Reread of the Hawk - Prelude

Naming convention swiped from the Read/Reread series on Tor.com.

I was first introduced to Kentaro Miura’s fantasy manga Berserk through the anime adaptation, which is still very good in its own right, but the changes from the manga turn it into more of a medieval warfare story, which can make the ending somewhat of a shocker if, like me, you had no existing familiarity with the series. It’s still worth checking out if you’re looking for a good fantasy warfare anime with few magical or supernatural elements and don’t mind a downer ending. I enjoyed it a lot and was easily motivated to check out the manga once I learned it was much longer and more complex than the anime.  So shortly after seeing the anime I picked up volume 1 of the manga and promptly spent the next nine months wishing that the average manga volume couldn’t be blown through in 30 minutes.

Needless to say, Berserk is currently my favourite manga (which isn’t saying much given how few of them I read), primarily because it appeals to my sensibilities as a fan of dark, gritty fantasy with a pseudo-medieval setting. Of course, these are probably the same elements that turn people off the series – it’s hard to deny that this is a series filled with heavy, and rather gory, violence, shady, self-serving, or just plain unpleasant characters, and a seemingly endless string of bad events. That’s not to say that the story is all violence for violence’s sake, and over the course of this reread I’ll hopefully be able to shed some light on what (if anything) deeper meaning the story has to offer beyond an angry guy slicing up people with a giant sword.

Format-wise, I’ll be following the structure used in the various Tor.com series and probably a million other reads/rereads on the internet , summarizing the events of what I just read and then posting my reactions and analysis. The update schedule will be to do one volume at a time every few days, so I’d estimate updates about twice a week, but always at least once a week barring something truly unexpected, and  I might cheat a little reading-wise if a volume begins or ends with the first or last chapter of a story arc. This is my first attempt at this kind of reread, so I’m not sure how things will go at first,but you've got to start somewhere.

Since this is a reread, obviously I already know the story and should have an easy time spotting most of the hints and foreshadowing. However, for the purpose of this reading I'll try my best to suspend my judgement and evaluate a given volume only on what occurs in it and prior volumes.

So without further ado, on with the show. Expect the first update sometime tomorrow on Tuesday.