Kentaro Miura Death Sees Fans Share Their Favorite ‘Berserk’ Scenes
Berserk #Berserk
Fans of the popular Japanese manga series Berserk have shared their favorite scenes from the fantasy series as a tribute to creator Kentaro Miura.
Kentaro Miura died on May 6, aged 54, after suffering from acute aortic dissection, a serious heart condition, according to a Thursday post on the official Dark Horse Comics Twitter page.
The news was first announced on the Berserk Twitter page and shared by Dark Horse Comics.
“Dr. Kentaro Miura, the author of Berserk, passed away on May 6, 2021 due to acute aortic dissection,” the translated tweet read. “We would like to express our utmost respect and gratitude to Dr. Miura’s painting work and pray for his soul.”
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Dark Horse Comics hailed Miura a “master artist and storyteller,” adding that he will be “greatly missed.”
Miura was born in 1966, in Chiba City, Japan. In 1988, while he was at Nihon University, Tokyo, Miura debuted Berserk Protoype. The 48-page manga would become the introduction into the epic Berserk series.
Berserk explores a dark medieval universe and tells the story of central character Guts, a mercenary who joins forces with Griffith, the leader of a mercenary group called “Band of the Hawk.”
The series was first published in 1989 in Japan and later in 2003 in the U.S. by Dark Horse Comics. In 2017, the U.S comic publisher declared the manga series the most popular ever published in North America, having sold over 1.2 million copies at the time. All 40 volumes of the series have since been published in the U.S.
The manga was animated three times. It was first brought to TV in 1997 as a series, then again in 2012 as a trilogy of films in Berserk: The Golden Age Arc and in 2016 as a TV show continuing the story from the films.
Miura was also known for his mini-series Gigantomachia and his illustrations in the manga King Of Wolves, which he worked on with writer Buronson.
Newsweek has contacted Dark Horse Comics for comment.
The news of his death came as a shock to fans of the Berserk series and prompted a wave of tributes on social media.
Twitter user @Carter___G shared their favorite Berserk scene in a lengthy thread.
“A few words about my favorite scene in Berserk. It isn’t the Eclipse or Guts and Griffith’s meeting on the Hill of Swords,” they wrote. “It’s just a conversation between Guts, Serpico and Roderick [fellow group members].”
The user shared four pages from the comics in which the characters have a heart-to-heart and wrote a lengthy post detailing why the scene had such an impact.
“This scene between Guts, Serpico and Roderick is in, in my opinion, the core of what Berserk is about,” they began. “For all the raw testosterone and masculine energy that surrounded Berserk’s identity, at its core the emotions of the characters were always the main focus. It the tender and delicate despite the art of the work depicting a blunt, hard look at violence.”
“Underneath everything that Guts was and everything he went through was someone who was always trying to push forward and learn more about himself,” the user explained. “He wanted to grow and become someone who could feel all the things that humanity had to offer.”
The user also went on to praise the way Guts “carved a path to create his own destiny” and Serpico and Roderick’s decision to stand by him, hailing their sibling-like relationship.
User @silentzelda also shared four favorite panels from the series that showcased the softer side of the characters.
“i wanted to share some of my favorite tender panels from berserk. we all knew miura for his extremely detailed, dynamic art, and berserk for its grittiness, but some of the more tender scenes are my favorite,” they explained.
@heavenrestricts posted: “my favorite scene in berserk to this day is the moment directly after guts fights the thunder demon thing and sees griffith again for the first time in so long and nobody else seems to notice him except for guts but the emotion in those pages, just watching each other … ‘the instant i saw him, i’d forgotten my urge to kill.'”
@Telnarmo explained why the “Bonfire of Dreams” scene, which is in episode 22 of the series, was meaningful to them.
“R.I.P. Kentaro Miura, Berserk will always be my favorite manga/anime & unfortunately you’ll never know how impactful & relatable the Bonfire of Dreams scene is/was to me,” they wrote. “Everything Guts states there hits me at my deepest core of how I view myself. I hope one day to find my dream.”
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