Berserk

[Anonymous No.15728705]

Berserk can be considered /lit/? There are a lot of philosophical ideas in this manga and also the characters are really good.

[Anonymous No.15728712]

and what are the philosophical ideas in it

[Anonymous No.15728755]

A few arcs of Berserk made it the single best dark fantasy there is. Better than GOT.

[Anonymous No.15728778]

>>15728712
Oh yeah
Berserk has some brutal ways of showing suffering and the pain of being, its Japanese too

[SAGE No.15728788]

>>15728712
pre-destination

[Anonymous No.15728798]

>>15728705
>There are a lot of philosophical ideas in this manga
Yes, but it's all on the level of "hurr dur, religion bad".

[Anonymous No.15728800]

>>15728712
There are several ideas from Nietzsche in this manga. Griffith and Guts contrast each other. Guts and Griffith represent the higher man and the lesser man. Griffith has ambition and has dream, whereas Guts didn't have a solid meaning in life besides killing people. However, Guts decided to search a meaning to his life when he abandoned Griffith. This could be represented with the tmetamorphosis: the camel, the lion, and the child. There is a several ideas of Nietzche besides these, but I am to lazy to explain them. Besides Nietzsche there a lot of philosophy of Machiavelli. If you already read the eclipse you already know what I am talking about. Existentialism is also a big part of this manga. Also, the ideas about free will, determinism and destiny are present.

[Anonymous No.15728807]

>>15728705
Berserk is garbage. Even the golden age arc wasn't as good as brainlets think it was, it had some nice ideas but the writing is contrived and apart from a few rapes and the eclipse it may very well be a shonen. After that it devolved into generic edgy dark fantasy maybe except in Lost children arc. Unironically the most /lit/ arc in Berserk is The Black Swordsman.

[Anonymous No.15728823]

>>15728798
Berserk just shows how religion can be used as a slave morality tool. This isn't a superficial critique to religion, this mostly comes from Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.15728834]

>>15728705
Berserk is one of the most /lit/ manga out there. If it isn't /lit/, no manga is

[Anonymous No.15728836]

>>15728807
Do you want to elaborate? I know the newer arcs aren't as good as the first ones, but do you care to explain why the golden age is bad?

[Anonymous No.15728838]

>>15728800
>>15728705
it's infantile transplantation of 'concepts', 'ideas'. anime/manga always pulls this cringy shit.

[Anonymous No.15728841]

>>15728755
I would say Sandman at any point was better than Berserk at any point by far. More lit certainly.

[Anonymous No.15728845]

>>15728823
>Berserk just shows how religion can be used as a slave morality tool.
Yes, but only in a 8th grade fedora tipping way.

[Anonymous No.15728852]

>>15728823
>This isn't a superficial critique to religion
yes it is lol. especially with systemising nietzsche into a few braindead redutions.

[Anonymous No.15728857]

>>15728705
The ideas are shallow and anything past the eclipse is hot fucking garbage.

So no, it gets tossed in the trash alongside 99% of manga.

[Anonymous No.15728862]

>>15728705
Parts of it but not all. Like most manga, it's length serves to its' detriment. Not as /lit/ as other stuff some other comics/manga.

[Anonymous No.15728873]

>>15728705
>"philosophical ideas"
Man, summer is getting really tiring.

[Anonymous No.15728887]

Elitists in this sub will say no because it's a manga, but I say absolutely.

Miura borrows ideas from Jung regarding the collective unconscious and how it gives birth to fantastical beings that exist in a world of forms transposed upon our material existence.

The series does a good job of showing instead of telling, with many of the best panels having few words. The setup of the panels is very well executed. The art itself is top-tier. Facial expressions are not contrived.

The story deals with trauma and its effects on character development well. There's some edgy, gratuitous rape scenes, but the emotional sex scene between Guts and Casca counterpoises it well.

The quality has gone downhill due to Miura's age and fatigue, but hopefully he'll get a second wind to satisfactorily wrap up the series. His other series will allow him to draw his lolis instead of inserting them into the story (hopefully big-tit witch is the last one).

[Anonymous No.15728893]

Now, Hunter x Hunter, that's a /lit/ manga.

