My wife woke me late last night after a session between the pencil and the page. I’ve heard this tone from her before and it reminds me bare feet gently walking on moss covered stone and mist. It’s a tone meant to ease the listener to brace themselves.
Kentaro Miura, creator of the quintessential, dark fantasy manga Berserk, passed away nine days ago. Apparently from a bad ticker.
Bridgit and I talk openly about our nerdy fandoms, as any nerdy marriage I hope would be. They’re kindle to our fire pit of creativity, even if mine are sometimes smoldering embers (still here!) and hers is the crescendo nights of Burning Man. We listen and see the connected dots in our creative voices. I’d like to think at this point there’s a constellation of all these wonderfully crafted stories that makes us … well, us.
Miura’s Berserk became one of my favorites surprisingly not too long ago, right before we were married six years ago. I’ve seen it much longer before from the Dreamcast game, or PS2 later on, but I had no clue about the story and saw the screenshots of “anime-dude-giant-sword-mayhem” in gaming magazines or the promotional info on the back of game boxes at Best Buy. Of course young me thought “Hell yeah that’s cool!” But that was all. The anime wasn’t accessible until much later (all anime was hard to come by in Stanly County), and manga could only be bought at really niche brick-and-mortar shops before they were cool at malls.
Anyway, let me put away my cane. The interest for Berserk greatly peaked when I saw a random Reddit post about their latest chapter in a long while. And it was way, way different than what I remembered back in the day.
I’m not going into a history lesson on how I became a fan of Miura, but this image set off the Struggler’s rabbit hole for me. In one panel, there was a story to tell; and as I dug deeper, the story wasn’t just a troupe of a man who was too angry to die. The story to me was an individual named Guts who was dealt an exceptionally bad hand since childbirth in a grim-dark medieval setting (where everything is just bad for everyone). And with every obstacle, whether it be kingdom warlords or barons of hell, he overcame them while wielding an impossibly large sword that others couldn’t fathom.
I feel like part of this epic tale transformed from this macho, rule-of-cool comic to an expression of Miura’s life, albeit keeping it very personal. The story unfolded slower, yes, but deliberately and precisely to his standards. No one knows except those closest to him knew of Kentaro Miura’s struggles, but it would be foolish to think he wouldn’t share what he learned from them. Lessons to me that will forever ring include:
- Yes, things can always get worse. But it’s never the end.
- There is always daybreak, no matter how long the night lasts.
- No matter how much you think you got whatever you struggle under control alone, it will never be as rewarding as taking it on with company.
- There is always something worth fighting for.
Kentaro Miura, you were loved by those who knew very little about you, especially me. I hope your story is finished the way you meant for it, whether you planned for this or not. You did tie up some loose ends and that may have been enough for you. But now, you struggle no more.