It took me awhile to get my thoughts in order. Honestly, as well intentioned as they are, a constant stream of fan tributes on Twitter and Tumblr more-or-less telling me how to process “The End” of Berserk with Miura’s death didn’t do a lot to console me, so I had to take some huge steps away from social media and only conversed my feelings with my other close Berserk fan-friends.
It was very surreal waking up yesterday morning to a friend messaging me simply saying, “did you hear the news?” When shit like that happens, I go onto my Google stories app and scroll through. I didn’t find anything really worth getting too upset over (maybe a bit sad that Queen Elizabeth II’s doggo died?) so it hit me to check my Twitter feed instead.
And that’s when I saw it.
We all know death is inevitable, and life is pretty much spent prolonging the point to that inevitability as well as preparing ourselves for when it happens to us or someone close to us. Being part of the Berserk fandom was the only time we all collectively had this on our mind not only for someone else but for someone we never met or really knew that much about. We only knew Miura through his magnum opus – and that was good enough for us. And no matter how much we discussed the worst-case scenario – pondering how the story would continue and how WE would continue – it still wasn’t enough to prepare us for this amount of shock. Hearing Miura had died and that the Berserk we know and love under his direct supervision is over truly felt like losing a long-lost friend.
It wasn’t just that the Berserk we know of is “over”, but that Miura didn’t have to die. He was only 54: not a young age, but not an old age either, especially by today’s standards. He could have seen the end to his magnum opus the way he envisioned it, yet he died of something so avoidable but is only brought about by a great deal of stress (from what I’ve read). It was always a morbid open rumor that so many of Miura’s infamous hiatuses were actually mental and/or physical health breaks, so the older or more conscious of us fans, while always eager and anxious for a new chapter, learned to not take them so personally. Miura was a spellbinding artist and storyteller, but he was also a human with his own life and conflicts that he was entitled to address at his own pace. This isn’t meant to blame anyone (at the very least, maybe to address some societal/industry issues), but it’s troubling enough to remind everyone – as the story of Berserk has demonstrated – that you need to take care of yourself physically and mentally, and while everyone struggles in life, you don’t have to struggle alone.
I always despised this weird cult of youth that insinuates that life isn’t worth pursuing once you hit your mid-thirties, and how some people so engulfed in their youth insist that they wouldn’t mind dying by the age of 50 or 60. It’s a shame when people live by that because there’s so much to live for beyond your youth – as I’ve learned, I only started buckling down when I transitioned into my thirties. Miura could have had a longer life ahead of him, going beyond Berserk and into his other endeavors, professional and personal, but that will unfortunately never happen now.
Everyone knows I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on Berserk. Most of you found out about me through my blogging several years ago, and I’m pretty proud that I was never the sort of fan that groveled at Miura’s feet and treated Berserk as some untouchable holy book: there were things I disliked about Berserk and things that disappointed me about Miura’s writing, but there were SO MANY MORE THINGS that I loved about Berserk and was proud of Miura for, and I wished him to continue his advancement in narrative growth. He did so and we watched it happened.
And, by meeting so many friends and acquaintances through the fandom, we saw a lot in ourselves change too. It’s surreal how we always joked that it would be one of us fans who would die before Berserk ended or the worst-case scenario of Miura dying; maybe some of us secretly preferred for that happen. But when we weren’t waiting around for another chapter… look at how much we’ve done with our lives! We graduated high school, undergrad, grad school, started and advanced our careers, traveled the world, got together, popped out a kid or two!... And while we experienced a lot of downfalls and tragedies that coincide, can you believe how much we have accomplished together?
