BERSERK: A Blind Review - LOST CHILDREN ARC

before i dive into this frankly outrageously brilliant arc i want to say that if you're interested in what manga i'll be tackling in my next blind review series stay tuned because at some point in this video i'll be making that big announcement but for now let's dive into berserk's incredible and haunting lost children arc [Music] [Music] the lost children arc is a story unlike any other contained within berserk in most other sections of this sprawling tragedy miura allows us to view guts as the backbone of each part however in this guts isn't the backbone and i wouldn't even say he's the main protagonist in fact speaking specifically about the foundations of this arc no one character fulfills that role in my view but instead what anchors this narrative is a fairy tale of sorts a piece of folklore that brings with it an interesting angle for which to view this story through so i think in order to understand this arc you must first understand its fairy tale peace the outcast something that came as a shock to me while i was reading this was how similar the structure was to one of my favorite one piece arcs skypia i'm not going to spoil the story of skype yet but one aspect that these two stories share is the legend or fairy tale present in their respective stories which dictates what happens later either thematically or literally in the case of one piece it's the story of noland and in the case of lost children it's the tale of pcaf the outcast occupying roughly two and a half pages in the entire arc pikaf's story tells a tale of a young village boy with two loving parents however sporting two pointy ears and red eyes he finds himself alienated from the rest of his community routinely bullied by the other children one night however in search of his real family picaff ran into the forest looking for where the elves lived where grownups never said to go eventually he found the elves but not the family he was seeking picaff didn't have wings and was honestly quite different to the elves he sought community with they did however tell him that one night many many years ago a mother and father ventured into the woods to save their sick child they managed to save him with their magic but in exchange changed his appearance to half resemble that of the elves learning this with great haste he ran off back to the village only to find that 100 years had passed in the moments he was away left alone peak half the outcast cried and cried his red eyes swollen even redder the moral of the story is simple to understand in isolation but it's how miura leverages this story and explores its themes and potential messaging in this broader story with two of its key characters jill a young girl rescued at the beginning by guts and eventually another young girl called rosine one of the first things you'll notice in this story is how different it feels from all the others and it achieves this through guts's relinquishing his position as the main character instead placing this role as the young girl with a troubled family situation called jill and the reason i see her as the main character is that there are large portions of it told through her point of view specifically for instance there's a tremendous amount of narration surrounding jill and guts's first meeting when he rescues her from some bandits and kidnappers already this sets a different tone but what really makes this strange is how he's often referred to as the black swordsman or just swordsman instead of guts his name with this very introduction she has two guts framed as our own to the character also in another scene after gutz brings her home he's shown a quiet place to rest but when we return to that scene the next morning we find that we didn't spend the night with him and instead jill it's her point of view and story that this tale is concerned with we return to guts having clearly spent a night fighting monsters only for jill to stumble upon the aftermath jill is our point of view character guts is just the catalyst for the chaos that ensues immediately after this moment when we get the first meeting between the two main characters the protagonist jill and the antagonist rosine interestingly and in keeping with the story doing things just a little bit different instead of guts being held responsible for the action taking place in this arc it's pock and his elven appearance that's held responsible and the reason is obviously this girl i've been talking about called rosine oh and by the way did i mention that she's a weird moth monster this is one of the two antagonists of the ark and one of the most important elements of the story to our main protagonist in jill and i'd like to talk about why this is cool now but instead right in the middle of the story we get this weird one-shot chapter called the prototype in the hardback deluxe edition i'm reading berserk the prototype this story is a submission piece created by kintara miura during his stay in college in 1988 which became his basis for what is now called the series berserk the establishment of certain details world view and whatnot differs at points from the berserk series that was later published but the intent is still present in this early incarnation the most noticeable difference right away is how much looser and art style the pages and characters are drawn with it still looks like berserk but with a greater emphasis on expression over the detail he would become later known for however in addition to that this manga carries with it a great sin one which i i don't think i can forgive for when guts is requested by an old woman to avenge her granddaughter he refuses in a way that makes my very skin crawl confidently he responds i've got nothing to do with just and generous chivalry i could care less i can't believe you've done this to borrow a quote from david mitchell i could care less is absolutely useless as an indicator of how much you care because the only thing that it rules out is that you don't care at all which is exactly what you're trying to convey and let's be clear here for one moment i don't blame miura for a second but i do blame whoever localized the version i'm reading into english translation is a tough business i'm sure but one thing i'm supposed to be able