/lit/ - Literature

Got to the lore dump in Beserk where Guts gets to the witch.

It's very similar to Bakker. In Beserk there are three worlds. A Platonic word of ideas, the Logos; the actual world of humans; and the modal world of possibilities, the Astral world's of fables like trolls and elves, but also a deep astral world where ego cannot reach and fathomless entities of possibility live. In deeper but accessible realms like the Godhand and Apostles.

The astral world's ability to effect the human is based on humans' belief, as in Bakker. However, humans can't seal the astral world off because their unconscious still has access to it via archetypes (it's Jungian in this way).

So the astral world invades from time to time, and does so at the behest of the will of unseen things in the abyss. This is similar to how the ciphrang seem to work.

The Godhand were all human once, whereas the Gods of Erwa seem to be collections of human souls, warped and twisted. Both feed on the souls of the dead.

Beserk looks at causality as a set of chains. Determinism is the material world is a prison. Bakker has extremely similar themes.

In Bakker, the God's are challenged by an amoral man (more a logic driven robot) utilizing the power of the Logos. Beserk is more Nietzschean. Guts is driven by pure hatred, the will to survive, and, at times, love. So there is some difference in themes because Guts' battle is two fold, against Causality (represented by the Godhand) and against his drive, mostly in the form of hatred, swallowing up all he loves (the Black Beast).

The aesthetics are also incredibly similar.

Do we think Bakker read Beserk? I know Beserk has its own influences. The Thirty Years War, Durer for the art, Nietzsche, Jung, Japanese folklore, Platonism, and seemingly in many places, the Evil Dead movies.

Also, anything else like these two? I've found I don't like most manga or fantasy, but I love these two.