[Anonymous No.15728896]

>>15728800
go back to youtube, pseud

[Anonymous No.15728935]

I only read oppai loli doujins

[Anonymous No.15728955]

>>15728935
Based

[Anonymous No.15729064]

>>15728836
Sure.
Golden age arc at its core had a nice concept, the most interesting one it had going for was reveal and implications on the Godhand and how they relate to humanity's collective sin. Griffith's and Guts' dynamic was also pretty good, however Miura's execution is questionable. I mean look at Guts fighting with that onion helmet dude as a teen and tell me he doesn't look like a shonen protag, not just that Guts vs. 100 men, Nosferatu Zodd, skeleton night etc. All are entrappings from shonen. Nothing bad per se but feels very contrived and mildly annoying when people bring it up as an example of well written dark fantasy. The most interesting character was Griffith but rest of the band including Casca were run of the mill "depressing past muh ambition" characters. There is also very questionable use of rape which is done more out of shock value and to push the series as a mature manga than anything else. Apart from all this the humor is also very juvenile and feels completely out of place. The biggest problem however is one that permeates 99% of all mangaka and that is they are Artists first, storytellers second and writers last. The dialogue is very contrived and i doubt it is so only because of the translation. I was re-reading through berserk but gave up 33 chapters into Golden age arc after realizing that the quality of writing was very mediocre, something 15 year old me did not notice. Later arcs are not even in conversation, all the potential it had in way of ideas about casuality, fate, bleak world were substituted for contrived discussions on religion and generic fantasy. As far as these anons go
>>15728887
>>15728800
These kind of essays can also be written on Naruto and bnha with the same sincerity and is more a case of readers looking deeper for connections and all, i am pretty sure Miura won't know half of these that he somehow put into his work.

[Anonymous No.15729118]

>>15729064
/thread

[Anonymous No.15729169]

>>15728893
>>15728705
What makes a manga /lit/, is it that it will never be finished?

[Anonymous No.15729180]

>>15728755
Cerebus is the best dark fantasy in comics/manga medium.

[Anonymous No.15729190]

>>15728893
Only because of the exposition dump.

[Anonymous No.15729195]

Why do you seek affirmation for your shit manga by calling it /lit/? as if that makes it any better?
have you seen what the retards in this board put in the yearly charts? I'd be ashamed to even tell anyone I browse this place if I were you.
You're better off calling Berserk /fa/ than associating it with here

[Anonymous No.15729222]

>>15728893
I've honestly never read this manga and I see a lot of obnoxious threads being made of it in this board now and then.
But I did finish the 2011 adaptation recently, it was a decent show I guess for the most part, but what caught my attention is a sequence that happens in a later arc, where they storm a palace to defeat the big bad guy.
I've honestly never seen this style of narration done in any medium before, the way events and characterization was happening in a split second, and how the narrator would really give crucial details that simply cannot be understood with a show don't tell approach.
I feel like this arc in particular would've worked well as a novel.

[Anonymous No.15729240]

>>15728800
>There are several ideas from Nietzsche in this manga.

[Anonymous No.15729247]

>>15728834
Berserk is edgy shonenshit genre fic.

Read Ten instead.

[Anonymous No.15729255]

If I have never read a manga in my life is this the one to read? What should I read instead?

[Anonymous No.15729258]

>>15728800
>Nietzsche, Machiavelli
>philosophy
dropped

[Anonymous No.15729260]

>>15729255
it's the only one I've read and I recommend it to all

[Anonymous No.15729263]

>>15728705 >>15728834
>>15729195

[Anonymous No.15729278]

>>15729195
Almost no one on /lit/ has any self-awareness sadly. Using "/lit/" as praise is a sign of arrested development.

[Anonymous No.15729287]

>when you integrate the shadow just right

[Anonymous No.15729322]

>>15729255
No read Go Nagai instead. Atleast there is some value and talent in his edge.

[Anonymous No.15729330]

>>15729322
Miura has talent he's just wasted it with the Japanese equivalent of Game of Thrones.

[Anonymous No.15729336]

>>15728788
berserk has fatalism, not predestination

[Anonymous No.15729339]

>>15729330
Miura's """talent""" only lasted 2 arcs, everything he made past the lost children has been shit with shonen tier tropes.

[Anonymous No.15729359]

>>15729339
Too ambitious and he effectively told all of the stories he wanted to with the stories incredibly early on. It's sad really.

[Anonymous No.15729363]

>>15729336
It is about predestination though

[Anonymous No.15729399]

>>15729195
based
fuck this board

[Anonymous No.15729418]

>>15728800
I watched a fucking GIRL make a video about this. Get this youtube tier analysis out of my face.

[Anonymous No.15729449]

>>15729330
Miura's only talent is his art which has gone down the shitter one and a half decades ago.

[Anonymous No.15729602]

>>15729449
Visual storytelling is still a type of storytelling.

[Anonymous No.15729923]

>>15729195
those charts are made by discordfags and tourists

[Anonymous No.15729947]

>>15728887
>The series does a good job of showing instead of telling
Dumb meme aside, a visual medium does a good job of "showing"? Whoa. That's revolutionary.

