Some of the most enduring memories from my dissolute youth in the anime scene revolve in some way around Kentaro Miura’s masterpiece Berserk. Whether it was crowding around a buddy’s CRT monitor to binge watch the visceral anime or blasting the soundtrack on the way to a con, Berserk set the rumbling bassline to my otaku years.
That early fling with Berserk ended before I drifted out of the hobby, though. Ronald Reagan’s famous saying about the Democrat party applies to my participation in the anime scene. I didn’t leave it. It left me. Along with the holy trinity of Outlaw Star, Trigun, and Cowboy Bebop, Berserk was one of the last series to make waves before pastel computer animation swept away the rich, organic 90s aesthetic.
To be sure, the last episode’s cliff hanger ending left us hungry for more. But as time passed without word of another season, we moved on from Berserk. In due season, we moved on with life.
News of Berserk creator Kentaro Miura’s untimely passing cast a retroactive pall over happier times. I’d been aware that Miura had continued work on his magnum opus for years after the original anime ended, though in manga, a medium I never developed a habit for. Still, it was a consolation knowing that one of the giants was still out there turning in High 90s caliber work. A spark of hope remained that his life’s work would attain completion someday, and we would finally turn the last page on this hauntingly dark fantasy.
Those hopes now lie shattered; Miura’s masterpiece forever unfinished. In a way, it’s a fitting end to yet another franchise beloved by the generation defined by loss. You stumble into the theater with the opera in progress. You grow attached to certain characters and get invested in their stories. Then someone pulls the fire alarm.
That’s not to divinize Miura or his creation. Berserk isn’t perfect. No work of art is. Aside from the obvious demerits of sometimes gratuitous gore and sleaze, the story’s cosmology is shot through with the now-hackneyed nihilism that afflicted much of the anime, JRPG, and manga market at the time. Nonetheless, Miura drew striking yet flawed characters we could root for in spite of their vices. He transported us to a grim yet lush world doomed by fate and invited us to meditate on the implications of destiny.
All while scarred swordsmen battled minotaurs in haunted castles.
My friend and fellow author David V. Stewart recorded a worthy video eulogy for Miura. Watch it now.
You will be missed, Miura-sensei. Eternal memory!
In retrospect, my award-winning Soul Cycle drew more than a little inspiration from Berserk. Read it now for 99 cents.
