Reviews

A lot of the material of this volume is pretty stock-standard Berserk- Guts coming up against some new enemy and figuring out how he can exploit its weakness, assisted or interrupted in intervals by a member of his traveling party doing something to be a help or a hindrance. All the most interesting parts of the story here are happening away from these main characters, in the conflict between Kushan and the rest of the world, but really Griffith, the only one apparently able to stop the Kushan.

Okay, I did like the fight in the harbor where Zodd shows up and he and Guts attack the manifestation of Ganishka together. But it's been hard to get re-invested after taking time away from the series and returning to it in the midst of an extended period where the main characters aren't directly engaging with their actual goals and the only reasons that they have to keep getting in fights are that the fights keep coming to them. The story of Griffith becoming the great hero of the world is more interesting, but Griffith is also such an insanely powerful figure that there can be no doubt as to the outcome, only as to how he's going to end up getting into power. The newly demon-staffed Band of the Hawk, now following Griffith as the "Hawk of Light," is guaranteed to be good at everything, which is demonstrated during the battle at Vritannis but especially during their infiltration, evacuation and preparation for battle at Wyndham. The main reason to read through this volume ends up being the action and the art- but Miura's art is basically unrivaled when it comes to dark fantasy comics.

I'm not sure there's much more point in me thinking critically about this series, to be honest. It's good, but I think I was pretty caught up in it back when I was making my way through the first 10 collected volumes of this printing and glossed over a lot of the flaws. Why start talking now about the violence feeling like it's just there to provide violence instead of to advance the plot, when the point of Berserk has really always been to provide extreme violence in a dark fantasy setting. The story has been going "no way someone could do this impossible feat to get out of a jam" and then having Guts do that impossible feat for so long that any feeling of stakes has basically been taken out of a battle that features important characters, and in a self-fulfilling prophecy, I just read on to see how the extreme violence will unfold. The treatment of women has also worn thin by this point- Casca, Farnese, and Schierke all started out as developed characters but they've been gradually worn away, with Farnese and Schierke just there to help hold down narrative loose ends and stare longingly at Guts' incredibly muscles, while I think Casca has been mentally regressed for longer than she was a functioning character in the story, and most women outside those main characters are there in some sexualized capacity. Yes, of course there are exceptions because of how long this series is- there have been hundreds of named characters at this point, most of them faded out of my memory by now.

I also don't want to go too far in the other direction and say that Miura is just there to titillate and amuse and waste everyone's time. There are fantastic arcs in Berserk. Many of the depictions of abuse and sexual violence have been empathetic and about how these characters' experience trauma. But I feel frustrated approaching the end of the manga as it's been published, feeling like all the best parts of the series are well behind and that Miura spent years on wasted narrative momentum to which there will never be payoff, leaving me stuck with the aspects of the series I like least. It's sad stuff.

hisabelbide's review

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5.0

When the plot is at its most transitory, Miura's attention to detail ensures even though Guts is on the run and sidelined by lots of political mechanics, the art remains at its most detailed, the writing still ensuring blocks of thematic and symbolic coherence are being dropped, character being built. A ship battle has me wondering what Miura doing Master and Commander would read like, General Zodd's moment of glory in Vol. 32 still bringing surprises. Nothing is disposable in Berserk - it is not just Guts' story, it's the whole world of Berserk that Miura's philosophy was entertaining, not just an individual's psychology but the orders of power and violence transcending the individual flesh.