Manga

Berserk

I think the first ever time I new about Japanese comics and anime as the airing of Sailor Moon I used to watch on the T.V.. Granted, I hardly remember any of it, but I knew it was way different than watching Scooby Doo. I kind of showed interested in the shows Toonami aired like Dragon Ball Z and Zoids, but I never really liked the Shojo style of anime (or anything with huge eyes. I still secretly hate Pokemon, don't tell anyone.) I've read my share of Shonen Jump magazines when I started attending high school, thanks to friends I met there carrying them around and reading them in their free time in class. It made me interested in collecting Bleach volumes, after I got hooked watching an Adult Swim commercial to the English dubbed anime they began to air around that time as well. I never really expanded onto other mangas until I realized Bleach's storyline sounded more like Dragon Ball Z, so I began to venture out until someone told me how gruesome one manga is. I was curious and started reading this manga called Berserk. It's infamous for it's blood, guts, rape, pedophelia, and even incest. I was soon drawn into reading a good chunk of the way through, and was disappointed when I read info about it that the manga hasn't even been finished yet even after running for 22 years (first volume was released in 1990).

The way Kentaro Miura inks his panels is what mostly got me fixated into reading more into the volumes of the manga. During action scenes, the shaded lines point in the direction of the moment, which is my favorite part seeing in every action sequence. Guts's expressions are pushed to the max when he is enraged while fighting countless demons. The backgrounds are definitely not flushed out - there is every detail added to every nook and cranny, even a page filled with thousands of soldiers lined up for battle all have their armor drawn out. The demons included may be atrocious, but it's things like them that make this gruesome story stand out more than other mangas. There are also some really human moments in the story that make it believable, aside from the fact that everything becomes insane in other chapters. Overall, I recommend someone to give it a try to see how thrilling it branches out to be.