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Despite my better judgement, I decided to start reading the manga "Berserk" by Kentaro Miura, and I am loving it.
I don't read very many mangas (Is the plural of manga, mangas? Or is it like moose, and it's still just manga?). When I do read, which isn't that often, I am usually reading non-fiction philosophy, or some programming/tech book or something. The only manga I've actually ended up reading was like the first volume of Dragon Ball Z, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stone Ocean. I enjoyed both of them. I had already seen a little past the Raditz arc in the DBZ anime at the time so I knew what happened. Stone Ocean is really the only one I've read and it's been all new.
It's not that I'm against reading manga really, I'm just bad at committing to reading or watching long running pieces of media. Dragon Ball is the longest thing I can think of that I've watched, which is 567 episodes and like 15 movies, and that took around a year or 2 to finish completely.
Berserk is (currently) 374 chapters, each around 20 pages with some exceptions at the beginning, so 7480 pages roughly. It's a chunk of books to read. So why did I decide to start reading it?
Berserk is pretty well known as a really good series, and has been running for over 30 years. It has inspired a ton of other projects, such as the Dark Souls series. I felt like I was missing out on some references. I've heard the Dark Souls games are pretty fun too, so I may end up playing them at some point.
Ok, if it's so good, why were you against reading it?
Unfortunately, last year Kenato Miura suddenly passed away due to an aortic dissection at the age of 54. This is very unfortunate for his family and friends, from what I can tell he was a very good person and loved by many.
That being said, Berserk is currently unfinished. The editors would like to be able to continue the series, from what I've read, but I'm not sure if Miura had any concrete plans on where it was going. I'm only about halfway through, so I have no idea where they left off. I hope that more content come out for Berserk in some fashion.
I'm probably going to be really sad once it's over, if they don't make anymore. For now though, I'm really enjoying it, and am planning on writing a review once it I'm finished.
Something that I do frequently with manga and anime/TV, is I try to finish them too quickly. I've sorta gotten to that point with Berserk, and am probably going to have to go back about 5-10 just to make sure I'm understanding everything that's going on. I'm on chapter 176 I think (depending on where you read it, the numbers can change it seems). I may start writing notes about individual chapters just to keep everything in my mind.
This also opens the door to me potentially trying to read One Piece. My friend has tried and tried to get me to read it for years now, but I've always been against it due to the length. I might finally give it a shot, not sure yet.
by Jackson Taylor