to take for granted when someone translates into english is that they know how to speak [ __ ] english i award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul and now i'm realizing that i've spoken about literally one tiny line more than the chapter itself in broad strokes this chapter while having a few details changed here and there highlights how much of the story miura was settled on even before the story began branding's the design of which is only minorly changed his appearance and the eclipse over the castle a shot that is etched into my mind so deep i'm convinced years of therapy won't remove it and of course the character of puck the flavor of berserk is very clearly present as well as miura's approach with guts as a character being a selfish tough guy that's pretty bad at being selfish decent chapter overall nothing groundbreaking but if you're a fan of the series you will absolutely get a kick out of this and now back to the main story in the past miura has described this story and the broader conviction arc as a sakaike or world type story the simple definition of a sekaike's story is the existence of a close relationship between two people which turns out to be the sole driving force of the events up to and including having all other happenings in the world at large depending on said relationship's fate whether metaphorically or literally within the broader conviction eric muir is obviously alluding to the relationship between guts and puck which too plays a massive role in these events surrounding lost children particularly the ending but the relationship in question that influences the path of lost children specifically is that which exists between the characters of jill our protagonist and rosine her friend and the antagonist of this story something miura does a fantastic job of with this chapter is managing the audience's expectations we're made aware of everyone's biases experiences and how their perception of the character guts changes and morphs over the narrative and it's most effective when we finally see the image of the children now corpses in a burning barn after changing back once they die at the hands of guts worth noting here though is that they actually attacked him first they weren't children and were in fact monster bug creatures embodied with the spirit of children lost from the village but try telling that to the parents they see a pile of child corpses and all of a sudden everyone's up in arms it's very like kintara miura to really hammer home just how bad a situation is by making it stand beside significantly less harrowing material i mean there's a page during the chapter entitled red eye peace where in a small fire a child reaches out to guts asking for his mommy and cuts just cleaves this young guy in twain like it's really brutal stuff but it comes immediately after seeing a heart to heart with jill and puck following close behind him jill's recounting of a backstory concerning her one time friend rosine however is interesting for a number of reasons i really like how these brief moments of reflection add more color to this already black world making it feel all the more lived in but when she brings up the beheld it rosine found my mind began to wonder those things seem to seek out those that are in tremendous pain or perhaps individuals with promise certainly not the same level of promise griffith had but it did give me a moment for pause this rogue elf creature is in fact rosine after all and she fell to the battle it which means there's reason to believe that the person she was once still resides somewhere deep down as she yielded her attack once jill placed herself in between guts and herself making me stop to think for a second i wonder if the person griffith is is still there and if he is is it someone that would have compassion for anyone is anything more important to him than his current conquest my guess would be no but who's to say for sure i have no idea what's to come in the story what are you doing do you think we should pick him up he's got a knife but he's got g fuel and a knife i'm sure there's a reason hey buddy what's with the knife it's for uh mexican [Music] knives [Music] say [Music] [Music] believe it i want to keep this section brief as it's sort of an aside to the main focus of this story instead picking up on the broader significance of certain aspects that came to my attention while reading this arc concerning the character of rosine she seems to have appeared during the eclipse in front of rickert which creates i suppose a natural segue into me pointing out my acknowledgement of other apostles that have appeared in other arcs like the snake man from chapter one the trouble count from the end of the black swordsman arc and of course the apostle that killed corkus it was the one guts obliterated in the very first pages of book one oh and by the way i'd like to thank the commenter that pointed that out to us a while back we definitely would have missed that had you not pointed that out to us so thank you additionally and perhaps most importantly concerning the present story we're exploring in this video something happens between guts and pop that's perhaps the most overt and explicit example of there being a fate that's drawing them towards each other having had a falling out and going their separate ways part ways through the midpoint of this arc puck seemingly without his knowledge is drawn back inadvertently to the area guts is heading the misty valley where rosine has brought jill i still don't fully understand what this means in the long term but it's definitely interesting to see how it might develop and with jill now having been kidnapped and taken by rosine into her land of the elves in this misty valley guts is slaughtering his way to rosine without her knowledge there's a collision course after being set so let's discuss the climax and the ending of this arc the lost children arc is a story about coping with trauma jill and rosine two young girls and in many ways are point of view antagonist and protagonist of the ark unlike previous arcs in this story guts has seen less like the central character and reality more like the opposing force of antagonism to the events that transpire it's honestly fascinating and yet the paradise roseanne