The Artistic Evolution Of Berserk

berserk the father of Japanese Arc fantasy and kintaro Mira's magnum opus well known for his phenomenal Characters themes of sacrifice and groundbreaking art berserk is more than just a manga it's a landmark of both literary and artistic history which inspired many Japanese media we love so much Dark Souls Dragon's Dogma Castlevania and Sword Art Online apparently all have some roots in berserk but what was berserk before all of this the praise of his art now is synonymous with your average berserk discussion but what was it like 380 chapters ago many of your thoughts will rush into the obvious things such as the Arches being generally more simple but those techniques we associate to the core of Berserk were completely gone along with those unique symbolic panels we put to such high esteem none of them were here because it took the late great Karo Mira many years to come this far he learned many techniques and even flipped his work ethic not once but twice completely which changed the very Foundation of Berserk publication as a result of Berserk being just so big clocking in at around 20,000 Pages we can't really cover all of it whilst doing it justice so in this video we're going to cover the changes from chapter 1 all the way up to the conviction Arc breaking down each and every single step berserk took to become berserk this is the artistic evolution of Berserk this is probably the most overlooked aspect of Berserk style as everyone talks about how realistic it is but in reality it had quite a few cartoony elements GS for instance had large eyes and the detail of his face was limited within the basic features same thing could be said about other characters as faces overall were minimalistic and sometimes goofy but unlike other manga berserk consistently tried to draw noses that weren't just too flat lines on another note though this is something strange I noticed like in regular panels guts faces normal in proportions but the moment the camera Zooms in his eyes turn super big whilst his face Narrows significantly why does this remind me of baki so much around the conviction Arc guts gets a far more consistent design with smaller eyes more detailed facial features and the lack of the goofy closeup effect these characters feel and look more alive whilst being far more Dynamic except poor father mosus I I don't know what the [ __ ] happened here I don't ask me this is around the point where I start having a lot of trouble when it comes to identifying the actual changes because these two are drastically different right but aside from the obvious [ __ ] what actually changed I I I just couldn't tell so after smashing my head against the keyboard for an hour trying to identify why one is God here and the other one is not as much got here I came to two conclusions and ironically they were very subtle things the Expressions guts would make nearly unreadable gazes or even the minute seemingly insignificant detail mirror would apply to his face gave guts a lot more Nuance as previously most of his Expressions were heavily exaggerated and were Prime targets for Discord emojis secondly the faces just became more detailed which allowed mura to exhibit more Nuance as simple designs fundamentally allow for simpler Expressions you can't really ask this goofy goober to wear his life story but what elevated this aspect even more was kentaro Mira's understanding of anatomy instead of just slapping in expression just by moving the eyebrows down and showing teeth Mira starts to think about how everything from a subtle twitch of the Brows to gaping grins affect other muscle groups how it can stretch out the skin and distort the face it's a far more subtle change but it gives off a lot more detail while not resorting to your traditional applications for detail this is fine and all but one thing that really really contributed to an even bigger change in berserk art is the shading became such an integral part of Berserk that it's not berserk anymore if you remove it previously the amazing cross touching we associate to berserk was not too common yes sometimes we get to see them but they were pretty scarce and held little prominence within the panels sometimes you get to see a lot of them but they had no sense of uniform direction or cohesion they were almost a substitute to dark shading and uh speaking of substitutes sometimes karoa would use this type of gray tone where detail is just omitted but they aren't dark enough to justify removing the details it's kind of odd especially since not all the detail is removed so guts just looks like his hair has faded into the ash roll realm the composition of this shading resembles dark tones more than anything else where that be with the overshadowing of detail having a transitioning point with cross-hatching or even its shape it's just wasn't dark enough I guess were they saving up on ink back to cross-stitching for a sec because as I mentioned previously this became the most drastic change when it comes to berserk art Evolution well previously it was comparable to most other mangas by the time the conviction Arc rolled around the shading became etched into the very soul of Berserk crosshatching goes through the roof towards the conviction Arc with every single panel containing some level of it the biggest twist here is that this isn't your typical application of cross edging kentara Mira and a masterful stroke of a pen molds the shading around the character's bodies giving them this near 3D geometrically round shape to every aspect of their characters this inherently gives everything a lot more detail and style was not resorting to added bloat for meaningless detail dark tones also get used a lot more here but that is so special it needs its own different topics so we will get back to that later berserk 2016 or what I'd like to call the torture and mutilation of kintaro Mira's Masterpiece this Abomination released in 2016 and somehow