We were all personally inspired, motivated, persuaded by Berserk in different ways: a lot of us were inspired for the better and admittedly, some for the not-as-good (if spending countless hours on Tumblr has taught me, there were definitely some toxic fan takeaways that had to be confronted). I’m not going to go to the point of saying that I now live my life by Berserk’s philosophy to a T or live as a reflection of certain characters (because I’m pretty sure that Miura was trying to tell us to NOT live your life like some particular characters) but it certainly helped to brings some aspects of life and existence into perspective, through the lenses of so many characters. Berserk also inspired me to write more, an already favorite pastime of mine, and how I should go about writing and planning a story, taking cues from Berserk on how to and how NOT to write and approach things in my own way, which I think is for the best in the long run. I can only dream that I’ll be published someday – which doesn’t have to be a pipe dream because it’s still much more possible than impossible. And so many other have done the same, creating our own stories and works.
And OF COURSE Berserk inspired me to be a little bit badass from time to time in moments of frivolity and seriousness – but it reminds us all that being badass and being a kinder person who tries to become the best version of themselves are not mutually exclusive. We definitely need more of that in today’s world.
We all made our own little bonfires of dreams happen, and because of Berserk existing, there will be a lot more beginnings than endings, and I don’t see a lot of bonfires being extinguished anytime soon. Miura poured his heart and soul into Berserk and its characters, and while he has passed on, his characters and lessons will live on through us and everything we create and how we live our lives (hopefully for the better).
I was happy to share all of my thoughts with you all – and I’ll continue to do so, since the mythos of Berserk has been a major backdrop of my creative mind for over fifteen years now and there is still so much to dissect and speculate. Personally, I don’t see Berserk ending just yet, if only because I’d be surprised that Miura or his publisher didn’t have some Operation London Bridge type plan in place in the event that this happened (Berserk is, after all, a major title that most likely brings Young Animal a lot of revenue). Again, I never treated Miura or Berserk as divine untouchables, so if there are plans in place to continue Berserk without Miura (BUT with his permission) or just on how to wrap up the story to give it a fulfilling conclusion, I personally would be okay with it (as a friend of mine put it, it’d be more of a tribute than an imitation). Going beyond our lifetimes, works will continue to be interpreted and reinterpreted as they have since time immemorial; perhaps Berserk will reach that point someday.
Honestly, and many have thought so too, Berserk was also meant to be cosmic level in both scale and concept. The plot is so grand and Byzantine that, even under Miura’s direct supervision, I always had a hard time envisioning how a story of this scale would conclude. As much as we love to hate him, a final showdown between Guts and Griffith seems too simple, too “good vs. evil”-esque for Berserk. Maybe having a low-key, vague but optimistic and bittersweet wrap up is what is best for Guts, Casca, and their new-found family. But that’s just another one of my fan speculations.
Regardless or what is to become of Berserk now, I think it’s safe to give adulations. We all came across Berserk at different times in our lives and stuck with the story for different reasons. For some of us, it was just another series that our friend from the campus anime club recommended to us; for others, we were drawn in from a morbid curiosity of its dark notoriety in anime circles. A few of us read for the gratuitous violence and the clout (because we all know you’re so deep and hardcore [/sar]), but a lot more of us read for the journey and the characters that we became a part of. The heaviness of Berserk made us confront a lot of trauma and even relive our own. For some of us, understandably, it was not a good idea to dive deeper (and maybe somethings could have been handled better); for the rest of us, it helped us cope, if not entirely through the story itself, than through the support network we made for ourselves in this fandom and its many realms (some realms, I argue, are more caring and nurturing than others).
From time to time, I always wonder if I would ever “grow out” of Berserk. There were indeed several times I took a step away from fandom and have tried to reduce my exposure to the story - but I always came back in some way, because the essence of Berserk has never left me and never will. Humorously I envisioned myself actually forgetting about Berserk for several decades, decades in which I work at my career, raise my family, mourn my elders, but continue living my life, only to go on the future internet in my mid-50s to find out… Miura is STILL working on that ending, sitting at his desk in the same pose as that famous monochrome capture of him, only he’s grayed and wrinkled, like the great Miyazaki.
The possibility of that future is over, but there are so many others.
