Episode 378

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Aazealh

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BERSERK Episode 378 will be published in Young Animal #22, slated to be released on Friday, November 8.

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This episode is part of the new serialization of Berserk that is being done without Kentarou Miura. It's based on some of the material he left behind as well as what he had told his close ones of the story over the years. Kouji Mori, his best friend and a fellow mangaka, writes and supervises the series while his former assistants draw it under the banner of Studio Gaga.

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Berserk Continuation Episode Summaries:

365: Griffith's presence is felt across the island. Casca runs toward Griffith but begins bleeding and triggering (random) memories.
366: Guts swings at Griffith but cannot land a hit. Schierke detects a maelstrom of power around Griffith. Zodd lands on the island.
367: Danan senses something dark rising from beneath the island. Griffith grabs Casca. The cherry tree loses its blossoms, and the island begins to break apart.
368: Gnawers emerge from the cracks, devouring the island. Roderick prepares the ship to depart. Guts despairs at the loss of Casca.
369: The island begins to sink. The elves vanish (except for Puck and Ivalera).
370: On the Sea Horse, Molda rallies Farnese to help heal the injured. Roderick is worried about Guts. In the ship's hold, Guts despairs his failure.
371: Schierke peeks in Guts' mind but is repelled by the Beast's jaws. Griffith arrives in Falconia with Casca.
372: Casca explores Falconia in a subdued state. Fleeting memories of her past provoke a failed escape attempt. Griffith sends his forces east.
373: Serpico says other magic users have begun to lose their powers. Schierke tries to locate Casca using a spell that requires everyone's concentration. During this, they are invaded by Kushan soldiers. Guts is taunted by the Beast.
374: Kushans, led by Silat, take over the Seahorse and bloodlessly capture everyone. They approach Guts with caution. Rickert is with the Kushans.
375: Silat captured the Sea Horse following a prophecy from Daiba. The passengers and crew are taken captive toward the Kushan capital.
376: Guts is locked in a cell. The powerless magic users are given over to Daiba. Silat announces a campaign against Falconia.
377: Silat attends a council with all the Kushan leaders and asks for control of their combined military. Rakshas bursts out from one of the participants.

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2 Rakshas drawings on the cover and one is a colour mini clear file insert...but what is going on with that art? He's now holding the new broken mask in front of his old repaired mask with his little claws? This is pretty damn silly, like Mori and the team asked him to strike his coolest pose for Intagram before taking the pic or something.
 
Draculoid said:
2 Rakshas drawings on the cover and one is a colour mini clear file insert...but what is going on with that art? He's now holding the new broken mask in front of his old repaired mask with his little claws? This is pretty damn silly, like Mori and the team asked him to strike his coolest pose for Intagram before taking the pic or something.
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Yeah we talked about it in the chat this morning, it's actually his new mask showing through the old one that's breaking down. Except the old one isn't accurate because it's lacking the "teeth" at the bottom. Notably, this doesn't fit what happened in episode 377 at all, which itself made no sense anyway considering what occurred when they fought Rakshas in Falconia. The Continuation in all its glory!
 
The first few pages are there to remind the reader who Rakshas is, and that Rickert shot at him with his rocket launcher. Rakshas apparently has no idea of where he is.
It looks like there were some actual Bakiraka assassins hiding amidst servants and soldiers. They look like regular Kushan, they even have the same completely white eyes. They look like the assassins that we see in volume 18 more than anything.
Suddenly, some sort of tornado appears, and Daiba says that that thing is a gate to the Astral World. It's unclear wether it was Rakshas who summoned it. Later Farnese says that this is the Qliphoth riemerging. I don't even know what to say about this. A strange black liquid starts to form puddles in the city's streets, and from them start to rise strange creatures that Farnese recognizes as trolls. Daiba later seems to hint that there might be someone else behind the summoning of these creatures, and there's a very suspicious zoom in on Schierke. She also looks a bit uneasy.
The dialogues between Rakshas and Silat feel like they come from a shounen manga, even the way the two start the fight.
The episode ends with Guts in his cell, looking as derpy as before. I'm really tired of this bait and switch thing that they've been doing with him.
No date for the next episode.
 
