Dark Horse Comics brings you Berserk Volume 41 by Kentaro Miura. To begin with, this isn’t just your ordinary dark fantasy manga volume just to pick up and read. But this manga volume holds something very special in the hearts of all fans when they felt devastated by the death of the creator himself last year. 
However most older artists and creators in this generation are passing their lives away in old age or health issues, and most new artists and creators arise in this generation.
Even though there are so many people that I liked who passed away, Kazuki Takahashi, creator of the original 1996 Yu-Gi-Oh!, died from drowning while he was saving some people from drowning. He was 60 years old, and yet I still watch and play Yu-Gi-Oh!, for as long as I can remember. And not too long ago, Kim Jung Gi, a South Korean artist, and comic creator died of a heart attack at the age of 47 when he departs to fly to New York from Paris, where he was supposed to appear at NYCC. When I got to that table where Kim Jung Gi was supposed to be there on Friday, I saw so many flowers and drawings and signatures of other artists who admired him, even after his death, people paid their respects to him. I paid him my tribute to draw a cartoony portrait of him and write “Rest in Peace Kim Jung Gi” from the year that he was born and died. Then later when I saw a picture on Instagram, most people respected him for the drawings that they made and hung those, including mine into the wall to give him more space. I did that, just to know what it means to be an artist with honor.
But as for Berserk here, the death of Kentaro Miura is legendary. However, so many readers have no idea how fragile we creators can be in making comics and manga, people grew up in old age and experience health issues. Kentaro had been on hiatus for months until he announced another chapter of Berserk at another time because he was experiencing some health issues making comics, and it takes a lot of time, even years of creating a comic/manga series such as this one. Most of the creators need to take breaks because they’re human beings, even when you’re reading a popular manga such as this one, you can’t help it to know what comes next. If you’re actually reading something that you liked, then you should start supporting the creator not just for the story, but for themselves too.
The front cover shows something so memorable as to commemorate Kentaro Miura’s death, although this composition is very detailed. Here are Guts and Casca on the front cover, even though Guts is still wearing that cursed armor, and the background is surrounded by cherry blossoms at the elf island. There’s not much to talk about because this volume is a memorial to him, and so does that memorial anime of Berserk.
So this review is going to be short because I’m only there to talk about how great Mr. Miura was for creating Berserk for all the fans out there, but this volume only covers Casca’s recovery and Griffith’s announcement at the empire. Even though these are the last fewer chapters from the time when he died, with nearly 200 pages, this is actually the rarest Berserk volume that anyone would get.
So after the war against some monsters at the plains West of Falconia, The Band of the Hawk just teleported back to the castle by the power of the Stonehenge that Griffith discovered. Then they held a meeting for the future of his kingdom, however, Charlotte had the idea to establish an orphanage to help the small children to grow up healthy while residing in the kingdom for help, food, and support as they can get. Griffith, however, claims that establishing an orphanage should be a lot of help to the children to have the government play a part in education, meaning they need to educate and teach the children how to read, write, and a range of other subjects. And someday when they grow up, they’ll become a great support to the kingdom once they’re independent, because Griffith is building a better kingdom for all humanity.
The next scene shows how Casca was grateful for everyone to help her go through all the trouble with Guts to get her to elf island to restore her mind. And then the following pages show a rememberable battle between Casca and some Golems, the action scenes of Casca fighting those golems show that she has so much experience in fighting since she was a soldier of the hawks with Griffith. Her skills didn’t become rusty, she’s an experienced fighter, and everyone is very surprised to see her in action. She did restore her mind, however, but she still couldn’t face the fact that she feared Guts and gave her another “episode” of her and her friends being killed and tortured during the eclipse and seeing Guts as the monster.
And after that Schierke and Farnese continued their training with the mages and witches, and Farnese’s wearing some white mage’s clothes. So once again, this scene is like Hooky on Webtoon except with the kids going on adventures, here we get to see Farnese’s experiences with magic and Schierke goes with her spirit magic. And the rest of the volume shows something very peaceful to the party while spending time at elf island, right until the end of the volume when the child transformed his hair to white and transformed himself into Griffith at a very tearful moment to the fans, giving out a touching speech of him giving a “tearful moment of a morning dew” and that was Mr. Miura’s final page of the series before he died.
I don’t know if I’m shedding tears over reading this because reading this volume is very emotional of how Mr. Miura has spent so much time making this manga, even more, greater, even up to this point, this volume became so memorable to the fans for reading the series. Even Young Animal gave an important message to the fans at the end of this volume telling how very grateful for Kentaro Miura to complete this manuscript and spending over 30 years producing the story of Berserk. And we all actually love the series as much more than we could remember.
Newsdesk