Find the Berserk connections (Symbolism thread)

[Sandman]

probably not but who knows

[TheParagon]

I dont know if anyone has posted it before, and i havnt had time to read the whole poem, but my suspicions is that he took inspiration from "Horatius at the bridge", when creating Azam. Azan once met a wounded man on a bridge. As he helped the old man cross, he prevented a group of nearly a hundred horsemen from crossing until the old wounded man had crossed it first. Horatius in the poem stands to protect a bridge from a thousand troops.

[caiooa]

didn't catch anyone talking about this, but at the footnote of v36chap324 of evilgenius, theres a message from Miura saying "I pray for Wada Shinji-sensei . If it wasn't for Pygmalio, there would be no berserk". I'm still reading Pygmalio...at first it looked radically different from berserk, but actually there's a lot of similarities...maybe it can give some insight of the direction miura wan't to take the history?

[War Machine]

Depends on how many similarities you see. Most of us could probably say that we got into manga or anime because of Dragon Ball Z, but even if some of us end up writing story of our own, how similar do you think it's going to be compared to DBZ?

I haven't read Pygmalio, so I don't know, but did you see anything in it in particular that reminds you of Berserk?

[retrogamer]

Depends on how many similarities you see. Most of us could probably say that we got into manga or anime because of Dragon Ball Z, but even if some of us end up writing story of our own, how similar do you think it's going to be compared to DBZ?

I haven't read Pygmalio, so I don't know, but did you see anything in it in particular that reminds you of Berserk?

Don't forget some elements of DBZ are pretty darn similar to Super Man, for that matter. I think there's a big difference between homage and plagiarism, I'd wager that Berserk falls more into the homage category. By the way, this may have been mentioned here before (I'm catching up on threads but have a long way to go), but the court intrigue with Griffith, Charlotte and the Queen is very similar to a French film about Henry of Navarre (from the early 90's if I remember right). I think Miura just draws on a lot of different works for inspiration.

[caiooa]

yeah, maybe i taked it too far. In the same way that dragon ball taked elements directly from Journey to the West ( One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature), it don't defined the direction of the history really.
I'm still far from finishing my read, but elaborating more...the art style is more childish and fantastic, very fit for the time and thematics. The structure of the history is closer to basic Monomyth. This make it looks very different at first, but then
[spoiler]*it's not quite the same, but the way the hero adquired his giant sword have some similarities. It was like a mid point bettwen how guts adquired his and a classic "sword in the stone" esque.
*the villain is a medusa, and there's some similarities with slain
*medusa mirrors the hero mother existence. They were born at the same time, and both are divinities.
*she became the villain because long ago, due to jealousy, she transformed the hero mom and villagers into stone statues. This was by that time the hero was just a baby, he only discovered about it 8 years later.
*it's said at first that medusa ignores the hero existence, but her subordinates (that are called apostles) see him hero as a danger for her, and want to kill him. And the hero wanted to kill medusa as a revenge. But later on things start to get more ambiguous.
*In various moments Medusa is actually kind to him, making it looks like she wants the hero for herself. The hero too discovered that it might be possible to return people to normal, but he don't know if it will automatically happen if he kill medusa or if had to convince her to do it. He becomes unsure if he even wanted to kill her.
*there's a white hawk that appeared out of nowere guiding the hero to the right place. But it too is ambiguous...if it's a creation of the hero's grandfather or aunt (that are divinities too) guiding him or if it's a Medusa familiar.[/spoiler]

[retrogamer]

By the way, I looked up the name of the film I mentioned earlier, it's called La Reine Margot (in English countries it was called Queen Margot). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110963/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Here's the trailer for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CL22j1qOU You can see that Miura borrowed some elements from it, supposedly this film was very popular in Japan with women because it depicted Margot as strong and independent (which isn't common in Japanese period dramas, especially in the early 90's).

