Berserk Volume 42: Berserk Is Still Great Folks

I was mixed on it at the time. The art was quite beautiful if funky and underdeveloped, and arguably better than Miura’s worst in Berserk. The narrative was extremely compelling if too sloppy for my taste. And the thing we all realized, despite our critiques, was that you can tell they love Miura and his fanbase and want to do them justice. And, looking back, they really do.

Now, a strong and reliable criticism this volume received was it’s character designs. Yes, they are imperfect and kind of take you out the scene, but not that much. The attention to detail is blazing but it’s clear Miura didn’t draw them, and that’s fine. It’s a new age for Berserk and if these are the designs we have to work with, we can. You can tell who is who immediately and I even prefer some newer panels to what Miura provided in the Fantasia arc. Like he himself also drew the characters a little weirdly if you look back.

A problem that really grabbed me in the past was how fast yet unbelievably slow these chapters felt. Like the characters, stuff just hits the fan and it’s unbelievable. The fact Griffith just arrives, and destroys everything we worked so hard to get to, it’s soul-sucking and so refreshing. Guts and Griffith needed to be reunited, and this was the perfect opportunity for the narrative to take a left  turn. In a not so long ago time, we were hoping Miura would move on from the Fantasia arc into more interesting stuff. And here we are.

This really is the Ozymandias of Berserk, aside from the Eclipse. Seeing Guts loose Casca by Griffith is one of the hardest moments in the manga to read. And probably provides some of my favorite chapters in Berserk. The theorizing that went down to speculate what Griffith and Guts were gonna do were endless and somehow this volume provided the best execution of the bunch I didn’t fully see coming. Now, with such incredible chapters like this, why is this volume not one of the better ones of the series? Well, this is Berserk so every volume usually is startlingly excellent and Guts is too stagnant in the later half, to my dismay.

Guts just needing a moment is fine but it starts to make the volume itself tedious. Waiting for him to get up and look for Casca was probably one of the most exhausting things to wait for. Though, that doesn’t mean things don’t get interesting later in this volume. One of my favorite parts in all of Berserk is seeing more of Casca. Her situation is one of the most fascinating parts of the manga so far, and how they are showing her locked in a castle matched with Guts and the crew at their lowest is just fantastique!

While I still have qualms with the art, I really love this volume and every Berserk fan should at least buy it to see how they look back on this hard time for many of us strugglers. It’s clear Miura planned this and it’s clear they are respecting his wishes in such a heartbreaking and profound way. If he didn’t say it, don’t write it is the motto I sense from these pages, and you have to respect that earnestness.