So I found out a bit over 5 hours ago that Kentaro Miura, author of Berserk, passed away suddenly two weeks ago from a heart attack. Acute aortic dissection to be specific, by all accounts an incredibly painful way to go but I'll spare the details of what that actually means (be warned if you look it up, it's not a pleasant mental image).
I've kind of gone through a lot thinking about it in the last few hours, I mean honestly when someone first told me he had died I believed it some kind of elaborate hoax partly because rumors of his death had been faked before and at the time the only source of this news was written in Japanese language in an image shared to twitter by the publisher which could have said anything. But eventually news sites started to report on it, the first being a Japanese news site which google translated into a confirmation of his passing soon followed by several English sites also passing on the sad news.
I mean for years a lot of people within the anime and manga community sort of joked that Miura would probably die before he finished Berserk based on its frequent hiatuses from regular publication over the last 12+ years. I suppose in hindsight Miura was likely suffering from actual health issues that he did not want to disclose to the public and so he just kept radio silence. By all accounts he was a great person, always seemed happy at the publication office.
So the next stage I went through was to wonder about the fate of the series. Part of me just considers it over. I know in reality that's probably not the case at all, reportedly he had been training assistants to work on the series in the last couple years of his life. He has also reportedly stated that he wished for his son to continue the series should he be unable to conclude it but I don't even know if his son can draw. I assume either his assistants or his son know of the general plan for the series events. I doubt many details are fully fleshed out, I bet it's mostly ideas with a few main outcomes stated. But maybe there's a chance something more substantial than that exists in written form waiting to be planned into a visual artistic medium. I don't even know if it'll continue in manga format, maybe they hand the script to an animation studio and ask them to interpret the conclusion but that's probably a stretch. I don't think any accomplished artist in the industry would want the pressure of ending Miura's life's work, a task that seems impossible without some level of unfair criticism. Personally I'd be fine with just knowing the outline and I'd be more than fine if they allowed any other artists to interpret that ending in their own way without calling it the definitive ending, perhaps as sort of a celebration of the series.
And around 2 hours ago it finally hit me exactly how big of a loss Miura is for not just the manga industry, but for entertainment media in general. There's so many things that exist that were directly inspired by Berserk or that reference it, several current artists and directors drew inspiration from Miura's dark fantasy world to create their own unique stories and settings. And I'm not just talking about the obvious ones like the Souls games or Dragon's Dogma (the video game and not the shitty netflix series I can't believe I live in a world where I have to clarify this), the netflix Castlevania series draws a lot of inspiration from Berserk for how it handles a lot of its brutal massacre scenes. Really the more I think about it I realize a lot of what Berserk established decades ago left such a lasting impact on its readers and anime viewers that it inspired the next generation of creators to want to make similarly dark stories in a fantasy setting.
It's always unfortunate when someone dies before they can finish their work, especially when Miura's work was a labor of 31 years. I don't consider his failure to complete it in a timely manner to really be a bad thing though. The fact the series lasted until the day he died, that's 31 years he could reach new readers and inspire them. Yeah sure the series itself has no conclusion and leaves off on a cliffhanger with several questions about key characters up for interpretation, but the journey that had been written up to that point still has value. If it didn't, it wouldn't have been able to inspire at least a generation of artists from around the globe. The fact some guy from Japan managed to get recognition globally for his series, even if it's in a niche market; And beyond recognition the fact his work left a strong enough impact to inspire and influence its readers and left that lasting impact on them for life. You can't call it a failure, he did something that very few creative types manage to achieve and he did it on a larger scale than most. It sucks that he's gone. I can't believe tomorrow for the first time in my life I'll wake up and Kentaro Miura won't be alive granted I guess he's been dead for two weeks nearly since they kept his passing a secret till after the funeral for the family's privacy.
This might sound strange, but I don't know if we're ever gonna see another mangaka as influential as Miura. How could we? He defined a genre of storytelling in anime. Like the next closest we have is probably how Eiichiro Oda set the standard for large scale chaotic battles in shonen comics which I still don't think that's gonna leave a lasting impact because everything that's tried to mime it so far has become a complete mess of a series or a forgettable disappointment.
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