[Anonymous No.15730107]

>>15729602
>Visual storytelling
That is secondary and not too prominent in Berserk. His art was just aesthetically pleasing.

[Anonymous No.15730182]

>>15730107
Guts becoming vulnerable for the first time in his life during mid-sex with Casca wouldn't have been nearly as impactful without the visualization.

[Anonymous No.15730193]

>>15729258
you're dumber than him

[Anonymous No.15730218]

>>15728705
It's good, but it doesn't really have anything new or profound to say about the ideas it is inspired by. It just uses ideas from philosophers like Nietzsche to make the world of Berserk more interesting and to provide depth for the characters. Not that I want it to say something profound, I think it's good that it can use ideas to make a richer story and world without having some blatant political or ideological thrust and attempt to get you to agree. It reminds me of the game Bioshock in that sense. Bioshock doesn't really critique Rand's philosophy itself, but instead what happens when an ideology is taken too far. Rand's philosophy provides an interesting backdrop for convincing world building.

[Anonymous No.15730249]

>>15728935
This but with muscle girls and shota instead.

[Anonymous No.15730488]

>>15728712
Whether the pursuit of happiness by humanity are good or bad. The villains in this comic are all ambitious people who were willing to sacrifice everything including their loved ones and their own humanity to achieve their goals, and they make a deal with devil to do just that. The final boss is the collective consciousness manifested of the human species' longing for transcendental reasons regarding its existence

[Anonymous No.15730519]

I remember reading the whole thing a couple of years ago and it felt like it too a nosedive in quality later on.
Guts was an underwhelming protagonist for me, his character is nothing I haven't seen before in other works, the only character I really liked was Griffith, he reminds me of Kierkegaard's concept of a knight of faith.

[Anonymous No.15730528]

>>15730519
>too
took*

[Anonymous No.15730748]

>>15730488
>The villains in this comic are all ambitious people who were willing to sacrifice everything including their loved ones and their own humanity to achieve their goals, and they make a deal with devil to do just that.
So just like any other seinen or Graphic novel?

[Anonymous No.15732069]

Philosophically you aren’t going to get much value from Berserk. I get that there’s things you can point to, but never does it make a strong statement. Berserk is more about the development of characters than philosophy and that’s where the value is. The characters are all written with great complexity, to the point that it’s frankly up to personal opinion if Griffith is a good or bad person despite his atrocious actions. Would he have been more noble to give up on himself for the sake of people who been carried by and idolized him? Was his new world not worth the cost of a hundred or so mercenaries? Maybe, but it’s arguable both ways, especially since he’s backed by the Idea of Evil who is essentially God.

After the Conviction Arc though, forget it. It’s just a shallow shonen gag manga beyond that point. Frankly, I HATE the Berserker Armour. Miura introduced this maguffin and threw out all meaning to any struggle in the process. Guts can just defer to the Berserker armour and have what may as well be infinite power as the plot needs it, the handicap is he has to mend offscreen, big whoop. Fuck everything past Conviction.

[Anonymous No.15732076]

>>15728834
>no manga is
correct

[Anonymous No.15732152]

>>15728935
cringe
>>15730249
based

[Anonymous No.15732233]

>>15729255
Just read something fun, like Yotsuba, Komi Can't Communicate. Something dumb and easy to read. You're not going to find any real enlightenment from manga anyway. That being said, reading at all keeps you away from things even dumber and less enlightening as mindless entertainment like television or video games. Reading shit like Berserk is stupid because it's time-consuming and only fooling you into thinking it has anything to say besides grimdark violence and nudity.

[Anonymous No.15732465]

>>15728800
I really hope English isn't your first language

[Anonymous No.15732670]

>>15728838
cringe

[Anonymous No.15732687]

>>15729947
upvote

[Anonymous No.15732772]

>>15728705
It's both /x and /lit. One of the best. It's Gnostic by the way.

[Anonymous No.15733037]

>>15732465
You got me there.

[Anonymous No.15733076]

Berserk is, or was, mostly about trauma, on a personal and societal scale.

[Anonymous No.15733144]

>>15729064
quality post

[Anonymous No.15733156]

>>15729255
Hunter x hunter is a good read, fun manga

[Anonymous No.15734073]

what philosphical themes does Strongest Legend Kurosawa have?

[Anonymous No.15734116]

>>15729064
good post.

[Anonymous No.15734150]

>>15728834
If NGE ain't /lit/, then nothing is /lit/

[Anonymous No.15734164]

>>15734150
>>15732076

[Anonymous No.15734173]

>my chinese cartoon is totally literature, I swear it's deep waaaah
a thread died for this

[Anonymous No.15735006]

>>15729255
The Walking Man