Does anyone have access to the paper "The influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on Kentaro Miura: How Lord of the Rings helped inspire Berserk"?

Gunlord500

Gunlord500

Hey berserkers! Pardon me if this seems like sort of a random inquiry but this is a pretty erudite bunch of Berserk scholars here so I figured there was noplace better to ask. I was wondering, does anyone have access to this paper:


It was from a Tolkien conference in 2021, which I didnt attend, and I have not been able to find recordings of the talk on Youtube or anyplace else. Might anyone here have access to the paper? If not I wonder if I should contact the author and see if they might be able to grace me. Thanks for your time!
 
Seems like a literary criticism paper written and presented to academic folks. You might be able to find it on JSTOR or Google Scholar. It may also never have been published.

That being said, the premise sounds flimsy. Miura was clear about his influences for Berserk, and he never mentioned Tolkien or LotR among them. Miura’s fantasy influences include Guin Saga, Conan (and he meant the ‘80s movie, not Howard’s stuff itself). I’d personally label that material within “sword and sorcery” fantasy, which grew up separately from Tolkien’s brand of fantasy.
 
Walter said:
That being said, the premise sounds flimsy. Miura was clear about his influences for Berserk, and he never mentioned Tolkien or LotR among them. Miura’s fantasy influences include Guin Saga, Conan (and he meant the ‘80s movie, not Howard’s stuff itself). I’d personally label that material within “sword and sorcery” fantasy, which grew up separately from Tolkien’s brand of fantasy.
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Well, there is this quote from one of his interviews:

Glénat — Dark fantasy is relatively rare in the manga universe but nevertheless very popular in Europe. Why did you choose to explore this genre? How do you explain the success of your series?

— Kentaro Miura: "I don't use a magic wand, so it's going to be hard to find a concrete reason for the success of my series. As for dark fantasy, my first influence comes from Conan the Great; I didn't see dark fantasy as a genre in its own right, but rather as the equivalent of fantasy in general. Outside of Japan, major fantasy works like The Lord of the Rings contain dark elements. In Japan, on the other hand, fantasy was popularized by video games like Dragon Quest, which were aimed at children and therefore purged of their dark elements at the source. But I had already received the influence of the novels before that of these games, so I naturally turned to dark fantasy.

To come back to the reasons for the success of my series, I think it offered something new to the Japanese public. As they became teenagers, readers who until then had fun in a fantasy world for children began to look for other stories of this genre that were appropriate for their age; and I think that by reading my series, they discovered new elements, tinged with bitterness for example, which caught their attention, in addition to finding it refreshing to approach a work intended for readers older than them. As for the success abroad, it can perhaps be explained by an audience already intimate with this type of story?"
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Source: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/fr/news/2019-04-09/kentaro-miura-se-livre-pour-glenat/.145523

(I thought he might have meant the Conan books, but you said that wasn't the case.)

Dunno how reliable that quote is or if it's translated properly though. Just thought I'd post it here.
 
Gunlord500 said:
It was from a Tolkien conference in 2021, which I didnt attend, and I have not been able to find recordings of the talk on Youtube or anyplace else. Might anyone here have access to the paper? If not I wonder if I should contact the author and see if they might be able to grace me. Thanks for your time!
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I think you would need to contact the author as they apparently have only given that one talk, and it doesn't seem their "paper" has been published anywhere. If I were you I wouldn't expect too much out of it though. Seems like a rather flawed proposition, which I can tell is wrongheaded from just the description.
  • "Themes of good and evil are similar between the two"
  • "The ways in which Miura borrowed from Lord of the Rings in order to create his own original creatures"
  • "Hero's journey in LOTR reflected in Berserk"
These statements are objectively and demonstrably false.

Lawliet said:
Source: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/fr/news/2019-04-09/kentaro-miura-se-livre-pour-glenat/.145523

(I thought he might have meant the Conan books, but you said that wasn't the case.)

Dunno how reliable that quote is or if it's translated properly though. Just thought I'd post it here.
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It's not reliable. Having experience with his interviews and some understanding of both languages, I'm quite sure he didn't actually say "these novels" and it's something the translator added to make his statement seem clearer in French. Same thing with that talk of a "magic wand", which is somewhat nonsensical.

Like Walter said, Miura has talked about his influences extensively over years, and the Lord of the Rings wasn't among them.
 
Thanks very much Walter, Aaz, and Lawliet. Thats a bit disappointing the paper seems to be a reach...ah well, I suppose it couldnt hurt to look at anyways, I'll contact the author if I can as Aaz mentioned. Thanks again guys.
 
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