[ApolyonNecron Zerdan]

yeah, maybe i taked it too far. In the same way that dragon ball taked elements directly from Journey to the West ( One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature), it don't defined the direction of the history really.
I'm still far from finishing my read, but elaborating more...the art style is more childish and fantastic, very fit for the time and thematics. The structure of the history is closer to basic Monomyth. This make it looks very different at first, but then
[spoiler]*it's not quite the same, but the way the hero adquired his giant sword have some similarities. It was like a mid point bettwen how guts adquired his and a classic "sword in the stone" esque.
*the villain is a medusa, and there's some similarities with slain
*medusa mirrors the hero mother existence. They were born at the same time, and both are divinities.
*she became the villain because long ago, due to jealousy, she transformed the hero mom and villagers into stone statues. This was by that time the hero was just a baby, he only discovered about it 8 years later.
*it's said at first that medusa ignores the hero existence, but her subordinates (that are called apostles) see him hero as a danger for her, and want to kill him. And the hero wanted to kill medusa as a revenge. But later on things start to get more ambiguous.
*In various moments Medusa is actually kind to him, making it looks like she wants the hero for herself. The hero too discovered that it might be possible to return people to normal, but he don't know if it will automatically happen if he kill medusa or if had to convince her to do it. He becomes unsure if he even wanted to kill her.
*there's a white hawk that appeared out of nowere guiding the hero to the right place. But it too is ambiguous...if it's a creation of the hero's grandfather or aunt (that are divinities too) guiding him or if it's a Medusa familiar.[/spoiler]

There's actually some connection that I see

[spoiler]About the connection you've made, it seems to have a closer tie with Berserk's Chapter 0, where Guts' family and mother were stated to have been killed by the apostles, and Guts is seeking revenge. This could possibly foreshadow some connection between Slan and Guts in the current story as she does seem to have some attraction for Guts and she might have something to do with Guts family lineage or something like that. What I mean is that there's a possible explanation for Guts' ability to fight fate, resist it and become a struggler against purposeful evil and the collective human conscious. We weren't given much of Guts' history or family except that he survives death, where they all die instead (what we know so far) except him, because he is sort of unkillable, is a berserker like warrior, has a strong connection with various characters from many stories including an anti-hero, who despite having faced a troubled past and present, has an unstoppable will, he's described as an evil who fights against evil like Go Nagai's Devilman/Violence Jack character [Which Miura himself stated to be a huge fan of in his teens]. Guts (a unique, secluded character) seems to be directed against fate by another sort of fate that guides and helps/conditions him to become the opposite of the one who tries to fuse all humanity together, which is Griffith, his counterpart (maybe an equal of his later on as the story sort of alludes to). But who's directing his fate? Is it from Guts' ancestors who made that happen or have anything to do with the story right now? Or is it the Elf King and the Elemental Gods who are fighting against the Idea of Evil? Your post seems to allude a future in which Slan has a connection with Guts' past, and Gut's for a reason has the ability to fight against fate, and the Manga might give a parallel story to the one you listed where whatever is responsible for guiding Guts against the Idea of Evil might have something to do with Slan, whether directly or indirectly, but who knows? It might not be Slan specifically but maybe the entire God Hand? IDK just speculation.

About the Hawk that guides Guts, it most likely is alluding to Guts' son who was eaten by the egg apostle who later gave birth to Griffith, who now was in control of that fetus' body. But if you noticed throughout the manga the full moon child only appears at a certain time, in which he travels through the tree that is in falconia, is powerful, has similar hair to Griffith when seen through the Astral Plane, helps Guts and Casca, seems to look like both of them and cares for them, which is why I believe it is the unborn son of Guts that is the Hawk that guides him. It is further alluded to this theory when Zodd for an odd reason was spying on Guts, the fullmoon child and company, hidden when the child appeared and was guiding the group.[/spoiler]

[SirUriah]

The entirety of berserk is one giant symbol.. The setting, the themes, each individual character, the arcs and stories in berserk, the lore etc... One giant philosophical paper shoved into a beautiful story and a complex world by a genius of the medium.. As such, I have a lot to say on this topic and I am excited to start sharing

[Rolos]

This forum is so dead it's not even funny.
Still, for archival reasons:

I was looking at a gallery of surrealist art by Max Ernst and came across this:



It's titled "The Entire City" and was painted on 1935. It really reminded me of that first shot of Falconia.

May be just a coincidence.

[psi29a]

https://i.imgur.com/GgtFJP2.jpeg

Spot the connection...

[Istvan]

https://i.imgur.com/GgtFJP2.jpeg

Spot the connection...

Huh. The connection is so remarkably.... subtle in that one.