worth the price of admission.

I guess you're right, Miura's interview and comments and the exclusive art are the redeeming components.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
Don't forget that it has a sizable (16 pg), recent interview with Miura, touching on things like his message to fans about the breaks, he and his staff's reaction to the anime (slim, but it's there), along with a variety of other awesome topics.

I value anything Miura has to say, and I know he goes into some good shit there too, but those are not awesome topics. :griffnotevil: Makes me wish you, Aaz, puella and the community could do another correspondence with him. Now THAT was awesome. :casca:

Aazealh said:
You know where that interview could have been? At the end of a new artbook. :casca:

Ouch, way to twist the knife! Yeah, it's like they took the informational section at the start of the volumes and tried to stretch it into something of value on its own, but if you can't even nail the facts down there's little point. I'll still buy it like all Miura's things (I have his other DH published mangas besides Berserk and if they gave me ANY reason to get the deluxe editions I'd probably do that too).
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Griffith said:
I value anything Miura has to say, and I know he goes into some good shit there too, but those are not awesome topics. :griffnotevil: Makes me wish you, Aaz, puella and the community could do another correspondence with him. Now THAT was awesome. :casca:

Well I just picked the two that I know people tend to ask about a lot. But it's 16 pages so there's a LOT.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
Well I just picked the two that I know people tend to ask about a lot. But it's 16 pages so there's a LOT.

It's unfortunate that's what so many focus on, especially since I know the interest in breaks isn't like, how he's balancing his home life and work prep. I always imagine he just spends the time drawing more unique Kushan soldier's armors and the like. =)

"This is going to take masterpiece to the next level!" :miura:
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
My guidebook shipped yesterday. I gave it a cursory look through. A lot of work went into it, just from a design perspective, but it's also very visually confusing. Their charts and character relations maps are mostly nonsensical, bordering on useless. Great to have the interview translated, though I haven't read the whole thing yet.

Also wanted to note that they do indeed fix the typos and problem with that preview page they tossed out on Twitter over the summer (which had Farnese's description on Guts' page). Yay.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
My guidebook shipped yesterday. I gave it a cursory look through. A lot of work went into it, just from a design perspective, but it's also very visually confusing. Their charts and character relations maps are mostly nonsensical, bordering on useless.

I'm going to go ahead and deem it pretty useless, but maybe not worthless for the fun of it; I basically tried to write this thing myself over a decade ago. :ganishka:

Walter said:
Also wanted to note that they do indeed fix the typos and problem with that preview page they tossed out on Twitter over the summer (which had Farnese's description on Guts' page). Yay.

Thank goodness, I'd hate to think Guts' legerity score and all wasn't 100% accurate. =)
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Just finished the interview. A few typos aside, it's really fantastic. Everybody should read that thing.
 
I'm reading through the whole guidebook now, which is just surreal. One thing I'm curious about: they spelled it as "Tudor" instead of their translation of "Chuder." I'm curious if they're correcting that error, or if they just didn't coordinate the translation with previous releases. But if they ARE correcting it, how could they still call him "Knight of Skeleton"? :SK:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
NCHaskew said:
I'm reading through the whole guidebook now, which is just surreal. One thing I'm curious about: they spelled it as "Tudor" instead of their translation of "Chuder." I'm curious if they're correcting that error, or if they just didn't coordinate the translation with previous releases.

Why not both? :carcus: It would be nice if they made that and other corrections consistent across the deluxe releases, though.

But if they ARE correcting it, how could they still call him "Knight of Skeleton"? :SK:

Sadly, that's an officially mandated translation from Japan (it's in the volume glosseries, on statues, etc) , so they don't have much choice, though I wouldn't mind them going rogue in this case. =)

We've got it covered either way though:

www.knightofskeleton.net

:badbone:
 
Top Bottom