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Well, it seems clear at this point that Mori & Kurosaki have no idea what they're doing... I'm frankly amazed that they somehow still manage to surprise me despite my low expectations.

Anyway, the episode title is "Uninvited Assassin". I wonder if it might be a play on words on the phrase 招かれざる客, which literally means an "uninvited guest" and is the Japanese title of the classic movie "Guess who's coming to dinner".
 
As more episodes have released during the course of these two years, the more I tried not to think about how they'd handle the end of the story. I've tried to limit myself as to what woud happen in the next episode to distract myself. But this episode made me think about the ending again, and if these pages are nonsensical, then I'm even more worried about the future.
 
One of the worst of the new episodes to date.

Where to start? This is some of the worst Berserk art I have ever seen. It's sketchy, rough first-draft looking art. The faces of people seem rushed and generic. The compositions and action sequences are confusing. The scale of things seems very off.

Rakshas shows up to basically do nothing. At least we now know why that table was empty. It was so he could pose on it for the whole episode. Aside from having a couple of no-name shirtless mooks chop off his claws, he doesn't kill ANYONE! He's an apostle assassin in the middle of a VIP council and he just... stands there. So much time wasted here...

Daiba and Silat also just stand there and gawk. We've set these people up to be the new capable leaders of the Kushan, and they just react with bafflement. Daiba, who is supposed to be able to influence animals just freaks out as elephants somehow rampage through the inner palace. BTW what are they feeding these elephants? They are huge! And there's no indication they are anything other than the normal elephants we saw last episode. I guess Isidro was right to be scared of them...

And next, with all the world-building that Miura has already set up to draw from, why on earth would Mori and team add goblins that spawn out of randomly forming dark puddles? This felt a lot like the random, unexplained gnawers. These monsters all look the same (easier to draw this way) and eat up pages for no good reason other than to add fake distress. We get a series of reactions from our different side characters including a fat witch eating while attacked (really?) and a shameless Molda cleavage shot. An apostle ambush would have fit much better.

The whole episode leaves us basically in the same place we were at the end of the last one, plus a mob of new monsters.

And to add a cherry on top, it's always traditional to end the episode with Guts being depressed about his sword.
 
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Vitris said:
I'm even more worried about the future.
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As any real fan should be at this point. This train's not only gone off the rails but it just went off a cliff.

went said:
Because this disrespect for Berserk has reached its peak with this episode.
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The level of confusion displayed in it is simply baffling to me. It's like they merely copy visual elements but without having an understanding of their underlying meaning. It's frankly disturbing.
 
They really did something with the damn table - incredible, really. And the elephants suddenly became Oliphaunts.

But I'm worried here people: are they trying to imply that Slan is the one pulling the strings here?

ApostleBob said:
And to add a cherry on top, it's always traditional to end the episode with Guts being depressed about his sword.
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I decided to skip those pages by now. As much as I'm trying not to get effected by this continuation, these scenes with Guts break me and I get riled up.
 
It shines through real hard that they are working of old notes/ideas/memories and trying to fill in the gaps without really understanding the source material.
Like I can totally imagine a note or mori remembering something like
* rakshas interupts a meeting of top kushans
* monsters start invading/appearing
 
If this is indeed a 'Qliphoth event' why aren't the monsters that appear unique to the very distinct Kushan culture? Shouldn't they be Djinn, Naga, or something inspired by middle eastern and east asian folklore? Isn't the idea that old myths manifest to life?
 
I take back whatever I said about the previous episode. THIS takes the #1 spot as the worst one.
My best guess is that this was written while they were high as kites, because otherwise I don't really know how to explain the absolute fuckery that's been put on page.
If this Qliphoth thing is Slan's work, then what the hell is she even doing there? Are they implying that the God Hand are going to aid Griffith in destroying the Kushan empire? Isn't that a bit of an overkill? I mean, these guys clearly don't have the means to counterattack, even if the exact opposite was said in the previous episode.
 
To be clear: Barely anything that happens in this episode makes sense. But I'm doing my best over here to try and MAKE some sense of it. And to do that, I unfortunately think you have to break some common rules of understanding about the world state of Berserk.

