 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode of Mother Edition, I hope we can geek them here on YouTube. My name is Jordan Hernandez and today we're going to try something a bit different. It's going to be more like a walk through and observation. Yeah, we're still going to review it, discuss the story, talk in depth about it. But at the same time, you know, I want to try something different. So this is my journey through one of the most famous manga that I have ever had the pleasure of reading and that is Kentaro Miyuda's Berserk. This is Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3. So this comprises of the first arc, if you will, the Black Swordsman arc, I think it's called. At any point I might screw up with a name or two, please forgive me in advance. I am but a humble servant in the YouTube world. I learned about Berserk many, many years ago. I think it was 1990 something when I learned about what anime was as a medium and I enjoyed the things that people my age enjoyed. You know Dragon Ball Z, you Hakusho, Pokemon, even Sailor Moon, stuff like that. But you knew, like even from then, I was told of a series called Berserk, I didn't know it was a manga of course, I was told of a series called Berserk and it was just tucked away in the corner, like you don't touch that. You leave that in that corner by itself. I knew it was like something bad or something not necessarily bad, but something for grown-ups, for adults, 18 and up. And I just, to be completely honest with you, I completely forgot about the series because it wasn't something that, one, at that time I wasn't interested in and I just kept moving on, comic books, movies, all that stuff, kept piling up and stuff. So recently, I'm gonna say two years ago, Berserk popped up in my feeds and discussions with fellow OmniBros and YouTube and fellow Facebook groups about books and stuff, there's a lot of groups out there. And the neighbors are kept popping up, so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go and do some research on it and I think I looked up some videos and fellow members of the OmniBus Collectors Network and all that stuff, they started baiting me. Pretty interesting, with pretty interesting themes and pictures and all that stuff about the manga. And then I realized, oh, it's a manga, then it got adapted into a 26 episode anime series in the 90s, boy I was about to say the 60s, in the 90s and it left off after, I think it adapted the whole golden age stuff, so it would be volume 13 or 14 or something like that. So it adapted all of that and it ended on a massive cliffhanger and it stayed on, or season 2 I guess, it stayed on development hell all these years and it wasn't until, oh wait, that's right. It wasn't until the recently released CGI, Berserk anime series that the conversation really picked up again, because that was so atrocious and so god-awful, then even I recognized, like no, I remember the animation for the older anime and then this new stuff, first off, I cannot, I just dislike wholeheartedly the usage of CGI in anime, it just looks so awkward and it's not where it's supposed to be. No sense of symmetry, no sense of, or no depth perception, everything looks just in your face, it needs more work, and by more, I mean like a couple more years of work and it's more evident now in stuff like Berserk, yeah they did anime movies where it was sort of blended, some parts were traditionally drawn but it was mixed in with the CGI stuff and it wasn't as bad because it was controlled with this new TV series, like there's this image that people like to repost, I've done it myself with the character of Guts, just instead of slowly walking away from the panel you just see this motion going like this, and he leaves off the panel and it just looks freaking ridiculous, it looks garbage, I'm sorry, I typically don't say that about stuff but it's a hot mess, if you are like me and you want to venture into Berserk, just don't watch any of that stuff, just read the manga, read the original source material, and if you want to watch the original anime go ahead and do so because that was pretty badass, especially for the time it aired, nowadays I don't think it would have aired, I don't know, that's the topic for another day, so yeah anyways that's how my story getting into Berserk, eventually with an order I did for other books and stuff, I sneaked in a manga and I got the first volume of Berserk, now I was told from the get go, first off it has the parental advisory stickers, this is not a series for kids, it is not a series for kids, please, if you're a parent and your kid wants to read that, no, just stop, I mean there is a ton of graphic violence and sexual encounters and nudity and monsters and demons and goblins and shit, a kid would not have the mental fortitude to comprehend what is happening on these pages and separate the dark fantasy element of it, I wouldn't want a kid to be corrupted with all this imagery, just leave it for when they're older, there's a reason why we put warnings on stuff, just pay attention, anyways, yeah, Berserk volume 1, it's not the best introduction and I was told beforehand but I cannot get into volume 2, everybody was saying, hey you're not going to like volume 1, you're going to like volume 2, it gets better there, start reading from volume 2, the completionist in me is like, no, I need volume 1 because that is the proper way of things, that is the order of life, I don't start with 