Berserk vol. 35

This was the summary given on the back of the volume:

“After a hellish battle against ravenous sea monsters, Guts the Black Swordsman and his companions are forced to seek refuge on a small island so that their ship can be repaired.  But this island is not the safe haven they’d hoped for — it’s a sinister place rife with dark energy, watched over by an ancient, vengeful god.  And with a full moon on the rise, that god’s power is about to be unleashed…”

I read this and immediately thought, “FILLER!”

After all I’ve invested in this series, it’ll actually have to WORK at sucking in order to get me to stop buying it.  That said, after the world-shattering events of the last volume, you’d hope for mangaka Kentaro Miura to run with that momentum as the story shifts back to Guts and co., but that’s not the case.  Perhaps realizing that it’s a bit too soon for him to try and top himself, the new arc dials things back a bit, giving us what’s best described as a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie written by H.P. Lovecraft.  We’re also introduced to a mysterious girl who will apparently have some deep significance to the plot, but beyond vague mermaid-esque hints it’s kind of hard to see her purpose beyond dishing up some exposition.

Now I said you could expect an angry podcast if this didn’t live up to the expectations of the previous one… but by the end, I couldn’t really stay mad at what I got here.  Yes, the current plot’s significance to the story at large is dubious at best, however Miura does a good job of building momentum throughout the volume so that the action is in full swing by the end of it.  I’ll even admit to liking some of the comic hijinks involving Isidro and Schierke, particularly the one where she tries to communicate with him psychically and gets a mindful of boobs for her trouble.

Of course, I wouldn’t be so critical of this particular volume’s merits if it wasn’t for the fact that it’ll (most likely) be a year before we see the next volume.  Vol. 36 recently came out in Japan, but after it took a year for this one to hit our shores, it looks like Dark Horse wants to keep that kind of timeframe for the future.  Now I’m no stranger to waiting for new volumes of manga, before “Eden” came along, there were times when I’d have to wait a year for a new volume of “Blade of the Immortal.”  The difference here is that “Blade” runs a much tighter ship in terms of pacing and plotting.  You can usually count on a good amount of incident in each volume, without any of the “Shonen Jump” bloat that tends to weigh down “Berserk.”

Now that we’re well into a fight scene, my hope is that it won’t take up the entirety of the next volume and we’ll actually get some time for plot development as well.  Man cannot live on epically violent fantasy action alone, and I doubt that even Miura would be able to make another volume of fighting interesting — as godly as his skills are.