There is not much off limits to an artist who draws a panel wherein a pregnant woman’s womb is obliterated by the birth of a demonic, The Slime-esq, troll fetus. Kentaro Miura, mangaka of Berserk — and by extension illustrator of the above scene (fig.1) — claims a certain privilege, or perhaps right, that other authors are too fearful to obtain. That being, complete freedom in depicting anything the story requires.
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Famously Infamous
Out of all manga, certainly out of all mainstream manga, Berserk is a contender for the most graphic. If given the opportunity, rarely does it shy away from depiction of the “Adult”, rarer still does it shy from detailing the Adult, resulting in eroticism, nausea, or a confusing mix of both. This aspect of Berserk has been, if not its primary appeal, what has made it so infamous among the manga community, resulting in over 60 million copies being in circulation (making it one of the top most successful manga).
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Kentaro Miura
Miura was born in Chiba, in 1976. By 10 he was drawing manga; by 11 he was drawing manga to the acclaim of others. At 18 he began working under Goerge Morikawa, author of Hajime no Ippo, as an assistant benefiting from, essentially, being an apprentice. Morikawa, tutoring teen Miura, claimed there was nothing he could teach the boy that he didn’t already know. During this time, Miura had been sketching a concept for a Western-inspired, dark fantasy manga following a broad-shouldered swordsman called Guts. This project was not seen till several manga and an admission into Nihon University later, in 1988, when a 48-page prototype for Berserk was published. One year later, Berserk’s full serialization began.
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