Dragon Ball Z Uncensored

[Roy]

Give us a loli upskirt for good measure.

[Bladtman]

After watching the recent movies it's apparent that Berserk has basically been a big disappointment overall and the Golden Age arc represents the only time the author actually conceived and executed a storyline with a beginning, middle and end

[Ryoko's Biatch]

Disagreed. I've liked almost the entirety of the story. The missing children, Mirror Eclipse and the troll arcs were all really good. The Golden Age is probably the best, but there's a lot of really good stuff going on throughout.

[Bladtman]

I agree that most of the early stuff was dope but I don't see how you can look at the entire series in context and say you're satisfied with this bullshit ass story. I read some of the recent shit and I don't even know what's happening anymore or who's motivated by what. Does Guts still wanna kill Griffith? Does he even care about revenge anymore? Who is the villain in this book now? Has time passed in the manga like it has in real life, cause if it was 20+ years since my girl was raped I'd probably say fuck it.

I first watched the anime when I was a kid, I'm almost 27 and this series is further away from any sort of ending and resolution than it was when I first started. Then there's still filler like that goofy pirate arc, which wouldn't be so bad if this shit were released at a rate greater than 8 chapters a year.

I think Berserk has changed so much thematically that we're way past the point of getting the ending we would've got when the Caska rape was new, but watching the new movies really reminded me how shitty this all turned out in the long run

[Roy]

I'm with you on that. The last volume I read was 32, and while new Berserk isn't terrible or anything, I'm not in a hurry to get caught up because I just don't care that much anymore. The quality of the aptly named Golden Age arc will never be matched again.

[BigJoeMex]

I was chatting with a friend the other day and we were discussing just this! We came to this weird conclusion that maybe Miura meant for Berserk to be exactly what it is now, a fantasy story with a PARTY going on ADVENTURES. He just set up the whole violence, fucking and violent fucking backstory so that people wouldn't stop reading, having invested so much time into it. He's ensnared all of you!

Personally, I thought the series lost direction after Griffith came back to life. Golden Age really was the best.

Also, I didn't know about the insane troll rape sequence and the entire thing with women blowing up due to troll babies. Kinda wish I didn't have to see that! That panel where the women are grinning as they're getting lanced really fucked me up.

[Ryoko's Biatch]

I guess I look at it like Guts, now that he has friends and a chance to heal Caska, he's not sure if revenge is worth the cost. He's been in the darkness for so long and now he sees a light at the end of the tunnel. So he has to decide if he goes back to being a monster who only knows how to fight or letting go of the past and moving on with Caska. It's becoming a different kind of story than I think most of us signed up for in the beginning, but I don't think it's bad. It's a re-evaluation of Guts' motivations.

I honestly didn't really trip out until the sea god arc. The pirates were lame as hell and I think there could be more interesting ways to show how the world changed after Griffith turned Ganishka into a giant tree. And the long breaks have really fucked up the flow of the story. It's like, the pace of the story isn't bad, but the pace of the releases make it feel worse. I want it to move forward and it isn't coming out often enough to make that happen. I've read the arcs up through Vrittanis in collected form and they're a lot better than I remembered when I was reading them one episode at a time.

Just my POV, tho.

[Seru]

No, you're right. Don't give any credence to these waxing nostalgic plebs.

[Vinny]

I think it just feels shitty as the story has taken so incredibly long to unfold in real life. Yeah, the series is just Guts slaughtering horrific creatures thousands of times over with low stakes as no important good guys seem to die anymore but quitting after the Golden Age arc would have been awful. That means no Mozgus who is a character I still think about a few times a month, even if it's just the "Heretic!" scene in my head.