2, I start with 1's, so I got volume 1 and the first panel is our main character of Guts having sex with this lady who turns out to be a giant freaking demon and he proceeds to kill it and it's all mayhem, blood, guts, fury, unrelenting machismo, bravado and epicness all the way through to where I'm reading, I'm past the halfway point of what's collected in manga volumes, my dark horse and all that stuff, so yeah, I do absolutely love this series, it is fantastic and it is just an amazing exercise in the concept of world building, Miura is able to take all of these characters that are in a dark fantasy setting, in a medieval European sense and breathe life into them and create this breathing world that just oozes with personality and atmosphere, the art in it is spectacular, even on these earlier volumes the art is a little shaky here and there but you still get a sense of realism that these characters inhabit the world where you could be a part of it, scenes are drawn on hills with dead trees where you feel the cold air creeping in and just chilling your bones, it's that beautiful imagery or when you see monsters and demons and stuff under the night sky with only like torchlight, stuff like that, it's that kind of spooky imagery that just makes the series that much richer in depth, just for that alone, just for an artistic point, I cannot recommend this enough and I know I am extremely late to the party, you don't need to tell me that, I know, this is from the 80s or in 2018 and I only learned about it from just whispers here and there, so I read the first volume a year ago and I liked it, it's a fun, it's a fine or fun introduction into this world, it's a little cliched at the beginning because you've read so much stuff, you've never read Berserk and you've read hundreds of other titles or seen other movies and all that stuff, it, they are, Miura's doing things here that we've seen later on with so many other video games, and dark fantasy movies and all that stuff where you're like, okay it's a demon hunting and he's like this lone badass but at the time it was pretty frickin revolutionary, you had guts being one of the first lone heroes with the big ass swords and all that stuff and just, it cemented a status that has been, that has been imitated ever since and I think it's really cool. With this volume, you do see tropes of every other dark fantasy thing, we get a sidekick that people are 50-50 on it, I happen to enjoy Puck's involvement in this, he's sort of like the Robin in the Batman and Robin thing where if you had a series like it's got 100% by himself, it would be too destructive for its own good, not only for the character but for the reader as well, you need a breath of fresh air and Puck, you know, he provides the comic relief and I don't know, I enjoy it, it's not that bad to me. So yeah, the first volume, we get to see this setting on this town and just excuse my language but the shitty conditions that these guys are living in, this world, this medieval world where corrupt officials, you know, the whole cliched thing with evil priests or clergymen or kings and all that stuff but the twist here, like I said, has to be the atmosphere, the concept of these characters inhabiting this disgruntled, gritty, heavy world that is very pessimistic but inside that pessimism, we later find out why it is and the bright spots in it making worthwhile. The character of Guts of course at the beginning, he's a bit of a douchebag, he's a bit of a jerk but I liked the way this was done. You get your answers as to why the character is like that, later on with the infamous golden age and all that stuff and you get to explore the character for several hundred chapters because the series is still ongoing, it's still not over as of this video. So at the beginning I really did enjoy the fact that you have this lone wolf being accompanied by Puck the elf or whatever and he finds this place with this corrupt bishop and clergymen and all that stuff eventually it progresses into Guts trying to stop this count from just basically murdering everybody for doing nothing wrong and we do get to see a ton of demonic imagery. I'm not going to go too much into detail just in case this is mostly a spoiler free video, there are hundreds of berserk videos. I am not doing something innovative here, I'm just expressing my love for this series in this new style of video docu-series that I'm making, I don't know what to call it. So yeah, my journey through berserk started very oddly and then it proceeded into these first three volumes which introduced concepts like the behelit or behelit or whatever you want to call it, the egg with the weird funky faces and you do get to see your first taste of demons inhabiting or serving as parasites for humans and becoming sort of like these giant warriors, one is like a friggin huge centipede or there's like this big giant colossal beast, there is a crab-tot of blood when Guts decides to swing his sword around, it's choppy choppy time and everything just goes splat and if you are sensitive about that stuff, about this level of violence, it's very crude at times, yeah it's a little bit off-putting at times because it is so violent but there is this deep satisfaction of just hacking and slashing away at all these friggin monsters that I enjoy and yeah, there is a ton of nudity that might upset some people so if that, if it bothers you, you might, okay my first recommendation would be still, at least check out