Kompozinaut

r/Berserk is becoming unbearable to visit. I know it’s always been a haven for casual readers, and part of why I joined it so long ago was to help these types of readers get a better handle on some of the nuances of the series. But episode 384 may have been the final tipping point.

Continuation apologists seem to outnumber the ones who want to push back on the ever present and multiplying inconsistencies. It used to be that you could show a panel and have a logical discussion. Now you just get downvoted for having the gal to not want to participate in this flaccid circlejerk.

I’ve moderated the sub for somewhere around 10 years. Honestly, it’s been kind of a chore since Miura died, but the state of this series, that I love more than most things in my life, is becoming so unrecognizable to me that I don’t know if I can really make myself keep doing this.

It’s not fun to participate anymore.

Finally got around to watching the Memorial Edition. It was way worse than I remember it being, and not even the welcomed added scenes did anything to salvage the bones of that project.

The retroactive elevation the 2016 series did for the Studio 4C stuff is pretty impressive, I guess, because I fully went in thinking I was going to enjoy my time watching it. I did not.

It just further punctuates my general disappointment for the series since Miura’s passing.

It's been a while, but I just re-read the scene where Mule meets Griffith for the first time, and I got chills all over again. Millenium Falcon is just so fucking amazing.

Listened to some Susumu Hirasawa Berserk tracks today. For whatever reason, out of everything, Indra really hit me hardest, which is funny, because it's the song that I should have the least attachment to. I've never played Sword of the Berserk. I've never watched a playthrough. I've only read a plot summary a few times over the years.

The piece is somber, with touches of ominous tension. But the underlying chords and arrangement suggest, at least to my imagination, qualities of hope and contentment.

It's exactly the kind of music I might expect the series to end on. Something bittersweet, but satisfying all the same. And perhaps that's why it strikes me so viscerally in this moment.