in 2017 they saided that it's a good idea to adapt berserk a manga which is known for housing hundreds of different 2D exclusive techniques in 3D while also chopping up the arcs and merging them into whatever the this is if you want to animate something in 3D obviously you'd have to use 3D models so tell me why is the shading the only FL that part of this thing the only thing that is meant to be threedimensional is flatter than my a how who approved of [Music] this and now with that out of the way let's go back to our usual programming the shading whilst adding a lot of detail also adds a [ __ ] ton of textures guts's Cape that intricately mols around this figure used to be just a black blob thing now it looks like it's been through thousands if not hundreds of thousands of battles with each Skirmish leaving a lasting scar on it the black robe around guts in my opinion is the peak example of what shading is capable of as Korum uses each and every single line to give it this smooth multi-layered look this can be viewed as an allegory to guts's life and all the suffering that destroyed his soul left him in tattles floating in the limbo that is the nonstop winds throwing him left and right and this is around the point where you start losing focus and space out and I snap you out of it by telling you how wake up put your glasses on because a heart take is coming please don't kill me for this next point because linework in berserk used to be a lot more consistent yes used to be it isn't now because kentaro miror would go off the dang wall by twisting and molding the style to capture guts's unshakable indominable and spiritual rage that can rip through all of time and space with a thunderous bang of his arm Cannon thing and his dragon slayer which description might start to sound more and more like a setup to a gai plot while Karo Mira previously was a lot more reluctant to alter the general composition of the style he soon removed that restraint around the conviction and lost children's Arc as it holds some of the most iconic and stylistically unique art berserk has to offer a large part of this can be attributed to the unique paneling and the use of dark tones canaro mura employs a far more spiritual and the symbolic framework to tell stories and motion drenching everything in these deep Inky blacks as it conveys the literal and metaphorical fall into the abyss for these characters he nearly never diverted from the tropes of manga paneling before but later each and every single panel conveys so much emotion and skill the combination of pure artistic genius and ability to rapidly change the style allows berserk to convey each and every single type of emotion on the Spectrum the best way can put it into words is being able to convey visually unimaginable emotional states visually like I don't know how he does it man this is so good no manga I've ever read has depicted PTSD trauma Terror and rage so flawlessly without resorting to your traditional oh let me add a lot of lines and show teth no he's mad Guys these panels are truly one of a kind and can barely be explained let alone replicated nice [ __ ] try essay one thing that didn't really change however is the action scenes finally I can skip something ahead and just not die while was reading this okay I'm lying but not really and the Black Swordsman Arc while speed lines were used it was not as common or plentiful sometimes we' get to see this massive honk of steel cut through the air but other times we would only get to see a glimpse of where it started to swing and where it ended without any Middle Ground the conveyence trajectory it just teleports the speed lines also were just a complimentary piece rather than the main focus but in the conviction Arc it is completely flipped upside down speed lines now are an invaluable piece as canar Mira implements dozens if not hundreds of speed lines for these panels conveying the sheer ferocity of gut's swing Along with all that energy just blowing everyone away this is because the speed lines weren't just added details as they became the details they became the fundamental and foundational piece for berserk action scenes every single line work every single detail was converted into speed lines and this gave everything so much more weight Dynamic and as in Impact guts's swings feel like they are ripping apart the entire world from the inside out but even more subtle thing about this is the way kentor Mira actually implements this Speed Line it isn't like your traditional other mangas where they are just vertical or horizontal Al or a [ __ ] Arc of a line and that is just speed here the way the corpses in the air spin around after guts's swing obliterates them is highlighted in their actual motion as some of these have almost this spiral effect where they're actually spinning around in the air it is so bizarre because it actually does its job so well without compromising on any of the detail or technicality before we go on to something very very emotional I want to State how this is the perfect representation and embodiment of just how far berserk has come from chapter 1 fittingly is one of the last panels of the conviction Arc the amount of emotion nuance and artistic choices complexity and its Simplicity is absolutely masterful kentor mura was so dedicated and set on making every single panel as brilliant as it could have been he added detail that couldn't even be picked up by the scanner let alone the readers berserk was his lovech child after all berserk was his life's work his magnumopus and everything after the conviction Arc is different the changes afterwards completely overshadow this entire video from its release schedule from the way it's actually drawn all the way to the main Mastermind behind it everything changed [Music] changed

Channel: Leo Armada

Views: 62,715

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Id: JUOp8hpLAHk

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023