 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to 31 Days of Halloween. I was supposed to review Hocus Pocus II today, but I was not able to watch the movie before I started filming, so I am going to review that later on in the month. Today, what I was going to, the place that's being taken later on in the month by Hocus Pocus II, I rearranged them, so I'm reviewing Berserk today. And it is by Gintaro Miura. I think I said that right, I'm not sure, but Berserk is a, I hope I don't open up to a page, you guys shouldn't look at, is a, this is volume one of the Deluxe Edition. My friend Tony, or he goes by Uzumaki Clan. He'll see him in chat. He has his own YouTube channel also. I definitely suggest you check it out, but he was kind enough to send me this copy of the book. I read it and I enjoyed it, and I wanted to talk a little bit about it, not really a review of the content. I want to talk about some of the things that I noticed in here that have affected pop culture, you know, like video games and such. The number one thing that I liked the most, and I knew what's his name, Hidetaki Miyazaki, the creator of Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiru, all that. He got, I knew this before I read it, but he, a lot of his content, he repurposed from Berserk. In fact, in one of the games, I can't remember which one, you can even find Guts Sword. And Guts is the main character of this book. I found quite a lot of references, like the enemies and the NPCs that you fight and that you talk to in those games. I found that in here. And that's the thing that I liked the most about it, just seeing, finally being able to read the source material for some of my favorite video games. I'm a huge Soulsborne fan. I never got too much into Sekiru, but I love Demon's Souls. I love Dark Souls. Bloodborne is a masterpiece. I love Elden Ring. That's my second favorite one. But more about this book, I will go into the content a little bit. I love how consistent the artwork is. So many times with Manga, especially, and even American comic books, there's no consistency in the artwork. Like, from frame to frame, you can't really tell. At least I've not delved into it a lot. I'm pretty sure there's people out there going, oh, you can tell all the time. Calm down. I have not read a whole lot. But what I have read, I've noticed that there's some consistency issues. Like, the fairy character in this one is really the only one that changes from frame to frame. She goes from hyper realistic to very, very cartoony. And it's almost like what I think about when I read Manga a lot is when you, you know, remember the old, well, not remember, but SpongeBob SquarePants where they'll have those frames of hyper realistic looking SpongeBob that are just super creepy. And then they go back to the regular style, the regular cartoony style. Well, in this one, you get some of that, but nowhere near as much as some of the other ones that I've read, like Demon Slayer and One Punch Man. Those are the ones that I'm talking about. Junji Ito is extremely consistent with his artwork. And if Junji Ito isn't the one drawing this stuff, I apologize. Like I said, I'm not a huge Manga fan. Manga, sorry, Manga fan. I barely say the word right. Anyways, I love the gore, the brutality, the pacing, all that, all that stuff. I loved every single bit of it. And I'm impressed that there are so much, there's so much content in here. And it's like 10 volumes, 10 to 15 volumes in this thing. And from what I understand, they're all just as good as one another. In fact, the later ones are even better. This is what I've been told anyways. But I'm definitely a fan and I will be collecting these Deluxe editions. They're like $40, $50 a piece. I'm holding up the wrong way. $40 to $50 a piece. I will touch on one thing, probably too late to say this, but if you haven't read Manga, the book, if you're a Western reader, not Western as in Yeehaw, but you know America, the West, that kind of thing. Canada, Mexico, all that stuff. The book opens in a different direction. So instead of reading from left to right, you're reading from right to left and you read the panels that way too. I like it because it's just a nice change of pace to go in the opposite direction. Artwork is fantastic. The story is great. The blood, the guts, the gore, character pacing, dread, all that stuff is off the charts. And once again, thank you so much, Tony, for sending me the book. I appreciate you. But if any of you guys read Berserk, I'd love to hear what you thought about it down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another episode of 31 Days of Halloween. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!