When did the decline of Berserk begin?
>>288030456After Guts got blacked.Nowhere to go but down after you reach the peak.
>>288030456Post-Conviction when we go from horror-action to fantasy-action.
>>2880304561997
>>288030456When the golden age ended, even though the lost children is probably the coolest single arc in the series and his art peaked at the holy iron chain knights. But he had no solid plan for the rest of the manga, so it ends up being a 20 volume slog where they're just travelling around.
>>288030456when Kingdom came and ate it for breakfastMiura clearly wanted to make the series like that but couldn't juggle so many characters
When he passed away and the fanfic is going to give Guts a cuckren ending instead of slicing Griffith's head off
>>288030749I fail to see the similarities between those two mangas
What do you mean "decline"? Don't you enjoy all the annoying kids, token characters, aimless traveling and the epic black moustached knight? And how dare you say something basd about Miura? He died, you know, that has turned him into an infallible god!
>>288030456we have been through thiswhen miura went digital
>>288030456iirc the troll arc. Literally a pointless and annoying arc. I think miura had this idea that he'd have Guts doing some basic fantasy quest adventures to spice things up as filler but he really should of just focused on the story and finished it up desu
>>288030456Magic introduction
>>288030719This
>>288030456Millennium Falcon arc. The fight against Zodd and Griffith's resurrection was cool and then mostly everything was shit after that other than Ganishka.
>>288032138okay but the trolls raping their captives was hot, Miura needed to draw it
>>288030456boat
Some time ago I made this. Compiled it into one picture for this occasion. Always good to see when most people agree on the substantial decline at some point, even when the exact point is argued about. It irritated me a lot when some people defended the later chapters, because for some reason their hero Miura just couldn't have done wrong.
>>288032779I didn't start reading Berserk until after Miura died and honestly did not mind later chapters just because his later art is so good even if writing-wise the series peaked in Golden Age. I think if I was reading it in real time I would have been resentful of the series because having to wait 10 years of real time for not much to happen at all would be annoying. So to me the series has no low points for the chapters that Miura is alive for.Post-Miura Berserk is just very bad unfortunately, I think it could have been good but Mori is too scared to write Miura's characters. I'm almost afraid to criticize Mori because he seems shaken up enough that he'd just stop writing the series if he was criticized but I doubt he'll ever read an English messageboard. So to me Berserk declined immediately when Miura died. Post-Miura Berserk doesn't have a consistent story direction, I still remember being really confused when the Fairy Island combusted and supposedly all of the Fairy creatures were dead and we didn't see Puck for like 20 chapters so I had assumed he disappeared with the rest of them, but then he just shows up with 0 explanation
>>288030456When Schierke gets introduced, that's when the plot stops having consequences now that they have a magic loli that can fix everything with magic when they go wrong
>>288030456When Miura died.
Conviction was the last great arc. Arcs that followed it are good but nowhere near as good as the first 4 arcs.
>>288030456The beginning of the decline began with the Boat hiatus. Miura's death was another heavy blow.
>>288030456Berserk was peak until the end of the Conviction arc then you can tell he just spun his wheels from then on.
>>288030456When he switched to digital, but then it started going back up again as he more used to using digital, but then he passed away tragically.
>>288030456>>288032959>>288033077There is a distinct tone shift after the Tower of Conviction when Schierke is introduced, but this is also when Miura's art hits its peak, and I think the decline is much later due to a combination of factors coinciding. Before this point, it was never really clear if Guts would have a new party and you could believe something might happen to Isidoro, Farnese, or Serpico like all the one off characters from previous arcs. We get more and more reoccurring characters as the story progresses who have plot armor.Obviously the boat and release cycle back then is awful, but the sea god chapter could have gone in interesting places with more exploration of Lovecraft horror.Where most people notice a decline is the arrival in Elfheim which is both thematically very whimsical and also when Miura switched digital which is very, very rough for a couple chapters. If these didn't coincide and we immediately got his usual fantastic art for the Casca mindscape sequence, the juxtaposition with idyllic Elfheim would have been more compelling. The destruction and exodus from Elfheim was probably intended to be more dramatic as well.
>>288030456Post-Conviction. The manga could survive wheelspinning forever if it was just Guts wandering from place to place fighting the apostle of the week(year) and making fleeting connections that stay behind as he moves on to the next arc. Just endless Lost Children, basically. Might've gotten a bit stale eventually, but I think it would've been better overall. But the JRPG party that he got after Conviction brought a lot of drag and made the storytelling less tight and destroyed the tone. It's not that I hate the characters per se, but it was just too unwieldy.It's the same thing that happened to Goblin Slayer, which is why the spin-off that's just him without the party is better at this point.
>>288030456Here
lolded
>>288030456Mid-Conviction. It starts strong but turns into a mess.>boxing chicken Mozgus>okay Griffith was reborn but actually he needs to merge with an egg and an abortion to be double rebornThe end of Lost Children is the perfect place to stop. Guts' struggles will go on and like Jill, we can't come with
>>288030749lol, lmao
>>288030456if I had to make a scale from 1 to 5>Black Swordsman 4>Golden Age 5>Conviction 4>Millenium Falcon 3>Fantasia 2very visible decline started after Schirke and Berserker Armor, but cracks were visible in Conviction arc due to Miura lacking the actual direction. Lost children is one of, if not the best part of whole manga though, but it works mostly detached.
Since it's inception, anime for edgy larpers with no real world experiences
Is it worth reading?
>>288030456The fucking boat.
>>288032138agreed, i dropped it there and never looked back
>>288035673The first 120 chapters or so are timeless
>>288033487then how do you explain it sucking for a decade prior?he should have canceled Berserk and finished Duranki
>>288033623the boat was the bottom, the lowest point, the decline began before that.
>>288030456when guts stopped having to rely on his wit and gets bailed out by the shonen tier berserk armor upgrade and schierke ex machinas
Shierke. Up to that point you can still see where it's going thematically. By its end Tower of Conviction has a lot of different characters facing their weaknesses and the bleak world as best as they can in their own way, in contrast to the rock bottom of Lost Children. Even Mozgus' true, genuine believers survive. Guts is reunited with Casca, and maybe now there is a way for him to make it through this too like the people around him. But as foreshadowed by his fight with Mozgus and highlighted by Griffith's rebirth through his aborted son, unlike everyone else he is doomed to carry this through to the end.Then in the next arc he meets a cute loli witch and gets a cool new magic armor! :) But he has to be careful not to get too crazy, or he'll lose himself! :o
>>288030456Idolmaster release.
>>288030749>Kingdom slopGeez that is embarrasing.
>>288031744I enjoyed it.
>>288030456At the end of Eclipse.