Ever since we arrived here at the Kushan capital, it's been bizarre that none of the chaos of Fantasia has been witnessed. No magical creatures invading, humans going about their daily lives in peace, not even an overwhelming defense force to keep these unseen monsters at bay.

So... I think it's possible that—as far as Studio Gaga is concerned—Fantasia's borders stopped on this page in Ep 305. And beyond that white bubble enveloping the planet is... Just Asia.

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Last episode, Roderick asks Silat how this country could have endured the great wave of the astral world and remained at peace. The answer Silat provided was that they're tough, have endured many hardships and “we won’t kneel before monsters!” That's not much of an answer, but I figured it's all we would get. It's a slimy, wishy-washy answer that arguably covers how their civilization is surviving Fantasia day to day, and why they would never bow to Falconia.

But in this episode, the Trolls very suddenly appeared after a wave emitted from Rakshas. People in the city are not prepared, appear surprised (admittedly mildly). It's ultimately treated as a crisis event throughout the city, not "another day in Fantasia." So no, none of that seems congruent with Silat's previous explanation of their people being able to weather any hardship etc. etc., which is why I tend to think Fantasia, for whatever reason, never truly reached the Kushan territories.

As the Berserk continuation has taught me, the real answer may never be provided in the context of the story, but instead, the reason is expressly for narrative purposes: Maybe Studio Gaga couldn't resist artificially delaying Fantasia's arrival here in the Kushan capital because they wanted the transformation to be a sudden change for the Kushan people. That way we can see the chaos that Fantasia brings from a ground zero perspective. After all, our main characters were isolated from the continent when that went down previously.

How, though? Why are trolls here, and why is Farnese mentioning the Qliphoth? Well... it doesn't make any sense. Because Qliphoth is a region of the astral world, and yes, because of Fantasia, it should have melded with the Corporeal world already (months ago). It's not a traveling island in Rakshas' pocket. But something happens that precedes the trolls arrival: Rakshas appears to manifest a localized astral wave in this episode.

And I don't think this is all Rakshas' doing. He thinks that he died in Falconia. And indeed, even though that's NOT what it seemed like at the time, when he appears in this episode he's surprised he's not still in Falconia, and he remembers Rickert's attack as the moment he died. So... then what could it be? What other force could be at work? Maybe a God Hand member is pulling the strings here, creating the conditions for them to be able to appear. Rakshas may have been shunted supernaturally over to the Kushan Capital in a way we've never seen before. And his appearance, somehow, for some reason, allowed a little bit of localized Fantasia folk to pop through the floor. All of which could be a prelude for a God Hand member's appearance.

Alternate Theory: Griffith wrapped Rakshas' soul up into a mortar and shot it from Falconia over to the Kushan capital. It landed inside that poor Kushan guy, and Rakshas emerged.
 
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Walter said:
Ever since we arrived here at the Kushan capital, it's been bizarre that none of the chaos of Fantasia has been witnessed. No magical creatures invading, humans going about their daily lives in peace, not even an overwhelming defense force to keep these unseen monsters at bay.

So... I think it's possible that—as far as Studio Gaga is concerned—Fantasia's borders stopped on this page in Ep 305. And beyond that white bubble enveloping the planet is... Just Asia.
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You know, that's a compelling idea, even though it's insane, and even though they did address the Great Wave of the Astral World in episode 377... Only for Silat to brush it off. But I think you're still giving them too much credit here by assuming there's a logic to their madness if you factor in that one giant misunderstanding. Maybe I'm too jaded right now but given the overwhelming amount of discrepancies, I think it might just come down to them not really caring to respect things Miura had established in the story. Like Falconia being landlocked and not a coastal city for example.

Looking at these events with the weirdo trolls, it feels like they just copied both Enoch & Fantasia to create this development, which amounts to "a bunch of monsters appearing out of black goo". It feels like the "gnawers" all over again honestly, an unexplained phenomenon meant to sow destruction without committing to any particular source or reason for it to happen. And that actually makes me wonder whether there will be a member of the God Hand behind it or not. Because again, that seems to be the logical conclusion and it's also the first thing I thought of, but with these guys... It might just be Rakshas, and there might be no real reason for it at all.
 
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