With Duranki out of the way, Kentaro Miura then moved on to talk about the current state of Berserk in the interview, clearing up some long-held fan misconceptions along the way.
Fans have long since tried to guess at the reason behind Berserk’s constant hiatuses in Young Animal, and while some have suggested that he simply doesn’t care about the series anymore, it’s quite clear from the interview that Miura has some more than valid reasons.
Firstly, Miura made the shift from traditional artwork to digital in 2015, around volume 38 of Berserk, which meant that Miura had to basically relearn everything from scratch.
That shift wasn’t as sudden as it first seems, however. As Miura revealed during the interview, he had actually already been using digital tools in tandem with traditional pen and paper for a while before that – sketching first in pencil and then inking digitally, after copying over the sketch, during the notorious ‘Sea God’ or ‘Boat’ arc.
Miura then decided to completely switch over digital as he believed it’d be more efficient, but several problems still remained.
He admitted during the interview that, while he’s also fast at doing storyboards and sketches, it’s inking and drawing where he often trips up, as he often focuses too much on detail – even getting shouted at multiple times by his editor for literally going pixel by pixel in his digital drawing software.
Even so, Miura views that level of detail as vital for his manga. Not only is he influenced by the so-called ‘baroque’ period of manga, as exemplified by the dense artwork of Tetsuo Hara’s Fist of the North Star and Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA, but he also believes that the manga panel acts as a ‘window to another world’ – with detail needed to sell this illusion.
All of this meant that it was fine with Miura, even perhaps necessary to miss a chapter or two every now and again if that meant being able to get the level of detail he desired, but even he admits that he might have bitten off more than he could chew with the series’ current ‘Fantasia’ arc.
The arc’s setting of the mystical island of Elfheim has necessitated even more detail and therefore more time spent on each panel than ever, as creating a believable ‘window’ to another world so steeped in magic and the unreal becomes harder and harder. More characters than ever also appear in each panel due to how many Elfheim inhabitants are diminutive in size, which only adds to the headache that this arc is proving for Miura.
The Future of Berserk
Don’t worry, though – we’ll be done with that arc and off the island of Elfheim very soon. Speaking very candidly about the future of Berserk during the interview, Kentaro Miura revealed that the story of Berserk is ‘approaching it’s back half’ and that ‘many surprises are in store.’
Of course, he’s mostly referring to where the character of Casca will go from here on out.