I was also thinking recently that the way I experienced Berserk for the first time was probably the best. I believe Spamdini sent me the series over AIM but didn't send the first episode until later, which obviously made the last few episodes a huge mindfuck. It's kind of odd thinking that the series is almost entirely monsters covered in human mouths and dicks eating people and the arc about medieval warfare and backdoor dealings was a short diversion.
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[Bladtman]

[Seru]

I'm not sure that out of context comment about marketing a video game based on misleading branding has any relevance to an ongoing narrative in a Japanese manga. Cool gif, though.

[Bladtman]

I cut out an excerpt concerning characters looking different and gay cause I figured one whiny about the good ole days post was enough.

Anyway I pretty much feel the same about NEW BERSERK as you do about FF, that it became this bullshit for marketing reasons. I don't have sales figures or any of that shit but I figure the return of Griffith in pretty form, adding some loli magic girl, adding a kid with a 'tude and some other fags to teach Guts the value of trusting in people at a time when the competing top manga series contained all of those elements wasn't some shit he thought up way back in the 80s as part of his monster rape manga master plan.

I would say it's misleading to call this new shit Berserk at all, what with Guts becoming less and less of the focal character, drastically lower monster rape and violence levels, all the ^_^ smiles and comic relief, apostles becoming some majestic looking Lord of the Rings creatures who can get along with people and a bunch of useless tag alongs who never get killed, but Vinny made a good point. Maybe there never was a clear definition to what Berserk actually is outside of Miura's various sexual fetishes

[Ryoko's Biatch]

People who say shit like that have a very poor memory of the Golden Age arc. The only part of the series that was unrelentingly grim is the Eclipse. Puck, Rickert, Erica and Corcus were all comic relief characters. Judeau was pretty lighthearted most of the time. Even Guts, Griffith and Casca had fun and were funny. The whole Golden Age arc was about a group of friends teaching Guts the value of trusting people. Fuck, you could argue that the central theme of Berserk is friendship.

Also, you're completely missing the point of the new Band of the Hawk. I mean, besides the fact that there are apostles in the army who are eating Griffith's enemies, they're just pretending to not be complete monsters because Griffith is their fucking god. They couldn't go against him if they tried. The apostles aren't human and are only playing at it because that's what their god wishes for them to do. It's a monstrous reflection of Griffith's dream through the mirror of his transformation into Femto.

[Yogurtman]

It really works a lot better when read in huge chunks instead of one chapter at a time. At the time it was coming out I thought the troll arc was interminable and awful, but then when I re-read it I zipped right through it and it was fine.

That being said, I do think the Golden Age was the best part by far. Guts has always been a great character, but Golden Age Griffith was a great character as well. He had complex dreams and motivations! When he goes and has sex with Charlotte, it wasn't immediately obvious what he was thinking or feeling! In my experience this is basically unheard of in anime and manga.

But, then he stopped being human and became a force of nature, which does not make for interesting character arcs. And so it was back down to just Guts, and I feel like that is the difference between Berserk being "great" and Golden Age Berserk being "fucking peerless".

But then, I haven't even downloaded a chapter for over a year, so what the fuck do I know?

[ALDP]

Maybe I should download Berserk and read it

[Ryoko's Biatch]

Don't worry, Yogurtman, it's been almost a year since the last chapter came out.

Also, I think Femto Griffith is going to eventually become more of a character because he's sharing a body with Guts Jr. and it's probably stirring up all kinds of emotions.

[Vinny]

I keep forgetting that all the established characters either were murdered, raped into retardation, or transformed into a living god. And Guts's primary motivation has been murderkill for ages, with fixing Casca's dumb brain only taking focus like 8 volumes or so ago (which, to be fair, was roughly fifty years ago in real life).
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[Ryoko's Biatch]

This week in Berserk ... Wait? This week in Berserk?

Anyway, this week in Berserk, Rickert checks out Neo Wyndham. It's pretty cool.

[Seru]

Whoa, those dirty whores are back. I wonder if they're still riddled with STDs.

[Ryoko's Biatch]

Griffith magically cured all STDs, obviously. That's why it's a utopia.