Berserk, Deluxe Edition volume 6, by Kentaro Miura
collecting work from the late 1990's, published in 2020
Berserk is one of the more popular manga out there. There are 40 published volumes in Japan, video games, anime shows and movies. For me, that's usually a sign I can just stay away. I've sampled popular manga like ONE PIECE and Attack on Titan, and not been very impressed. So I can't say exactly why I tried out Berserk. I saw images from one or two pages somewhere last year and decided it looked crazy enough that I would at least give it a try. It's good, but somewhere along the way while reading, I started to realize it might just be Great Art.
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| I'm going to take that sticker off |
Berserk is the story of Guts, the toughest man in the world, who carries a two meter sword, and has been branded with a mark that attracts evil demons. He is accompanied by a pixie-ish elf, and they travel the land, generally going nowhere in particular.
Volume 6 of the Deluxe Editions put out by Dark Horse collects volumes 16-18 of the regular collections. It starts mid-story from where 15 cut off. No effort seems to be made in collecting complete story arcs in these books. Each volume collects about ten chapters, and an arc could be six or sixteen chapters. Normally, this would frustrate me, and while I don't want to say it works for Berserk, I find the stories to be beside the point. I've read a 3,000 pages of this stuff now, and can barely remember how any plot ends. But I have vivid recollections of images and occurrences. So volume 6 starts mid battle with an elf butterfly that has been kidnapping children.
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| The sword often takes up a lot of the panel |
I was thinking about what goes into making a compelling story. For example, a hero that has to overcome personal difficulties to achieve a goal. Berserk does not have this. It has an unhappy wanderer that makes mincemeat of anything that crosses his path. The difficulties may increase, but there is little doubt that Guts will cleave it in half. And there isn't a clear destination. There is an overarching bad guy in the book, but he's far removed from the center. The book operates much more like a video game than a traditional narrative, at least in terms of Guts' story. Guts walks into a new land, encounters new enemies, there will be a big bad he takes down, and then he'll move onto the next place. And that will be 500 to 1000 pages of story.
There is a McGuffin in the overarching story, the Behelit, an egg with face parts on it that can connect the real world to the demon world.
But it's all a framework for Miura to create insane imagery, rendered in a variety of techniques. Sometimes it's tight nib-drawn ink work, and sometimes brash brush work.
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| Miura shows all sorts of disturbing imagery |
A common idea of modern storytelling is that the reader's imagination is more horrific than anything that could ever been shown (think the shark in Jaws), and Miura does the exact opposite of that. Miura intends to show you images that will haunt you.
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| They used to be dogs |
It shouldn't work, but it does, and it works superbly because Miura (and likely a team of super-talented assistants) have to skills and imagination to pull it off. He's placing these characters in extreme situations, and because we can see how insane their experience is, we can better empathize with them.
This volume gets into the topic of religion, with a holy army overseeing a nation fallen into famine. As life gets worse, faith starts to evaporate, and like the medieval papacy, sometimes extreme means are used to keep people "believing." And it's one thing to show a torture device and then shut a door and hear screaming. Here, you see everything that is done with the device. In every single instance, Miura shows and tells, he doesn't imply or rely on the viewer's imagination.
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| Father Mozgus and his devoted Toruturers. The character design in this is good |
A new character in this edition, the leader of the holy army Lady Farnese, tenaciously keeps her faith despite any doubt, and the story works hard to show how someone who believes they are working on God's behalf could do horrific things. It's an astute portrayal, and while I wouldn't want to call it sympathetic, it's at least giving the character an inner life.
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| How not to feel guilt for torturing others |
The book doesn't shy away from sex or violence, and graphically shows it. It's crucial to give the story weight. I don't take issue with sex or violence in other books, but often it's used to excite readers without actually adding to the book. Here, it's the point. This volume and the last two had rape scenarios come up, something often used poorly by writers. In Berserk, each character has very different reactions and and there are lasting ramifications. As well, the character Guts himself was raped in an early issue and has lasting trauma from it making him process rape and sex differently. I can't go so far as to say it's well-handled, I don't feel qualified to, but Miura does not treat rape as a problem to be solved with revenge and a quip.
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| There is a subplot with a demon worshipping orgy |
All in all, the series goes in depth to places like nothing I've ever read. There's been horror and fantasy works out there before, but possibly not of this graphic complexity. It's hard to fathom he's done 8,000 pages of this so far.
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| The dark world |
I'm going to keep on with this, and read volume 7. Dark Horse may plan to eventually publish every one, but they'll be up to 7 this month and have announced up to 9, which will be 27 of the Japanese tankoban collections. I can't believe that this will end with any sort of satisfying resolution though. The story just keeps winding in and out of places and themes. That's alright. This book is like a jazz jam, bringing things up then bringing them down. I don't really want an ending.
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