creates for herself turns into a flaming hellscape [Applause] [Music] in this climax the action is insane the visuals are ridiculously beautiful and harrowing and guts really brings the intensity and he is very much the pressure onto the evil in this story but in the end he reveals that he isn't the answer that jill is looking for the salvation she desires from the torment of her upbringing she confides in him and wants to escape with him anywhere else but he reveals to her that his battlefield isn't any better and that she too should return to her own in the story it brings to the forefront of our minds sometimes you can't be happy sometimes there are no happy ending sometimes all we can do is continue to struggle and fight he disappeared into the darkness and in the end i still didn't know who he was just like when he appeared he took the demons away i was the only one left behind i still don't really know what these past days of fear sadness and shock were to me the mist cleared away the mist that would never go away was pushed out by the flames the clear sky now peeks through but it's by no means a spectacle that makes my heart leap like when i flew in the sky with rosine it's savage lonely cold but such a vivid sky it's a clear sky like the kind after a storm blows through i don't have wings so i guess i'll look up at the sky and crawl along the earth maybe i can change something the poetry in lost children's closing chapters are a poignant and bittersweet reminder that well comfort can be found in fantasy and delusion the clear vivid and real skies we seek so desperately in life come at the expense of what we thought it was we wanted sometimes your most desperate dreams are destined to be just that but you have a choice to exist in the real world and appreciate what you have when you have it or to lose yourself like rosain in the delusions and desires she had for the impossible in this arc miura really does explore themes of escapism through delusion the story of rosine is one of tragedy and so too is jill's a tale of tragedy with one discernible difference jill's tragedy is one of possibility one that contains hope for the future and in the end if berserk has taught me anything it's that while things can get worse they can also get much better and that alone is worth struggling for both rosine and jill seek ways to escape their realities burdened with a feeling of not belonging having grown up in families they don't feel a connection with both rosin and jill see themselves as picaf in his tale and their respective journeys reflect his actions in that children's story but in slightly different ways ways that explore the messaging of this arc in an intensely effective fashion rosine creates her nightmarish paradise filled with the fake friends and guardians she was denied as a child while jill asked guts to take her to look for another paradise once the action and events subside in both cases guts is the one who gives them their respective reality checks firstly by killing roseanne and forcing her to see what is real and secondly by showing jill the reality of what she's asking for the nightmarish demons that haunt him every single night there is no paradise only battlefields and by accepting reality jill ends up seeking her own way to confront her own life's numerous obstacles and her own destiny the same way guts does for a manga so rife with conflict and grotesque acts of violence and misconduct the berserk series has surprised me by reliably providing some of the most perfectly poetic moments like guts's heart-to-heart with jill at the end there is no paradise for you to escape to what's there is just a battlefield another friendly reminder that even the most powerful or monstrous among us face struggles only they can fully appreciate and understand and that we are all in one way or another struggling our own way through life it should go without saying at this point that quintaro miora is a league into and of his own when it comes to the condition of his layouts and the presentation given to these stories he's so feverishly lavished with his deepest considerations rosine's death is an absolute highlight from this section and another reminder that while he's immensely talented at depicting some of the most horrific tragedies one can conjure in their mind is also able to elicit an ethereal and otherworldly tragic beauty also i took a slightly different direction with this arc and i thought the inclusion of a fairy tale in this story was an interesting angle for which to tackle the material and to be clear this is the main reason why the more bombastic aspects of the story like the fight with guts and the bandits that were later turned into insects or details like rosine having already shown off her control over bug demons in the golden age arc didn't take the main focus of this video and speaking of guts and rosin the final bout between the two of them is brutally fantastic but as you know the element that always receives the main focus from me is the story storytelling over action and because we are now out of material that has a companion anime my editor now only has manga panels for which to create visuals and thus making these videos has become a much much more time-consuming effort and pretty much like i did last time with the character of zod i'm saving my thoughts on the holy iron chain knights for the second part of the conviction tale as i have a feeling we're gonna see much more of them later in the story but in closing if you haven't read berserk yet please do so it's honestly a story unlike any i've read next week i tackle my next white whale in the anime and manga world and i hope you all can join me on that big adventure but until then i've been told not mark i'll see you all next week and thank you so much for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Totally Not Mark

Views: 223,954

Keywords: lost children arc, berserk guts, berserk manga, kentaro miura, berserk anime, golden age, berserk manga reaction, berserk rosine, black swordsman, blind review of berserk, berserk manga blind review, berserk ost, blind review berserk, berserk 2021 lost children arc, berserk lost children arc, berserk manga ending

Id: H5P3c1qpLtw

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021