the first chapters in this story, the first 13 volumes or something to get a feel for it and if you still don't like it, it's not for you and that is perfectly okay but for everybody else that wants this day, you're gonna go for a wild ride of emotions, you will feel things and even from early on in these three volumes, I could say that the feeling was there, sure later on with the famous Golden Age you get a much deserved explanation but it wasn't, if it wasn't for the starting volumes of the Black Swordsman arc, this short but sweet and simple arc introducing us to one of anime and manga's legendary characters, it wouldn't have been the same, if you would have started with Guts' backstory growing up and all that stuff, the effect would have been greatly diminished, I mean you sort of need this introduction where you get to see the god hand and what the hell they are and just Guts fighting to save a town and the Count's daughter and all that stuff, you need that hard edged uncomfortable introduction so when you do get your answers for those lingering questions, it is such a satisfying feeling that I can't recommend enough, I absolutely love it and I am in it for the long run, I didn't mention this and I kind of quickly want to mention it before we go, I know it's a little long but the art is astounding, for the first volume there are the opening pages, let me see if I can do this without YouTube censoring my ass, there is, I think I can show this, yeah I can show this, this type of shading and darkness of the panels and stuff, I'm not a fan of it, I didn't like it, when I first started reading I made the observation like this is a little bit too muddied, sort of blurry for my taste, I want a more clean, sharper drawing but as soon as I say that you do get art like this, early Miuta art, where it is, oh here's a freaking giant monster thing that I can show, look at that cobra bastard right there, it is so highly detailed, the craftsmanship involved in making this series is astonishing, if you've seen behind the scenes stuff and if you've seen concept art and drawings, preliminary stuff, background work, it is all just a thing of beauty, even in the chaotic nature of fights, of demonology, of the love making and sex and guts and violence and all that stuff, it's very human Miuta is able to draw something that appeals to every sense even at its most goriest or grittiest, you still like what you're seeing because it is brimming with richness with a richness and detail that I wish other comic books and manga could even hope to imitate, that's how beautiful the artwork in these volumes is, even from early on and I was complaining about it because it was a little bit too grayish but from this, I don't know if you can see it, to go from this to let me pull a panel from volume 3 that I really liked, to something like this over the course of so not long, it's like a couple chapters is astounding and as you keep reading and at the end of volume 3 you start the golden age stuff, the arches keeps escalating and escalating to a point where it's a treat to watch all the large scale battles and the small stuff in a dialogue just really impresses stuff that I cannot even begin to comprehend and do a proper video on, but yeah, as the series progresses don't worry, as time progresses I should say, I will be making another video talking about the golden age and talking about the conviction stuff and etc etc, just be patient I will get to it and you might see some surprise cameos on these videos, so yeah like I was mentioning earlier, sorry I got sidetracked, tell me down below do you like this sort of video, it's more of an open conversation with you guys, tell me down below 3 things do you like the title, my journey with number 2, what do you think about berserk spoiler free and number 3 what do you think about this specific art first 3 books and does it do a successful job of introducing us to this world and these characters on the next video I'm going to highlight some answers and sort of continue the discussion a little bit before moving on so yeah, thank you guys so very much, I hope this was entertaining I didn't feature a lot of stuff, but I hope you like it anyways if you're a berserk fan, I kinda wanted to do something special with this series just admire it's greatness, guys thank you so much as always for liking, commenting, subscribing and doing all the wonderful stuff that you guys do, you are the absolute best I couldn't do this without you, of course last video I made a very newish mistake of putting my cell phone next to my recording equipment that I'm using here and the signal interference showed up when I was editing it and I had to cut a lot of juicy stuff that I was talking about for Dr. Stone, so I'm sorry about that and I didn't mention on that video but I don't think it made it to the final version we have unlocked the community tab here on YouTube, if you go to my channel you should see the community tab where finally I have been waiting for so long to get that thing open so I can tell you guys hey, I'm on a break, hey I'm editing this, I'm doing that and I recently took a little hiatus but I'm back stuff like that to keep you guys informed if you don't follow me on social media, but speaking of social media follow me there if you can, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff just type a we can get them and I am there, thank you wow, thank you so much, I will catch all of you on our next video