Comic Review: Berserk Deluxe Edition Vol.1 (Dark Horse)

Dark Horse Comics releases a jumbo-sized Japanese graphic novel for collectives in Berserk Deluxe Edition on its first volume.

So it comes down with this, Dark Horse publishes a jumbo-sized three volume packed Berserk manga for the first time at its finest. There are many jumbo sized mangas that were combined with 3 or 4 volumes of the original story, even if you feel like collecting these books. However, you’ll get this book with a never-ending violent and horrific action fantasy story out of your head split right open. There are 3 volumes inside of this book and combined to have an extended story like every other manga that you’ve read.

Join Guts and his never-ending adventure of hunting apostles and seeking revenge against Griffith who betrayed his group of the army known as The Band of the Hawk. Seeing Guts in action with his prosthetic hand and the dragonslayer blade never gets old with it. The guy never gets tired of hunting monsters because of his cursed brand attracts them is just like the Grim Reaper is behind his shadow. Then the comic gives a backstory known as “The Golden Age” where a woman hangs herself on a tree and Guts was born on that tree, and then he fights like a beast since childhood. Obviously, his fighting spirit and his raw power of strength that he has been actually born from it. Everything that he goes on an adventure, fighting apostles, being a mercenary and a black swordsman is truly fearsome.

I do get that the story of Berserk goes somewhere, however, on the first chapter it goes on an adventure alone, leaving the mentally ill Casca behind to a blacksmith, and travels with a fairy, Puck who left his domain where all the other fairies live. This is where the tragedy began for Guts when his cursed brand drips with blood, every monster that he encounters wants him dead.

The last thing I want to talk about is the anime series of Berserk. Up from that point, the anime that I’ve watched on 1997 is just only raw and intense animation which makes it so violent, but the 2016 anime shows that there’s more to that because the animators tend to have the animation more violent in a CGI animated version of it. I’m truly disappointed that the animation looks like crap and most of the fans expected to continue with the actual animation from ’97 and the CGI version in 2016, but I wonder why is it so bad? And no, I’m not saying that I don’t like that kind of animation, the CGI animation is great, but going through with the anime is totally lacking the animation and it made it so cheap that the fans are putting hands down. Take this manga, for instance, Kentaro Miura may be the best manga artist in Japan, but seeing the art, Miura focused an intense amount of details in both deceptions of cosmic horror and otherworldly beauty. So that means, the animators had a hard time to make an anime version of Berserk, even so, the manga kept going because of Miura’s greatest art style in Japanese manga history. The editing and the storyboard of the anime are the worst. Whenever I watched the 2016 anime, it became less redundant that the animation is lacking its storyboard, and this is one of the most disappointments of all time. Even with the editing, there are some shots that didn’t make sense to the viewers, but the CGI needs some improvement. It’s actually worse when you have a camera on your phone and everything is blurry at the end, EVEN GOING SWINGING AROUND WITH THE CAMERA ON 3D ANIMATION IS NOT HELPING THAT MUCH, that is like the animation have some serious problems when it didn’t include a storyboard on it, but the music and the sound effects didn’t disappoint me.

Speaking of music, let’s talk about the theme song of the Berserk animes that you’ve heard. Besides the animation, the theme songs of every Berserk anime is very epic, that the animators and the viewers excited to have it played on your ears. My favorite one is the Hai Yo (Oh Ashes) from Berserk 2016, composed by Susumu Hirasawa, just listen on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4S6dNvHBYI It contains an epic orchestra music of a warrior going on a war, while the Vikings are rampaging on the battleground, this is most likely to have a great music for the Berserk anime and I’m glad that they brought him back, just to see Guts kicks ass following with some *CLANG* noises with his sword, and the lyrics are epic too, hearing this music is like giving you the confidence in order to beat Dark Souls with the look on your eye or going on that job interview for a dream job that you’ve always wanted to work for, it’s dark, terrifying, but really epic. But if you go back to the other theme song of the 1997 Berserk, it’s just like hearing a Native American and its survival days and one of Nobuo Uematsu pieces, just listen to the track of “Behelit” on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLg_wp0IXoI There’s nothing wrong with those, the music is combined with some fine orchestra with fantasy music which can be very dark and really fearsome, which is much more epic than listening to any metal music that you’ve ever heard.

So, this is great jumbo manga to get for collectors who haven’t read Berserk yet, it gives a lot of raw emotion between the medieval world and the fantasy world, but a really violent one. The art style is really inspiring to the other viewers that they want to know how his style influences just to make manga in order to make it more interesting. And the story goes on and on and on until he gets his revenge against Griffith. If you rather want to start collecting these newly published jumbo books of Berserk then this is for you.